n possession, the necessary inference is that this
community of possession is no true and rational one, since one member of
the family boasts offensively of contributing the greater share. If the
family of our present society is being thus dissolved, this dissolution
merely shows that, at bottom, the binding tie of this family was not
family affection, but private interest lurking under the cloak of a
pretended community of possessions. The same relation exists on the part
of those children who support unemployed parents {147a} when they do not
directly pay board as already referred to. Dr. Hawkins testified in the
Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report that this relation is common
enough, and in Manchester it is notorious. In this case the children are
the masters in the house, as the wife was in the former case, and Lord
Ashley gives an example of this in his speech: {147b} A man berated his
two daughters for going to the public house, and they answered that they
were tired of being ordered about, saying, "Damn you, we have to keep
you!" Determined to keep the proceeds of their work for themselves, they
left the family dwelling, and abandoned their parents to their fate.

The unmarried women, who have grown up in mills, are no better off than
the married ones. It is self-evident that a girl who has worked in a
mill from her ninth year is in no position to understand domestic work,
whence it follows that female operatives prove wholly inexperienced and
unfit as housekeepers. They cannot knit or sew, cook or wash, are
unacquainted with the most ordinary duties of a housekeeper, and when
they have young children to take care of, have not the vaguest idea how
to set about it. The Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report gives dozens
of examples of this, and Dr. Hawkins, Commissioner for Lancashire,
expresses his opinion as follows: {147c}

"The girls marry early and recklessly; they have neither means, time,
nor opportunity to learn the ordinary duties of household life; but if
they had them all, they would find no time in married life for the
performance of these duties. The mother is more than twelve hours
away from her child daily; the baby is cared for by a young girl or an
old woman, to whom it is given to nurse. Besides this, the dwelling
of the mill-hands is too often no home but a cellar, which contains no
cooking or washing utensils, no sewing or mending materials, nothing
which