"That in some trades, those especially requiring skilled workmen, these apprentices are bound by legal indentures, usually at the age of fourteen, and for a term of seven years, the age being rarely younger, and the period of servitude very seldom longer; but by far the greater number are bound without any prescribed legal forms, and in almost all these cases they are required to serve their masters, at whatever age they may commence their apprenticeship, until they attain the age of twenty-one, in some instances in employments in which there is nothing deserving the name of skill to be acquired, and in other instances in employments in which they are taught to make only one particular part of the article manufactured: so that at the end of their servitude they are altogether unable to make any one article of their trade in a complete state. That a large proportion of these apprentices consist of orphans, or are the children of widows, or belong to the very poorest families, and frequently are apprenticed by boards of guardians.

"That in these districts it is common for parents to borrow money of the employers, and to stipulate, by express agreement, to repay it from their children's wages; a practice which prevails likewise in Birmingham and Warrington: in most other places no evidence was discovered of its existence."—Second Report of the Commissioners, p. 195, 196.

"The peculiar trade of the Wolverhampton district, with the exception of a very few large proprietors, is in the hands of a great number of small masters, who are personally known only to some of the foremen of the factors to whom they take their work, and scarcely one of whom is sufficiently important to have his name over his door or his workshop in front of a street. In the town of Wolverhampton alone there are of these small masters, for example, two hundred and sixty locksmiths, sixty or seventy key-makers, from twenty to thirty screwmakers, and a like number of latch, bolt, snuffer, tobacco-box, and spectacle frame and case makers. Each of these small masters, if they have not children of their own, generally employ from one to three apprentices."—Horne, Report; App. pt. ii. p. 2. s. 13 et seq.

"There are two modes of obtaining apprentices in this district, namely, the legal one of application to magistrates or boards of guardians for sanction of indentures; and, secondly, the illegal mode of taking the children to be bound by an attorney, without any such reference to the proper authorities. There are many more bound by this illegal mode than by the former.

"In all cases, the children, of whatever age, are bound till they attain the age of twenty-one years. If the child be only seven years of age, the period of servitude remains the same, however simple the process or nature of the trade to be learnt. During the first year or two, if the apprentice be very young, he is merely used to run errands, do dirty household work, nurse infants, &c.

"If the master die before the apprentice attain the age of twenty-one years, the apprentice is equally bound as the servant of his deceased master's heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns—in fact, the apprentice is part of the deceased master's goods and chattels. Whoever, therefore, may carry on the trade, he is the servant of such person or persons until his manumission is obtained by reaching his one-and-twentieth year. The apprentice has no regular pocket-money allowed him by the master. Sometimes a few halfpence are given to him. An apprentice of eighteen or nineteen years of age often has 2d. or 3d. a week given him, but never as a rightful claim."—Second Report of Commissioners.

"Among other witnesses, the superintendent registrar states that in those trades particularly in which the work is by the piece, the growth of the children is injured; that in these cases more especially their strength is over-taxed for profit. One of the constables of the town says that 'there are examples without number in the place, of deformed men and boys; their backs or their legs, and often both, grow wrong; the backs grow out and the legs grow in at the knees—hump-backed and knock-kneed. There is most commonly only one leg turned in—a K leg; it is occasioned by standing all day for years filing at a vice; the hind leg grows in—the leg that is hindermost. Thinks that among the adults of the working classes of Willenhall, whose work is all forging and filing, one-third of the number are afflicted with hernia,' &c."—Horne, Evidence, p. 28, No. 128.

"They are frequently fed," says the sub-commissioner, "especially during the winter season, on red herrings, potatoes, bread with lard upon it, and have not always sufficient even of this.

"Their living is poor; they have not enough to eat. Did not know what it was to have butcher's meat above once a week; often a red herring was divided between two for dinner. The boys are often clemmed, (almost starved;) have often been to his house to ask for a bit of pudding—are frequent complaints. In some trades, particularly in the casting-shops of founderies, in the shops in which general forge or smith's work is done, and in the shops of the small locksmiths, screwmakers, &c., there are no regular meal-hours, but the children swallow their food as they can, during their work, often while noxious fumes or dust are flying about, and perhaps with noxious compositions in their unwashed hands."

"Throughout the long descent of the main roadway, or rather sludgeway, of Lower Gormal," says Mr. Horne, "and throughout the very long winding and straggling roadway of Coseley, I never saw one abode of a working family which had the least appearance of comfort or wholesomeness, while the immense majority were of the most wretched and sty-like description. The effect of these unfavourable circumstances is greatly to injure the health of the children, and to stop their growth; and it is remarkable that the boys are more injured than the girls, because the girls are not put to work as early as the boys by two years or more. They appear to bear the heat of the forges better, and they sometimes even become strong by their work."

"From his experience he thinks the community has no idea of what a boy at a bottle-work goes through; 'it would never be allowed, if it were known;' he knows himself; he has been carried home from fair fatigue; and on two several occasions, when laid in bed, could not rest, and had to be taken out and laid on the floor. These boys begin work on Sabbath evenings at ten o'clock, and are not at home again till between one and three on Monday afternoon. The drawing the bottles out of the arches is a work which no child should be allowed, on any consideration, to do; he himself has been obliged several times to have planks put in to walk on, which have caught fire under the feet; and a woollen cap over the ears and always mits on the hands; and a boy cannot generally stop in them above five minutes. There is no man that works in a bottle-work, but will corroborate the statement that such work checks the growth of the body; the irregularity and the unnatural times of work cause the boys and men to feel in a sort of stupor or dulness from heavy sweats and irregular hours. The boys work harder than any man in the works; all will allow that. From their experience of the bad effect on the health, witness and five others left the work, and none but one ever went to a bottle-work after."

"A delicate and beautiful young woman, an orphan, applied at the hospital for very defective vision, and her symptoms were precisely as just described. Upon inquiry it was ascertained that she had been apprenticed to a milliner, and was in her last year of indentureship. Her working hours were eighteen in the day, occasionally even more; her meals were snatched with scarcely an interval of a few minutes from work, and her general health was evidently assuming a tendency to consumption. An appeal was made, by my directions, to her mistress for relaxation; but the reply was that, in the last year of her apprenticeship, her labours had become valuable, and that her mistress was entitled to them as a recompense for teaching. Subsequently a threat of appeal to the Lord Mayor, and a belief that a continuation of the occupation would soon render the apprentice incapable of labour, induced the mistress to cancel the indentures, and the victim was saved."

"A fair and delicate girl, about seventeen years of age, was brought to witness in consequence of total loss of vision. She had experienced the train of symptoms which have been detailed, to the fullest extent. On examination, both eyes were found disorganized, and recovery therefore was hopeless. She had been an apprentice as a dress-maker at the west end of the town; and some time before her vision became affected, her general health had been materially deranged from too close confinement and excessive work. The immediate cause of the disease in the eyes was excessive and continued application to making mourning. She stated that she had been compelled to remain without changing her dress for nine days and nights consecutively; that during this period she had been permitted only occasionally to rest on a mattrass placed on the floor, for an hour or two at a time; and that her meals were placed at her side, cut up, so that as little time as possible should be spent in their consumption. Witness regrets that he did not, in this and a few other cases nearly as flagrant and distressing, induce the sufferers to appeal to a jury for compensation."

"Granting that the negro gangs who are worked on the cotton grounds of the Southern States of North America, or in the sugar plantations of Brazil, are slaves, in what way should we speak of persons who are circumstanced in the manner we are about to relate? Let us consider them as inhabitants of a distant region—say of New Orleans—no matter about the colour of their skins, and then ask ourselves what should be our opinion of a nation in which such things are tolerated. They are of a sex and age the least qualified to struggle with the hardships of their lot—young women, for the most part, between sixteen and thirty years of age. As we would not deal in exaggerations, we would promise that we take them at their busy season, just as writers upon American slavery are careful to select the season of cotton-picking and sugar-crushing as illustrations of their theories. The young female slaves, then, of whom we speak, are worked in gangs, in ill-ventilated rooms, or rooms that are not ventilated at all; for it is found by experience that if air be admitted it brings with it "blacks" of another kind, which damage the work upon which the seamstresses are employed. Their occupation is to sew from morning till night and night till morning—stitch, stitch, stitch—without pause, without speech, without a smile, without a sigh. In the gray of the morning they must be at work, say at six o'clock, having a quarter of an hour allowed them for breaking their fast. The food served out to them is scanty and miserable enough, but still, in all probability, more than their fevered system can digest. We do not, however, wish to make out a case of starvation; the suffering is of another kind, equally dreadful of endurance. From six o'clock till eleven it is stitch, stitch. At eleven a small piece of dry bread is served to each seamstress, but still she must stitch on. At one o'clock, twenty minutes are allowed for dinner—a slice of meat and a potato, with a glass of toast-and-water to each workwoman. Then again to work—stitch, stitch, until five o'clock, when fifteen minutes are again allowed for tea. The needles are then set in motion once more—stitch, stitch, until nine o'clock, when fifteen minutes are allowed for supper—a piece of dry bread and cheese and a glass of beer. From nine o'clock at night until one, two, and three o'clock in the morning, stitch, stitch; the only break in this long period being a minute or two—just time enough to swallow a cup of strong tea, which is supplied lest the young people should 'feel sleepy.' At three o'clock A.M., to bed; at six o'clock A.M., out of it again to resume the duties of the following day. There must be a good deal of monotony in the occupation.

