In the manufacture of earthenware there are many young slaves employed. The mould-runners are an especially pitiable class of workmen; they receive on a mould the ware as it is formed by the workmen, and carry it to the stove-room, where both mould and ware are arranged on shelves to dry. The same children liberate the mould when sufficiently dry, and carry it back to receive a fresh supply of ware, to be in like manner deposited on the shelves. They are also generally required by the workmen to "wedge their clay;" that is, to lift up large lumps of clay, which are to be thrown down forcibly on a hard surface to free the clay from air and to render it more compact. Excepting when thus engaged, they are constantly "on the run" from morning till night, always carrying a considerable weight. These children are generally pale, thin, weak, and unhealthy. In the manufacture of glass the toil and suffering of the apprentices, as recorded in the evidence before the commissioners, are extreme. One witness said— "From his experience he thinks the community has no idea of what a boy at a bottle-work goes through; 'it would never be allowed, if it were known;' he knows himself; he has been carried home from fair fatigue; and on two several occasions, when laid in bed, could not rest, and had to be taken out and laid on the floor. These boys begin work on Sabbath evenings at ten o'clock, and are not at home again till between one and three on Monday afternoon. The drawing the bottles out of the arches is a work which no child should be allowed, on any consideration, to do; he himself has been obliged several times to have planks put in to walk on, which have caught fire under the feet; and a woollen cap over the ears and always mits on the hands; and a boy cannot generally stop in them above five minutes. There is no man that works in a bottle-work, but will corroborate the statement that such work checks the growth of the body; the irregularity and the unnatural times of work cause the boys and men to feel in a sort of stupor or dulness from heavy sweats and irregular hours. The boys work harder than any man in the works; all will allow that. From their experience of the bad effect on the health, witness and five others left the work, and none but one ever went to a bottle-work after." The young females apprenticed to dressmakers suffer greatly from over-work and bad treatment, as has long been known. John Dalrymple, Esq., Assistant Surgeon, Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, narrates the following case:—