PORTER'S _Parl. Tables_, xi. 162.--_Parl. Paper of Crime_,
1843, p. 53.]

[Footnote 8: Strike.]

[Footnote 9: Strike.]

Infant labour, unhappily now so frequent in all kinds of factories,
and the great prevalence of female workers, is another evil of a very
serious kind in the manufacturing districts. We do not propose to
enter into the question, recently so fiercely agitated in the
legislature, as to the practicability of substituting a compulsory
ten-hours' bill for the twelve hours' at present in operation.
Anxious to avoid all topics on which there is a difference of opinion
among able and patriotic men, we merely state this prevalence and
precocity of juvenile labour in the manufacturing and mining
districts as _a fact_ which all must deplore, and which is attended
with the most unhappy effects on the rising generation. The great
majority, probably nine-tenths, of all the workers in cotton-mills or
printfields, are females. We have heard much of the profligacy and
licentiousness which pervade such establishments; but though that may
be too true in some cases, it is far from being universal, or even
general; and there are numerous instances of female virtue being as
jealously guarded and effectually preserved in such establishments,
as in the most secluded rural districts. The real evils--and they
follow universally from such employment of juvenile females in great
numbers in laborious but lucrative employment--are the emancipation
of the young from parental control, the temptation held out to
idleness in the parents from the possibility of living on their
children, and the disqualifying the girls for performing all the