§ 4. THE BEGINNING OF THE FACTORY AGITATION--The state of things in factories where large numbers of apprentices {182} were employed became so bad, that at last something had to be done. In 1802 an Act was passed “for the preservation of the health and morals of apprentices and others employed in cotton and other mills.” It is a significant fact, that the immediate cause of this Bill was the fearful spread through the factory districts of Manchester of epidemic disease, owing to the overwork, scanty food, wretched clothing, long hours, bad ventilation, and overcrowding in unhealthy dwellings of the workpeople, especially the children. The hours of work were “reduced” to only 12 per day. This Act, however, did not apply to children residing near the factory where they were employed, for they were supposed to be “under the supervision of their parents.” The result was that, although the apprentice system was discontinued, other children came to work in the mills, and were treated almost as brutally, though luckily they were not entirely in the hands of their master. But the evils of this system of child labour were very great. During the whole of the period of 1800 to 1820, and even to 1840, the results of their sufferings were seen in the early deaths of the majority of children and in the crippled and distorted forms of the majority of those who survived. On the women and grown-up girls the effects of long hours and wearisome work were equally disastrous. A curious inversion of the proper order of things was seen in the domestic economy of the victims of this cheap labour system, for women and girls were superseding men in manufacturing labour, and, in consequence, their husbands had often to attend, in a shiftless, slovenly fashion, to those household duties which mothers and daughters hard at work in the factories were unable to fulfil. Worse still, mothers and fathers in some cases lived upon the killing labour of their little children, by letting them out {183} to hire to manufacturers, who found them cheaper than their parents.