frequently kept out longer, and instances are
quoted in which the hours are from five A.M. to
seven or eight P.M., on Sundays and week-days
alike. In harvest-work, boys frequently engage
themselves to men. One boy of fifteen had
"taken" three harvests, engaging himself for
five weeks to work from five A.M. till seven P.M.,
at six shillings a week. Another boy of nine
was hired by a man to make bands for sheaves,
and afterwards led carts at carrying. To do
this he had to leave home at four A.M., and did
not return till nine P.M., and sometimes later.
"This," it is added, "was only for a short time,
and he could not have kept on long with it."

The distance travelled by the gangs to and
from their place of work of course varies with
circumstances. Three or four miles night and
morning is a common distance, while some gangs
go four or five, and at times eight miles. They
usually go on foot, but instances are quoted in
which the employers send waggons, and a gang
of fifty boys and girls were seen riding until a
toll-bar was reached, thus having a partial lift
on their way home. To quote particular instances,
one gang-master, employing children of
six and seven years of age, takes his gang daily
on foot to farms six miles off; another makes
"children of eight years old walk five miles out
and five back." Elsewhere, a woman whose
children began gang-work before seven years of
age, says: "Some of mine have gone four, six,
and seven miles off; and adds, that the little ones,
down to those at fourpence a day, have all the
same steps to get as the great, and all the same
yards and miles to go." One boy of five used
to be carried home from his work by the others;
and "you see the big ones come dragging the
little ones home, and sometimes taking them on
their backs when they are over-tired." A mother
says of her boy who walked six miles and further
to and from his work, that he came home so
tired that he could scarcely stand, and that on
one occasion on sending out late at night to
search for him, they "found him dropped asleep
in a cow-shed." The poor little labourers are
mercifully allowed to return home from their
work as slowly as they please, but their
taskmaster takes care they do not linger on their
way to it in the morning. "I have bought
sweetmeats," remarks one of them, "and said
those who get there first shall have these."
The gangs frequently start too early in the
morning to have breakfast first, when "some of
the children ain't hardly up, so they take a little
bit in their hand to eat." Their dinner is
carried with them, and frequently consists of a
piece of bread, with sometimes an onion or a
bit of cheese or butter added.

The gang-master usually carries a stick or
whip, with which he flogs such children as he
considers to be unruly or idle. Of course it is
maintained by those interested in the preservation
of the system, that this is more for show
than use; that "giving them the promise of it"
is absolutely necessary to the performance of the
work. "Flogging" is admitted, however, "to
be an expression in common use," and though
the children are too much cowed to complain,
there is abundant evidence of their ill treatment.
The wretched parents dare not interfere,
and the gang-master, who, as we have
shown, is responsible only to himself, and
concerning whose disposition it is nobody's
business to inquire, inflicts as much or as little
pain as seems right in his own eyes. A mother,
whose child had never complained, hearing from
others that he had been flogged, "looked and
found bruises on him. It would be, I was told,
for standing up or looking about, or that. I did
not like to notice it, for fear of making him
disobedient." Cases are given, too, of a gang-
master who was imprisoned for kicking a girl,
and injuring her in such a way that medical
treatment was necessary; of a girl of scrofulous
habit dying from a kick in the back from a gang-
master; and of a boy "who lay suffering for
nearly six years before he had his leg and thigh
taken off"—a white swelling having followed the
gang-master's kick. And though these proofs
of specific injuries are comparatively rare, there
is abundant evidence of habitual ill treatment.
Knocking down, kickings, hitting with hoes,
"dyking," or pushing into the water,
"gibbeting," or lifting children from the ground
by their chins "until they are black in the
face," are portions of the gentle discipline
applied. "I don't see the difference," says
one gang-master, frankly, "between this and
what a schoolmaster does;" on which the
government commissioner remarks, with obvious
truth, "if corporal punishment is allowed
at all, a distinction between unruly behaviour
and idleness in work is too fine to be likely to
be drawn in practice by an uneducated man, to
whom the work is the one main object. A further
remark seems proper, namely, that a child is
sent to school for his own good, but is sent to
work for the profit of others, and to his own
loss as regards the benefits of education."

The wages paid to the gangs is governed by
the price of adult labour in the locality. From
fourpence to sixpence a day is the ordinary wage
of a child; and though in Suffolk women earn
sevenpence and eightpence a day in field-work,
girls of even seventeen or eighteen years of age
do not get more than sixpence a day until they
are married, or, as one of them put it, "sixpence
is the top price till you get to be a woman."
The children begin at low wages, according to
their strength, which are increased by a penny
or a halfpenny a day until they reach the average
of fourpence or sixpence a day. In the fen
districts, where the working-day is longer, the
wages are sometimes from a penny to twopence
a day higher; and in parts of Suffolk they are
lower, the youngest children beginning at twopence
and threepence per day. Speaking of two
children who were then in their fourth year of
gang-work, a mother said: "Agnes was seven
when she began, and got twopence a day; Frank
was six, and got three-halfpence, and he has
been heightened a halfpenny a day each year
since. Unless the gangs work as much as a quarter
of a day, they get nothing. . . . They do not