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Economy-Saturday Night's Wages.

nical apparatus, and the library now contains seven hundred volumes.

ECONOMY." A slight knowledge of human nature will show," says Mr. Colquhoun, "that when a man gets on a little in the world he is desirous of getting on a little further." Such is the growth of provident habits that it has been said, if a journeyman lays by the first five shillings his fortune is made. Mr. William Hall, who has bestow. ed great attention on the state of the laboring poor, declares he never knew an instance of one who had saved money coming to the parish. And he adds, moreover, "those individuals who save money are better work. men if they do not the work better, they behave better and are more respectable; and I would sooner have in my trade a hundred men who save money, than two hundred who would spend every shilling they get. In proportion as individuals save a little money their morals are much better; they husband that little, and there is a superior tone given to their morals, and they behave better for knowing they have a little stake in society." It is scarcely necessary to remark, that habits of thoughtfulness and frugality are at all times immense importance.-[Wilderspin's Early Discipline.]

SATURDAY NIGHT'S WAGES.-The system frequently pursued in manufacturing towns in paying the wages of Mechanics, is not, perhaps, calculated to give to these all the advantages which they should derive from their hard earnings.

It is the custom in many factories to pay the wages of the week at a neighboring public house on the Saturday evening, after the labors of the day are over. This duty, in a large establishment, is a work which necessarily occupies some time; and the most sober and well-disposed, those most anxious to take their earnings home to their families, cannot obtain their money in time for procuring the Sunday's meal before the usual hour of rest. After a hard day's labor, spent in domestic cares, and in rendering the dwelling in a fit state for the coming day, the weary housewife would gladly seek repose. Under this arrangement, however, she is obliged to encroach on the period which should be devoted to sleep, in order to make her requisite purchases, or to invade the quiet of the Sabbath morning with the petty cares of life, which, for that one day at least, should be laid aside.

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This in itself is a great annoyance to the female part of the community; but it is light as air to them, compared with the more serious evil which the system carries in its train, and which they would gladly exchange for any personal inconvenience they might be called upon to endure.

Workmen of the most abstemious habits consider themselves in a manner constrained to take some refreshment in the house where they have just received money; and though they may spend but a trifle, that trifle would have been better bestowed in assisting to minister to the wants of those nearest and dearest to them. But what a temptation is held out to men of a less temperate character. Here the love of noisy fellowship is nourished, unfitting the mind for the quiet enjoyments of home. Here the habit of intoxication is gradually acquired and con. firmed. While wives are anxiously waiting at the door of the house for those supplies which will enable them to furnish necessaries for their families, husbands are too often rioting within, forgetful of those ties which should prevent such a waste of time and money in selfish and degrading enjoyment; and when, at length, the expecting female does obtain the residue of the earnings which should have been appropriated to the support of her family for the ensuing week, she finds the sum fearfully diminished and inadequate for the purpose.

Many a watchful mother has had to mourn over the ruined prospects of a beloved son, whose first deviation from right was the loi. tering at the public house on the Saturday night; his former simple habits gradually turned into those of selfishness, and all its lamentable consequences. Many an affectionate wife has had to grieve at this wreck of her early happiness, first invaded by the Saturday night's temptation; while she is either left to struggle neglected and alone through the miseries of life, or called upon to endure more active ill-treatment from her inebriated partner.

It may be said we are rather exaggerating the picture; that a large proportion of those who gain their livelihood by working as mechanics are respectable, intelligent, and virtuous members of society. Most happily this is true; but we think a still farther num. ber might be ranked in the same class, it the payment of wages were better regu. lated, while the comfort of the artisans, and that of their families, would at the same time be materially increased.

There can be little doubt that, were proprietors once convinced of the bad effects which arise from this plan, they would adopt one more conducive to the comfort of those by whose labor they are benefitted. A walk in a manufacturing town at twelve o'clock on the Saturday night would sufficiently exрове the evils of this manner of payment. The shops are then still open, and harrassed females are seen flocking to them; the streets are crowded with people; and many women, with looks of distress, are still lingering at the doors of the pay-houses, in the vain hope of alluring home their truant hus. bands. The whole continues a scene of noise, bustle and confusion, long past the hour of midnight, and but ill-befitted to usher in the day of rest. How unlike the holy sooth. ing repose of the Cotter's Saturday Eve, so beautifully described by Burns.

