to require only that they use any precautions
that occur to them for the prevention of the
accidents now so deplorably frequent.
Machinery might, for example, be adjusted when
the shafts are not in motion; ceilings white-
washed only when all the machinery is standing
still; men working near shafts should
wear closely-fitting dresses, and so forth.
Manufacturers are to do as they please, and cut
down in their own way the matter furnished
for their annual of horrors. Only of this
they are warned, that they must reduce it;
and that, hereafter, the friends of injured
operatives will be encouraged to sue for
compensation upon death or loss of limb, and
Government will sometimes act as prosecutor.
What do we find now in the reports?
For severe injury to a young person caused
by gross and cognisable neglect to fence or
shaft, the punishment awarded to a wealthy
firm is a fine of ten pounds twelve shillings
costs. For killing a woman by the same act
of indifference to life and limb, another large
firm is fined ten pounds, and has to pay one
guinea costs. A fine of a thousand pounds
and twelve months at the treadmill would, in
the last case, have been an award much
nearer the mark of honesty, and have indicated
something like a civilised sense of
the sacredness of human life. If the same firm
had, by an illegal act of negligence, caused
the death of a neighbour's horse, they would
have had forty, fifty, sixty pounds to pay for
it. Ten pounds was the expense of picking
a man's wife, a child's mother, limb from
limb.

We have not spoken too strongly on this
subject. We are indignant against no class,
but discuss only one section of a topic
that concerns, in some form, almost every
division of society. Since, however, we now
find ourselves speaking about factories, and
turning over leaves of the reports of Factory
Inspectors, we may as well have our grumble
out, or, at any rate, so far prolong it as to
make room for one more subject of dissatisfaction.
It is important that Factory management
should be watched by the public; in a
friendly spirit indeed—for it is no small part
of our whole English mind and body—but
with the strictness which every man who
means well should exercise in judgment on
himself, in scrutiny of his own actions. We
are told that in one Inspector's district—only
in one district—mills and engines have so
multiplied, during the last three years, in
number and power, that additional work has,
in that period, been created for the employment
of another forty thousand hands. Every
reporter has the same kind of tale to tell.
During the last year, in our manufacturing
districts, additions to the steam power found
employment for an additional army of operatives,
nearly thirty thousand strong. The
Factory system, therefore, is developing itself most
rapidly. It grows too fast, perhaps; at present
the mills are, for a short time, in excess of the
work required, and in many cases lie idle for
two days in the week, or for one or two hours in
the day. The succession of strikes, too, in Preston,
Wigan, Hindley, Burnley, Padiham, and
Bacup and the other places, have left a large
number of men out of employ, and caused, for
a long time, a total sacrifice of wages, to the
extent of some twenty thousand pounds a
week. These, however, are all temporary
difficulties: the great extension of the
Factory system is a permanent fact, and it must
be made to bring good with it, not evil.

The law wisely requires that mill-owners,
who employ children, shall also teach them,
and a minimum, as to time, of schooling is
assigned. Before this regulation was
compulsory, there were some good schools kept as
show-places by certain persons; but, when the
maintenance of them became a necessity, and
schools were no longer exceptional curiosities,
these show-places often fell into complete
neglect; they were no longer goods that
would attract the public. In Scotland this
part of the Factory Law seems to be well
worked; and, for its own sake, as a beneficial
requirement. That does not, however, seem
to be the case in England. All the Inspectors
tell us of the lamentable state of the factory
schools in this country; allowance being, of
course, made for a few worthy exceptions. It
is doubtful whether much good will come
out of them, unless they be themselves
organised by men determined that they
shall fulfil their purpose. English Factory
children have yet to be really taught.

"Let them prove their inward souls against the
            notion
      That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!
   Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
      Grinding life down from its mark;
   And the children's souls, which God is calling
           sunward,
       Spin on blindly in the dark."

Here they are left spinning in the dark. Let
Mr. Redgrave's account of a factory school
visited by him, near Leeds, suffice to
show:—

"It was held in a large room, and the
Inspector visiting it at twenty minutes before
twelve, found the children at play in the yard,
and the master at work in the school-room,
sawing up the black board to make fittings of a
house to which he proposed transferring his
business. The children being summoned, came
in carelessly, their disorderly habits evidently
not repressed by their master, but checked
slightly by the appearance of a strange
gentleman. Two girls lolling in the porch were
summoned in, and the teacher then
triumphantly drew out of his pocket a whistle,
whereupon to blow the order for attention.
It was the only whole thing that he had to
teach with. There were the twenty children
ranged along the wall of a room able to
contain seven times the number; there were the
bits of black board, the master's arms, with a
hand-saw, and a hammer for apparatus, and