When the first factories were erected, it was soon discovered that there was in the minds of the parents a strong repugnance to the employment thus provided for children: the native domestic labourers, being then able amply to provide for their children, rejected the tempting offers of the mill-owners, the parents preferring to rear their children in their own homes, and to train them to their own handicrafts. For a long period it was by the working people themselves considered to be disgraceful to any father who allowed his child to enter the factory--nay, in the homely words of that day, as will be remembered by the old men of the present age, "that parent made himself the town's talk"--and the unfortunate girl so given up by her parents in after life found the door of household employment closed against her--"Because she had been a factory girl." It was not until the condition of portions of the working class had been reduced that it became the custom with working men to eke out the means of their subsistence by sending their children to the mills. Until that sad and calamitous custom prevailed, the factories in England were worked by "stranger-children," gathered together from the workhouse. Under the operation of the factories' apprentice system parish apprentices were sent, without remorse or enquiry, from the workhouses in England, to be "used up" as the "cheapest raw material in the market." This inhuman conduct was systematically practised; the mill-owners communicated with the overseer of the poor, and when the demand and supply had been arranged to the satisfaction of both the contracting parties, a day was fixed for the examination of "the little children" to be inspected by the mill-owner, or his agent, previous to which the authorities of the workhouse had filled the minds of their wards with the notion that by entering the mills they would become ladies and gentlemen.... It sometimes happened that traffickers contracted with the overseers, removing their juvenile victims to Manchester, or other towns, on their arrival; if not previously assigned, they were deposited sometimes in dark cellars, where the merchant dealing in them brought his customers; the mill-owners, by the light of lanthorns, being enabled to examine the children, their limbs and stature having undergone the necessary scrutiny, the bargain was struck, and the poor innocents were conveyed to the mills. The general treatment of those apprentices depended entirely on the will of their masters; in very many instances their labour was limited only by exhaustion after many modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force continued action; their food was stinted, coarse, and unwholesome. In "brisk times" the beds (such as they were) were never cool, the mills were worked night and day, and as soon as one set of children rose for labour the other set retired for rest. We dare not trust ourselves to write all we know on this subject, much less all we feel....