“Then in order to keep them awake, to stimulate their exertions, means are made use of to which I shall now advert, as a last instance of the degradation to which this system has reduced the manufacturing operatives of this country. Children are beaten with thongs, prepared for the purpose. Yes, the females of this country, no matter whether children or grown up, and I hardly know which is the more disgusting outrage, are beaten, beaten in your free market of labour as you term it, like slaves. The poor wretch is flogged before its companions, flogged, I say, like a dog, by the tyrant overlooker. We speak with execration of the cartwhip of the West Indies, but let us see this night an equal feeling rise against the factory thong in England.”[454] Interesting too was the fact brought out at this time that while these were the conditions in England, in the colonies black labour was protected to the extent that nine hours a day was the legal day for adults and young persons and children were not allowed to work more than six, while night work was simply prohibited. The investigation of the Sadler Committee evoked the interesting information from one witness that children were never employed if they were under five. The attitude of the employers toward the agitation can be best judged from the following extracts: “Every man acquainted with the political history of the last century must know, that the labour of children was actually pointed out to the manufacturers by Mr. William Pitt, as a new resource by which they might be enabled to bear the additional load of taxation which the necessities of the State compelled him to impose. The necessity for labour created by this taxation has not yet abated; because the immense capital taken away by the enormous expenditure of the great wars arising out of the French Revolution, an expenditure which was mainly supported out of the industrial resources of the country, has not been replaced. But even independent of these considerations, and irrespective of a past which can never be recalled, we mean to assert, as we have done elsewhere, in broad terms and the plainest language, that the infant labour, as it is erroneously called—or the juvenile labour, as it should be called—in factories, is in fact a national blessing, and absolutely necessary for the support of the manifold fiscal burthens which have been placed upon the industry of this country. It is quite sufficient to say that the children of the operatives have mouths, and must be fed; they have limbs, and must be clothed; they have minds, which ought to be instructed; and they have passions, which must be controlled. Now, if the parents are unable to provide these requisites, and their inability to do so is just as notorious as their existence, it becomes absolutely necessary that the children should aid in obtaining them for themselves. To abolish juvenile labour, is plainly nothing else than to abolish juvenile means