"But when we have said that for certain months in the year these unfortunate young persons are worked in the manner we describe, we have not said all. Even during the few hours allotted to sleep—should we not rather say to a feverish cessation from toil—their miseries continue. They are cooped up in sleeping-pens, ten in a room which would perhaps be sufficient for the accommodation of two persons. The alternation is from the treadmill—and what a treadmill!—to the Black Hole of Calcutta. Not a word of remonstrance is allowed, or is possible. The seamstresses may leave the mill, no doubt, but what awaits them on the other side of the door?—starvation, if they be honest; if not, in all probability, prostitution and its consequence. They would scarcely escape from slavery that way. Surely this is a terrible state of things, and one which claims the anxious consideration of the ladies of England who have pronounced themselves so loudly against the horrors of negro slavery in the United States. Had this system of oppression against persons of their own sex been really exercised in New Orleans, it would have elicited from them many expressions of sympathy for the sufferers, and of abhorrence for the cruel task-masters who could so cruelly over-work wretched creatures so unfitted for the toil. It is idle to use any further mystification in the matter. The scenes of misery we have described exist at our own doors, and in the most fashionable quarters of luxurious London. It is in the dress-making and millinery establishments of the 'West-end' that the system is steadily pursued. The continuous labour is bestowed upon the gay garments in which the 'ladies of England' love to adorn themselves. It is to satisfy their whims and caprices that their wretched sisters undergo these days and nights of suffering and toil. It is but right that we should confess the fault does not lie so much at the door of the customers as with the principals of these establishments. The milliners and dressmakers of the metropolis will not employ hands enough to do the work. They increase their profits from the blood and life of the wretched creatures in their employ. Certainly the prices charged for articles of dress at any of the great West-end establishments are sufficiently high—as most English heads of families know to their cost—to enable the proprietors to retain a competent staff of work-people, and at the same time to secure a very handsome profit to themselves. Wherein, then, lies the remedy? Will the case of these poor seamstresses be bettered if the ladies of England abstain partially, or in great measure, from giving their usual orders to their usual houses? In that case it may be said some of the seamstresses will be dismissed to starvation, and the remainder will be over-worked as before. We freely confess we do not see our way through the difficulty; for we hold the most improbable event in our social arrangements to be the fact, that a lady of fashion will employ a second-rate instead of a first-rate house for the purchase of her annual finery. The leading milliners and dressmakers of London have hold of English society at both ends. They hold the ladies by their vanity and their love of fine clothes, and the seamstresses by what appears to be their interest and by their love of life. Now, love of fine clothes and love of life are two very strong motive springs of human action."

"In Sedgley they are sometimes struck with a red-hot iron, and burned and bruised simultaneously; sometimes they have 'a flash of lightning' sent at them. When a bar of iron is drawn white-hot from the forge it emits fiery particles, which the man commonly flings in a shower upon the ground by a swing of his arm, before placing the bar upon the anvil. This shower is sometimes directed at the boy. It may come over his hands and face, his naked arms, or on his breast. If his shirt be open in front, which is usually the case, the red-hot particles are lodged therein, and he has to shake them out as fast as he can."—Horne, Report, p. 76, § 757. See also witnesses, p. 56, 1. 24; p. 59, 1. 54.

"In Darlaston, however, the children appear to be very little beaten, and in Bilston there were only a few instances of cruel treatment: 'the boys are kicked and cuffed abundantly, but not with any vicious or cruel intention, and only with an idea that this is getting the work done.'"—Ibid. p. 62, 65, §§ 660, 688.

"In Wednesbury the treatment is better than in any other town in the district. The boys are not generally subject to any severe corporal chastisement, though a few cases of ill-treatment occasionally occur. 'A few months ago an adult workman broke a boy's arm by a blow with a piece of iron; the boy went to school till his arm got well; his father and mother thought it a good opportunity to give him some schooling.'"—Ibid. Evidence, No. 331.

"But the class of children in this district the most abused and oppressed are the apprentices, and particularly those who are bound to the small masters among the locksmiths, key and bolt makers, screwmakers, &c. Even among these small masters, there are respectable and humane men, who do not suffer any degree of poverty to render them brutal; but many of these men treat their apprentices not so much with neglect and harshness, as with ferocious violence, the result of unbridled passions, excited often by ardent spirits, acting on bodies exhausted by over-work, and on minds which have never received the slightest moral or religious culture, and which, therefore, never exercise the smallest moral or religious restraint."—Ibid.

"—— ——, aged sixteen: 'His master stints him from six in the morning till ten and sometimes eleven at night, as much as ever he can do; and if he don't do it, his master gives him no supper, and gives him a good hiding, sometimes with a big strap, sometimes with a big stick. His master has cut his head open five times—once with a key and twice with a lock; knocked the corner of a lock into his head twice—once with an iron bolt, and once with an iron shut—a thing that runs into the staple. His master's name is —— ——, of Little London. There is another apprentice besides him, who is treated just as bad.'"—Ibid. p. 32, 1. 4.

"—— ——, aged fifteen: 'Works at knob-locks with —— ——. Is a fellow-apprentice with —— ——. Lives in the house of his master. Is beaten by his master, who hits him sometimes with his fists, and sometimes with the file-haft, and sometimes with a stick—it's no matter what when he's a bit cross; sometimes hits him with the locks; has cut his head open four or five times; so he has his fellow apprentice's head. Once when he cut his head open with a key, thinks half a pint of blood run off him.'"—Ibid. p. 32, 1. 19.

"—— ——, aged fourteen: 'Has been an in-door apprentice three years. Has no wages; nobody gets any wages for him. Has to serve till he is twenty-one. His master behaves very bad. His mistress behaves worse, like a devil; she beats him; knocks his head against the wall. His master goes out a-drinking, and when he comes back, if any thing's gone wrong that he (the boy) knows nothing about, he is beat all the same.'"—Ibid. p. 32, 1. 36.

