tory life
upon the morality of the youthful female population is most
depressing."

It is, besides, a matter of course that factory servitude, like any
other, and to an even higher degree, confers the _jus primae noctis_ upon
the master. In this respect also the employer is sovereign over the
persons and charms of his employees. The threat of discharge suffices to
overcome all resistance in nine cases out of ten, if not in ninety-nine
out of a hundred, in girls who, in any case, have no strong inducements
to chastity. If the master is mean enough, and the official report
mentions several such cases, his mill is also his harem; and the fact
that not all manufacturers use their power, does not in the least change
the position of the girls. In the beginning of manufacturing industry,
when most of the employers were upstarts without education or
consideration for the hypocrisy of society, they let nothing interfere
with the exercise of their vested rights.

To form a correct judgment of the influence of factory-work upon the
health of the female sex, it is necessary first to consider the work of
children, and then the nature of the work itself. From the beginning of
manufacturing industry, children have been employed in mills, at first
almost exclusively by reason of the smallness of the machines, which were
later enlarged. Even children from the workhouses were employed in
multitudes, being rented out for a number of years to the manufacturers
as apprentices. They were lodged, fed, and clothed in common, and were,
of course, completely the slaves of their masters, by whom they were
treated with the utmost recklessness and barbarity. As early as 1796,
the public objection to this revolting system found such vigorous
expression through Dr. Percival and Sir Robert Peel (father of the
Cabinet Minister, and himself a cotton manufacturer), that in 1802
Parliament passed an Apprentices' Bill, by which the most crying evils
were removed. Gradually the increasing competition of free workpeople
crowded out the whole apprentice system; factories were built in cities,
machinery was constructed on a larger scale, and workrooms were made more
airy and wholesome; gradually, too, more work was found for adults and
young persons. The number of children in the mills diminished somewhat,
and the age at which they began to work rose a little; few children under
eight or nine years were now employed. Later, as we shall see, t