CHAPTER XXII RISE OF FACTORY SYSTEM—THE CHILD A CHARGE ON THE STATE—CHILDREN ACTUALLY SLAVES UNDER FACTORY SYSTEM—REFORM OF 1833—OASTLER AGAINST THE CHILD SLAVERY—“JUVENILE LABOUR IN FACTORIES IS A NATIONAL BLESSING”. The cannibalistic stage has passed and the day of sacrifice has passed—no longer is the child frankly a convenience nor is its life, as a result of past economic stress, a lightly considered trifle to be tossed into the cauldron of religious ceremony. Philosophy, humanity, civilization, and religion have combined to make the life of the child safe. With what result? The general belief that children were not regularly employed until the middle of the last century, when the factory system arose, had led to the equally erroneous belief that it was in the factory where the industrial abuse of children was first practised. In France where there was little industrial use for children in the large centres of population, where in other words children did not pay, the problem of modern humanity was to save infants from exposure and death. In England where there was an industrial use for them from early times, and where from the earliest times there are records of their abuse, there was no necessity for measures to protect them from infanticidal tendencies. But it is in England that we must study the ill-treatment of children that was brought about by the desire to make them useful. The industrial records of the Middle Ages contain but few references[438] to children, for the adults were busy with their own troubles. One of the first of these notices was an order issued by the famous Richard Whittington, in 1398, and, although it is mixed with other considerations, it shows the human spark. It reads: “ORDINANCES OF THE HURERS. “_22 Richard II., A.D. 1398. Letter-Book H., fol. cccxviii. (Norman French)._ “On the 20th day of August, in the 22d year, etc., the following Articles of the trade of Hurers were by Richard Whityngtone, Mayor, and the Aldermen, ordered to be entered.— “In the first place,—that no one of the said trade shall scour a _cappe_ or _hure_, or anything pertaining to _scouryng_, belonging to the said trade, in any open place: but they must do this in their own houses; seeing that some persons in the said trade have of late sent their apprentices and journeymen as well as children of tender age and others, down to the water of Thames and other exposed places, and amid horrible tempests, frosts, and snows, to the very great scandal, as well of the good folks of the said trade, as of the City aforesaid. And also, because of that divers persons, and pages belonging to lords, when they take their horses down to the Thames, are often-times wrangling with their said apprentices and journeymen; and they are then on the point of killing one another, to the very great peril that seems likely to ensue therefrom.”[439]