KINDERGARTEN'S AND MANUAL TRAINING. 377 



of a terrific crisis. Its light shot across the Atlantic to safe and 

 peaceful America, and a new style of teaching was inaugurated 

 largely through the influence of Horace Mann ; but this again 

 was improved upon, and brought more into harmony with the 

 fundamental laws of mind by Froebel in Germany one of his 

 most earnest American propagandists being the venerable Miss 

 Elizabeth P. Peabody and now it seems as if his ideas are on the 

 verge of universal realization. 



In 1831-'32 England was in a state of ferment ; incendiaries 

 kept the country lighted up by a line of blazing hay-ricks from 

 county to county, cattle were poisoned or mutilated, and every 

 day brought news of some fine machine broken up by the factory 

 people, as a devouring monster that had come to eat the bread 

 out of their mouths, and the real oppressions and fancied injuries 

 of the factory population had become so unbearable that Parlia- 

 ment could no longer remain apathetic and supine. 



In 1833 a commission was appointed to examine into the con- 

 dition of the labor of young persons and children employed in 

 factories. The commissioners found generally that the children 

 were worked during the same stages as adults eleven, twelve, or 

 more hours daily and this long-time labor had practically ex- 

 cluded the children from the means of education, so that a 

 population had been growing up deteriorated morally as well as 

 physically by excess of labor. Sir Edwin Chadwick was charged 

 with the work of drawing up a bill that should remedy the evils 

 of their condition. The commission declared that six hours of 

 daily labor was all that young children could endure without 

 permanent bodily harm, and insisted that manufacturers enforc- 

 ing work during those long hours should do it with double sets 

 of children, six hours to each set. The provision which Mr. 

 Chadwick proposed as an efficient protection to these little fac- 

 tory slaves against exclusion from education was, " that it should 

 be a condition of the employment of children by the manufact- 

 urer that every child so employed should produce a certificate 

 from a competent teacher in a fitting school, certifying that the 

 child had been under instruction three hours every working-day 

 during theweek preceding; three hours being half the time then 

 generally occupied in the working-schools. Hence the name 

 " half-school-timers," which soon shortened into "half-timers." 

 These three hours' schooling much of it in inferior or nominal 

 schools was primarily intended as a security from overwork, 

 for it was reasoned " Three hours in the school-room keeps them 

 out of the workshop three hours," and the immediate effect, as 

 testified by competent medical men, was a better growth ; and, 

 quite unexpectedly, employers admitted, a better quality of work. 

 But, over and above these results, there came out of these inves- 



VOL. XLI. 28 



