Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/68

 even in some instances, they were driven to commit suicide to evade the cruelties of a world, in which, though born so recently, their happiest moments had been passed in the garb and coercion of a workhouse."

"The profits of the manufacturers were enormous; but this only whetted the appetite that it should have satisfied, and therefore the manufacturers had recourse to an expedient that seemed to secure to them those profits without any possibility of limit; they began the practice of what is termed "night working," that is, having tired out one set of hands, by working them through the day, they had another set ready to go on working through the night; the day set getting into the beds that the night set had just quitted, and in their turn again, the night set getting into the beds that the day set quitted in the morning. It is a common tradition in Lancashire, that the beds never got cold!"

"These outrages on nature, nature herself took in hand; she would not tolerate this, and accordingly she stepped forth with an ominous and awful warning—contagious malignant fevers broke out, and began to spread their ravages around; neighborhoods became alarmed, correspondences appeared in the newspapers, and a feeling of general horror was excited when the atrocities committed in those remote glens became even partially known."

The above is copied from a work by John Fielden, Esq. M. P. for Oldham, and cotton manufacturer at Todmorden, in Lancashire.

My second extract is taken from the evidence of Sir Robert Peel, (father of the late prime minister,) as given before Parliament. Sir Robert is said to have had more parish apprentices than any one man in England. He thus speaks of them: