I do not know any story, not even that of the slave-trade, which can compare, for brutality and callousness of heart, with the story of the women and children employed in the factories and the mines of this realm. There is nothing in the whole history of mankind which shows more clearly the enormities which become possible when men, spurred by desire for gain, are left uncontrolled by laws or the weight of public opinion, and placed in the position of absolute mastery over their fellow-men. The record of the slavery time is black in the West Indies and the United States, God knows; but the record of the English mine and factory is blacker still. It is so black that it seems incredible to us. We ask ourselves in amazement if, fifty years ago, these things could be. Alas! my friends, there are cruelties as great still going on around us in every great city, and wherever women are forced to work for bread. For the women and the children are inarticulate, and in the dark places, where no light of publicity penetrates, the hand of the master is armed with a scourge of scorpions. Let us therefore humble ourselves, and read the story of the children in the mines with shame as well as with indignation. The cry of the needlewomen is louder in our ears than the cry of the children in the mines ever was to our fathers; yet we regard it not.

Fellow-sinners and partakers in the crimes of slavery, torture, and robbery of light, life, youth, and joy, hear the tale of the Factory and the Mine.

Early in the century—in the year 1801—the overcrowding of the factories and mills, the neglect of the simplest sanitary precautions, the long hours, the poor food, and insufficient rest, caused the outbreak of a dreadful epidemic fever, which alarmed even the mill-owners, because if they lost their hands they lost their machinery. The hands are the producers, and the aim of the masters was to regard the producers as so many machines. Now if your machine is laid low with fever it is as good as an engine out of repair.

For the first time in history, not only was the public conscience awakened, but the House of Commons was called upon to act in the interests of health, public morals, humanity, and justice. Strange, that the world had been Christian for so long, yet no law had been passed to protect women and children. In the Year of Grace 1802 a beginning was made.

By the Act then passed the daily hours of labour for children were to be not more than twelve—yet think of making young children work for twelve hours a day!—exclusive of an hour and a half for meals and rest, so that the working day really covered thirteen hours and a half, say from six in the morning until half-past seven in the evening. This seems a good day’s work to exact of children, but it was a little heaven compared with the state of things which preceded the Act. Next, no children were to be employed under the age of nine. Certain factories, proved to be unwholesome for children, were closed to them altogether. Twenty years later Sir John Cam Hobhouse—may his soul find peace!—invented the Saturday half-holiday for factories. There was found, however, a loophole for cruelty and overwork; the limitation of hours was evaded by making the hands work in relays, by which means a child might be kept at work half the night. It was, therefore, in 1833 enacted that there should be no work done at all between 8.30 P.M. and 5.30 A.M.: that children under thirteen should not work more than forty-eight hours a week, and those under eighteen should not work more than sixty-eight hours a week.

Observe that nothing—not the light of publicity, not public opinion, not common humanity, not pity towards the tender children—nothing but Law had any power to stop this daily massacre of the innocents. Yet, no doubt, the manufacturers were subscribing for all kinds of good objects, and reviling the Yankees continually for the institution of Slavery.

What happened next? Greed of gain, seeing the factory closed, looked round, and saw wide open—not the gates of Hell—but the mouth of the Pit, and they flung the children down into the darkness, and made them work among the narrow passages and galleries of the coal mines.

They took the child—boy or girl—at six years of age; they carried the little thing away from the light of heaven, and lowered it deep down into the black and gloomy pit; they placed it behind a door, and ordered it to pull this open to let the corves, or trucks, come and go, and to keep it shut when they were not passing. The child was set at the door in the dark—at first they gave it a candle, which would burn for an hour or two and then go out. Think of taking a child of six—your child, Madam!—and putting it all alone down the dark mine! They kept the little creature there for twelve interminable hours. If the child cried, or went to sleep, or neglected to pull the door open, they beat that child. The work began at four in the morning, and it was not brought out of the pit until four, or perhaps later, in the evening, so that in the winter the children never saw daylight at all. The evidence given before the Royal Commission showed that the children, when they were brought up to the pit’s mouth, were heavy and stupefied, and cared for little when they had taken their supper but to go to bed. And yet the men who owned these collieries had children of their own! And they would have gone on to this very day starving the children of light and loading them with work, stunting their growth, and suffering them to grow up in ignorance all their days, but for Lord Shaftesbury. This is what is written of the children and their work by one who visited the mines:—

