Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/95

 than in any other process in the business. They are mostly boys. The machine consists of various sorts of cylinders, or rather polygonal prisms, having heckles set on their edges, which revolve with great rapidity; and the business of the machine minders is to fix the bunches of flax on supports in front of these heckles, and to move them from time to time, from the coarser to the finer heckles. The bunches, for the purpose of being thus suspended, are screwed between two bars of iron, which is the business of the screwer; who is generally a younger boy than the machine minder, and his labor is very fatiguing; in fact, this is one of the most laborious employments to which children can be put, independently of the noxious atmosphere, which is loaded with particles of flax incessantly pulled off, and scattered by the whirling of the machines. The screwer seems not to have an instant's cessation from labor; bunch after bunch is thrown down before him to fix and unfix, which he performs with astonishing rapidity. If he does not perform his work properly, it mars the work of the machine minder, and a box on the ear, or a kick with the foot, is the usual consequence.

The machine minder is far from being idle; he has to move his flax when it has received its due proportion of heckling in one position, the arrival of which time is indicated by a bell; he has also to collect from between the rows of spikes, as they revolve, the tow, or short fibres and refuse of the flax which they comb off. The boys become very expert at this part of the business, but sometimes suffer severely while learning, in consequence of having their hands caught by the spikes on the cylinders as they revolve. The tow is collected and carried to the card room, which is equally bad in regard to dust as the heckling room. After the tow has been carded, it is