s one or more deaths by burning in almost
every number. That the general mortality among young children must be
increased by the employment of the mothers is self-evident, and is placed
beyond all doubt by notorious facts. Women often return to the mill
three or four days after confinement, leaving the baby, of course; in the
dinner hour they must hurry home to feed the child and eat something, and
what sort of suckling that can be is also evident. Lord Ashley repeats
the testimony of several workwomen: "M. H., twenty years old, has two
children, the youngest a baby, that is tended by the other, a little
older. The mother goes to the mill shortly after five o'clock in the
morning, and comes home at eight at night; all day the milk pours from
her breasts, so that her clothing drips with it." "H. W. has three
children, goes away Monday morning at five o'clock, and comes back
Saturday evening; has so much to do for the children then that she cannot
get to bed before three o'clock in the morning; often wet through to the
skin, and obliged to work in that state." She said: "My breasts have
given me the most frightful pain, and I have been dripping wet with
milk." The use of narcotics to keep the children still is fostered by
this infamous system, and has reached a great extent in the factory
districts. Dr. Johns, Registrar in Chief for Manchester, is of opinion
that this custom is the chief source of the many deaths from convulsions.
The employment of the wife dissolves the family utterly and of necessity,
and this dissolution, in our present society, which is based upon the
family, brings the most demoralising consequences for parents as well as
children. A mother who has no time to trouble herself about her child,
to perform the most ordinary loving services for it during its first
year, who scarcely indeed sees it, can be no real mother to the child,
must inevitably grow indifferent to it, treat it unlovingly like a
stranger. The children who grow up under such conditions are utterly
ruined for later family life, can never feel at home in the family which
they themselves found, because they have always been accustomed to
isolation, and they contribute therefore to the already general
undermining of the family in the working-class. A similar dissolution of
the family is brought about by the employment of the children. When they
get on far enough to earn more than they cost their parents from week to
week, they be