CHAPTER III. Whilst the commerce of Lancashire is thus the means to this county of taking a lead in diffusing comforts over the world, it may safely be asserted that the trade is one which has for its basis the excellent principle of making its influence most beneficially felt at home. It has often indeed been asserted, and ignorant men have taken up the cry without consideration, that the cotton manufacture flourishes at the expense of the health, the comforts, and the bodily sinews of the people; and in the exuberance of their indignation, some philanthropists have placed the Lancashire (and especially the Manchester) manufacturer lower in the scale of humanity than the Egyptian taskmasters, who would compel the people to make bricks without straw. Fortunately the Government of the Country was carried away in 1833 by this outcry, and compelled to nominate a body of travelling Commissioners, whose appointed task it was to visit the district and to inspect the establishments thus maligned, for the purpose of ascertaining the condition, mental, moral and physical, of the operative cotton manufacturers. The result of their enquiry,* * which had reference to the abridgment of the hours of infant labour, was such as to satisfy all reasonable men that the aspersions thrown upon the British manufacturer were grossly ill-founded; the fact proving to be, that though of itself the confinement in a cotton factory may not always be (as in certain cases it is) conducive to health, the The Commissioners made three reports, which have been ably analyzed and reduced to a small compass by a member of the Manchester Statistical Society. injury so sustained would, in the course of even a long life, be almost imperceptible, were it not that the private habits of the operative (in small part, possibly, induced by the nature of his employment) are frequently gross, generally improvident, and always prejudicial to health. Evidence without end might be adduced from the immense folios published by the Factory Commissioners, in 1833-4, to shew that the alleged cruelty to younger hands in mills-the imputed immorality to which the unrestrained association of large bodies of men, women and children gives rise the fearful inroads upon health-the frequent lacerations of limb, and deprivation of life, occasioned by machinery,—are highly exaggerated, not to say pure fabrications. Thus, for example, as to the second of these charges, a girl selected by the Commissioners for examination, who followed her weekly labour in a factory, and on the Sunday taught at a school, being asked whether she thought the boys and girls brought up in mills were 66 more immoral than those in the other various conditions of life," replied that she thought them "much about the same;" whilst other witnesses expressed decidedly their opinion to the same effect. One operative stated that the morality in cotton mills was equally as good "as elsewhere, so far as he was acquainted with society;" adding, (and the remark should be noted by those who decry large towns, and extol the simplicity of rural life) that in country places the females have not that regard to decency in their conversation which females have in Manchester and in other towns, "which he supposes, must be owing to their being better educated in towns than in the country." The state of morality in Lancashire generally may be tested in other ways. It appears that in the year 1830 the number of illegitimate children born in this county was 2830, or in the proportion of one in thirteen to other births a very small ratio if the density and variety of our population be taken into account. In Herefordshire and Salop, purely agricultural counties, the proportion is the same one in thirteen. The evidence of Oswald Milne, Esq., Clerk to the Magistrates, given before the Factory Commissioners, is important. Being asked, "Are factory children often brought before the Magistrates?"-he replied, "Not more so than from other trades, and the greatest part of them that are brought up have been driven to the commission of crime from the neglect of their own parents." Of their character generally, he gives it as his opinion that "they are by no means worse than the rest of the labouring population." This evidence is corroborated by the testimony of several clergymen and other experienced individuals. The total number of witnesses on this branch of the inquiry was fifty-three; forty-seven of whom agreed that factory operatives were not more immoral than others, whilst six were of a different opinion. Again, the alleged cruelty to children, if it exist, reflects no discredit upon the owners or principal directors of factories, since the majority of children in mills are the servants of the adult operatives-piecing, as it is called, for them; so that should any undue severity be exercised, they have not only a ready appeal to the law, which in these districts is always open to their complaints, but they may claim also the protection of their superiors in the mill, or in the last resort they have their natural guardian—the parent. Unfortunately, however, it too frequently happens that this protector fails them; and it is not a little singular that the fact has been more painfully illustrated since the passing of that factory act, which was framed to shield the juvenile operative from oppression, than it had been before. In Manchester very many families depend solely for subsistence on the labour of their young members, the parents being base enough to pass their days in idleness or debauchery, whilst their offspring toil to support them. A very few months ago some striking examples occurred in one of the Petty Session Courts of the length to which villainy can be carried to support this system. Some millowners being charged under the factory act with overworking children not eighteen years of age, the Superintendant who laid the informations brought forward a number of children whose ages varied from ten to fifteen years, and who had been certified as of that age, but who within a few months, or even weeks, after the ages of their offspring had been set down at 12, 13 or 14, as the case might be, brought certificates declaring them to be "above eighteen." These children had been working more than twelve hours, (the legal period) but so unwilling were the parents to have the fact detected and punished, that they had drilled the children into a resolution not to take an oath, and it was with extreme difficulty they were induced to give their evidence. This, no doubt, may in some cases result from fear of the employer, but such tricks are more probably devised by idle parents, anxious to extract from their children the utmost possible amount of profitable toil. The alleged injury to health accruing from factory labour is equally fabulous, the fact being proved to be that, apart from immorality and drunkenness-the vices of all large cities, mercantile or otherwise,-the rate of mortality is very considerably smaller in manufacturing than in agricultural districts. Dr. Hawkins prepared for the Commissioners three tables of health, from the first of which it appeared that one-fifth, and from the second one-twelfth, of the factory children were unhealthy, whilst the result of the third (an inquiry into the health of several mills) appears to be that one-eighth of the male and one-tenth of the female operatives had bad health, and that the largest factories are the most comfortable and salubrious. The Doctor examined the attenders at several Sunday Schools, but could not perceive "the smallest difference" between the children employed in factories and those otherwise occupied. Mr. Cowell adopted the novel test of measuring upwards of a thousand children under eighteen years of age, and he arrived at the following minute result: 28 Inches. Boys in factories measured.. 55.28 | Girls in Factories Inches. 54.951 Boys not in factories........ 55.56 | Girls not in factories...... 54.976 Difference in favour of boys not employed in factories, parts of an inch, and of girls, parts. The children were weighed also; the factory boys were found to be 3.5lbs. and the girls 0.3lbs. lighter than the other classes. The Commissioners consider this result to be naturally attributable to the fact that their employment "requires no muscular exertion whatever; consequently many of the muscles are never fully developed, and the additional weight which their development would give to the body is lost." Of forty-three operatives examined, nine state that their employment fatigues the children much, whilst thirty-four are of a different opinion. As to the adults, one witness produced a return from a Bolton Sick Club, containing five hundred and sixty-three members, of whom one-half were factory operatives, and yet little more than one-fourth of the cases of sickness and only one-fifth of the deaths were from that class. Another witness, Dr. Mitchell, prepared tables exhibiting the amount of sickness yearly among various classes of persons, viz.:— Days Sickness. In the Staffordshire Potteries, to the age of 61 years.. 9.3 per man. 7.8 East India Company's Servants do. do. under 16 years of age..... 3.14 * Evidence was given by three surgeons at Bolton and a physician at Staley Bridge, to the effect that the high temperature of mills is not injurious, if there be proper ventilation; that scrofula is not frequent; that asthma and bronchitis are generated in the card-rooms; that pulmonary complaints are of most frequent occurrence among factory operatives; but that they are not more liable to sickness than out-door labourers, |