I do not know any story, not even that of the slave-trade, which can compare, for brutality and callousness of heart, with the story of the women and children employed in the factories and the mines of this realm. There is nothing in the whole history of mankind which shows more clearly the enormities which become possible when men, spurred by desire for gain, are left uncontrolled by laws or the weight of public opinion, and placed in the position of absolute mastery over their fellow-men. The record of the slavery time is black in the West Indies and the United States, God knows; but the record of the English mine and factory is blacker still. It is so black that it seems incredible to us. We ask ourselves in amazement if, fifty years ago, these things could be. Alas! my friends, there are cruelties as great still going on around us in every great city, and wherever women are forced to work for bread. For the women and the children are inarticulate, and in the dark places, where no light of publicity penetrates, the hand of the master is armed with a scourge of scorpions. Let us therefore humble ourselves, and read the story of the children in the mines with shame as well as with indignation. The cry of the needlewomen is louder in our ears than the cry of the children in the mines ever was to our fathers; yet we regard it not. [Illustration: LETTING CHILDREN DOWN A COAL MINE (From a Plate in the _Westminster Review_)] Fellow-sinners and partakers in the crimes of slavery, torture, and robbery of light, life, youth, and joy, hear the tale of the Factory and the Mine. Early in the century--in the year 1801--the overcrowding of the factories and mills, the neglect of the simplest sanitary precautions, the long hours, the poor food, and insufficient rest, caused the outbreak of a dreadful epidemic fever, which alarmed even the mill-owners, because if they lost their hands they lost their machinery. The hands are the producers, and the aim of the masters was to regard the producers as so many machines. Now if your machine is laid low with fever it is as good as an engine out of repair. For the first time in history, not only was the public conscience awakened, but the House of Commons was called upon to act in the interests of health, public morals, humanity, and justice. Strange, that the world had been Christian for so long, yet no law had been passed to protect women and children. In the Year of Grace 1802 a beginning was made.