"Joseph Hurtley, aged forty-four: 'Is an overlooker of the flax-dressing department. Has been there since the commencement. Thinks, from what he observes, that the hours are too long for children. Is led to think so from seeing the children much exhausted toward the conclusion of the work. When he came here first, and the children were all new to the work, he found that by six o'clock they began to be drowsy and sleepy. He took different devices to keep them awake, such as giving them snuff, &c.; but this drowsiness partly wore off in time, from habit, but he still observes the same with all the boys, (they are all boys in his department,) and it continues with them for some time. Does not know whether the children go to school in the evening, but he thinks, from their appearance, that they would be able to receive very little benefit from tuition. "'The occupation of draw-boys and girls to harness hand-loom weavers, in their own shops, is by far the lowest and least sought after of any connected with the manufacture of cotton. They are poor, neglected, ragged, dirty children. They seldom are taught any thing, and they work as long as the weaver, that is, as long as they can see, standing on the same spot, always barefooted, on an earthen, cold, damp floor, in a close, damp cellar, for thirteen or fourteen hours a day. "'The power-loom dressers have all been hand-loom weavers, but now prevent any more of their former companions from being employed in their present business. "'They earn 2_s._ per week, and eat porridge, if their parents can afford it; if not, potatoes and salt. They are, almost always, between nine and thirteen years of age, and look healthy, though some have been two or three years at the business; while the weaver, for whom they draw, is looking pale, squalid, and underfed. "'There are some hundreds of children thus employed in the immediate neighbourhood of Glasgow.'" In Leicester, Mr. Drinkwater, of the Factory Commission, found that great cruelty was practised upon the children employed in some of the factories, by the workmen called "slubbers," for whom the young creatures act as piecers. Thomas Hough, a trimmer and dyer, who had worked at Robinson's factory, deposed—