House of Commons.  Here he gives some data as to the relations of sex and age of the operatives, not yet refuted by the manufacturers, whose statements, as quoted above, cover moreover only a part of the manufacturing industry of England.  Of 419,560 factory operatives of the British Empire in 1839, 192,887, or nearly half, were under eighteen years of age, and 242,296 of the female sex, of whom 112,192 were less than eighteen years old.  There remain, therefore, 80,695 male operatives under eighteen years, and 96,569 adult male operatives, or not one full quarter of the whole number.  In the cotton factories, 56.25 per cent.; in the woollen mills, 69.5 per cent.; in the silk mills, 70.5 per cent.; in the flax-spinning mills, 70.5 per cent. of all operatives are of the female sex.  These numbers suffice to prove the crowding out of adult males.  But you have only to go into the nearest mill to see the fact confirmed.  Hence follows of necessity that inversion of the existing social order which, being forced upon them, has the most ruinous consequences for the workers.  The employment of women at once breaks up the family; for when the wife spends twelve or thirteen hours every day in the mill, and the husband works the same length of time there or elsewhere, what becomes of the children?  They grow up like wild weeds; they are put out to nurse for a shilling or eighteenpence a week, and how they are treated may be imagined.  Hence the accidents to which little children fall victims multiply in the factory districts to a terrible extent.  The lists of the Coroner of Manchester {143a} showed for nine months:  69 deaths from burning, 56 from drowning, 23 from falling, 77 from other causes, or a total of 225 {143b} deaths from accidents, while in non-manufacturing Liverpool during twelve months there were but 146 fatal accidents.  The mining accidents are excluded in both cases; and since the Coroner of Manchester has no authority in Salford, the population of both places mentioned in the comparison is about the same.  The Manchester Guardian reports one or more deaths by burning in almost every number.  That the general mortality among young children must be increased by the employment of the mothers is self-evident, and is placed beyond all doubt by notorious facts.  Women often return to the mill three or four days after confinement, leaving the baby, of course; in the dinner hour they must hurry home to feed the child and eat something, and what sort of suckling that can be is also evident.  Lord Ashley repeats the testimony of several workwomen:  “M.  H., twenty years old, has two children, the youngest a baby, that is tended by the other, a little older.  The mother goes to the mill shortly after five o’clock in the morning, and comes home at eight at night; all day the milk pours from her breasts, so that her clothing drips with it.”  “H.  W. has three children, goes away Monday morning at five o’clock, and comes back Saturday