lane; a clergyman, who had occupied himself
largely with the statistics of education, was of the opinion that of
16,500 children of the working-class who are in a position to attend
school, scarcely 6,500 can read. This comes of the fact that the
children are taken from school in the seventh, and, at the very latest,
in the twelfth year, and that the teachers are good for nothing; one was
a convicted thief who found no other way of supporting himself after
being released from jail than teaching school! Immorality among young
people seems to be more prevalent in Sheffield than anywhere else. It is
hard to tell which town ought to have the prize, and in reading the
report one believes of each one that this certainly deserves it! The
younger generation spend the whole of Sunday lying in the street tossing
coins or fighting dogs, go regularly to the gin palace, where they sit
with their sweethearts until late at night, when they take walks in
solitary couples. In an ale-house which the commissioner visited, there
sat forty to fifty young people of both sexes, nearly all under seventeen
years of age, and each lad beside his lass. Here and there cards were
played, at other places dancing was going on, and everywhere drinking.
Among the company were openly avowed professional prostitutes. No
wonder, then, that, as all the witnesses testify, early, unbridled sexual
intercourse, youthful prostitution, beginning with persons of fourteen to
fifteen years, is extraordinarily frequent in Sheffield. Crimes of a
savage and desperate sort are of common occurrence; one year before the
commissioner's visit, a band, consisting chiefly of young persons, was
arrested when about to set fire to the town, being fully equipped with
lances and inflammable substances. We shall see later that the labour
movement in Sheffield has this same savage character. {205}

Besides these two main centres of the metal industry, there are needle
factories in Warrington, Lancashire, where great want, immorality, and
ignorance prevail among the workers, and especially among the children;
and a number of nail forges in the neighbourhood of Wigan, in Lancashire,
and in the east of Scotland. The reports from these latter districts
tell almost precisely the same story as those of Staffordshire. There is
one more branch of this industry carried on in the factory districts,
especially in Lancashire, the essential peculiarity of which is the
production of mac