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MARRIED WOMEN IN FACTORIES. ’57
exhaustively treated. Pet nothing has been done, although
it is impossible to stir the mass of records without discovering
that the evils recorded are appalling in their nature. Can
such things be in a Christian country? is the exclamation
which rises to the lips in contemplating the mass of misery,
and, especially, the infinite, irreparable wrong to helpless
children, which is involved in the mother’s employment at tho
mills.
It is a strange topic for reflection how the public, morbidly
fixing their attention on some wretched murderer, or a scoro
O€ dogs or rabbits sacrificed for the enduring iuterssts of
humanity, can calmly ignore the existence of evils which are EO
extensive that the imagination fails to grasp them clearly. It
is a curious, and yet unquestionable fact, that a comparatively
small and unimportant work is often undertaken with ardour,
whereas a vastly greater and more urgent work of the same kind
produces only languor. Thus Mr. George Smith succeeded in
arousing intense sympathy for the small number of children
brought up (often not brought up) in canal boats. Tho peculiar
circumstances of the canal boats, and the definite manageable
extent of the ideas involved, conduced to the success of the very
proper movement which Mr. Smith carried out to the point of
legislation. But infant mortality in general is, I fear, far too
wide and vague an idea to rivet the attention of the public.*
It is 8 question involving the whole of tho lower-class population
of the manufacturing districts. The actual excess of
deaths is to be counted in tens of thousands. Briefly stated,
the question concerns the mode of death of certainly 30,000
infants, and perhaps a.s many as 40,000 or even 50,000 which
perish annually in this country through preventible causes. In
no small number of cases the deaths are actually intentional
infanticides, committed in a manner which defies the scrutiny
of a coroner and jury. Thus the Registrar-General, in his
Thirty-seventh Annual Report (p.xxiii.), refers ominously to
the large number of infants suffocated in one town, and
I prefer to adopt thii explanation of tbo public apathy &oat this
BUbjWt ; but 8 correspondent maintains that 6‘ it is simply one of the
pheses of middle-class selfishnsse.”