he apprentice
system, agreeing to teach them the trade. Girls and boys from orphan
asylums and workhouses were secured and held as practical slaves. They
were herded in sheep-sheds, where they slept on straw and were fed in
troughs. They were worked in two shifts, night and day, so the straw was
never really cold. They worked twelve hours, slept eight, and one hour
was allowed for meals. Their clothing was not removed except on
Saturday. Any alteration in the business life of a people is fraught
with great danger.

Recklessness, greed and brutality at such a time are rife.

Almost all workingmen of forty or over were out of work. Naturally,
employers hired only the young, the active, the athletic. These made
more money than they were used to making, so they spent it lavishly and
foolishly. It was a prosperous time, yet, strangely enough, prosperity
brought starvation to thousands. Family life in many instances was
destroyed, and thus were built those long rows of houses, all alike,
with no mark of individuality--no yard, no flowers, no gardens--that
still in places mar the landscape in factory towns.

Pretty girls went to the towns to work in the mills, and thus lost home
ties. Later they drifted to London. Drunkenness increased.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, there was formed the Manchester Board
of Health. Its intent was to guard the interests of factory-workers. Its
desire was to insure light, ventilation and sanitary conveniences for
the workers. Beyond this it did not seek to go.

The mill superintendents lifted a howl. They talked about interference,
and depriving the poor people of the right to labor. They declared it
was all a private matter between themselves and the workers--a matter of
contract.

Robert Owen, it seems, was the first factory superintendent to invite
inspection of his plant. He worked with the Board of Health, not against
it. He refused to employ children under ten years of age, and although
there was a tax on windows, he supplied plenty of light and also fresh
air. So great was the ignorance of the workers that they regarded the
Factory Laws as an infringement on their rights. The greed and foolish
fears of the mill-owners prompted them to put out the good old argument
that a man's children were his own, and that for the State to dictate to
him where they should work, when and how, was a species of tyranny. Work
was good for children! Let them run the streets? Never!

It is a curiou