"'And you see the worst of it is, this here children's labour is of such value now in our trade, that there's more brought into the business every year, so that it's really for all the world _like breeding slaves_. Without my children I don't know how we should be able to get along.' 'There's that little thing,' said the man, pointing to the girl ten years of age, before alluded to, as she sat at the edge of the bed, 'why she works regularly every day from six in the morning till ten at night. She never goes to school; we can't spare her. There's schools enough about here for a penny a week, but we could not afford to keep her without working. If I'd ten more children I should be obliged to employ them all the same way, and there's hundreds and thousands of children now slaving at this business. There's the M—'s; they have a family of eight, and the youngest to the oldest of all works at the bench; and the oldest a'n't fourteen. I'm sure, of the two thousand five hundred small masters in the cabinet line, you may safely say that two thousand of them, at the very least, have from five to six in family, and that's upward of twelve thousand children that's been put to the trade since prices have come down. Twenty years ago I don't think there was a child at work in our business; and I am sure there is not a small master now whose whole family doesn't assist him. But what I want to know is, what's to become of the twelve thousand children when they're growed up and come regular into the trade? Here are all my ones growing up without being taught any thing but a business that I know they must starve at.' "In answer to my inquiry as to what dependence he had in case of sickness, 'Oh, bless you,' he said, 'there's nothing but the parish for us. I _did_ belong to a benefit society about four years ago, but I couldn't keep up my payments any longer. I was in the society above five-and-twenty years, and then was obliged to leave it after all. I don't know of one as belongs to any friendly society, and I don't think there is a man as can afford it in our trade now. They must all go to the workhouse when they're sick or old.'" The "trading operatives," or those labourers who employ subordinate and cheaper work-people, are much decried in England; but they, also, are the creations of the general system. A workman frequently ascertains that he can make more money with less labour, by employing women or children at home, than if he did all of his own work; and very often men are driven to this resource to save themselves from being worked to death. The condition of those persons who work for the "trading operatives," or "middlemen," is as miserable as imagination may conceive.