began their life in the coal
mines at five, six, or seven years of age. Girls and women worked
like boys and men, they were less than half clothed, and worked
alongside of men who were stark naked. There were from twelve to
fourteen working hours in the twenty-four, and these were often at
night. Little girls of six or eight years of age made ten to twelve
trips a day up steep ladders to the surface, carrying half a hundred
weight of coal in wooden buckets on their backs at each journey. Young
women appeared before the commissioners, when summoned from their
work, dressed merely in a pair of trousers, dripping wet from the
water of the mine, and already weary with the labor of a day scarcely
more than begun. A common form of labor consisted of drawing on hands
and knees over the inequalities of a passageway not more than two feet
or twenty-eight inches high a car or tub filled with three or four
hundred weight of coal, attached by a chain and hook to a leather band
around the waist. The mere recital of the testimony taken precluded
all discussion as to the desirability of reform, and a law was
immediately passed, almost without dissent, which prohibited for the
future all work underground by females or by boys under thirteen years
of age. Inspectors were appointed, and by subsequent acts a whole code
of regulation of mines as regards age, hours, lighting, ventilation,
safety, licensing of engineers, and in other respects has been
created.

[Illustration: Children's Labor in Coal Mines. _Report of Children's
Employment Commission of 1842._]

[Illustration: Women's Labor in Coal Mines. (_Report of Children's
Employment Commission, 1842._)]

In 1846 a bill was passed applying to calico printing works
regulations similar to the factory laws proper. In 1860, 1861, and
1863 similar laws were passed for bleaching and dyeing for lace works,
and for bakeries. In 1864 another so-called factory act was passed
applying to at least six other industries, none of which had any
connection with textile factories. Three years later, in 1867, two
acts for factories and workshops respectively took a large number of
additional industries under their care; and finally, in 1878, the
"Factory and Workshop Consolidation Act" repealed all the former
special laws and substituted a veritable factory code containing a
vast number of provisions for the regulation of industrial
establishments. This law covered more than fifty printed pages of th