"Having other pursuits, it was not often in my power to visit factories, (speaking of his own,) but whenever such visits were made, I was struck with the uniform appearance of bad health, and, in many cases, stinted growth of the children. The hours of labor were regulated by the interests of the overseer, whose remuneration was regulated by the quantity of work done."
He further says:
"Such indiscriminate and unlimited employment of the poor, will be attended with effects to the rising generation so serious and alarming, that I cannot contemplate them without dismay; and thus that great effort of British ingenuity, whereby the machinery of our manufactures has been brought to such perfection, instead of being a blessing to the nation., will be converted into the bitterest curse."
It will be necessary here to state, that Sir Robert Peel, senior, introduced a Bill into Parliament in the year 1802; and thus commenced the factory legislation, which has been carried on with very little success, for more than forty-four years.
On the 3d of April, 1816, Mr. R. Gordon made the following statement in the House of Commons:
"It appears that overseers of parishes in London are in the habit of contracting with the manufacturers of the north for the disposal of their children; and these manufacturers agree to take one idiot for every nineteen sane children. In this manner wagon loads of these little creatures are sent down to be at the perfect disposal of their new masters."
I will take another extract from the evidence of L. Horner, Esq., one of the head Inspectors of factories. He says:
"These children were often sent one, two, or three hundred miles from the place of their birth, separated for
