ARMAGEDDON'S AFTERMATH

NZ Truth, Issue 579, 22 July 1916, Page 1

ARMAGEDDON'S AFTERMATH

/ ♦ — _ History Tells its Horrors Here is a picture of England after the Napoleonic debacle, and peace had been declared: "Children were transferred m large numbers to the north, where they were housed m pent-up buildings adjoining: the factories, and kept to long hours of labor. Work was carried on day and night without intermission; so that the beds were never cold, inasmuch as one batch of children rested while another went back to the looms. Epidemic fevers were rife. Medical inspectors reported the rapid spread of malformation of 'the bones, curvature of the spine, heart diseases, rupture, stunted growth, asthma, and premature old age among children and young persons. Manufacturing profits were being at the same time reckoned at hundreds and even thousands per cent. The most terrible condition of things existed In the mines, where children of both sexes worked together, half naked, often for sixteen hours a day. In the fetid passages children of seven, six, and even four years of ago were found at work. Women were employed underground, many of them even while pregnant, at the most exhausting labor. After a a child was born its mother was at work again m less than a week, In on atmosphere charged with sulphuric acid. In some places women stood all day knee-deep m water, and subject to an intense heat. One woman when examined avowed that she was wot through nil daylong, and had drawn coal carts till her akin carno off. Women and young children of six years old drew coal along the passages of the mines, crawling: on all fours with a girdle passing 1 round their waists, harnessed by a chain between their legs to the cart. A sub-commissioner Jn Scotland reported that he found a little girl, six years of age, carrying half a cwt.. and making regularly 14 long journeys a day. The height ascended, [ and the distance along the road ox- i ceeded, In. each Journey, the height of I St. Paul's Cathedral."— William Clarke, "Industrial England."