er that the children
were simply at the mercy of their oweners, nominally as
apprentices, but in reality as mere slaves, who got no
wages, and whom it was not worth while even to feed and
clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their places
could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the
parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that
one idiot should be taken by the mill owener with every
twenty sane children. The fate of these unhappy idiots was
even worse than that of the others. The secret of their
final end has never been disclosed, but we can form some
idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships of the
other victims to capitalist greed and cruelty. The hours of
their labor were only limited by exhaustion, after many
modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force
continued work. Children were often worked sixteen hours a
day, by day and by night.

In the year 1819 an act of Parliament was proposed limiting the labor
of children nine years of age to fourteen hours a day. This would seem
to have been a reasonable provision, likely to have won the approval
of Christ; yet the bill was violently opposed by Christian employers,
backed by Christian clergymen. It was interfering with freedom of
contract, and therefore with the will of Providence; it was anathema
to an established Church, whose function was in 1819, as it is in
1918, and was in 1918 B.C., to teach the divine origin and sanction of
the prevailing economic order. "Anu and Baal called me, Hammurabi, the
exalted prince, worshipper of the gods" ... so begins the oldest legal
code which has come down to us, from 2250 B.C.; and the coronation
service of the English church is made whole out of the same thesis.
The duty of submission, not merely to divinely chosen King, but to
divinely chosen Landlord and divinely chosen Manufacturer, is implicit
in the church's every ceremony, and explicit in many of its creeds. In
the Litany the people petition for "increase of grace to hear meekly
Thy Word"; and here is this "Word," as little children are made to
learn it by heart. If there exists in the world a more perfect summary
of slave ethics, I do not know where to find it.

My duty towards my neighbour is ... To honour and obey the
King, and all that are put in authority under him; To submit
myself to all my governours, teachers, sp