and the Best Means of Promoting it. 89 



Scotland, total workers, 77,432 



School cliildren, 1,188 



Or IJ per cent. 



Lanark, total workers, ... . , 23,821 



School children, 236 



Or 1 per cent. 



We thus arrive at the full value of the Factory Act as an educational 

 measure. We find that over the three kingdoms 6 per cent, of those 

 employed are receiving education under the Act, and that their ages 

 range over the five years between eight and thirteen. If they are 

 divided equally over these years, as is probably near the fact, it follows 

 that one-fifth attain the status of full time workers annually. One-fifth 

 of 6 per cent, is twelve per thousand, which is thus the proportion of 

 educated workers raised into the general mass every year. It will thus 

 take just eighty-four years for the Factory Act to complete the educa- 

 tion of the whole workers, provided we could contrive that all the 

 educated additions remain so long ! 



If a more complete reductio ad dbsurdum is wanted, Scotland will 

 afford it, her factory school children being 1| per cent., a-fifth of which 

 is just three per thousand raised annually into the imedueated mass; so 

 that, if we could insure patriarchal longevity, the scheme would be 

 complete in 333 years ! 



The foregoing results also take for granted that the factory school 

 children really are taught ; and to show how far this is the case, I must 

 refer to the inspectors : — 



Mr. Redgrave says (Report 1852) : — 



" The millowner cannot legally employ a child without having obtained 

 certificates of its having attended school, and the parent is responsible if 

 it be permitted to neglect school ; but the law has imposed no condition, 

 and provided no security that anything shall have been learned at school." 



And farther on : — " In several schools which I have visited I have 

 found factory children well advanced ; but in general the factory children 

 are the least informed in the school — a result not of their inaptitude or 

 inferiority, but of the irregular and uncertain intervals of their atten- 

 dance." 



Mr. Horner testifies (Report 1855) : — 



" The so-called education clauses in the Factory Act enact no more 

 than that the children shall attend a school. Nothing is said as to the 

 kind or quahty of the education they arc to receive, and unless it be 

 such a case of gross ignorance as is scarcely conceivable would be met 

 with in any one professing to teach, or for immoral conduct on tlic part 

 of the teacher, the inspector has no power to require that the children 



Vol. IV.— No. 1. n 



