ty of the hours, the frequent night-work, and especially
the great heat of the working place (100 to 130 Fahrenheit), engender in
children general debility and disease, stunted growth, and especially
affections of the eye, bowel complaint, and rheumatic and bronchial
affections. Many of the children are pale, have red eyes, often blind
for weeks at a time, suffer from violent nausea, vomiting, coughs, colds,
and rheumatism. When the glass is withdrawn from the fire, the children
must often go into such heat that the boards on which they stand catch
fire under their feet. The glassblowers usually die young of debility
and chest affections. {208}

As a whole, this report testifies to the gradual but sure introduction of
the factory system into all branches of industry, recognisable especially
by the employment of women and children. I have not thought it necessary
to trace in every case the progress of machinery and the superseding of
men as workers. Every one who is in any degree acquainted with the
nature of manufacture can fill this out for himself, while space fails me
to describe in detail an aspect of our present system of production, the
result of which I have already sketched in dealing with the factory
system. In all directions machinery is being introduced, and the last
trace of the working-man's independence thus destroyed. In all
directions the family is being dissolved by the labour of wife and
children, or inverted by the husband's being thrown out of employment and
made dependent upon them for bread; everywhere the inevitable machinery
bestows upon the great capitalist command of trade and of the workers
with it. The centralisation of capital strides forward without
interruption, the division of society into great capitalists and
non-possessing workers is sharper every day, the industrial development
of the nation advances with giant strides towards the inevitable crisis.

I have already stated that in the handicrafts the power of capital, and
in some cases the division of labour too, has produced the same results,
crushed the small tradesmen, and put great capitalists and non-possessing
workers in their place. As to these handicraftsmen there is little to be
said, since all that relates to them has already found its place where
the proletariat in general was under discussion. There has been but
little change here in the nature of the work and its influence upon
health since the beginning of the i