"—— ——, aged sixteen: 'His master sometimes hits him with his fist, sometimes kicks him; gave him the black eye he has got; beat him in bed while he was asleep, at five in the morning, because he was not up to work. He came up-stairs and set about him—set about him with his fist. Has been over to the public office, Brummagem, to complain; took a note with him, which was written for him; his brother gave it to the public office there, but they would not attend to it; they said they could do no good, and gave the note back. He had been beaten at that time with a whip-handle—it made wales all down his arms and back and all; everybody he showed it to said it was scandalous. Wishes he could be released from his master, who's never easy but when he's a-beating of me. Never has enough to eat at no time; ax him for more, he won't gie it me.'"—Ibid. p. 30, 1. 5.

"—— ——, aged seventeen: 'Has no father or mother to take his part. His master once cut his head open with a flat file-haft, and used to pull his ears nearly off; they bled so he was obliged to go into the house to wipe them with a cloth,'"—Ibid. p. 37, 1. 7.

"—— ——, aged fifteen: 'The neighbours who live agen the shop will say how his master beats him; beats him with a strap, and sometimes a nut-stick; sometimes the wales remain upon him for a week; his master once cut his eyelid open, cut a hole in it, and it bled all over his files that he was working with,'"—Ibid. p. 37, 1. 47.

"—— ——, aged 18: 'His master once ran at him with a hammer, and drove the iron-head of the hammer into his side—he felt it for weeks; his master often knocks him down on the shop-floor; he can't tell what it's all for, no more than you can; don't know what it can be for unless it's this, his master thinks he don't do enough work for him. When he is beaten, his master does not lay it on very heavy, as some masters do, only beats him for five minutes at a time; should think that was enough, though.'"—Horne, Evidence, p. 37, 1. 57.

"The hours of labour in mechanical callings are usually twelve, two of them devoted to meals, or seventy-two hours (less by the permitted intervals) in a week. In the course of my inquiries for the Chronicle, I met with slop cabinet-makers, tailors, and milliners, who worked sixteen hours and more daily, their toil being only interrupted by the necessity of going out, if small masters, to purchase materials, and offer the goods for sale; or, if journeymen in the slop trade, to obtain more work and carry what was completed to the master's shop. They worked on Sundays also; one tailor told me that the coat he worked at on the previous Sunday was for the Rev. Mr. ——, who 'little thought it,' and these slop-workers rarely give above a few minutes to a meal. Thus they toil forty hours beyond the hours usual in an honourable trade, (112 hours instead of 72,) in the course of a week, or between three and four days of the regular hours of work of the six working days. In other words, two such men will in less than a week accomplish work which should occupy three men a full week; or 1000 men will execute labour fairly calculated to employ 1500 at the least. A paucity of employment is thus caused among the general body, by this system of over-labour decreasing the share of work accruing to the several operatives, and so adding to surplus hands.

"Of over-work, as regards excessive labour, both in the general and fancy cabinet trade, I heard the following accounts, which different operatives concurred in giving; while some represented the labour as of longer duration by at least an hour, and some by two hours a day, than I have stated.

"The labour of the men who depend entirely on 'the slaughter-houses' for the purchase of their articles is usually seven days a week the year through. That is, seven days—for Sunday-work is all but universal—each of thirteen hours, or ninety-one hours in all; while the established hours of labour in the 'honourable trade' are six days of the week, each of ten hours, or sixty hours in all. Thus fifty per cent. is added to the extent of the production of low-priced cabinet work, merely from 'over-hours'; but in some cases I heard of fifteen hours for seven days in the week, or 105 hours in all.

"Concerning the hours of labour in this trade, I had the following minute particulars from a garret-master who was a chair-maker:—

"'I work from six every morning to nine at night; some work till ten. My breakfast at eight stops me for ten minutes. I can breakfast in less time, but it's a rest. My dinner takes me say twenty minutes at the outside; and my tea eight minutes. All the rest of the time I'm slaving at my bench. How many minutes' rest is that, sir? Thirty-eight; well, say three-quarters of an hour, and that allows a few sucks at a pipe when I rest; but I can smoke and work too. I have only one room to work and eat in, or I should lose more time. Altogether, I labour fourteen and a quarter hours every day, and I must work on Sundays—at least forty Sundays in the year. One may as well work as sit fretting. But on Sundays I only work till it's dusk, or till five or six in summer. When it's dusk I take a walk. I'm not well dressed enough for a Sunday walk when it's light, and I can't wear my apron on that day very well to hide patches. But there's eight hours that I reckon I take up every week, one with another, in dancing about to the slaughterers. I'm satisfied that I work very nearly 100 hours a week the year through; deducting the time taken up by the slaughterers, and buying stuff—say eight hours a week—it gives more than ninety hours a week for my work, and there's hundreds labour as hard as I do, just for a crust.'

