"'Is the treatment of the children better in that large mill than in the smaller mills in which you have been usually?' 'There is little difference; the treatment is all one.' "'To whose mill did you next go?' 'To Messrs. Baxter & Brothers, at Dundee.' "'State the hours of labour which you worked when you were there, when trade was brisk?' 'Thirteen hours and twenty minutes.' "'What time was allowed for meals?' 'Fifty minutes each day.' "'Have you found that the system is getting any better now?' 'No, the system is getting no better with us.' "'Is there as much beating as there was?' 'There is not so much in the licking way.' "'But it is not entirely abolished, the system of chastisement?' 'No, it is far from that.' "'Do you think that, where young children are employed, that system ought, or can be, entirely dispensed with, of giving some chastisement to the children of that age?' 'They would not require chastisement if they had shorter daily work.' "'Do you mean to state that they are only chastised because through weariness they are unable to attend to their work, and that they are not chastised for other faults and carelessness as well?' 'There may be other causes besides, but weariness is the principal fault.' "'Does not that over-labour induce that weariness and incapacity to do the work, which brings upon them chastisement at other parts of the day as well as in the evening?' 'Yes; young girls, if their work go wrong, if they see me going round, and my countenance with the least frown upon it, they will begin crying when I go by.' "'Then they live in a state of perpetual alarm and suffering?' 'Yes.' "'Do you think that those children are healthy?' 'No, they are far from that; I have two girls that have been under me these two years; the one is 13 years, the other 15, and they are both orphans and sisters, and both one size, and they very seldom are working together, because the one or the other is generally ill; and they are working for 3_s._ 6_d._ a week.' "'Have you the same system of locking up now?' 'Yes, locking up all day.' "'Are they locked up at night?' 'No; after they have left their work we have nothing more to do with them.' "'What time do they leave their work in the evening now?' 'About 20 minutes past 7.' "'What time do they go to it in the morning?' 'Five minutes before 5.' "'Do you conceive that that is at all consistent with the health of those children?' 'It is certainly very greatly against their health.' "'Is not the flax-spinning business in itself very unwholesome?' 'Very unwholesome.'