CONDITIONS OF CHILDREN'S WORK 783 
the large capitalists who worked by steam. The Report of 4-D.1776 
the Commission of 1833 enables us to form an opinion as to 
the reasons which rendered it necessary to legislate in regard 
to these deplorable evils. Very many of them were mot Tals 
by any means new, though the introduction of the factory Tonge 
system had served to bring them into light. The sanitary (faied to 
conditions, under which cottage industry were carried on, nam 
were perpetuated in the earlier factories, and parents may 
occasionally have been harsh masters to the children who 
helped them? Still, the evil, in its obvious forms, was of 
recent development, and there was much mutual recrimination 
at the time in regard to its cause. Colonel Williams probably 
expressed the commonest opinion, both in the House and 
out-of-doors, when he said that “ this practice of overworking 
children was attributable to the avarice of the masters?” 
Mr Hume, on the other hand, defended the capitalists, and as 
he had presided over the Select Committee, which reported 
against the Combination Laws, his opinion on industrial con- 
ditions was entitled to respect. He held that the distress of 
the country was wholly due to the corn laws, and laid the 
blame on the owners of lands. Mr Cobbett, who was member 
for Oldham and had abundant opportunity of forming a 
judgment in his own constituency, exonerated the employers. 
He held that the immediate blame lay with the parents, but 
that they should not be too harshly judged, as they were 
driven to it by the pressure of taxation, which as he believed 
was the ultimate reason of their distress+. 
1 The Commission of 1833 called for no evidence as to the overworking of 
children who assisted their parents at home, but there is no reason to believe that 
they fared better than their companions in the mills. In only one point, and that 
a ost important one, was it alleged that the condition of the domestic workers 
was preferable. Parents could look after their own children and the elder girls if 
they worked at home, whilst the factories had an evil repute. Careful parents 
bad to choose between bringing up their children to an overcrowded and under 
paid trade, and the risk of placing them in demoralising surroundings (Reports, 
stc., 1883, xx. 532, 538). The bad repute of factories was not improbably due to 
their being the resort of apprenticed children and a shifting population, when they 
were first organised. At the same time it is probable that these evils diminished, 
as the smaller mills were broken up; and Mr Bolling, the member for Bolton, 
appears fo have regarded the charges against the factories as illusory, so far as 
ais constituency was concerned (3 Hansard, xrx. 910). 
t 3 Hansard, xv. 1160. 8 Ib. 1161. 4 Ib. 1294,