indirectly to force a
pregnant woman to work twelve or thirteen hours daily (formerly still
longer), up to the day of her delivery, in a standing position, with
frequent stoopings. But this is not all. If these women are not obliged
to resume work within two weeks, they are thankful, and count themselves
fortunate. Many come back to the factory after eight, and even after
three to four days, to resume full work. I once heard a manufacturer ask
an overlooker: "Is so and so not back yet?" "No." "How long since she
was confined?" "A week." "She might surely have been back long ago.
That one over there only stays three days." Naturally, fear of being
discharged, dread of starvation drives her to the factory in spite of her
weakness, in defiance of her pain. The interest of the manufacturer will
not brook that his employees stay at home by reason of illness; they must
not be ill, they must not venture to lie still through a long
confinement, or he must stop his machinery or trouble his supreme head
with a temporary change of arrangements, and rather than do this, he
discharges his people when they begin to be ill. Listen: {162a}

"A girl feels very ill, can scarcely do her work. Why does she not
ask permission to go home? Ah! the master is very particular, and if
we are away half a day, we risk being sent away altogether."

Or Sir D. Barry: {162b}

"Thomas McDurt, workman, has slight fever. Cannot stay at home longer
than four days, because he would fear of losing his place."

And so it goes on in almost all the factories. The employment of young
girls produces all sorts of irregularities during the period of
development. In some, especially those who are better fed, the heat of
the factories hastens this process, so that in single cases, girls of
thirteen and fourteen are wholly mature. Robertson, whom I have already
cited (mentioned in the Factories' Inquiry Commission's Report as the
"eminent" gynaecologist of Manchester), relates in the North of England
_Medical and Surgical Journal_, that he had seen a girl of eleven years
who was not only a wholly developed woman, but pregnant, and that it was
by no means rare in Manchester for women to be confined at fifteen years
of age. In such cases, the influence of the warmth of the factories is
the same as that of a tropical climate, and, as in such climates, the
abnormally early development revenges itself by correspondingly premature
age an