To ascertain the nature of the employment of these children, I went down a pit.... Descending a shaft, 600 feet deep, I went some distance along a subterranean road which, I was told, was three miles in length. To the right and left of one of these roads or ways are low galleries, called workings, in which the hewers are employed, in a state of almost perfect nudity, on account of the great heat, digging out the coal. To these galleries there are traps, or doors, which are kept shut, to guard against the ingress or egress of inflammable air, and to prevent counter-currents disturbing the ventilation. The use of a child, six years of age, is to open and shut one of these doors when the loaded corves, or coal trucks, pass and repass. For this object the child is trained to sit by itself in a dark gallery for the number of hours I have described. The older boys drive horses and load the corves, but the little children are always trap-keepers. When first taken down they have a candle given them, but, gradually getting accustomed to the gloom of the place, they have to do without, and sit therefore literally in the dark the whole time of their imprisonment.

When a child grew strong enough, he or she—boy or girl—was promoted to the post of drawer, or thrutcher. The drawer, boy or girl alike, clad in a short pair of trousers and nothing else, had a belt tied round the waist and a chain attached by one end to the belt and the other to the corve, or truck, which he dragged along the galleries to the place where it was loaded for the mouth, the chain passing between his legs; on account of the low height of the galleries he had generally to go on all-fours. Those who were the thrutchers pushed the truck along with their heads and hands. They wore a thick cap, but the work made them bald on the top of the head. When the boys grew up they became hewers, but the women, if they stayed in the pit, remained drawers or thrutchers, continuing to the end of the day to push or drag the truck dressed in nothing but the pair of short trousers. This was a beautiful kind of life for Christian women and children to be leading. So many children were wanted, that in one colliery employing 400 hands there were 100 under twenty and 56 under thirteen. In another, where there was an inundation, there were 44 children, of whom 26 were drowned; of these 11 were girls and 15 boys; 9 were under ten years of age. Again, in the year 1838, there were 38 children under thirteen killed by colliery accidents and 62 young people under eighteen.

When men talk about the interference of the State and the regulation of hours, let us always remember this history of the children in the Pit. Yet there were men in plenty who denounced the action of the Government: some of them were leaders in the philanthropic world; some of them were religious men; some of them humane men; but they could not bear to think that any limit should be imposed upon the power of the employer. In point of fact, when one considers the use which the employer has always made of his power, how every consideration has been always set aside which might interfere with the acquisition of wealth, it seems as if the chief business of the Legislature should be the protection of the employed.

Again, take the story of the chimney-sweep. Fifty years ago the master went his morning rounds accompanied by his climbing boys. It is difficult now to understand how much time and trouble it took to convince people that the climbing boy was made to endure an extraordinary amount of suffering quite needlessly, because a brush would do the work quite as well. Consider: the poor little wretch’s hands, elbows, and knees were constantly being torn by the bricks; sometimes he stuck going up, sometimes coming down; sometimes the chimney-pot at the top fell off, the child with it, so that he was killed. He was beaten and kicked unmercifully; his master would sometimes light a fire underneath so as to force him to come down quickly. The boy’s life was intolerable to him. He was badly fed, badly clothed, and never washed, though his occupation demanded incessant cleanliness—the neglect of which was certain to bring on a most dreadful disease. And all this because his master would not use a broom. It was not until 1841 that the children were protected by Acts of Parliament.

The men have shown themselves able to protect themselves. The improvement in their position is due wholly to their own combination. That it will still more improve no one can for a moment doubt. If we were asked to forecast the future, one thing would be safe to prophesy—namely, that it will become, day by day, increasingly difficult to get rich. Meanwhile, let us remember that we have with us still the women and the children, who cannot combine. We have protected the latter; how—oh! my brothers—how shall we protect the former?