"That the nature of the employment which is assigned to the youngest children, generally that of 'trapping,' requires that they should be in the pit as soon as the work of the day commences, and, according to the present system, that they should not leave the pit before the work of the day is at an end. "That although this employment scarcely deserves the name of labor, yet, as the children engaged in it are commonly excluded from light, and are always without companions, it would, were it not for the passing and re-passing of the coal carriages, amount to solitary confinement of the worst order. "That in some districts they remain in solitude and darkness during the whole time they are in the pit, and, according to their own account, many of them never see the light of day for weeks together during the greater part of the winter season, excepting on those days in the week when work is not going on, and on the Sundays. "That at different ages, from six years old and upwards, the hard work of pushing and dragging the carriages of coal from the workings to the main ways or to the foot of the shaft, begins: a labor which all classes of witnesses concur in stating, requires the unremitting exertion of all the physical power which the young workers possess. "That, in the districts in which females are taken down into the coal mines, both sexes are employed together in precisely the same kind of labor, and work for the same number of hours; that the girls and boys, and the young men and the young women, and even married women and women with child, commonly work almost naked, and the men, in many mines, quite naked; and that all classes of witnesses bear testimony to the demoralizing influence of the employment of females underground.[32] "That, in the east of Scotland, a much larger proportion of children and young persons are employed in these mines than in other districts, many of whom are girls; and that the chief part of their labor consists in carrying the coals on their backs up steep ladders. "That when the work-people are in full employment, the regular hours of work for children and young persons are rarely less than eleven; more often they are _twelve_; in some districts they are _thirteen_; and in one district they are generally _fourteen_ and upwards. "That, in the great majority of these mines night-work is a part of the ordinary system of labor, more or less regularly carried on according to the demand for coals, and one which the whole body of evidence shows to act most injuriously both on the physical and moral condition of the work-people, and more especially on that of the children and young persons.