Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/128

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122
VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE IN ENGLISH FACTORIES.
Hernia 1
Distorted Spine 1
Absent through sickness 3 1


These statements need no comments.

No sooner are they worked up in this way, and rendered unable to earn their living, than they are cast off, their places being supplied by new comers.

Knowing these facts, who can wonder at there being 10,000 cripples in the factory districts?

There is no provision made by the manufacturers for the support of these unfortunate persons, after being rendered useless. Had they sustained their injuries while fighting for their country, they might have looked forward to Chelsea or Greenwich Hospital; but in vain we look for such asylums for the mutilated factory cripples. There are no such institutions throughout the length and breadth of the land. The Union workhouse and the grave, are the only asylums for such cases.

Thus we behold in a Christian country, a land which boasts of being the glory and admiration of the world, thousands of human beings, mutilated and crippled, emaciated, ruined in health, their spirits broken, their minds and reasoning powers toppling from their seats, and many of them catching, like drowning men, at straws, to save themselves from what would be a happy release from their miserable situation; crying out with Job—"Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul?" Contrast this with what man was intended to be. We are told that man was made "in the image of God;" that God "saw his substance yet being imperfect," and that in "His book all our members are written;" that he was made "a little lower than the angels," and "crowned with glory and honor," and placed in this lower world "to have dominion over