The suffering was not confined to children; it was found that young girls, married women, and aged and decrepit women were exposed to bearing upon their backs burdens of coal weighing from three-quarters of a cwt. to 3 cwt.; often to carry these whilst wading in water up to the ankles, sometimes up to the knees, or to carry them from the bottom of the mine to the bank up steep ladders; to go through the hard work of hewing coal by the side of the men; to drag trucks on all fours harnessed by chains; and that the nature of their work, when hewing coal, constantly obliged them to dispense with most of their clothing. [Illustration: Children at work.] The illustrations in the Report brought all this before my childish imagination very vividly. Perhaps they also, as the Commissioners hoped they might do, caught the attention of busy members of Parliament and learned lords who might not have waded through a lengthy "blue-book" to find the facts which these pictures showed at a glance. The object of the Commissioners was to put the facts strikingly, and in this they succeeded. [Illustration: Woman drawing truck.] Lord Ashley's Bill, based on this Report, encountered great opposition, especially in the House of Lords, many members of which were large proprietors of mines, and in the course of its passage through Parliament it was much mutilated. Lord Ashley had hoped to prevent any boy under thirteen from working in the mines, but the age of exemption was lowered to ten years old; and his attempt to prohibit the employment of boys and old men in the work of lowering the miners into the pit by means of ropes was also defeated. Still, the main points were gained; for by Lord Ashley's Bill, which passed in 1844 and was founded on the labours of this and the Factory Commission, not only was it enacted that all _children_ under ten should henceforth be prohibited from working in mines, but that such labour should also be illegal for girls of all ages and for women. It may be worth noticing that the change in the law did not at first give satisfaction to the miners. The men considered it a great hardship to be deprived of the earnings of their wives and children, and the women themselves complained sorely of being deprived of their work. But time has proved the great benefits of the new system. The men now earn nearly as much as a man and his wife used to do, the presence of the wife in the home causes it to be better cared for, and the children are free to attend school.