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378 .AN INTERESTING BJLUE.BOOK.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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¦ — - . » Questions Factory On The Other...
can , in the great majority of cases , enable him to keep up with the demands of his work . The agricultural laborer must be inured to
weather and to the life of the field ; the factory worker must acquire his dexterity when the fingers are most supple . In the
evidence contained in Mr . Treinenhere ' s Report on the Lace Factories it is more than _, once urged— " Threaders make the best
weavers . " The children brought up to the craft are the most efficient workpeople . It then becomes the . parent's duty , as it appears the
interest of the . child , to withdraw his boys or girls from school that the work by which they are to live may not be hindered . And it
ought to be remembered that efficiency in w , ork has not only an educational , it has a high moral value .
But the mournful fact cannot be forgotten , tliat the children have required protection against their parents . The whole course of
factory legislation has been an assertion on the part of the public of the rights of the children , a recognition that the public interests
and those of the children are . one . It was the interest of the employers to obtain labor cheaply and plentifully . They resisted
the Factory Acts as long as possible , blind to tlie fact that health and strength and industrious habits are the instruments of labor , and
that the destruction of these in the youthful population was the destruction of the elements of industrial success . The employers
are now nearly at one with the most enlightened portion of the public on this point . But when they were the instruments of the
direst oppression , the primary moral res _| _3 onsibility rested not with them but with the parents . This cannot be sufficiently insisted on
for of , it thoug for good h the cannot abuse " of be enforced parental by power any may legislative be prevented act or , outward the use ,
authority whatever . . . that The welfar welfare it of is the the State depends function on the of welfare of the people :
-e principal the State to secure by preserving the just balance between liberty and law , between free-. idom and control . The parents forfeited their riht to the
control , by altogether neglecting the welfare , of the being g s they had brought into the world . The children were sold into a bondage
_ifrom which they had no escape . Tender infants were sent to toil in _^ factories or crawl along the dark passages of pits , to be made
into helpless cripples for whom the public must provide . . The moral tie between child and _j _>& _rent was dissolved . No respect ,
, no attachment , could exist between _ojopressor and _oj _> pressed . Boy and girl despised parental control ,, marriedandbound
by still stronger necessities than their parents , , acted , in the eame way towards their enfeebled offspring * . The _jDopulation
visibly _^ deteriorated , and the State stepped in to arrest its own destruction through the destruction of its people ' s life . The law
existed for the protection of life , and therefore , did not go beyond the limits of its just authority , in preventing a manifest and
murderous waste of it . But it existed also . for the preservation of
378 .An Interesting Bjlue.Book.
378 . AN INTERESTING _BJLUE . BOOK .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1861, page 378, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081861/page/18/
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