“I believe that most travellers are struck by the lowness of stature, the leanness and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to the eye at Manchester, and above all, among the factory classes.  I have never been in any town in Great Britain, nor in Europe, in which degeneracy of form and colour from the national standard has been so obvious.  Among the married women all the characteristic peculiarities of the English wife are conspicuously wanting.  I must confess that all the boys and girls brought before me from the Manchester mills had a depressed appearance, and were very pale.  In the expression of their faces lay nothing of the usual mobility, liveliness, and cheeriness of youth.  Many of them told me that they felt not the slightest inclination to play out of doors on Saturday and Sunday, but preferred to be quiet at home.”

I add, at once, another passage of Hawkins’ report, which only half belongs here, but may be quoted here as well as anywhere else: 

“Intemperance, excess, and want of providence are the chief faults of the factory population, and these evils may be readily traced to the habits which are formed under the present system, and almost inevitably arise from it.  It is universally admitted that indigestion, hypochondria, and general debility affect this class to a very great extent.  After twelve hours of monotonous toil, it is but natural to look about for a stimulant of one sort or another; but when the above-mentioned diseased conditions are added to the customary weariness, people will quickly and repeatedly take refuge in spirituous liquors.”

For all this testimony of the physicians and commissioners, the report itself offers hundreds of cases of proof.  That the growth of young operatives is stunted, by their work, hundreds of statements testify; among others, Cowell gives the weight of 46 youths of 17 years of age, from one Sunday school, of whom 26 employed in mills, averaged 104.5 pounds, and 20 not employed in mills, 117.7 pounds.  One of the largest manufacturers of Manchester, leader of the opposition against the working-men, I think Robert Hyde Greg himself, said, on one occasion, that if things went on as at present, the operatives of Lancashire would soon be a race of pigmies. {159a} A recruiting officer {159b} testified that operatives are little adapted for military service, looked thin and nervous, and were frequently rejected by the surgeons as unfit.  In Manchester he could hardly get men of five feet eight inches; they were usually only five feet six to seven, whereas in the agricultural districts, most of the recruits were five feet eight.

The men wear out very early in consequence of the conditions under which they live and work.  Most of them are unfit for work at forty years, a few hold out to forty-five, almost none to fifty years of age.  This is caused not only by the general enfeeblement of the frame, but also very often by a failure of the sight, which is a result of mule-spinning, in which the operative is obliged to fix his gaze upon a long row of fine, parallel threads, and so greatly to strain the sight.