If payment of the week's earnings were made on the respective premises, instead of at a drinking-house, and on the Friday instead of the Saturday evening, all these evils might at once be avoided.

The men would have no temptation given them to spend their earnings away from their families-the women would be enabled to make their purchases on the Saturday, at the time most convenient for the purpose, and they would have one chance less for unhappiness.

Two objections are made to this proposed alteration-the one moral, the other practical. It is said that, with a well furnished pocket, a man not very industrious may be inclined to indulge himself in idleness during the ensuing day; but this would evince so total an absence of foresight and prudence, that the individual capable of such conduct would, we fear, when paid on the Saturday, in like manner take his holiday on the Monday, or just as long as his money might last.

The other objection arises from the mode in which the wages are usually paid at a large establishment. The required amount of money is in the first instance deposited in the hands of the confidential foreman, who does not pay each individual workman, but divides the whole in classes, and to a respon. sible man in each of these intrusts the sum due to his particular class: should the indi. viduals of which this is composed be very numerous, he in his turn subdivides it, till at length the various claimants receive their due. The transaction is not, therefore, sim. ply that of a proprietor paying his men, but it involves itself into a much more compli

cated form, and the men must necessarily have a common place of rendezvous to adjust their various accounts. That this diffi. culty may be obviated, and that it is in fact nearly as easy to pay on the premises as to adjourn to another house, we happen to be furnished with a practical proof. The proprietor of a large concern, not residing on the spot where it is carried on, had recently occasion to proceed to that place in order to examine more particularly how the works were conducted. He immediately perceived the bad effects arising from the system of paying the workmen at a drinking-house, and determined at once to abolish the practice. This intention was strongly combatted by the superintendant, who assured him that it was an impossibility to pay all the men at the works, for if the few to whom he delivered the money for their respective divisions were to receive it on the premises, they would of their own accord repair to the usual pay-house with those to whom the money was due, in order to make a settlement among themselves.

The gentleman persevered, however, in his intention; and on the day of payment, he himself, without any assistance, paid into the hands of each workman before he left the premises the wages due to him. He thus proved the practicability of the altera. tion, and acquired the right of insisting that henceforth the plan should always be pursued. By a little method, and by the aid of a few assistants, this work would of course be comparatively easy to one understanding its practical details; if in the absence of these advantages it was accomplished without any difficulty, in the manner we have described, by one quite new to the business, in an establishment where numerous work. people are employed, it follows that this objection is of no weight.

TO ASCERTAIN THE HEIGHT OF A STEEPLE, ToWER, &c.-Take two sticks of any but equal length, and holding one perpendicular, place one end of the other against its centre, so as to form a right angle with it; having done this, place your eye at the other end, and advance towards, or recede from, the object the height of which you wish to as certain, until the upper and lower ends of the perpendicular stick shall appear to touch its top and bottom at the same time; then, from the spot on which you stand, measure the distance to the foot of the object, and this will be its exact height.

Milne's Mercurial Dynamometer, and Railway Lock for raising Carriages, &c.

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Milne's Mercurial Dynamometer, and Rail. way Lock for raising Carriages from one Level to another. [From the London Mechanics' Magazine.]

In our review of Mr. Milne's excellent "Practical View of the Steam Engine," we made mention of a mercurial dynamometer, for which Mr. M. had received the honorary gold medal of the Highland Society of Scotland. We now proceed to fulfil our promise of extracting from Mr. M.'s "Appendix" the following descriptive particulars of this instrument; and shall subjoin thereto an account of an ingenious apparatus which Mr. M. has also devised for raising or lowering railway carriages from one level to another.

THE DYNAMOMETER.-Practical engineers complain that those dynamometers which indicate the quantum of force applied by a horse upon a railway, by the inflection of springs, lose their elasticity when kept at work for a considerable time; the oscillations of the index-pointer, too, make it impossible to ascertain the medium of unequal draught applied by the animal in stepping out. Such also is the case when any other common instrument is used for this purpose. Both of these defects are completely obviated by the mercurial dynamometer now to be described. This instrument consists of a hollow metallic cylinder, A, fig. 2, in which is placed a floating piston, B, which should be about one.

