(p. 19) [The children] are generally cruelly treated; so cruelly treated, that they dare not hardly for their lives to be late at their work in the morning. When I have been at the mills in the winter season, when the children are at work in the evening . . . (they) look so anxious to know o'clock it is, that I am convinced the children are fatigued, and think that even at seven they have worked too long [the finishing hour was 10 P.M.] . . . they have been so fatigued as not to know whether they were at work or not . . . It is a very difficult thing to go into a mill in the latter part of the day, particularly in winter, and not to hear some of the children crying for being beaten . . . so violently that they have lost their lives in consequence of their being so beaten; and even a young girl has had the end of a billy-roller [iron rod] jammed through her cheek.
(p. 130) Reason dictates that when the children go to the mill at 5 in the morning, and work to 10 at night, they are almost stupid with labor; . . . where I worked . . you might have heard the cries of children that would have touched a heart of stone. . . . I have had my own children come home beat [with a leather strap] so severely, that it was hardly possible to tell the original color of their back. . . . I have known a girl of mine very severely beaten for going to the privy.
(p. 138) I have seen some children running down [at 5 A.M.] to the mill crying, with a bit of bread in their hand, and that is all they may have till 12 o'clock at noon. . . .
(p. 205) {On the factory floor] provided a child should be drowsy, the onlooker [overseer] walks around the room with a stick in his hand, and he touches that child on the shoulder and says, "Come here." In a corner of the room there is an iron cistern; it is filled with water . . . he takes this boy, and takes him up by the legs, and dips him over the head in the cistern, and sends him to his work for the remainder of the day; and that boy is to stand, dripping as he is, at his work; he has no chance of drying himself.
(p. 237) The calculation of the working power of a cotton-mill is such, that [the children] are obliged to attend to their duty; the spinner is the first hand in the employ, and it is known by calculation of the machinery, how many hanks [lengths of yarn] may be thrown each week, if he attends to his duty; if he does not do that, or near it, he loses his work: and in consequence of this, he is obliged to keep the piecers [children who join the threads for spinning and hence moving constantly around and under the machinery] strictly to their duty; and if they are not able to do it, in consequence of being over-wrought, there is no other remedy but to use the strap . . . there is no avoiding of it.
(p. 454; evidence of Richard Oastler) . . . that it was the regular custom, to work children in
factories thirteen hours a day, and only allow them half an hour for dinner; . . . and that in
many factories they were worked considerably more. . . On all occasions I have refrained
from exposing the worst parts of the system, for they are so gross that I dare not publish
them. The demoralizing effects of the system are as bad, I know it, as the demoralizing
effects of slavery in the West Indies. I know that there are instances and scenes of the
grossest prostitution amongst the poor creatures who are the victims of the system, and in
some cases are the objects of the cruelty and rapacity and sensuality of their masters. These
things, I never dared to publish, but the cruelties which are inflicted personally upon the little
children, not to mention the immensely long hours which they are subject to work, are such
as I am very sure would disgrace a West Indian plantation. . . . I have seen little boys and
girls of 10 years old; one I have in my eye particularly now, whose forehead has been cut
open by the thong; whose cheeks and lips have been laid open, and whose back has been
almost covered with black stripes; and the only crime that that little boy, who was 10 years
and 3 months old, had committed, was that he retched three pieces of woolen yarn. . .
The same boy told me that he had been frequently knocked down with the billy-roller, and
that on one occasion, he had been hung up by a rope round the body, and almost frightened to
death . . I have seen their bodies almost broken down, so that they could not walk without
assistance, when they have been 17 or 18 years of age.
. . . it is almost the general system in (the small) manufacturing villages to know nothing of
their parents at all excepting that in a morning very early, at 5 o'clock, very often before 4,
they are awakened by a human being that they are told is their father, and are pulled out of
bed (I have heard many a score of them give an account of it) when they are almost asleep,
and lesser children are absolutely carried on the backs of the older children asleep to the mill,
and they see no more of their parents, generally speaking, till they go home at night, and are
sent to bed.
[Ref.: British Parliamentary Papers, 1831-2, XV, No. 706 (Report of Committee on the Labor of Children in Factories)]
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