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264 which spread guano over the English fields. The same blind eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as clearly as the diminishing military standard in Germany and France.

The Factory Act of 1850 now in force (1867) allows for the average working-day 10 hours, i.e., for the first 5 days 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., including $1⁄2$ an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner, and thus leaving 10$1⁄2$ working hours, and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., of which $1⁄2$ an hour is subtracted for breakfast. 60 working hours are left, 10$1⁄2$ for each of the first 5 days, 7$1⁄2$ for the last. Certain guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, directly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published half-yearly by order of Parliament. They give regular and official statistics of the capitalistic greed for surplus-labour.

Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors.