was passed, the main provisions of which were that no child under nine years of age, should be employed in any factory for the spinning of cotton or wool; and second, that no child under sixteen years of age should be employed should be employed in any such factory for more than twelve hours during the day, exclusive of meal times.

In 1825, Sir John Hobhouse secured the passage of an act, limiting the labor of persons under sixteen, to sixty-nine hours in the week, twelve on five days and nine on Saturdays. In 1831, this act was amended so as to prohibit night work, for all under twenty-one, and protecting the labor of all persons under eighteen, instead of sixteen years.

In 1832, Mr. Sadler brought in a bill to limit the hours of labor for all under eighteen years of age, to fifty-eight hours in the week, and to extend its provisions to all mills, woollen, flax, and silk, as well as cotton. The House, unwilling to pass such a measure without further investigation, a committee was appointed, of which Mr. Sadler was chairman. Above eighty witnesses, including six physicians, fourteen surgeons, and other gentlemen of reputation and experience, voluntarily appeared before the committee. The following is a speci men of their evidence:

SIR ANTHONY CARLISLE, F. R. S.-Factory children demand legislative protection for their own sakes, and for the sake of future generations of English laborers, because every succeeding generation will be progressively deteriorated, if you do not stop these sins against nature and humanity. I am quite sure, that the foundations for debility, decrepitude, and premature death, are to be found in these unnatural habits.

SIR WILLIAM BLIZARD, F. R. S.-Q. You think the average of such hours of labor (twelve and upwards) would be an extravagant imposition on the human frame? A. Dreadful. Not more than ten hours' actual labor ought to be demanded in behalf of young persons between nine and nineteen. I heartily concur in that opinion of my late honored friend, Dr. Baillie, that the duration of a day's actual labor of ten hours is quite enough, and as much as can be ordinarily endured, at any age, with impunity.

SIR CHARLES BELL K. G. H., F. R. S.-From nine to eighteen years, ten hours' labor a day, to which must be added the time necessary for taking meals and refreshment, making twelve hours a day, is as much as can be endured, generally speaking, with impunity, by those so occupied, and more than that is painful in idea.

SIR GEORGE LEMAN TUTHILL. F. R. S., M. D.-I think that ten hours of actual labor is as much as children and young persons from the age of nine to eighteen, of either sex, can endure with impunity.

JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, F. R. S. (surgeon of St. Thomas' Hospital, and Professor of Surgery at King's College.)-This is indeed a melancholy list of maladies (scrofula, tending to produce spinal complaints, white swellings, pulmonary consumptions, &c.), and one which I am sorry to say might be greatly augmented, as traceable to the neglect and improper management of those whose tender years demand our kindest care and attention. I fear that this country will have much to answer for in permitting the growth of that system of employing children in factories, which tends directly to the creation of all those circumstances which inevitably lead to disease. I say that these, and all the physi.

cal evils incident to such a state, require no medical opinion, but demand unsparing moral correction.

SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE F. R. S.-Q. It has been stated by a preceding witness, that out of about 2,000 children and young persons who have been carefully examined, about or nearly 200 were deformed, some of them very considerably, though it was considered many cases had escaped detection in the females, which their dress would more easily hide; do you conceive that would be a great portion of deformity to befall persons under those circumstances? Å. Certainly, an immense proportion.-Do you conceive that it is more than ordinarily necessary to give protection to the female about the age of puberty? Yes. Are you of opinion that a young person from nine to eighteen ought to labor beyond twelve hours a day, including the necessary intervals for taking meals?' I should think twelve too much for all, and indeed I think ten too much for children of ten or twelve years of age.

PETER MARK ROGET. M. D., F. R. S., (late a Physician to Manchester Infirmary.)-It appears to me, that the period mentioned (twelve hours a day, with due intermission for meals) is quite as much as the human frame is calculated to endure for any length of time, even in the adult state. WILLIAM LUTENER, Esq., surgeon, (Newton, Montgomeryshire.)-Q. Have you had reason to remark, in your professional duties, that accidents occur when the children became over-fatigued? A. We have frequent accidents, because the children get sleepy at night, and get their hands in the work; I have had frequently to amputate the hands and fingers of children.

GEORGE JAMES GUTHRIE, Esq., F.R. S.-Q. Have you not been a medical officer in the armies of this country for a considerable length of time? A. Yes. -Is eight hours out of the twenty-four about the amount of ordinary duty required of a soldier? A soldier is never kept under arms more than four or six hours, unless before the enemy.

JOHN RICHARD FARRE. M. D., (a physician of forty-two years' standing.)-Q. Were you engaged in medical practice in the West Indies? A. I was. Supposing that the employment of the children in the factories of this country is spread over twelve or fourteen hours a day, and often with but very short intervals for the taking of their meals; is there any thing equal to that sort of labor imposed upon the children of the slaves in Barbadoes? Nothing of the kind; even the wlait, in the most vigorous condition of the body, is not subject to labor of that duration. In English factories, every thing which is valuable in manhood is sacrificed to an inferior advantage in childhood. You purchase your advantage at the price of infanticide; the profit thus gained is death to the child.

As this evidence was excepted to as having been given by persons friendly to Mr. Sadler's bill, and not under oath, the bill drawn up by him, and introduced by Lord Ashley, in the absence of Mr. Sadler who was no longer a member, was not considered but was postponed for the appointment of a Commission under the Great Seal, to collect information and evidence, as to the expediency of the measure. The board, consisting of ten civil and five medical commissioners, made a wide and minute survey of the whole field, viz. the hours of labor, the age at which children begin to work, the nature of their employment, the state of the buildings in which the occupation is carried on, the treatment to which they are subjected, and the ultimate effects of their em. ployment on their physical and moral condition.

The conclusions arrived at by the board, from personal inspection and folio volumes of evidence, were-

1st. That the children employed in all the principal branches of manufacture throughout the kingdom, work during the same number of hours as the adults.

2d. That the effects of labor during such hours are, in a great number of cases, permanent deterioration of the physical constitution; the production of diseases often wholly irremediable; and the partial or entire exclusion (by reason of excessive fatigue) from the means of obtaining adequate education, and acquiring useful habits, or of profiting by those means when afforded.

3d. That, at the age when children suffer these injuries, from the labor they undergo, they are not free agents, but are let out to hire, the wages they earn being received and appropriated by their parents and guardians.

We are therefore of opinion, that a case is made out for the interference of the Legislature in behalf of the children employed in factories.

The restrictions we venture to propose are:That children under nine years of age shall not be employed in factories.

That, until the commencement of the fourteenth year, the hours of labor during any one day shall not in any case exceed eight.

That, until the commencement of the fourteenth year, children shall not, in any case, be allowed to work at night-that is to say, between the hours of ten at night and five in the morning.

In order that the children may derive substantial benefit from the abridgement of their hours of labor, it is recommended that a portion of the time thus gained should be occupied in education; and it is suggested that this will secure two ulterior objects of considerable importance: first, it will be the best means of preventing the employment of the same child in two different factories on the same day, or in any other kind of labor likely to be injurious to its health; and, secondly, it will better qualify the persons so educated to adapt themselves to other employments, if, in after life, the vicissitudes of trade or other causes should render it desirable that they should find other means of support.

Such were the recommendations of the Factory Commission, which were embodied substantially in the act of August, 1833. This statute provides

That no child shall be employed in any mill or factory, except in silk-mills, under nine years of age; that after the 13th of February, 1834, no child shall be employed without previously producing a certificate of age from a surgeon; that no child under eleven, and eventually none under thirteen years of age, shall work more than nine hours in any one day, or more than forty-eight in the week, and never in the night. That no young person, under eighteen years age, shall work more than twelve hours in any one day, or more than sixty-nine hours in the week, nor in the night, except under particular circumstances.

of

That children limited to forty-eight hours in the week shall attend school on every working-day for two hours.

That an hour and a half in the day shall be allowed for the meals of all under eighteen. That holidays, equal to six entire days in the course of the year, shall be given to all under eighteen.

Four inspectors are appointed, empowered to enforce the observance of the act, to each of whom a certain district is assigned. The duty of the inspector is to visit and personally inspect the various factories in his district, to see that the law is obeyed, and twice a year to report his proceedings to the Government.

