Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/351

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and its Green Border-Land.
337

six scholarships and six fellowships in Worcester College. Oxford, a truly munificent donation.

Close to Bromsgrove are the extensive saltworks of Stoke Prior. The brine pits are the deepest in England, or more than 600 feet. The works cover the space of about seventeen acres, and cost about £450,000. The brine yields a rich proportion, or forty-two per cent., of salt. About 500 hands are employed, and about 3,000 tons of salt produced weekly. Droitwich, the next town, is a kind of Salina or Syracuse, whose very name breathes "the brine of the ocean." These Worcestershire springs or wells export about 50,000 tons, and those of Cheshire about 650,000 annually. Although so many corruptible things are seasoned and preserved wholesome by salt, it does but little in this way for the minds and morals of the men, women, and children engaged in its manufacture. The printed reports of their conduct and condition. I am inclined to believe, are exaggerated, or refer to times gone or going past. Says one of these statements: "The work is necessarily continuous day and night, and from Monday morning to Saturday evening it often happens that the labourer never quits the precincts of the works, snatching his intervals of rest beside the pans. Men and women, boys and girls, are thus exposed to more than all the debasing and demoralizing influences which haunt the worst