These effects are
decidedly, and to a very great extent, injurious, even under these
most favourable circumstances. (3) In the year 1842, three-fifths of
all the children employed in Wood's mill were treated by me. (4) The
worst effect is not the predominance of deformities, but of enfeebled
and morbid constitutions. (5) All this is greatly improved since the
working-hours of children have been reduced at Wood's to ten."

The Commissioner, Dr. Loudon himself, who cites these witnesses, says:

"In conclusion, I think it has been clearly proved that children have
been worked a most unreasonable and cruel length of time daily, and
that even adults have been expected to do a certain quantity of labour
which scarcely any human being is able to endure. The consequence is
that many have died prematurely, and others are afflicted for life
with defective constitutions, and the fear of a posterity enfeebled by
the shattered constitution of the survivors is but too well founded,
from a physiological point of view."

And, finally, Dr. Hawkins, in speaking of Manchester:

"I believe that most travellers are struck by the lowness of stature,
the leanness and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to
the eye at Manchester, and above all, among the factory classes. I
have never been in any town in Great Britain, nor in Europe, in which
degeneracy of form and colour from the national standard has been so
obvious. Among the married women all the characteristic peculiarities
of the English wife are conspicuously wanting. I must confess that
all the boys and girls brought before me from the Manchester mills had
a depressed appearance, and were very pale. In the expression of
their faces lay nothing of the usual mobility, liveliness, and
cheeriness of youth. Many of them told me that they felt not the
slightest inclination to play out of doors on Saturday and Sunday, but
preferred to be quiet at home."

I add, at once, another passage of Hawkins' report, which only half
belongs here, but may be quoted here as well as anywhere else:

"Intemperance, excess, and want of providence are the chief faults of
the factory population, and these evils may be readily traced to the
habits which are formed under the present system, and almost
inevitably arise from it. It is universally admitted that
indigestion, hypochondria, and ge