From the whole of this account it is clear that the main object of the framers of this Act, and of the Legislature in adopting its provisions, has been the separation of infant from adult labor, with the twofold purpose of protecting the health of the children and of providing for their education.

The intellectual, social, and moral condition of the manufacturing population, as represented in the Report of the Commission, and pamphlets growing out of the inquiry, is deplorable and full of warning. The report says

From the depositions of witnesses of all classes, it appears that even when the employment of children at so early an age, and for so many hours, as is customary at present, produces no manifest bodily disease, yet, in the great majority of cases, it incapacitates them from receiving instruction. The young children very generally declare that they are too much fatigued to attend school, even when a school is provided for them. This is more uniformly the declaration of the children in the factories of Scotland than in those of England. Few will be prepared to expect the statements on this head, in regard to Scotland, where the education of the children is neglected to a far greater extent than is commonly believed; where a comparatively small number can write; where, though perhaps the majority can read, many cannot; and where, with some honorable ex ceptions, it seems certain that the care once bestowed on the instruction of the young has ceased to be exemplary.

The Report from Scotland says,

The want of education, so general among these people, which has surprised me, is to be attributed to their being for so long a period of the day confined to the factories. The overseers of the small mills, when the proprietors are absent, uniformly declare their aversion to the present long hours of working, as injurious to the health of the workers, and as rendering their education impossible. It is, upon the whole, impossible to doubt that the young workers must be so much fatigued by the very long hours of labor, that they cannot be so fit to receive instruction as other young people, and that they have too little time for being at school even to enable them to learn to read, write, and understand accounts tolerably. Want of education cannot fail to have an unfavorable influence on their morals.

The result is, that, for the whole of England, there are stated to be of the work-people, able to read, 43,327, that is, 86 out of every 100; not able to read, 7,170, that is, 14 out of every 100; able to write, 21,488, that is, 43 out of every 100; not able to write, 29,009, that is, 57 out of every 100: for the whole of Scotland there are returned, as able to read, 28,256, that is, 96 out of every 100; not able to read, 1,230, that is, 4 out of every 100; able to write, 15,794, that is, 53 out of every 100; not able to write, 13,692, that is, 47 out of every 100. This, it must be observed, is the account of the people themselves of their own condition; and it may be presumed that where so many do not read at all, and so very large a portion is totally unable to write, the knowledge of reading cannot in general be very perfect; and that of those who do not write, few or none are able to read writing, or know any thing of accounts, or have the

slightest acquaintance with the elements of geogra phy, geometry, or drawing.

This is, in part, a direct consequence of the factory system. The operations of the factory have created what may be called an unnatural demand for children, the children employed in them being occupied with the business of the factory, at the time when children of like age are at school. The whole of the time ordinarily devoted to education is thus occupied in factory labor; and no other time is set apart for instruction, at least no time which can be profitably spent in the acquisition of knowledge; for no child can attend to the things commonly taught in a school after twelve or thirteen hours' labor in a factory: consequently the evening school is useless. On the other hand, one day in the week is insufficient for education, even if it were right to occupy in mental labor the only day of rest from bodily labor: consequently the Sunday school is at once inadequate and inappropriate.

The following picture of the condition of the manufacturing population, was drawn by Dr. Kay, in 1832, now one of the Poor Law Commissioners.

The population employed in the cotton factories, rises at five o'clock in the morning; works in the mills from six till eight o'clock, and returns home for half an hour or forty minutes, to breakfast. This meal generally consists of tea or coffee, with a little bread. Oatmeal porridge is sometimes, but of late, rarely used, and chiefly by the men; but the stimulus of tea is preferred, and especially by the women. The tea is almost always of a bad, and sometimes of a deleterious quality; the infusion is weak, and little or no milk is added. The operatives return to the mills and workshops until twelve o'clock, when an hour is allowed for dinner.

Amongst those who obtain the lower rates of wages, this meal generally consists of boiled potatoes. The mess of potatoes is put into one large dish; melted lard and butter are poured upon them, and a few pieces of fried fat bacon are sometimes mingled with them, and but seldom a little meat.

