In the iron district of Staffordshire the state of things is still worse.  For the coarse wares made here neither much division of labour (with certain exceptions) nor steam-power or machinery can be applied.  In Wolverhampton, Willenhall, Bilston, Sedgeley, Wednesfield, Darlaston, Dudley, Walsall, Wednesbury, etc., there are, therefore, fewer factories, but chiefly single forges, where the small masters work alone, or with one or more apprentices, who serve them until reaching the twenty-first year.  The small employers are in about the same situation as those of Birmingham; but the apprentices, as a rule, are much worse off.  They get almost exclusively meat from diseased animals or such as have died a natural death, or tainted meat, or fish to eat, with veal from calves killed too young, and pork from swine smothered during transportation, and such food is furnished not by small employers only, but by large manufacturers, who employ from thirty to forty apprentices.  The custom seems to be universal in Wolverhampton, and its natural consequence is frequent bowel complaints and other diseases.  Moreover, the children usually do not get enough to eat, and have rarely other clothing than their working rags, for which reason, if for no other, they cannot go to Sunday school The dwellings are bad and filthy, often so much so that they give rise to disease; and in spite of the not materially unhealthy work, the children are puny, weak, and, in many cases, severely crippled.  In Willenhall, for instance, there are countless persons who have, from perpetually filing at the lathe, crooked backs and one leg crooked, “hind-leg” as they call it, so that the two legs have the form of a K; while it is said that more than one-third of the working-men there are ruptured.  Here, as well as in Wolverhampton, numberless cases were found of retarded puberty among girls, (for girls, too, work at the forges,) as well as among boys, extending even to the nineteenth year.  In Sedgeley and its surrounding district, where nails form almost the sole product, the nailers live and work in the most wretched stable-like huts, which for filth can scarcely be equalled.  Girls and boys work from the tenth or twelfth year, and are accounted fully skilled only when they make a thousand nails a day.  For twelve hundred nails the pay is 5.75d.  Every nail receives twelve blows, and since the hammer weighs 1.25 pounds, the nailer must lift 18,000 pounds to earn this miserable pay.  With this hard work and insufficient food, the children inevitably develop ill-formed, undersized frames, and the commissioners depositions confirm this.  As to the state of education in this district, data have already been furnished in the foregoing chapters.  It is upon an incredibly low plane; half the children do not even go to Sunday school, and the other half go irregularly; very few, in comparison with the other districts, can read, and in the matter of writing the case is much worse.  Naturally, for between