and the Best Means of Promoting it. 91 



health iii unwholesome places, others of them are roaming idle about the 

 street at the very age when poverty and idleness are most prone to 

 engender evil habits and associations which can never after be shaken 

 off." 



Again, he states (Report, Oct., 1852): — 



" I believe it will not be disputed that the usual employment of 

 children in factories can as easily be performed by a child of ten years of 

 age as one of fifteen, as the active employment of theii* eyes and fingers 

 are almost the only physical exertions required of them. 



" The Act, which was intended to benefit the children by precluding 

 their being employed as young persons, has in my district proved 

 altogether a failure, and bears very hardly against the class it was in- 

 tended to benefit, for few of them receive education in the factories, and 

 only a fourth of them outside. I would therefore respectfully submit, 

 whether education should not be substituted for age as the qualification 

 for a young person to be employed in factories, namely, that every child, 

 eleven years of age, who could read, write, and understands what he 

 reads and writes, should be eligible for employment as a young person, 

 and none under fifteen years of age should be eligible who could not. 



" I have consulted millowners and many other individuals well 

 qualified to judge of this proposition, without meeting a dissentient 

 voice. All are of opinion that its beneficial effects would be immense ; 

 for while, under the present Act, poor as well as profligate parents and 

 relations are tempted to practise all manner of deceit, even to the extent 

 of forging baptismal certificates, to bring their children within the 

 prescribed age for employment in factories as young persons, the altera- 

 tion suggested would oblige them to put their shoulders to the wheel 

 to get their children educated." 



Mr. Redgrave, I find, expresses a somewhat similar opinion in the 

 following words : — 



" The present qualification for the labour of youth is simply age and 

 health. It is therefore the interest of the parent, in maldng out the 

 right of his child to work for longer hours, and to earn increased wages, 

 to prove it to be older than it really is, and to lessen the period of its 

 attendance at school, which thus becomes a burden upon the parent, 

 who relieves himself from the irksome responsibility the instant he 

 can. But if employment were made the reward of education, if a 

 certain amount of acquired knowledge, or a certain number of years' 

 attendance at school, were made the qualifications for labour, an interest 

 would at once be created in the ri^ht direction, the value of education 

 would be ai)[)reeiatcd by those who arc now insensible to it ; the punc- 

 tiiul allcndanco at .<;chr)ol, and the advancement of his child, would then 