Those who obtain better wages, or families whose aggregate income is larger, add a greater proportion of animal food to this meal, at least three times in the week; but the quantity consumed by the laboring population is not great. The family sits round the table, and each rapidly appropriates his portion on a plate, or, they all plunge their spoons into the dish, and with an animal eagerness satisfy the cravings of their appetite. At the expiration of the hour, they are all again employed in the workshops or mills, where they generally again indulge in the use of tea, often mingled with spirits, accompanied by a little bread. Oatmeal or potatoes are, however, taken by some, a second time in the evening.

The population nourished on this aliment, is crowded into one dense mass, in cottages, separated by narrow, unpaved, and almost pestilential streets, in an atmosphere loaded with smoke and the exhalations of a large manufacturing city. The operatives are congregated in rooms and workshops, during twelve hours of the day, in an enervating heated atmosphere, which is frequently loaded with dust or filaments of cotton, or impure from constant respiration, or from other causes. They are engaged in an employment which absorbs their attention, and unremittingly employs their physical engergies. They are drudges who watch the movements, and assist the operations of a mighty material force, which toils with an energy unconscious of fatigue. The persevering labor of the operative must rival the mathematial precision, the incessant motion and the exhaustless power of the machine.

Prolonged and exhausting labor, continued from day to day, and from year to year, is not calculated

to develope the intellectual or the moral faculties of man. The dull routine of a ceaseless drudgery, in which the same mechanical process is incessantly repeated, resembles the torment of Sisyphus. The toil, like the rock, recoils perpetually on the wearied operative. The mind gathers neither stores nor strength from the constant extension and retraction of the same muscles. The intellect slumbers in supine inertness; but the grosser parts of our nature attain a rank developement. To condemn man to such severity of toil is, in some measure, to cultivate in him the habits of an animal. He becomes reckless-he disregards the distinguishing appetites and habits of his species-he neglects the comforts and delicacies of life-he lives in squalid wretchedness, on meagre food, and expends his superfluous gains in debauchery.

Hence, besides the negative results-the total abstraction of every moral and intellectual stimulusthe absence of variety-banishment from the grateful air and the cheering influence of light,-the phys imperfect nutrition. Having been subjected to the ical energies are exhausted by incessant toil and prolonged labor of an animal-his physical energy wasted-his mind in supine inaction-the artisan has neither moral dignity, nor intellectual nor organic strength, to resist the seductions of appetite. His wife and children, too frequently subjected to the same process, are unable to cheer his remaining moments of leisure. Domestic economy is neglected, domestic comforts are unknown. A meal of the coarsest food is prepared with heedless haste, and devoured with equal precipitation. Home has no other relation to him than that of sheller-few pleasures are there-it chiefly presents to him a scene of physical exhaustion, from which he is glad to escape. Himself impotent of all the distinguishing aims of his species, he sinks into sensual sloth, or revels in more degrading licentiousness. His house is ill furnished, uncleanly, often ill ventilated, perhaps damp; his food, for want of forethought and domestic economy, is meagre and innutricious; he is debilitated and hypochondriacal, and falls the victim of dissipation.

In 1840 a Select Committee, of which Lord Ashley was chairman, was appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into the opera tion of the Act for the regulation of mills and factories, passed in 1833, and to report their observations and opinions, together with the minutes of evidence taken before them. This committee summoned before them the Factory Inspectors, mill owners and other persons practically acquainted with the subject, and have submitted from time to time six Reports, containing minutes of evidence which fill 869 folio pages. This evidence makes it very manifest that the law of 1833 has been productive of much good, and put an end to many of the evils which made the interference of the legis lature necessary.

Its restrictions, however, are in many cases evaded with impunity, and the advantages of education are not secured to children in factories to the extent that was contemplated by the friends of the measure. It is also made very evident, that the protection of the legislature should be extended to children who are employed in mills for the manufacture of silk and lace, as well as in other departments of labor.

