required degree of attention, and blows are resorted to with the children when oaths fail, and sometimes even before an oath has been tried. In short, the men must do work enough, or lose their places. It is a question between losing their places and the exercise of severity of discipline in all cases; between starvation and positive cruelty, in many. There are exceptions, but my conviction is that they are comparatively few indeed. To me the whole system has always appeared one of tyranny." Mr. Abraham Whitehead, clothier, of Scholes, near Holmfirth, examined by Parliamentary Committee:— "'What has been the treatment which you have observed that these children have received at the mills, to keep them attentive for so many hours, at so early ages?' 'They are generally cruelly treated; so cruelly treated that they dare not, hardly for their lives, be too late at their work in the morning. When I have been at the mills in the winter season, when the children are at work in the evening, the very first thing they inquire is, "What o'clock is it?" If we should answer, "Seven," they say, "Only seven! it is a great while to ten, but we must not give up till ten o'clock, or past." They look so anxious to know what o'clock it is that I am convinced the children are fatigued, and think that, even at seven, they have worked too long. My heart has been ready to bleed for them when I have seen them so fatigued, for they appear in such a state of apathy and insensibility as really not to know whether they are doing their work or not. They usually throw a bunch of ten or twelve cordings across the hand, and take one off at a time; but I have seen the bunch entirely finished, and they have attempted to take off another, when they have not had a cording at all; they have been so fatigued as not to know whether they were at work or not.' "'Do they frequently fall into errors and mistakes in piecing when thus fatigued?' 'Yes; the errors they make when thus fatigued are, that instead of placing the cording in this way, (describing it,) they are apt to place them obliquely, and that causes a flying, which makes bad yarn; and when the billy-spinner sees that, he takes his strap, or the billy-roller, and says, "Damn thee, close it; little devil, close it;" and they strike the child with the strap or billy roller.' "'You have noticed this in the after part of the day more particularly?' 'It is a very difficult thing to go into a mill in the latter part of the day, particularly in winter, and not to hear some of the children crying for being beaten for this very fault.'