HAND-LOOM WEAVERS FACTORY SYSTEM. 451 



been summoned to stretch out its shield of legislative protection. It 

 cannot be questioned but that these children are legitimate objects 

 for the public care ; neither can it be denied but that great abuse, 

 and great cruelties, have been suffered by the junior hands. It is 

 nevertheless a very nice question for legislation. Children are 

 essential in the mills. The law, as it at present stands, has done a 

 great deal of mischief: it has vexatiously interfered with pre-existent 

 modes of business, without affording any alternative ; it has deprived 

 numbers of children of employment; and, if allowed to continue in 

 operation, it will be the means of enticing many families into the 

 already overcrowded manufacturing districts, for the sake of having 

 their older children employed ; and these districts will become still 

 more extensively mischievous recipients for an unemployed adult 

 population. The strange notions prevalent on the condition and 

 prospects of the labouring community, even amongst those who have 

 the direction of its industrial affairs, were never more conspicuously 

 shown, than by the expectation expressed by the Factory inspectors 

 that relays of children might be provided for the mills, the Act pro- 

 hibiting any child under thirteen years of age, working more than 

 forty-eight hours in any one week. These relays, even could they be 

 procured, would interfere so materially with the business economy 

 of the manufacturers, that rather than submit to them, they have 

 discharged their junior hands, and thus inflicted great sufferings upon 

 multitudes of families. 



In the light labour performed by children from ten to twelve years 

 of age, in the mills, no injury is done to health beyond what arises 

 from the confinement in a particular room. Mr. Gask^il sums up 

 an elaborate statement of the causes influencing the health of factory 

 labourers, in the following words: *' Nothing appears in the con- 

 dition of the labour to which children are subjected, of an active or 

 positively injurious character, as far as physical health is concerned;" 

 and farther, " that the employment of children in manufactories 

 ought not to be looked on as an evil, till the present moral and 

 domestic habits of the population are completely re-organised. So 

 long as home education is not found for them, they are to some 

 extent best situated when engaged in light labour, and the labour 

 generally is light which falls to their share." This view has been 

 amply corroborated by all subsequent inquiries. 



