§ =Children.=--We must not forget too that for half a week many thousands of young children are working in these places exposed to precisely the same conditions; and besides the half-timers who gravitate between the mill and the school many children of very tender years spend the time when their whole future depends upon healthy conditions from six o’clock in the morning till five o’clock at night in the mills. If the work is trying for adults, what must it be for the half-timers and young whole-timers? On this point Dr. Tarrop, one of the certifying surgeons, has made some valuable researches, and I give below his diagnosis of two thousand factory children examined by him. § =Dr. Tarrop’s Report.=--“Of the first two thousand cases noted 1771 may be described as specimens of the ordinary factory child, and I separate them into three classes--341 superior, 1106 medium, and 324 distinctly below average. [Lancashire average, _nota bene_.] As to the rest of the 2000, 151 were really fine children, of whom twenty-one were excellent examples of humanity, weighing 130 lbs., 126 lbs., and 120 lbs. respectively. The balance of the 2000--78 in number--were a feeble folk, amongst whom were some eight veritable pigmies, ten to thirteen years old, and not scaling fifty pound a piece. It must be borne in mind that the medium average of Lancashire factory children is not equal to the average elsewhere. The latter standard is hardly reached by the 341 children described as superior, while the medium division is greatly below the standard of good health. This is much more distinctly marked amongst children of thirteen, ‘full-timers,’ who have passed some years in the factory, than it is in those of ten years of age. Of sixty healthy children, averaging thirteen and a half years, and taken as they came (thirty-one girls and twenty-nine boys), the average weight was seventy-four pound, or eighteen pound below the average of good health elsewhere. The lower division of 324 included many defective and diseased cases, and of course the seventy-eight residuum were poor indeed. The cases of defective or diseased children numbered 198.” He appends to these numerical particulars the observation that “Factory work is not so excessively laborious, it is the heat, impurity, and dust-laden state of the atmosphere that injures health. The promising child of ten degenerates into the lean and sallow person of thirteen, and this progress is continued until a whole population becomes stunted, and thus the conditions of life in factory towns become a real source of danger to England’s future. In addition to the loss of physique it is instructive to note the deterioration in personal appearance. Out of the 2000 children under notice only sixteen could be described as handsome, and of these the larger portion were girls from Ireland.”