Then the House of Commons interfered--very reluctantly--because to stand between the master and his man was felt to be a dangerous innovation. It interfered, however, and passed a law which forbade children under nine to be employed in a factory, and limited their hours to twelve, exclusive of an hour and a half for rest and food; so that by this merciful Act a little girl of ten might be, and actually was, made to work from six in the morning till half-past seven at night. Can one conceive a readier method of destroying strength, youth, self-respect, everything? But the injured millowner got over this law. He was not forced to make the children work continuously. He therefore made the children work in relays, so that they had half the night as well as half the day to work in. This went on for thirty years before the nation was moved by the injustice and cruelty of the thing. An Act was passed that no children should work between 8.30 P.M. and 5.30 A.M.; that children under thirteen should not work more than 48 hours a week or eight hours a day; and that those under eighteen should not work more than 68 hours a week or 11⅓ hours a day. As I told you, the man who had the power exercised it cruelly, heartlessly, ruthlessly, for the conversion of his people into slaves. [Illustration: _Paintings by Winterhalter_ PRINCE ALBERT AND QUEEN VICTORIA AT THE TIME OF THEIR MARRIAGE] Then, because the Act spoke of the factory or the mill, and not of the mine, they took the little children and dropped them into the coal-pit. When the boy or the girl was six years of age--six! think of it--they took the little thing and put it in a dark passage, underground, with instructions to open and shut a door in order to let the trucks come and go. All day long--for twelve hours--that innocent infant was kept in the dark opening and shutting the doors. They worked from four in the morning till four in the evening; when they were taken up they were stupid, and cared for nothing but to sleep. When they grew older they pushed the trucks with their heads; when they grew older still the lads became hewers of coal: the girls--now women--continued to push the trucks with their heads or to drag them, clad in nothing but a pair of short trousers. This was done in a Christian country which boasted of having abolished slavery. Observe that there was no chance for these children ever to learn anything, ever to do anything, except to continue all their lives in the coal-pit; they were doomed to brutish ignorance, to unremitting toil, without holidays, except on Sunday--day after day, week after week, year after year, till they could push the truck no longer, till the pick fell from their hands.