s, that prove a great deal for
the uninitiated reader and nothing for the initiated, and with
suppressions of facts bearing on the most important points; and they
prove only the selfish blindness and want of uprightness of the
manufacturers concerned. Let us take some of the statements of a speech
with which Lord Ashley introduced the Ten Hours' Bill, March 15th, 1844,
into the House of Commons. Here he gives some data as to the relations
of sex and age of the operatives, not yet refuted by the manufacturers,
whose statements, as quoted above, cover moreover only a part of the
manufacturing industry of England. Of 419,560 factory operatives of the
British Empire in 1839, 192,887, or nearly half, were under eighteen
years of age, and 242,296 of the female sex, of whom 112,192 were less
than eighteen years old. There remain, therefore, 80,695 male operatives
under eighteen years, and 96,569 adult male operatives, _or not one full
quarter_ of the whole number. In the cotton factories, 56.25 per cent.;
in the woollen mills, 69.5 per cent.; in the silk mills, 70.5 per cent.;
in the flax-spinning mills, 70.5 per cent. of all operatives are of the
female sex. These numbers suffice to prove the crowding out of adult
males. But you have only to go into the nearest mill to see the fact
confirmed. Hence follows of necessity that inversion of the existing
social order which, being forced upon them, has the most ruinous
consequences for the workers. The employment of women at once breaks up
the family; for when the wife spends twelve or thirteen hours every day
in the mill, and the husband works the same length of time there or
elsewhere, what becomes of the children? They grow up like wild weeds;
they are put out to nurse for a shilling or eighteenpence a week, and how
they are treated may be imagined. Hence the accidents to which little
children fall victims multiply in the factory districts to a terrible
extent. The lists of the Coroner of Manchester {143a} showed for nine
months: 69 deaths from burning, 56 from drowning, 23 from falling, 77
from other causes, or a total of 225 {143b} deaths from accidents, while
in non-manufacturing Liverpool during twelve months there were but 146
fatal accidents. The mining accidents are excluded in both cases; and
since the Coroner of Manchester has no authority in Salford, the
population of both places mentioned in the comparison is about the same.
The _Manchester Guardian_ report