d debility. On the other hand, retarded development of the female
constitution occurs, the breasts mature late or not at all. {162c}
Menstruation first appears in the seventeenth or Eighteenth, sometimes in
the twentieth year, and is often wholly wanting. {163a} Irregular
menstruation, coupled with great pain and numerous affections, especially
with anaemia, is very frequent, as the medical reports unanimously state.

Children of such mothers, particularly of those who are obliged to work
during pregnancy, cannot be vigorous. They are, on the contrary,
described in the report, especially in Manchester, as very feeble; and
Barry alone asserts that they are healthy, but says further, that in
Scotland, where his inspection lay, almost no married women worked in
factories. Moreover, most of the factories there are in the country
(with the exception of Glasgow), a circumstance which contributes greatly
to the invigoration of the children. The operatives' children in the
neighbourhood of Manchester are nearly all thriving and rosy, while those
within the city look pale and scrofulous; but with the ninth year the
colour vanishes suddenly, because all are then sent into the factories,
when it soon becomes impossible to distinguish the country from the city
children.

But besides all this, there are some branches of factory-work which have
an especially injurious effect. In many rooms of the cotton and flax-
spinning mills, the air is filled with fibrous dust, which produces chest
affections, especially among workers in the carding and combing-rooms.
Some constitutions can bear it, some cannot; but the operative has no
choice. He must take the room in which he finds work, whether his chest
is sound or not. The most common effects of this breathing of dust are
blood-spitting, hard, noisy breathing, pains in the chest, coughs,
sleeplessness--in short, all the symptoms of asthma ending in the worst
cases in consumption. {163b} Especially unwholesome is the wet spinning
of linen-yarn which is carried on by young girls and boys. The water
spirts over them from the spindle, so that the front of their clothing is
constantly wet through to the skin; and there is always water standing on
the floor. This is the case to a less degree in the doubling-rooms of
the cotton mills, and the result is a constant succession of colds and
affections of the chest. A hoarse, rough voice is common to all
operatives, but especially to wet spi