"The East-end turners generally, I was informed, when inquiring into the state of that trade, labour at the lathe from six o'clock in the morning till eleven and twelve at night, being eighteen hours' work per day, or one hundred and eight hours per week. They allow themselves two hours for their meals. It takes them, upon an average, two hours more every day fetching and carrying their work home. Some of the East-end men work on Sundays, and not a few either,' said my informant. 'Sometimes I have worked hard,' said one man, 'from six one morning till four the next, and scarcely had any time to take my meals in the bargain. I have been almost suffocated with the dust flying down my throat after working so many hours upon such heavy work too, and sweating so much. It makes a man drink where he would not.'

"This system of over-work exists in the 'slop' part of almost every business; indeed, it is the principal means by which the cheap trade is maintained. Let me cite from my letters in the Chronicle some more of my experience on this subject. As regards the London mantuamakers, I said:—'The workwomen for good shops that give fair, or tolerably fair wages, and expect good work, can make six average-sized mantles in a week, working from ten to twelve hours a day; but the slop-workers by toiling from thirteen to sixteen hours a day, will make nine such sized mantles in a week. In a season of twelve weeks, 1000 workers for the slop-houses and warehouses would at this rate make 108,000 mantles, or 36,000 more than workers for the fair trade. Or, to put it in another light, these slop-women, by being compelled, in order to live, to work such over-hours as inflict lasting injury on the health, supplant, by their over-work and over-hours, the labour of 500 hands, working the regular hours."

"'I work in what is called a strapping-shop, and have worked at nothing else for these many years past in London. I call "strapping" doing as much work as a human being or a horse possibly can in a day, and that without any hanging upon the collar, but with the foreman's eyes constantly fixed upon you, from six o'clock in the morning to six o'clock at night. The shop in which I work is for all the world like a prison; the silent system is as strictly carried out there as in a model jail. If a man was to ask any common question of his neighbour, except it was connected with his trade, he would be discharged there and then. If a journeyman makes the least mistake he is packed off just the same. A man working at such places is almost always in fear; for the most trifling things he's thrown out of work in an instant. And then the quantity of work that one is forced to get through is positively awful; if he can't do a plenty of it he don't stop long where I am. No one would think it was possible to get so much out of blood and bones. No slaves work like we do. At some of the strapping shops the foreman keeps continually walking about with his eyes on all the men at once. At others the foreman is perched high up, so that he can have the whole of the men under his eye together. I suppose since I knew the trade that a man does four times the work that he did formerly. I know a man that's done four pairs of sashes in a day, and one is considered to be a good day's labour. What's worse than all, the men are every one striving one against the other. Each is trying to get through the work quicker than his neighbours. Four or five men are set the same job, so that they may be all pitted against one another, and then away they go, every one striving his hardest for fear that the others should get finished first. They are all tearing along, from the first thing in the morning to the last at night, as hard as they can go, and when the time comes to knock off they are ready to drop. It was hours after I got home last night before I could get a wink of sleep; the soles of my feet were on fire, and my arms ached to that degree that I could hardly lift my hand to my head. Often, too, when we get up of a morning, we are more tired than when we went to bed, for we can't sleep many a night; but we musn't let our employers know it, or else they'd be certain we couldn't do enough for them, and we'd get the sack. So, tired as we may be, we are obliged to look lively, somehow or other, at the shop of a morning. If we're not beside our bench the very moment the bell's done ringing, our time's docked—they won't give us a single minute out of the hour. If I was working for a fair master, I should do nearly one-third, and sometimes a half, less work than I am now forced to get through; and, even to manage that much, I shouldn't be idle a second of my time. It's quite a mystery to me how they do contrive to get so much work out of the men. But they are very clever people. They know how to have the most out of a man, better than any one in the world. They are all picked men in the shop—regular "strappers," and no mistake. The most of them are five foot ten, and fine broad-shouldered, strong-backed fellows too—if they weren't they wouldn't have them. Bless you, they make no words with the men, they sack them if they're not strong enough to do all they want; and they can pretty soon tell, the very first shaving a man strikes in the shop, what a chap is made of. Some men are done up at such work—quite old men and gray, with spectacles on, by the time they are forty. I have seen fine strong men, of thirty-six, come in there, and be bent double in two or three years. They are most all countrymen at the strapping shops. If they see a great strapping fellow, who they think has got some stuff about him that will come out, they will give him a job directly. We are used for all the world like cab or omnibus-horses. Directly they've had all the work out of us, we are turned off, and I am sure, after my day's work is over, my feelings must be very much the same as one of the London cab-horses. As for Sunday, it is literally a day of rest with us, for the greater part of us lay a-bed all day, and even that will hardly take the aches and pains out of our bones and muscles. When I'm done and flung by, of course I must starve.'"

"The most on us has got large families; we put the children to work as soon as we can. My little girl began about six, but about eight or nine is the usual age. 'Oh, poor little things,' said the wife, 'they are obliged to begin the very minute they can use their fingers at all.' The most of the cabinet-makers of the East end have from five to six in family, and they are generally all at work for them. The small masters mostly marry when they are turned of twenty. You see our trade's coming to such a pass, that unless a man has children to help him he can't live at all. I've worked more than a month together, and the longest night's rest I've had has been an hour and a quarter; ay, and I've been up three nights a week besides. I've had my children lying ill, and been obliged to wait on them into the bargain. You see we couldn't live if it wasn't for the labour of our children, though it makes 'em—poor little things!—old people long afore they are growed up.'

