216 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



work, or even much less than that, would be sufficient 

 to produce for a family a rich and varied vegetable 

 and animal food. But the researches of Engel (at 

 Berlin) and his many followers tell us that the workman's 

 family has to spend one full half of its yearly earnings 

 that is, to give six months of labour, and often more, 

 to provide its food. And what food ! Is not bread and 

 dripping the staple food of more than one-half of Eng- 

 lish children? 



One month of work every year would be quite suffi- 

 cient to provide the worker with a healthy dwelling. 

 But it is from 25 to 40 per cent of his yearly earnings 

 that is, from three to five months of his working time 

 every year that he has to spend in order to get a dwell- 

 ing, in most cases unhealthy and far too small ; and this 

 dwelling will never be his own, even though at the age 

 of forty-five or fifty he is sure to be sent away from 

 the factory, because the work that he used to do will by 

 that time be accomplished by a machine and a child. 



We all know that the child ought, at least, to be 

 familiarised with the forces of Nature which some day 

 he will have to utilise ; that he ought to be prepared 

 to keep pace in his life with the steady progress of 

 science and technics ; that he ought to study science 

 and learn a trade. Every one will grant thus much; 

 but what do we do ? From the age of ten or even nine 

 we send the child to push a coal-cart in a mine, or to 

 bind, with a little monkey's agility, the two ends of 

 threads broken in a spinning gin. From the age of 

 thirteen we compel the girl a child yet to work as a 

 " woman " at the weaving-loom, or to stew in the 

 poisoned, over-heated air of a cotton-dressing factory, 

 or, perhaps, . to be poisoned in the death chambers 

 of a Staffordshire pottery. As to those who have the 

 relatively rare luck of receiving some more education, 

 we crush their minds by useless overtime, we con- 

 sciously deprive them of all possibility of themselves 



