Q. “At the end of a week, during which they have been employed in the night, do you think that they have much capacity left for study on Sunday?”
A. “No; my opinion is most decidedly that either turning out at four o’clock in the morning, or being kept out of bed at night, must be injurious to children, both to their physical constitution and their mental powers.”
Q. “The law, as it stands, does not prevent the children from being employed even twenty hours?”
A. “It does not apply to lace-mills.”
Q. “Therefore the period during which the child is employed depends upon the varying humanity of the individual proprietor of the mill?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “You say that it sometimes happens that the children come to the mill at five in the morning, and do not leave it till ten at night?”
A. “It is reported to me that it does so happen about Chesterfield.”
Q. “If a child is kept in winter till twelve o’clock at night, and has then to go home and return to the factory in the morning, a distance of two miles, does not he undergo fearful hardships?”