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Milne's Mercurial Dynamometer, and Railway Lock for raising Carriages, &c.

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tenth of an inch less in diameter than the cylinder in which it must move freely up or down. To prevent friction, four small roll. ers should be inserted into the side of this wooden float, both at its top and bottom; which rollers should not project further than to admit of the piston being "shake-free within its cylinder. In order, also, to prevent absorption of the mercury, the wood should be coated with bees' wax mixed with whitening or with lamp-black. These things being attended to, and a portion of mercury placed within the cylinder, by pushing down the piston the fluid will ascend in a thin film between it and the cylinder, till the statical weight of the mercury, acting on the base of the floating piston, balances the force exerted in pushing it down. Hence, since the statical weight of the fluid increases reciprocally as the height to which it is caused to ascend by its displacing force, so must its various points of height within the cylinder be a measure of the force in equilibrio with the statical weight of the fluid.

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Such being the construction of this dyna. mometer, it is only necessary to fix it in a vertical position to the front of the foremost of a train of waggons, and to turn the direc. tion of the horses' draught in such a manner as to cause it to pull down the floating piston; while a glass tube exhibits the height of the fluid, and consequently the force exerted by the animal. To prevent any sud. den elevations or depressions in the mer. cury in the tube, from the irregularity of the horses' draught, the socket in which it is placed has a ventricle at D, the diameter of which is .033 of an inch, while that of the .2502 glass tube is .250; wherefore = 57.4; hence the elevation or depression of the mercury in the tube must be 57.4 times less than in the cylinder; the celerity of which fluid, too, is still further reduced by springs attached to the draught-hook, as seen in the plan, fig. 3. Since this machine was first constructed, it has occurred to Mr. Milne that, by attaching a stop-cock, the celerity of the motion of the mercury in the glass tube could be regulated to any required extent with the utmost exactness. In addition to these contrivances, oscillations of the fluid might be still further prevented by making the yoke-levers, E, shorter than those which pull down the piston. The friction of the arbor, F, might also be much lessened, by making its extremities similar to the bearing. pivots of a common balance.

Mr. Granger, the engineer, having placed this dynamometer on a carriage (represented in fig. 1) so constructed that neither the weight of the instrument nor of the persons upon it should affect the results, made a number of very interesting and useful experiments with it on the Kirkintilloch Railway. The first object in these experiments was to ascertain the capabilities of the dynamometer; on which head nothing can be more satisfactory than the testimony Mr. G. has given. "It is altogether superior," he says, "to any other I have seen; and it is the opinion of several engineers, who have seen it at work, that it is the best instrument for engineering purposes that has ever been tried." A long and circumstantial narrative of these experiments is given, but it is only necessary that we should here place before our readers the principal facts which they have established with respect to friction on railways:

1. The medium friction of a train of five waggons on a level part of the railway was 9 lbs. per ton; while on a curved part, with a radius of about 800 feet, it was 18 lbs. per ton.

2. A draught of 10-8 lbs. per ton was required to travel at the rate of three miles an hour when the rails were dry, and only 6.8 lbs. when wet.

3. On a level the force exerted by horse was observed to vary from 90 to 110 lbs., but when the train came to a part of the railway which inclined at the rate of 1 in 280, the waggons descended freely by their own gravity.

4. On a descent of 1 in 117, a waggon with wheels 2-5 feet in diameter carried 1020 lbs. more weight than one with 3 feet wheels, at the same rate of speed and with the same power applied: but on a curve with a radius of a thousand feet, the 3 feet wheels proved superior to the 2-5-a circumstance which Mr. Milne ascribes to the axles of the 3 feet wheels being of two pieces, meeting within a bush at the centre, while the 2.5 wheels were attached by an inflexi. ble axle, whence it followed, in the case of the former, that "all the wheels would roll upon the rails of different radii, independent of the motions of each other."

