Nor are jam makers the only employers who offend in this way. Cases have occurred in “textile factories, the places where one most expects to find labour-saving methods, but undoubtedly whenever there is a fairly abundant supply of young, cheap labour, there is less anxiety to introduce these, and carrying, pushing or pulling heavy weights is one of the duties of the apprentice in almost every trade. In a cotton weaving factory in Lancashire I found children and young persons[35] carrying cloth from the shed to the warehouse in an upper floor. One bundle was proved to weigh 44 lbs. and another 40 lbs. In a similar factory, also in Lancashire, I was not able to have weighed any of the tins of weft which children were found carrying to the looms, but from the evident effort it was to raise the tin to the shoulder, it was clear that the weight was too great. In both cases the entire weight was on one shoulder, and it was pitiful to see the twisted little figures of the children doing their best to accomplish more than they were physically fit for.”[36] On the same page Miss Martindale speaks of a boy whom she saw in 1903 carrying a piece of clay “weighing 69 lbs., his own weight being 77 lbs. During the two years which has elapsed he has hardly grown, and he informed me that he weighs at the present time 81 lbs., showing an increase of only four lbs.” While it is reported that in Scotland “the half time system has almost ceased to exist,” there has recently been in some districts of England, a marked increase in the number of half timers, owing to the unexampled prosperity of the cotton trade, and the difficulty of satisfying the demand for labour in that industry. In a good many districts, a half timer may be as young as twelve years old. What the conditions of children’s employment would be, if there were no Factory Acts, may be guessed by the nature of the first Act of Parliament passed in their interests. In 1784 certain Manchester physicians investigated an outbreak of fever. They failed to discover its primary cause, but reported that “we are decided in our opinion that the disorder has been supported, diffused and aggravated by the ready communication of contagion ... and by the injury done to young persons through confinement and too long continued labour, to which several evils the cotton mills have given occasion.” They went on to say that they regarded a longer recess at noon and a shorter working day as “essential to the present health and future capacity for labour of those who are under the age of fourteen; for the active recreations of childhood and youth are necessary to the right growth and conformation of the human body.” The Manchester magistrates, who had asked for this report, resolved not to allow in future “indentures of Parish Apprentices whereby they shall be bound to owners of cotton mills and other works in which children are obliged to work in the night or more than ten hours in the day.”