d to labor for
twelve and thirteen hours continuously in the factories. In the coal
mines their case was even worse. All day long these poor creatures
sat in absolute darkness, opening and shutting doors for the passage
of coal cars. If, overcome with fatigue, they fell asleep, they were
cruelly beaten with a strap.[1]

[1] See Gibbin's "Industrial History of England," E.F. Cheyney's
"Industrial History of England," and Mrs. E. B. Browning's poem,
"The Cry of the Children."

Parliament at length turned its attention to these abuses, and passed
acts, 1833, forbidding the employment of women and young children in
such work; a later act put an end to the barbarous practice of forcing
children to sweep chimneys.

584. The First Steam Railway, 1830; the Railway Craze; the Friction
Match, 1834.

Ever since the application of steam to machinery, the inventors had
been discussing plans for placing the steam engine on wheels and using
it as a propelling power in place of horses. Macadam, a Scotch
surveyor, had constructed a number of very superior roads made of
gravel and broken stone in the south of England, which soon made the
name of "macadamized turnpike" celebrated.

The question then arose, Might not a still further advance be made by
employing steam to draw cars on these roads, or, better still, on iron
rails? The first locomotives built were used in hauling coal at the
mines in the North of England. Puffing Billy, the pioneer machine
(1813), worked for many years near Newcastle. At length George
Stephenson, an inventor and engineer, together with certain
capitalists, succeeded in getting Parliament to pass an act for
constructing a passenger railway between Liverpool and Manchester, a
distance of about thirty miles.

When the line was completed by Stephenson, he had great difficulty in
getting permission to use an engine instead of horse power on it.
Finally, Stephenson's new locomotive, The Rocket,--which first
introduced the tubular boiler, and employed the exhaust, or escaping,
steam to increase the draft of the fire,--was tried with entire
success.[1]

[1] Stephenson's Rocket and Watt's stationary steam engine (S563) are
both preserved in the South Kensington Museum, London. The boiler of
the Rocket was traversed by a number of tubes communicating with the
smoke pipe. The steam, after it hada done its work in the cylinders
of the engine, escaped with great force through the smoke pipe and so
c