"If you had refused to work those long hours, and wished to have worked a moderate length of time only, should you have been retained in your situation ?"

"I should have had to go home; I should have been turned off directly."

These miserable young slaves have no power of choice; for if they, or their parents for them, refuse, they are instantly turned off to literal starvation; no parish assistance being allowed to those who resist the regulations of the manufacturers.

Says Mrs. Trollope, in the beautiful. story of Michael Armstrong, "Whenever our boasted trade flows briskly, they are compelled to stand to their work for just as many hours as the application of the overlooker's strap or billy-roller can keep them on their legs. Innumerable instances are on record of children falling from excess of weariness on the machinery, and being called to life by its lacerating their flesh. It continually happens that young creatures under fifteen years of age are kept from their beds all night. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hours of labour out of the twenty-four, are cases which recur continually, and I need not say with what effect upon these victims of ferocious avarice.

* *

"Two hundred thousand little creatures, created by the abounding mercy of God with faculties for enjoyment so perfect that no poverty short of actual starvation can check their joy, so long as innocence and liberty be left them! Two hundred thousand

little creatures, for whose freedom from toil during their tender years the awful voice of nature has gone forth, to be snatched away, living and feeling, from the pure air of heaven, while the beautiful process is going on by which their delicate fabric gradually strengthens into maturity; taken forever from all with which their Maker has surrounded them, for the purpose of completing his own noblest work; taken and lodged amid stench, and stunning, terrifying tumult; driven to and fro till their little limbs bend under them, hour after hour and day after day; the repose of a moment to be purchased only by yielding their tender bodies to the fist, the heel, or the strap of the overlooker !"

This is almost as shocking as anything Mrs. Trollope found in the "Domestic Manners of the Americans.'

Let me ask your attention, dear sir, for a moment longer, to this terrible history of early suffering, developed in the evidence on the Factory Bill.

Evidence of Elden Hargrave." In attending to this machine, are you not always upon the stretch and upon the move?" "Yes, always."

"Do you not use your hand a good deal in stretching it out?" "Yes."

"What effect had this long labour upon you?" "I had a pain across my knees, and I got crooked." "Was it in the back of your knees or the side of your knees?" "All round."

"Will you show your limbs ?" (Here the witness exposed her legs and knees.)

WORK OF SCAVENGERS.

169

"Were your knees ever straight at any time?" "They were straight before I went to Mr. Brown's mill."

*

*

*

*

*

"You say you worked for seventeen hours a day all the year round; did you do that without interruption ?" "YES."

"Could you attend any day or night school?"

"Can you

"No."

read?" "I can read a little in a spell

ing-book."
"Where did

you learn that? did you go to a Sunday-school?" "No; I had no clothes to go in." Evidence of Mr. Thomas Daniel relative to the boys called Scavengers.-"You have stated that there is considerable difference in the ages of the children employed; are the younger or the older of the children employed those that have to undergo the greatest degree of labour and exertion?" "The younger." "Those you call scavengers?" "Yes, scaven

gers and middle-piecers."

" Will state their average age?" "The averyou age age of scavengers will not be more than ten years."

"Describe to the committee the employment of those scavengers." "Their work is to keep the machines, while they are going, clean from all kinds of dust and dirt that may be flying about, and they are in all sorts of positions to come at them; I think that their bodily exertion is more than they are able VOL. I.-P

to bear, for they are constantly kept in a state of activity."

"Have they not to clean the machines, and to creep under, and run round them, and to change and accommodate their position in every possible manner, in order to keep those machines in proper order?" "They are in all sorts of postures that the human body is capable of being put into, to come at the machines."

"Are they not peculiarly liable to accidents, then ?" "In many instances they are; but not so much now as they formerly were; spinners take more care and more notice of the children than they formerly did."

"Do you think that they are capable of performing that work for the length of time that you have described?" "Not without doing them a serious injury with respect to their health and their bodily strength."

"State the effect that it has upon them, according to your own observation and experience." "Those children, every moment they have to spare, will be stretched at their length upon the floor in a state of perspiration, and we are obliged to keep them up to the work by using either a strap or some harsh language, and they are kept continually in a state of agitation; I consider them to be constantly in a state of grief, though some of them cannot shed tears; their condition greatly depresses their spirits."

"They live in a state of constant apprehension,

EXCESSIVE LABOUR IMPOSED ON CHILDREN. 171

and often in one of terror ?" "They are always in terror; and I consider that that does them as much injury as their labour, their minds being in a constant state of agitation and fear."

chil

"You consider, then, upon the whole, their state as one of extreme hardship and misery ?" "So much so that I have made up my mind that my dren shall never go into a factory, more especially as scavengers and piecers."

"What do you mean by saying that those children are always in a state of terror and fear?" "The reason of their being in a state of terror and fear is, that we are obliged to have our work done, and we are compelled, therefore, to use the strap, or some harsh language, which it hurts my feelings often to do, for I think it is heart-breaking to the poor child."

"Do not you think that their labour is more aggravating to them at the end of the day?" "I do; for we have to be more harsh with them at the latter part of the day than in the middle part of it. The greatest difficulty that we have to contend with, in point of making them do their labour, is in the morning and after four o'clock in the afternoon. The long hours that they have laboured the day before, in my opinion, cause them to be very sleepy in the morning."

"Have you observed them to be drowsy in the after part of the day?" "Very much so."

You cannot have failed, dear sir, to have examined most thoroughly a question of such deep interest