Employment of children in Belgium.
While in England we are happily doing away with the great evil of employing young children in our factories, all the Chambers of Commerce in Belgium unite in deploring the increasing moral and physical degeneracy of the working classes, owing to the premature employment of children. In the Belgian factories for spinning and weaving flax, cotton, and wool, children from ten to twelve years old are very generally admitted, and work twelve hours a day. In the Belgian coal-pits 8,000 children under fourteen years of age, of both sexes, are employed. Of children between ten and twelve 2,400 are employed, 700 above and 1,700 below ground.
In 1866, out of their total population of 4,827,000, more than one-half were unable to read or write. The necessity for the employment of children is best proved by the description given by Mr. Kennedy, of the position of the Belgian operatives at Alost and Tirmonde, where a first-class hand earns £28 a year, while the smallest sum on which a man can exist is £20 a year. Indeed, existence is only made possible by the employment of children in factories, and by the possession of a small garden in which vegetables are raised.