"William Campbell, aged thirty-seven: 'Is a grocer, carrying on business in Belfast. Was bred up a cotton-spinner. Went first as a piecer to his father, who was a spinner at Mr. Hussy's mill, Graham Square, Glasgow, and afterward to several mills in this place, among which was Mr. John McCrackan's, where he was, altogether, piecer and spinner between four and five years, (1811-1818.) There was a regulation at that time there, that every hand should be fined if five minutes too late at any working hour in the morning and after meals—the younger 5_d._, which amounted to the whole wages of some of the lesser ones; the older hands were fined as high as 10_d._ The treatment of the children at that time was very cruel. Has seen Robert Martin, the manager, continually beating the children—with his hands generally, sometimes with his clenched fist. Has often seen his sister Jane, then about fourteen, struck by him; and he used to pinch her ears till the blood came, and pull her hair. The faults were usually very trifling. If on coming in he should find any girl combing her hair, that was an offence for which he would beat her severely, and he would do so if he heard them talking to one another. He never complained of the ill-usage of his sister, because he believed if he did, his father and two sisters, who were both employed in the mill, would have been immediately dismissed. A complaint was made by the father of a little girl, against Martin, for beating a child. Mr. Ferrer, the police magistrate, admonished him. He was a hot-headed, fiery man, and when he saw the least fault, or what he conceived to be a fault, he just struck them at once. Does not recollect any child getting a lasting injury from any beating here. The treatment of the children at the mill was the only thing which could be called cruelty which he had witnessed. One great hardship to people employed in the factories is the want of good water, which exists in most of them. At only one of the mills which he worked at was there water such as could be drunk brought into the flats, and that was Mr. Holdsworth's mill, Anderson, Glasgow. From what he recollects of his own and his sister's feelings, he considers the hours which were then and are still commonly occupied in actual labour—viz. twelve hours and a half per day—longer than the health of children can sustain, and also longer than will admit of any time being reserved in the evening for their instruction.'"