he power
of the State intervened several times to protect them from the
money-greed of the bourgeoisie.

The great mortality among children of the working-class, and especially
among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the unwholesome
conditions under which they pass their first year. These influences are
at work, of course, among the children who survive, but not quite so
powerfully as upon those who succumb. The result in the most favourable
case is a tendency to disease, or some check in development, and
consequent less than normal vigour of the constitution. A nine years old
child of a factory operative that has grown up in want, privation, and
changing conditions, in cold and damp, with insufficient clothing and
unwholesome dwellings, is far from having the working force of a child
brought up under healthier conditions. At nine years of age it is sent
into the mill to work 6.5 hours (formerly 8, earlier still, 12 to 14,
even 16 hours) daily, until the thirteenth year; then twelve hours until
the eighteenth year. The old enfeebling influences continue, while the
work is added to them. It is not to be denied that a child of nine
years, even an operative's child, can hold out through 6.5 hours' daily
work, without any one being able to trace visible bad results in its
development directly to this cause; but in no case can its presence in
the damp, heavy air of the factory, often at once warm and wet,
contribute to good health; and, in any case, it is unpardonable to
sacrifice to the greed of an unfeeling bourgeoisie the time of children
which should be devoted solely to their physical and mental development,
withdraw them from school and the fresh air, in order to wear them out
for the benefit of the manufacturers. The bourgeoisie says: "If we do
not employ the children in the mills, they only remain under conditions
unfavourable to their development;" and this is true, on the whole. But
what does this mean if it is not a confession that the bourgeoisie first
places the children of the working-class under unfavourable conditions,
and then exploits these bad conditions for its own benefit, appeals to
that which is as much its own fault as the factory system, excuses the
sin of to-day with the sin of yesterday? And if the Factory Act did not
in some measure fetter their hands, how this "humane," this "benevolent"
bourgeoisie, which has built its factories solely for the good of the
working-class