“‘They considered and consulted among themselves. They had no money, nothing of their own to give, but their labour; and they agreed that they would work a certain number of hours beyond their usual time, to earn money to buy a silver cup, which they might present to him the day before that appointed for his departure. They were obliged to sit up a great part of the night to work to earn their shares. Several of the little children were not able to bear the fatigue and the want of sleep. For this they were very sorry, and when Ellen saw how sorry they were, she pitied them, and she did more than pity them. After she had earned her own share of the money to be subscribed for buying the silver cup, she sat up every night a certain time to work, to earn the shares of all these little children. “‘Ellen never said anything of her intentions, but went on working steadily, till she had accomplished her purpose. I used to see her night after night, and used to fear she would hurt her health, and often begged her not to labour so hard, but she said, “It does me good, sir.”’” The modern reader will sigh to think of what the admirable Ellen’s health and strength would probably be at thirty, and will find it difficult to forgive the complacency of the employer in whose mill she was permitted so to squander her physical resources. In our own country the general development of factory legislation has gone far towards stopping the overwork of children in mills and factories; though it is only of late years, and thanks to the exertions of Mrs Hogg, that the law has begun to attempt the regulation of children’s labour out of school hours either in their own homes or for outside employers.[39] In the United States, however, where each State is free to make its own regulations, there is, at this present day, one State (Georgia) in which the work of children is absolutely unrestricted, and several in which the practical limitation is extremely small. Children of any age may be, and actually are, kept at work in the cotton mills of the Southern States, precisely as they used to be in the mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire. “Only last year, in North Carolina, the testimony of two doctors was introduced to show that there was no need from a hygienic point of view, for a law forbidding girls under fourteen to stand at their work for twelve hours a day, or for boys or girls under fourteen to work a twelve-hour night.”[40] Boys of twelve may still legally work in the coal mines of Kansas and in all mines in Iowa, Missouri and North Carolina; and do so work. “No colliery has been visited in which children have not been found employed at ages prohibited by the law of the State.”[41]