"'Why, I stood at this bench,' said the wife, 'with my child, only ten years of age, from four o'clock on Friday morning till ten minutes past seven in the evening, without a bit to eat or drink. I never sat down a minute from the time I began till I finished my work, and then I went out to sell what I had done. I walked all the way from here [Shoreditch] down to the Lowther Arcade to get rid of the articles.' Here she burst out into a violent flood of tears, saying, 'Oh, sir, it is hard to be obliged to labour from morning till night as we do, all of us, little ones and all, and yet not be able to live by it either.'

"'And you see the worst of it is, this here children's labour is of such value now in our trade, that there's more brought into the business every year, so that it's really for all the world like breeding slaves. Without my children I don't know how we should be able to get along.' 'There's that little thing,' said the man, pointing to the girl ten years of age, before alluded to, as she sat at the edge of the bed, 'why she works regularly every day from six in the morning till ten at night. She never goes to school; we can't spare her. There's schools enough about here for a penny a week, but we could not afford to keep her without working. If I'd ten more children I should be obliged to employ them all the same way, and there's hundreds and thousands of children now slaving at this business. There's the M——'s; they have a family of eight, and the youngest to the oldest of all works at the bench; and the oldest a'n't fourteen. I'm sure, of the two thousand five hundred small masters in the cabinet line, you may safely say that two thousand of them, at the very least, have from five to six in family, and that's upward of twelve thousand children that's been put to the trade since prices have come down. Twenty years ago I don't think there was a child at work in our business; and I am sure there is not a small master now whose whole family doesn't assist him. But what I want to know is, what's to become of the twelve thousand children when they're growed up and come regular into the trade? Here are all my ones growing up without being taught any thing but a business that I know they must starve at.'

"In answer to my inquiry as to what dependence he had in case of sickness, 'Oh, bless you,' he said, 'there's nothing but the parish for us. I did belong to a benefit society about four years ago, but I couldn't keep up my payments any longer. I was in the society above five-and-twenty years, and then was obliged to leave it after all. I don't know of one as belongs to any friendly society, and I don't think there is a man as can afford it in our trade now. They must all go to the workhouse when they're sick or old.'"

"I stumbled after Mr. Jones up a dark, narrow iron staircase, till we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to work—perhaps through life! A low lean-to room, stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The windows were tight closed to keep out the cold winter air; and the condensed breath ran in streams down the panes, checkering the dreary outlook of chimney-tops and smoke. The conductor handed me over to one of the men.

"'Here Crossthwaite, take this younker and make a tailor of him. Keep him next you, and prick him up with your needle if he shirks.'

"He disappeared down the trap-door, and mechanically, as if in a dream, I sat down by the man and listened to his instructions, kindly enough bestowed. But I did not remain in peace two minutes. A burst of chatter rose as the foreman vanished, and a tall, bloated, sharp-nosed young man next me bawled in my ear—

"'I say, young 'un, fork out the tin and pay your footing at Conscrumption Hospital!'

"'What do you mean?'

"'An't he just green?—Down with the stumpy—a tizzy for a pot of half-and-half.'

"'I never drink beer.'

"'Then never do,' whispered the man at my side; 'as sure as hell's hell, it's your only chance.'

"There was a fierce, deep earnestness in the tone, which made me look up at the speaker, but the other instantly chimed in.

"'Oh, yer don't, don't yer, my young Father Mathy! then yer'll soon learn it here if yer want to keep your victuals down.'

"'And I have promised to take my wages home to my mother.'

"'Oh criminy! hark to that, my coves! here's a chap as is going to take the blunt home to his mammy.'

"'Ta'nt much of it the old un'll see,' said another. 'Ven yer pockets it at the Cock and Bottle, my kiddy, yer won't find much of it left o' Sunday mornings.'

"'Don't his mother know he's out?' asked another; 'and won't she know it—

Oh no, ve never mentions her—her name is never heard. Certainly not, by no means. Why should it?'

"'Well, if yer won't stand a pot,' quoth the tall man, 'I will, that's all, and blow temperance. 'A short life and a merry one,' says the tailor—

Here, Sam, run to the Cock and Bottle for a pot of half-and-half to my score.'

"A thin, pale lad jumped up and vanished, while my tormentor turned to me:

"I say, young 'un, do you know why we're nearer heaven here than our neighbours?'

"'I shouldn't have thought so,' answered I with a naÏvetÉ which raised a laugh, and dashed the tall man for a moment.

"'Yer don't? then I'll tell yer. Acause we're atop of the house in the first place, and next place yer'll die here six months sooner nor if yer worked in the room below. A'n't that logic and science, Orator?' appealing to Crossthwaite.

"'Why?' asked I.

"'Acause you get all the other floors' stinks up here, as well as your own. Concentrated essence of man's flesh, is this here as you're a-breathing. Cellar work-room we calls Rheumatic Ward, because of the damp. Ground-floor's, Fever Ward—them as don't get typhus gets dysentery, and them as don't get dysentery gets typhus—your nose 'd tell yer why if you opened the back windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward—don't you hear 'um now through the cracks in the boards, a-puffing away like a nest of young locomotives? And this here more august and upper-crust cockloft is the Conscrumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceed to expectorate—spittoons, as you see, perwided free gracious for nothing—fined a kivarten if you spits on the floor—

and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering bare backs of the hairystocracy,

as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks.'

