Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1868-01-07
THE HERALD.
Chain Making in Lancaster, England.

In the blast furnaces, mills and
forges, great numbers of children and
youths are employed in night sets,
between 6 p. m. and q. nj and in
the miscellaneous trades overtime is
is very common, great number OF
children working as long as the men,
viz, from a. m. to IL p m. Little
girls are employed in bellows blows
ing (very hard work for chill
dren) for fourteen hours day, stand.
ing on Platforms to enable them to
reach the handle of the bellows
Night work, overtime, and the very
nature of the employment, cannot
but have very disastrous influence
on their health. The foundry boys,
it is admitted by the masters them
selves, commence work at much too
early an age, and are taxed far be-
You'd Their strength; and the children
who work at home in the various do
nestle manufactures, are SO injured
by premature labor, often commen-
cling from the age OF seven, that, as a
rule, they are stunted, dwarfed, or
detormed. An instance is given of a
father kaving worked his three young
boys from four in the morning until
twelve at night for weeks together,
| until other men 'cried shame upon
him" Overwork is systematic; L.
200 boys under fifteen, and 2,400
youths between ID and Is, work
through the nights of every alternate
week Iron chains are wrought in
this district, and there is no employ
ment in which boys are subjected to
greater amount OF labor. Each link
is formed by welding together at a
white heat the ends of thick pieces of
rod iron, a man and his boys striking
alternately with the greatest possi>
bic rapidity lest the iron should cool
before the welding is completed
The labor of boys is measured only
by the strength of men; for as long
as the men can work, the boys must
attend them but so heavy is the
work, that by 6p. m, the men them>
selves are completed exhausted and
Obliged to cease, and it has been
pronounced unfit for boys. A chain
maker at Wcdnesfield Heath. work :
ing in his own shop for large man,
ufactory, and who had left the estab>
lishment that he might employ his
little girls to help him instead OF
hiring boys, which he was obliged to
do in the public workshop was found
by the assistant commissioner en-
gagged in making a large chain
Two girls nine and ten years of age,
were working as "strikers," and a
little girl eight, occasionly relieved
by a still younger one Of six, was
working the bellows. The gross
earnings of this man was two gum
cas- per week. Ii may be doubted
whether the world could now pro,
duce a more revolving instance Of
parental oppression than the specta'
Gle of these two young girls whose
little hands would have been appro,
priately employed in hemming 9
kerchief or working a sampler-be'
grimed with the smoke, stified with
the heat and stunned whit he din O.
q smithy, welding sledge hammers
and forging iron chains from morn,
ing till night. A single instance Of
oppression has often had a greater
effect in rousing indignation than the
most powerful denunciation OF a
general wrong. The picture of these
little Staffordshire GIRLS thus unsexeC
by an imperious tasknaster, nda that
taskmaster their parent, is vel
adapted to ex pose for universal re-
probation a system under which such
an enormity could be possible, and tt
prove the necessity of immediatelegis
lative interference.-London Qurterl,
ReUleac.