makes life agreeable and civilised, or the domestic hearth
attractive. For these and other reasons, and especially for the sake
of the better chances of life for the little children, I can but wish
and hope that a time may come in which married women will be shut out
of the factories." {148a}

But that is the least of the evil. The moral consequences of the
employment of women in factories are even worse. The collecting of
persons of both sexes and all ages in a single workroom, the inevitable
contact, the crowding into a small space of people, to whom neither
mental nor moral education has been given, is not calculated for the
favourable development of the female character. The manufacturer, if he
pays any attention to the matter, can interfere only when something
scandalous actually happens; the permanent, less conspicuous influence of
persons of dissolute character, upon the more moral, and especially upon
the younger ones, he cannot ascertain, and consequently cannot prevent.
But precisely this influence is the most injurious. The language used in
the mills is characterised by many witnesses in the report of 1833, as
"indecent," "bad," "filthy," etc. {148b} It is the same process upon a
small scale which we have already witnessed upon a large one in the great
cities. The centralisation of population has the same influence upon the
same persons, whether it affects them in a great city or a small factory.
The smaller the mill the closer the packing, and the more unavoidable the
contact; and the consequences are not wanting. A witness in Leicester
said that he would rather let his daughter beg than go into a factory;
that they are perfect gates of hell; that most of the prostitutes of the
town had their employment in the mills to thank for their present
situation. {148c} Another, in Manchester, "did not hesitate to assert
that three-fourths of the young factory employees, from fourteen to
twenty years of age, were unchaste." {149a} Commissioner Cowell
expresses it as his opinion, that the morality of the factory operatives
is somewhat below the average of that of the working-class in general.
{149b} And Dr. Hawkins {149c} says:

"An estimate of sexual morality cannot readily be reduced to figures;
but if I may trust my own observations and the general opinion of
those with whom I have spoken, as well as the whole tenor of the
testimony furnished me, the aspect of the influence of fac