CONCLUSION. 415 



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 accom- 

 plished 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 poi- 

 soned 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 them- 

 selves becoming producers ; and under an 

 educational system of which the motive is " pro- 

 fits," and the means " specialisation," we simply 

 work to death the women teachers who take 