The first Report of this Committee is devoted to the evidence given by Leonard Horner, who has been an Inspector of Factories since

1833. Mr. Horner has since published a very valuable pamphlet, "ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN IN FACTORIES AND OTHER WORKS," from which we make the following extracts:

The wealth of a country surely depends, in no inconsiderable degree, on the people who are engaged in works of industry, being capable of performing the greatest possible amount of labor in a given time, without impairing their health; for it will cost. a great deal less to maintain, in food, clothes, and lodging, two strong healthy men employed to perform a piece of work, than would be required if we had to employ three men to do the same work, because of their inferior muscular powers. To culti vate the intelligence, and increase the probability of useful inventions, by improving the natural faculties of the working classes, must also be considered a source of national wealth; and to be spared the expense of the repression and punishment of crime seems no less clearly an important element in national prosperity. Now unless every possible chance be given to the child of growing up healthy and strong, unless his natural intelligence be cultivated and drawn out, unless moral and religious principles be early implanted in him, so as to become a part of his nature, what chance have we of his growing up to be a healthy, strong, intelligent, ingenious, honest, and right-principled man, a useful and orderly

citizen?

It is in vain that we establish schools, if the children have no time to attend them: if the children of our working classes are to be raised from their present degraded condition, by means of education, it is obvious that it can only be done by securing to them, in - the first instance, the time necessary for it. If, in order to be allowed to make a profit by the labour of children, it were made a condition, that the child shall not thereby be deprived of the means of obtaining a suitable education, it would be so far an adop tion of a compulsory system; but one both gentle and reasonable, and, at the same time, most extensively

efficacious.

As to the alleged encroachment on parental authority-if the parent does his duty to his child, if he takes due care of his health, and gives him such advantages of education as are within his reach, he will not know of the existence of the law, for he will have already done all that the law requires. Parental authority confers no right on a father wantonly to mutilate the little finger of his child; ought he to be permitted to do what is a thousand times worse, to enfeeble him and spread disease through his whole frame, to leave him as low in intelligence as a brute, and to infect him with the most danger ous of all pestilences, a corrupt, depraved mind? If

the father has his natural rights, so has the child; and if the father robs him of these, the State must become his guardian, and restore them to him.

The increasing tendency to employ children, and for such a number of hours daily as is ruinous both to their physical and moral condition, in order to cheapen production, in almost all branches of industry, and the growing, unnatural, and vicious practice of parents making their children work, to enable themselves to live in idleness and profligacy, can only be checked by some law of general application. cannot see that it would be in any respect inconsistent with sound principle, to pass a general law to the following effect; applicable to all children who are let out to work for hire, away from the houses of their parents:

I

1. That no child under eight years of age shall be allowed to work in any description of labour whatsoever.

2. That no child under thirteen years of age shall be allowed to work more than half a day; the day being divided by the ordinary dining hour

of the working classes, in the place where the child works.

3. That no child under thirteen years of age shall be allowed to work before five o'clock in the morning, or after eight o'clock at night. 4. That the parent, or other person deriving benefit from the wages of the child, shall be obliged to lay aside a certain portion of the child's own earnings for its own education; and shall be required to produce weekly to the employer a certificate, in proof that the child has attended school for at least two hours daily, on five days of the preceding week, until he has completed his thirteenth year.

The example of England has not been lost. upon other countries in Europe. Mr. Horner in the pamphlet, from which the above extract is taken, gives a review of the legislation of several of them respecting the employment and education of children in factories and other works, from which the following pages are mostly taken.

V. PRUSSIA.

The King of Prussia, in consequence of a Report from General von Horn, that the health and bodily vigor of the population of manufacturing towns and districts were inferior to those in the agricultural, directed his ministers to institute an inquiry into the facts and the causes. From their investigation, and the unanimous testimony of the provincial authorities, who were examined on the subject, it appeared that a large number of children, in the earliest stages of their physical development, were employed in manufactures, in excessive and long continued labor, frightfully disproportionate to their infantine powers. In Berlin, for example, 1510 young persons of both sexes, from eight to eighteen years of age, were found to be employed in factories from eleven to fourteen hours daily in continuous labor, and the same thing was going on to a still greater extent, comparatively, in the Rhenish Provinces. Such employment precludes, in general, all exercise in the open air, and causes injuries which can be traced to the positions in which they work, cither sitting, or standing in a stooping posture, or continually moving some one part of the body. They are almost always employed in highly heated apartments, in which the artificial temperature must often rise to the highest degree that is bearable. The atmosphere of these rooms besides, is often loaded with particles of the material used in the manufactories, and these positively noxious substances must necessarily be swallowed by the children, to the inevitable injury of their health. This is the case for example, in pin manufactories and in cotton spinning. In some factories the children are kept in constant employment in the night time. Such an unnatural mode of life is evidently calculated to repress the physical growth, and to sow in the body the seeds of ill-health in their earliest years. It puts a stop, in like proportion, to their intellectual and moral advancement; for it deprives

them of all opportunity, capability, and power of mental development, and of the full advantages of school instruction.

