but his clothing was so mean that he was ashamed to go, and being too poor to purchase any thing new, his friends and customers entered into a subscription of one shilling each, to put him in decent plight.
How many thousands of human beings have been hurried off to an untimely grave, in scraping together for these gentlemen, father and son, the enormous sum of upwards of forty millions of dollars, time will not reveal.
It is this sort of work that has made England so full of cripples and paupers.
LETTER XIV.
CONDITION OF FEMALE OPERATIVES.
At a meeting recently held in Bradford,[1] in Yorkshire, to take into consideration the deplorable condition of 12,000 female factory operatives employed in that town, mention was made of the high moral and social condition of the female operatives of Lowell. The speakers strongly urged the necessity of a like state of things being brought about among the female operatives of England. However desirable this object may be, however praiseworthy the motives and exertions of those benevolent individuals by whom the movement has been commenced, still I feel convinced, and that conviction is founded upon a life of practical knowledge, that the object sought is beyond their power to obtain. Much good, it is true,
- ↑ In the history of Bradford, lately published by John James, it is stated that five sixths of the persons employed in the factories of this town and neighborhood, are females.