5. The average force of draught required on a level at 3.5 miles per hour was 8 lbs. per ton; at 6.66 miles, 9.5 lbs. ; at 7.5 miles, 10-2 lbs. ; at 8 miles, 10.67 lbs. ; at 8.57 miles, 11-63 lbs.

THE RAILWAY LOCK.-Let A and B, fig. 4, be two platforms, on which the waggons

General Education.

are to be elevated or let down; A being at the upper level and B at the lower. Cand D are two cast iron cylinders filled with water, and having water-tight pistons supporting the platforms, A and B. Suppose, now, that a train of waggons has been placed on the platform, B, to be raised to the upper level, and that a greater weight is about to descend upon A; then by turning the handle, E, of the fourway-valve, F, to a proper point on an index beneath it, the superior weight on A will press the water below its piston through the valve F into D, and there. by elevate the weight upon B; the fluid above the piston in D passing over into C by the pipe G. But suppose there is no counterweight ready to descend on A when it is required to raise a load on B, then by turning the handle E, the water in the cistern H will descend and press upon the piston D, while simultaneously the water above D will pass off through the pipe G into C, and the water below the piston in C will make its exit through one of the water-ways of the valve F. Or if, on the other hand, there should be a load descending on A when there is none ascending on B, the valve F has only to be turned in proportion to the load (a matter which practice would easily determine), when a corresponding weight of water will be driven from the cylinders up the pipe and into the cistern H; in which case the cylinders below the ascending platform will fill themselves from the well K. The power of a machine of this kind may be stated as being equal to the weight of a column of water whose base is equal to the height of the fluid in the pipe L; and were this pipe a transparent tube, with a graduated scale attached to it, the height of the fluid in the tube would clearly point out the quantity of weight incumbent on one or other of the platforms, minus the friction of the pistons.

GENERAL EDUCATION.-A strange idea is entertained by many that education unfits persons for labor, and renders them dissatisfied with their condition in life. But what would be said were any of the powers of the body to be in a certain case disused? Suppose a man were to place a bandage over his right eye-to tie up one of his hands-or to attach a ponderous weight to his legs and, when asked the cause, were to reply, that the glance of that eye might make him covetous-that his hand might pick his neigh. bor's pocket-or that his feet might carry him into evil company-might it not be fairly re

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plied, that his members were given to use, and not to abuse, that their abuse is no argument against their use, and that this suspension of their action was just as contrary to the wise and benevolent purpose of their Creator as their wrong and guilty application? And does this reasoning fail when applied to the mind? Is not the unemployed mental faculty as opposed to the advantage of the individual as the unused physical power? Can the difference between mind and matter overturn the ordinary principles of reasoning and of morals? Besides, how is man to be prepared for the duties he has to discharge? By mere attention to his body? Impossible. The mind must be enlightened and disciplined; and if this be neglected, the man rises but little in charac ter above the beasts that perish, and is wholly unprepared for that state to which he ought to have aspired.-[Wilderspin's Early Discipline.]

Thus I Think. [From Locke's Miscellaneous Papers, published in his Life by Lord King.]

It is a man's proper business to seek happiness and avoid misery. Happiness consists in what delights and contents the mind; misery in what disturbs, discomposes, or torments it.

I will therefore make it my business to seek satisfaction and delight, and avoid uneasiness and disquiet; to have as much of the one and as little of the other as may be.

But here I must have a care I mistake not; for if I prefer a short pleasure to a lasting one, it is plain I cross my own happiness.

Let me then see wherein consists the most lasting pleasure of this life, and that, as far as I can observe, is in these things:

1st. Health, without which no sensual (as opposed to intellectual) pleasure can have any relish.

2d. Reputation,-for that I find every body is pleased with, and the want of it is a constant torment.

3d. Knowledge,-for the little knowledge I have, I find I would not sell at any rate, nor part with for any other pleasure.

4th. Doing good, for I find the wellcooked meat I eat to-day does now no more delight me, nay, I am diseased after a full meal; the perfumes I smelt yesterday now no more affect me with any pleasure; but the good turn I did yesterday, a year, seven years since, continues still to please and delight me as often as I reflect on it.

5th. The expectation of eternal and in

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