and in part by hand, and 10,000,000 by machinery alone, with four to six colours.  As the machinery is chiefly new and undergoes constant improvement, the number of hand-printers is far too great for the available quantity of work, and many of them are therefore starving; the petition puts the number at one-quarter of the whole, while the rest are employed but one or two, in the best case three days in the week, and are ill-paid.  Leach {194} asserts of one print-work (Deeply Dale, near Bury, in Lancashire), that the hand-printers did not earn on an average more than five shillings, though he knows that the machine-printers were pretty well paid.  The print-works are thus wholly affiliated with the factory system, but without being subject to the legislative restrictions placed upon it.  They produce an article subject to fashion, and have therefore no regular work.  If they have small orders, they work half time; if they make a hit with a pattern, and business is brisk, they work twelve hours, perhaps all night.  In the neighbourhood of my home, near Manchester, there was a print-work that was often lighted when I returned late at night; and I have heard that the children were obliged at times to work so long there, that they would try to catch a moment’s rest and sleep on the stone steps and in the corners of the lobby.  I have no legal proof of the truth of the statement, or I should name the firm.  The Report of the Children’s Employment Commission is very cursory upon this subject, stating merely that in England, at least, the children are mostly pretty well clothed and fed (relatively, according to the wages of the parents), that they receive no education whatsoever, and are morally on a low plane.  It is only necessary to remember that these children are subject to the factory system, and then, referring the reader to what has already been said of that, we can pass on.

Of the remaining workers employed in the manufacture of clothing stuffs little remains to be said; the bleachers’ work is very unwholesome, obliging them to breathe chlorine, a gas injurious to the lungs.  The work of the dyers is in many cases very healthful, since it requires the exertion of the whole body; how these workers are paid is little known, and this is ground enough for the inference that they do not receive less than the average wages, otherwise they would make complaint.  The fustian cutters, who, in consequence of the large consumption of cotton velvet, are comparatively numerous, being estimated at from 3,000 to 4,000, have suffered very severely, indirectly, from the influence of the factory system.  The goods formerly woven with hand-looms, were not perfectly uniform, and required a practised hand in cutting the single rows of threads.  Since power-looms have been used, the rows run regularly; each thread of the weft is exactly parallel with the preceding one, and cutting is no longer an art.  The workers thrown out of employment by the introduction of machinery