"And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and pretended to die in a fit of coughing, which last was alas! no counterfeit, while poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears fall fast upon my knees.

"'Fine him a pot!' roared one, 'for talking about kicking the bucket. He's a nice young man to keep a cove's spirits up, and talk about "a short life and a merry one." Here comes the heavy. Hand it here to take the taste of that fellow's talk out of my mouth.'

"'Well, my young 'un,' recommenced my tormentor, 'and how do you like your company?'

"'Leave the boy alone,' growled Crossthwaite: 'don't you see he's crying?'

"'Is that any thing good to eat? Give me some on it, if it is—it'll save me washing my face.' And he took hold of my hair and pulled my head back.

"'I'll tell you what, Jemmy Downes,' said Crossthwaite, in a voice that made him draw back, 'if you don't drop that, I'll give you such a taste of my tongue as shall turn you blue.'

"'You'd better try it on, then. Do—only just now—if you please.'

"'Be quiet, you fool!' said another. 'You're a pretty fellow to chaff the orator. He'll slang you up the chimney afore you can get your shoes on.'

"'Fine him a kivarten for quarrelling,' cried another; and the bully subsided into a minute's silence, after a sotto voce—'Blow temperance, and blow all Chartists, say I!' and then delivered himself of his feelings in a doggrel song:

"'There's common sense for you now; hand the pot here.'

"I recollect nothing more of that day, except that I bent myself to my work with assiduity enough to earn praises from Crossthwaite. It was to be done, and I did it. The only virtue I ever possessed (if virtue it be) is the power of absorbing my whole heart and mind in the pursuit of the moment, however dull or trivial, if there be good reason why it should be pursued at all.

"I owe, too, an apology to my readers for introducing all this ribaldry. God knows it is as little to my taste as it can be to theirs, but the thing exists; and those who live, if not by, yet still beside such a state of things, ought to know what the men are like, to whose labour, ay, life-blood, they owe their luxuries. They are 'their brothers' keepers,' let them deny it as they will."

"He stopped at the end of a miserable blind alley, where a dirty gas-lamp just served to make darkness visible, and show the patched windows and rickety doorways of the crazy houses, whose upper stories were lost in a brooding cloud of fog; and the pools of stagnant water at our feet: and the huge heap of cinders which filled up the waste end of the alley—a dreary black, formless mound, on which two or three spectral dogs prowled up and down after the offal, appearing and vanishing like dark imps in and out of the black misty chaos beyond.

"The neighbourhood was undergoing, as it seemed, 'improvements,' of that peculiar metropolitan species which consists in pulling down the dwellings of the poor, and building up rich men's houses instead; and great buildings, within high temporary palings, had already eaten up half the little houses; as the great fish and the great estates, and the great shopkeepers, eat up the little ones of their species—by the law of competition, lately discovered to be the true creator and preserver of the universe. There they loomed up, the tall bullies, against the dreary sky, looking down with their grim, proud, stony visages, on the misery which they were driving out of one corner, only to accumulate and intensify it in another.

"The house at which we stopped was the last in the row; all its companions had been pulled down; and there it stood, leaning out with one naked ugly side into the gap, and stretching out long props, like feeble arms and crutches, to resist the work of demolition.

"A group of slatternly people were in the entry, talking loudly, and as Downes pushed by them, a woman seized him by the arm.

"'Oh! you unnatural villain!—To go away after your drink, and leave all them poor dead corpses locked up, without even letting a body go in to stretch them out!'

"'And breeding the fever, too, to poison the whole house!' growled one.

"'The relieving-officer's been here, my cove,' said another; 'and he's gone for a peeler and a search-warrant to break open the door, I can tell you!'

"But Downes pushed past unheeding, unlocked a door at the end of the passage, thrust me in, locked it again, and then rushed across the room in chase of two or three rats, who vanished into cracks and holes.

"And what a room! A low lean-to with wooden walls, without a single article of furniture; and through the broad chinks of the floor shone up as it were ugly glaring eyes, staring at us. They were the reflections of the rushlight in the sewer below. The stench was frightful—the air heavy with pestilence. The first breath I drew made my heart sink, and my stomach turn. But I forgot every thing in the object which lay before me, as Downes tore a half-finished coat off three corpses laid side by side on the bare floor.

"There was his little Irish wife;—dead—and naked—the wasted white limbs gleamed in the lurid light; the unclosed eyes stared, as if reproachfully, at the husband whose drunkenness had brought her there to kill her with the pestilence; and on each side of her a little, shrivelled, impish, child-corpse—the wretched man had laid their arms round the dead mother's neck—and there they slept, their hungering and wailing over at last for ever: the rats had been busy already with them—but what matter to them now?

"'Look!' he cried; 'I watched 'em dying! Day after day I saw the devils come up through the cracks, like little maggots and beetles, and all manner of ugly things, creeping down their throats; and I asked 'em, and they said they were the fever devils.'

