Of course, work of this nature, for such hours, and at such an early age, cannot but be followed by deplorable consequences to health in after life, as well as to moral character. Accordingly the Commissioners report.--(II, p. 109, 110, 181.)
"598. From the nature of their occupation, the long and irregular hours of work, the frequency of night-work, and the insufficient time allowed for meals--an evil of the greatest magnitude in the case of growing children--the constitution is frequently seriously impaired. 'The majority of the children whom I saw,' says the Sub-commissioner, 'were pale and unhealthy-looking, and several were of diminutive stature. The health and sight are often greatly impaired, especially among the runners, who occasionally faint while at work; indeed, there cannot be an occupation which more seriously deteriorates the constitution. Short-sightedness, amaurosis, distortion of the spine, excessive constitutional debility, indigestion, and derangement of the uterine functions, may be said to be almost universal: all the evidence points to this conclusion.'
"'In the town of Nottingham,' says Mr. Grainger, 'all parties, clergy, police, manufacturers, work-people, and parents, agree that the present mode of employing children and young persons as threaders and winders is a most fertile source of immorality. There can, in fact, be but few states more immediately leading to vice and profligacy. Children of both sexes are called out of their parents' houses at all hours of the night, and, as it is quite uncertain how long they may be required, whether for two hours or the whole night, a ready and unanswerable excuse for staying out is furnished.--(No. 138.)
"The moral condition of the lace-makers in Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Beds and Bucks, is stated by Major Burns to be extremely low, and prostitution is rife among them, from their scanty earnings, their love of finery, and the almost total absence of early moral culture."--(Report: App. Pt. I, p. A. 12, s. 104.)
_Millinery and Dressmaking._--The portion of these instructive volumes which describes the condition of the young women employed as milliners and mantua-makers in our great cities, and especially in London, is, however, that which has left the most painful impression upon our minds--not only because the work of these unfortunate girls is of all the most, severe and unremitting--nor because it is inflicted exclusively upon the weaker sex, and at a period of life the most susceptible of injury from overstrained exertion--nor yet because the actual consequences which are shown to ensue in thousands of cases are so peculiarly deplorable---but because the excess of labor (with all its pernicious and fatal results) is endured in the service, and inflicted in execution of the orders, of a class whose own exemption from toil and privation should make them scrupulously careful not to increase, causelessly or selfishly, the toils and privations of their less favored fellow-creatures--a class, too, many of whom have been conspicuously loud in denouncing the cruelties of far more venial offenders, and in expressing a somewhat clamorous and overacted sympathy with sufferings which cannot for a moment be compared in severity with those which are every day inflicted on the helpless of their own sex, in ministering to their own factitious and capricious wants. The remark may appear harsh, but the evidence before us fully warrants it--that probably in no occupation whatever--not in the printing fields of Lancashire--not, in the lace trade of Nottingham--not in the collieries of Scotland--scarcely in the workshops of Willenhall--most assuredly not in the cotton factories of Manchester, (which a few years ago the fashionable fair of London were so pathetic in lamenting)--can any instances of cruelty be met with which do not "whiten in the shade" of those which every spring and autumn season sees practiced--unreprobated, and till now nearly unknown--in the _millinery establishments_ of the metropolis.