Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/20

 represented the impossibility of bringing up her family without assistance; she had formed her plans not to part from her children under any circumstances.

About this time the large manufacturers of Lancashire, and Yorkshire, having nearly worked up all the parish children from London, Birmingham, and other large towns, sent their agents into the small towns and villages around to pick up any poor families whom they might meet with. An engagement with these agents would at once have relieved widow Graham of three of the children; but this was nearly the same thing as sending them to the work-house, and like the other was abandoned.

What was to be done? Work the children must, at something; for one pair of hands, however industriously employed, could not maintain five persons, besides paying house rent, fire and taxes. Accordingly she agreed to send the two oldest girls to a factory in the neighborhood on trial, then her favorite little boy Jemmy, and lastly her youngest girl.

They all continued to work in factories many years; the result was the oldest girl met an untimely death, the youngest was taken away to save her from the same fate, and the two others became cripples for life.

But it is to the boy Jemmy that the reader's attention is called.

When first he was sent to the factories, being but 5 years and 9 months old, he was too short to reach the top of the frame at which he was set to work, and a block of wood was given him to stand on, in order that he might be enabled to get to his work properly. The hours which he was obliged to work were from 6 o'clock in the morning till half past 7 in the evening; with one hour and a half for meals, with 12 working hours for 5 days, and 9 on Saturday. For this employment he received 24 cents the first week, and 36 cents the second, at which