Excerpt from Journal of the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania and Mechanics' Register, Vol. 26: Devoted to Mechanical and Physical Science, Civil Engineering, the Arts and Manufactures, and the Recording of American and Other Patented Inventions

This subject has been frequently recalled to my notice in other countries. Any remark which I might chance to make on the bad effects of not limiting the hours of infant labour in other factories, has been generally met by the remark, "We do not work our children nearly so much as in Austria." Thus the cruelty of the Austrian practice becomes a justification (though a bad one) for lesser excess over the rest of the continent.

The Wandershaft system of course prevails there, and most of the trades are supplied by the itinerant journeymen. A carpenter there can earn from 40 to 54 kr. and even a florin (1s. 8d.) per day. Millwrights ditto. The social system is very different from what it is in England or in Scotland, and it would take some time to describe it fully. In the first place, almost every father of a family has a house and several patches of land. The house and land may have cost 1200 to 1500 florins, or even less. 1200 fl. equals 100l. sterling, and this the proprietor has probably bought, liable to a mortgage of 600, 800, or even 900 fl., for which he pays 5 percent. The Voralberg, containing about 90, 000 inhabitants, sends out masons and house builders to nearly the whole of Switzerland, and the neighbouring provinces of France. They leave early in spring, and live very sparingly during the summer, cooking for themselves a kind of pudding or soup of flour and Indian corn, which, with bread, and now and then a glass of wine, suffice for their nourishment. They return home in autumn, where they have little to do during winter, excepting to tell wood, &c., in the forests, and other chance work. The children leave the country at the same time in thousands, to herd cattle in Suabia and Bavaria: they get perhaps 1l., besides board and lodgings, for their services, a suit of home-spun linen clothes, and two pair of shoes, and perhaps a bag of flour, which they manage to cook for themselves on the way, and return with nearly the whole of their earnings. The women who remain, and the elder men, cultivate the land, and the girls and many of the young men weave, and are employed in the manufactories.

I have before stated, that food is cheap in Austria. These are the prices of bread and meat, and wheat, as published by authority in the "Feldkircher Wochenblatt, " of October 9th, the day I was at that town, Best wheat, 6 fl. the half "metz, " of which, four make a sack, (the price of the English quarter would be, therefore, 40s.) common wheat., 2 1/2 fl. per halt metz, (or 33s. 4d. per quarter).

In Austria, the working classes generally are a contented, but certainly an ill-informed people.

The means of life seem pretty equally distributed, according to the manufacturing demand for labour, or the fertility of the soil, compared with the number of the population. In the Tyrol, great poverty prevails, and this forces the natives to migrate and wander over the rest of the Continent, deriving a scanty subsistence from the sale of wares, &c.,

In Northern Prussia, wages are not quite so high. Mechanics, as carpenters and blacksmiths, earn in the towns from 1s. 6d. to 1s. 10d. per day.

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