It was in the densely peopled manufacturing parts of the Rhenish Provinces, that these striking and lamentable evils were most apparent; and in the last Diet of the Provincial States held there, the following resolutions, as to the necessity of a protecting law, were embodied in the form of a special petition:

1. That children who have not completed their ninth year shall not be allowed to work in factories.

2. That childrer shall not be admitted into factories unless they shall produce proof of having attended school for three years; except local circumstances should render deviation a from this condition necessary; which however must be inquired into, and regulated by the local magistrates.

3. That children shall not be allowed to work in factories more than ten hours a day, at the most.

4. That in the course of these ten working hours the children shall have two hours of intervals of rest, one of which shal Ibe at noon, when they shall have excrcise in the open air.

The resolutions 1, 2, and 4, were carried unanimously, the third by a majority of 60 to 9; this minority wishing to fix the limit of employment at eleven hours daily.

These resolutions, which were strongly supported by the Government Commissary at the Diet, appeared to the Ministers of State to form an appropriate ground-work, in all essential particulars, for the wished-for law; and, accordingly, they were mainly followed in framing the regulations for the employment of the young operatives in factories, which were drawn up by the Minister of the Interior and of Police. REGULATIONS for the employment of the young operatives in Manufactories.

I. No child who shall not have completed his ninth year, shall be employed in daily labor in any manufactory, or in the works attached to mines. II. No one, who shall not have completed his sixteenth year, shall be employed in any of the before mentioned works, unless he shall! previously have received, during three years, regular school instruction, or shall prove, by a certificate from the school authorities, that he can read his mother tongue with fluency, and has made a beginning in learning to write."

No exception from this Regulation shall be allowed, unless the owner of the manufactory shall secure education to the young persons employed, by establishing and maintaining a school upon his premises. The judging of the fulfilment of this condition shall belong to the provincial governments, who, in this case, shall fix the proportion between the time for school and the time for work.

III. No young person who shall not have completed his sixteenth year, shall be employed in any of the before-mentioned works for a longer time than ten hours in any one day.

But the local police magistrates are empowered to grant an extension of these hours of labor, when the regular employment in the before-mentioned works

shall have been interrupted, either by natural canses or by accidents, when a making up of time lost thereby is requisite. But this additional time shall not exceed one hour in any one day, nor be continued for a longer period than four weeks at most. IV. During the hours of work fixed by the foregoing regulations, the operatives shall have an interval of a quarter of an hour's rest in the forenoon and the afternoon; and at noon, one entire hour besides; and on each of those occasions they shall have the opportunity of taking exercise in the open

air.

V. All employment of the said young persons before five o'clock in the morning, or after nine o'clock at night, or upon Sundays, or upon sacred festival days, is expressly prohibited.

VI. Operatives belonging to any Christian sect, who shall not have yet received the Holy Sacrament, shall not be employed in any of the before-mentioned works during those hours set apart by their regular pastors for their instruction, preparatory to their confirmation.

VII. The proprietors of the before-mentioned works, employing young persons therein, are ordered to keep an exact and full register of their names, ages, residences, parents, and of the date of their admission; to have the said register always in the factory; and, when required, to produce the same to the officers of police and to the school authorities.

VIII. Masters of the said works, or their authorized agents, who shall violate any of the preceding regulations, shall be punished by a penalty of not less than one, and not exceeding five thalers (three to fifteen shillings) for each child so illegally employed.

In case of the register prescribed by regulation VII. not having been made out or regularly kept, a penalty of not less than one, and not exceed ing five thalers, shall be imposed for a first offence; for a second offence, the penalty shall not be less than five, and shall not exceed fifty thalers (7/. 10s.): and the local police authorities shall have the power, at any time, to cause the before-mentioned register to be made out or completed, at the expense of the party contravening the law; which expenses may be fevied without further process, by the said author

ities.