en of education at the very seed-time of
life, and literally murders many of them; for their soft and porous
skins, and growing organs, take in all poisons and disorders quicker
than an adult.

C. What the Legislature might do.

"It might issue a commission to examine the Hillsborough trades, and,
when accurately informed, might put some practical restraints both on
the murder and the suicide that are going on at present. A few of the
suggestions I have thrown out might, I think, be made law.

"For instance, the master who should set a dry-grinder to a trough
without a fan, or put his wet-grinders on a mud floor and no fire, or
his file-cutters in a room without taps and basins, or who should be
convicted of willfully buying a faulty grindstone, might be made subject
to a severe penalty; and the municipal authorities invested with rights
of inspection, and encouraged to report.

"In restraint of the workmen, the Legislature ought to extend the
Factory Acts to Hillsborough trades, and so check the heartless avarice
of the parents. At present, no class of her Majesty's subjects cries
so loud, and so vainly, to her motherly bosom, and the humanity of
Parliament as these poor little children; their parents, the lowest
and most degraded set of brutes in England, teach them swearing and
indecency at home, and rob them of all decent education, and drive them
to their death, in order to squeeze a few shillings out of their young
lives; for what?--to waste in drink and debauchery. Count the public
houses in this town.

"As to the fork-grinding trade, the Legislature might assist the masters
to extinguish it. It numbers only about one hundred and fifty persons,
all much poisoned, and little paid. The work could all be done by
fifteen machines and thirty hands, and, in my opinion, without the
expense of grindstones. The thirty men would get double wages: the odd
hundred and twenty would, of course, be driven into other trades,
after suffering much distress. And, on this account, I would call in
Parliament, because then there would be a temporary compensation offered
to the temporary sufferers by a far-sighted and, beneficent measure.
Besides, without Parliament, I am afraid the masters could not do it.
The fork-grinders would blow up the machines, and the men who worked
them, and their wives and their children, and their lodgers, and their
lodgers' visitors.

"For all that, if your theory of Life, Labor, and Capital is true