WHEN recently, in the 100 Years Ago section, I ran a story about "Bachelor Women", it seemed to Mrs Alice Cook, of Mealhouse Court, Atherton, to give so different a picture of the working class, single women, of her youth, that it inspired her to write to me. This is what she said:

WHENEVER I thought about my future, I knew I would have to work in industry, although I longed for work where I could use my talent and love for arithmetic.

This would have meant an office job; these positions were few and far between and open to those with a commercial education.

I put day dreams to one side and gave my mind towards giving an honest day's work to anyone who employed me.

Women were such a plentiful source of cheap labour. I do not know or remember any single woman who had a home of her own; they lived either with relatives or friends. None had their own "hearth" stones.

So many women had lost prospective husbands in the First World War, so many young men killed, so many women denied marriage and motherhood - so many women condemned to live a hand to mouth existence for the rest of their working lives with the stark reality of the "Workhouse" in their old age!

It's a pity Lowry never portrayed the ugly features of poverty -- the knock knees, low legs, stunted growth, gaunt features and lack lustre eyes.

He painted industry as the background and limit of our horizons -- the be all and end all of our existence. We had to work to earn the cash to buy the food which would provide the energy to work -- ad infinition!

When I worked at Carr and Nichols Smithy in Bolton Road I often saw two sisters who lived nearby - the elder one was so knock kneed that her knees crossed as she walked (childhood rickets). She worked in the cotton mill. Her younger sister was terribly "bow-legged" and didn't go out to work.

Knock knees and bow legs were not an unusual sight around this time, but theirs were gross deformities.

When wages are insufficient for one's basic needs, this is the cause of malnutrition, the underlying factor of many diseases -- rickets, TB and premature death, the hidden price of the "good old days".

The slave owner paid hard cash for his slaves and I'm sure most would see that their investments were taken better care of, than the workers in Lancashire, the first Industrial Society.

The mill and mine owners paid "nowt" for their work force, their investments were in their mills and mines.

Workers, working for "peanuts", overworked, underfed, living in appalling conditions, and, when they showed signs of illness or fatigue being sacked! There were always many more willing to take their place; you had to work or starve!

I'm ashamed of local social history, children of six years working in the mills and mines.

Most children in my youth had read or heard about the shameful slave trade and Harriet Beecher Slaves "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and wept!

Today's children should read "The First Industrial Society" by Christopher Aspin, and weep again. They need to know how their forebears lived, and the price they paid!