had to contend was the
insufficient supply of labor for their factories. Since these had to
be run by water power, they were placed along the rapid streams in the
remote parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire,
which were sparsely populated, and where such inhabitants as there
were had a strong objection to working in factories. However abundant
population might be in some other parts of England, in the northwest
where the new manufacturing was growing up, and especially in the
hilly rural districts, there were but few persons available to perform
the work which must be done by human hands in connection with the mill
machinery. There was, however, in existence a source of supply of
laborers which could furnish almost unlimited numbers and at the
lowest possible cost. The parish poorhouses or workhouses of the large
cities were overcrowded with children. The authorities always had
difficulty in finding occupation for them when they came to an age
when they could earn their own living, and any plan of putting them to
work would be received with welcome. This source of supply was early
discovered and utilized by the manufacturers, and it soon became
customary for them to take as apprentices large numbers of the
poorhouse children. They signed indentures with the overseers of the
poor by which they agreed to give board, clothing, and instruction for
a certain number of years to the children who were thus bound to them.
In return they put them to work in the factories. Children from seven
years of age upward were engaged by hundreds from London and the other
large cities, and set to work in the cotton spinning factories of the
north. Since there were no other facilities for boarding them,
"apprentice houses" were built for them in the vicinity of the
factories, where they were placed under the care of superintendents or
matrons. The conditions of life among these pauper children were, as
might be expected, very hard. They were remotely situated, apart from
the observation of the community, left to the burdens of unrelieved
labor and the harshness of small masters or foremen. Their hours of
labor were excessive. When the demands of trade were active they were
often arranged in two shifts, each shift working twelve hours, one in
the day and another in the night, so that it was a common saying in
the north that "their beds never got cold," one set climbing into bed
as the other got out. When there was no