hinery by machinery, whereby the workers, crowded out
elsewhere, are deprived of their last refuge, the creation of the very
enemy which supersedes them. Machinery for planing and boring, cutting
screws, wheels, nuts, etc., with power lathes, has thrown out of
employment a multitude of men who formerly found regular work at good
wages; and whoever wishes to do so may see crowds of them in Manchester.

North of the iron district of Staffordshire lies an industrial region to
which we shall now turn our attention, the Potteries, whose headquarters
are in the borough of Stoke, embracing Henley, Burslem, Lane End, Lane
Delph, Etruria, Coleridge, Langport, Tunstall, and Golden Hill,
containing together 60,000 inhabitants. The Children's Employment
Commission reports upon this subject that in some branches of this
industry, in the production of stoneware, the children have light
employment in warm, airy rooms; in others, on the contrary, hard, wearing
labour is required, while they receive neither sufficient food nor good
clothing. Many children complain: "Don't get enough to eat, get mostly
potatoes with salt, never meat, never bread, don't go to school, haven't
got no clothes." "Haven't got nothin' to eat to-day for dinner, don't
never have dinner at home, get mostly potatoes and salt, sometimes
bread." "These is all the clothes I have, no Sunday suit at home." Among
the children whose work is especially injurious are the mould-runners,
who have to carry the moulded article with the form to the drying-room,
and afterwards bring back the empty form, when the article is properly
dried. Thus they must go to and fro the whole day, carrying burdens
heavy in proportion to their age, while the high temperature in which
they have to do this increases very considerably the exhaustiveness of
the work. These children, with scarcely a single exception, are lean,
pale, feeble, stunted; nearly all suffer from stomach troubles, nausea,
want of appetite, and many of them die of consumption. Almost as
delicate are the boys called "jiggers," from the "jigger" wheel which
they turn. But by far the most injurious is the work of those who dip
the finished article into a fluid containing great quantities of lead,
and often of arsenic, or have to take the freshly-dipped article up with
the hand. The hands and clothing of these workers, adults and children,
are always wet with this fluid, the skin softens and falls off under the
constant