"It was too true; the poisonous exhalations had killed them. The wretched man's delirium tremens had given that horrible substantiality to the poisonous fever gases.

"Suddenly Downes turned on me almost menacingly. 'Money! money! I want some gin!'

"I was thoroughly terrified—and there was no shame in feeling fear, locked up with a madman far my superior in size and strength, in so ghastly a place. But the shame, and the folly too, would have been in giving way to my fear; and with a boldness half assumed, half the real fruit of excitement and indignation at the horrors I beheld, I answered—

"'If I had money, I would give you none. What do you want with gin? Look at the fruits of your accursed tippling. If you had taken my advice, my poor fellow,' I went on, gaining courage as I spoke, 'and become a water-drinker, like me'——

"'Curse you and your water-drinking! If you had had no water to drink or wash with for two years but that—that,' pointing to the foul ditch below—'If you had emptied the slops in there with one hand, and filled your kettle with the other'——

"'Do you actually mean that that sewer is your only drinking water?'

"'Where else can we get any? Everybody drinks it; and you shall too—you shall!' he cried, with a fearful oath, 'and then see if you don't run off to the gin-shop, to take the taste of it out of your mouth. Drink! and who can help drinking, with his stomach turned with such hell-broth as that—or such a hell's blast as this air is here, ready to vomit from morning till night with the smells? I'll show you. You shall drink a bucket-full of it, as sure as you live, you shall.'

"And he ran out of the back door, upon a little balcony, which hung over the ditch.

"I tried the door, but the key was gone, and the handle too. I beat furiously on it, and called for help. Two gruff authoritative voices were heard in the passage.

"'Let us in; I'm the policeman!'

"'Let me out, or mischief will happen!'

"The policeman made a vigorous thrust at the crazy door; and just as it burst open, and the light of his lantern streamed into the horrible den, a heavy splash was heard outside.

"'He has fallen into the ditch!'

"'He'll be drowned, then, as sure as he's a born man,' shouted one of the crowd behind.

"We rushed out on the balcony. The light of the policeman's lantern glared over the ghastly scene—along the double row of miserable house-backs, which lined the sides of the open tidal ditch—over strange rambling jetties, and balconies, and sleeping sheds, which hung on rotting piles over the black waters, with phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming and twinkling out of the dark hollows, like devilish gravelights—over bubbles of poisonous gas, and bloated carcases of dogs, and lumps of offal, floating on the stagnant olive-green hell-broth—over the slow sullen rows of oily ripple which were dying away into the darkness far beyond, sending up, as they stirred, hot breaths of miasma—the only sign that a spark of humanity, after years of foul life, had quenched itself at last in that foul death. I almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up at me through the slimy water; but no—it was as opaque as stone."

"We were all bound to expect this. Every working tailor must come to this at last, on the present system; and we are only lucky in having been spared so long. You all know where this will end—in the same misery as fifteen thousand out of twenty thousand of our class are enduring now. We shall become the slaves, often the bodily prisoners, of Jews, middlemen, and sweaters, who draw their livelihood out of our starvation. We shall have to face, as the rest have, ever-decreasing prices of labour, ever-increasing profits made out of that labour by the contractors who will employ us—arbitrary fines, inflicted at the caprice of hirelings—the competition of women, and children, and starving Irish—our hours of work will increase one-third, our actual pay decrease to less than one-half; and in all this we shall have no hope, no chance of improvement in wages, but ever more penury, slavery, misery, as we are pressed on by those who are sucked by fifties—almost by hundreds—yearly, out of the honourable trade in which we were brought up, into the infernal system of contract work, which is devouring our trade and many others, body and soul. Our wives will be forced to sit up night and day to help us—our children must labour from the cradle, without chance of going to school, hardly of breathing the fresh air of heaven—our boys as they grow up must turn beggars or paupers—our daughters, as thousands do, must eke out their miserable earnings by prostitution. And, after all, a whole family will not gain what one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed. You know there will be no hope for us. There is no use appealing to government or Parliament. I don't want to talk politics here. I shall keep them for another place. But you can recollect as well as I can, when a deputation of us went up to a member of Parliament—one that was reputed a philosopher, and a political economist, and a liberal—and set before him the ever-increasing penury and misery of our trade and of those connected with it; you recollect his answer—that, however glad he would be to help us, it was impossible—he could not alter the laws of nature—that wages were regulated by the amount of competition among the men themselves, and that it was no business of government, or any one else, to interfere in contracts between the employer and employed, that those things regulated themselves by the laws of political economy, which it was madness and suicide to oppose. He may have been a wise man. I only know that he was a rich one. Every one speaks well of the bridge which carries him over. Every one fancies the laws which fill his pockets to be God's laws. But I say this: If neither government nor members of Parliament can help us, we must help ourselves. Help yourselves, and Heaven will help you. Combination among ourselves is the only chance. One thing we can do—sit still.'

"'And starve!' said some one."

"Peter Moreau and his wife are dead, aged twenty-five years. Too much work has killed them and many besides. We say—Work like a negro, like a galley-slave: we ought to say—Work like a freeman."