Doubtless the half timers in a good English mill are examples of children working under the best of existing conditions; and manufacturers are fond of assuring us how good these conditions are. Yet I shall never forget the painful impression made upon myself by the peculiar mixture of pallor and eagerness on the faces of the little half timers, the first time that I went over a weaving mill. The working place was light and airy, and the situation, just outside a healthy Northern town, was admirable; the work was not physically hard, and the management, as I was assured by a trustworthy witness, who was himself at work there, considerate. He, for his part, seemed unaware that the children looked ill. Incidentally, however, he mentioned that a large proportion of his fellow workers drank; and I felt that it would be interesting to know how many of them had been half timers, and whether early exhaustion might not lie at the root of their intemperance. As to the children, I am quite sure that any London doctor, or any woman accustomed to the care of children, would have thought their appearance unhealthy and their expression of face abnormal. Evidence more valuable than any untrained observer’s impression is on record in regard to London school children. Dr Thomas, assistant Medical Officer of Health to the London County Council, in investigating the physical condition of 2000 school children, in 14 different schools, gave special attention to 384 wage earners among the boys. “Of this number 233 showed signs of fatigue, 140 were proved to be anæmic, 131 had severe nerve signs, 64 were suffering from deformities resulting from the carrying of heavy weights, and 51 had severe heart signs. Barbers’ boys were found to suffer most in physique, 72 per cent being anæmic, 63 per cent showing severe nerve strain, and 27 per cent severe heart affection.”[45] Before the Inter-Departmental Committee on the employment of school children, appointed in 1901, evidence was given by Alderman Watts, of Manchester, of the abnormal death-rate among children in industrial schools, many of whom had drifted thither from the streets; and in 1904 Sir Lambert Ormsby, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, of Dublin, gave to the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, particulars of the miserable physique of the little street sellers and of the many cases of pneumonia among them which had been brought to his notice in the children’s hospitals.[46]