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dlARRlED W0.1fE4\' fZV FACTORlES. '77
home, nnd the death of ten out of twelve of the offspring,
here is palpable evil which no theory can mitigate. What can
be more against all principle, all right., natare, datg, law, or
whatever else is thought to be most immutable and saclred,
than that a mother should learn to hear '' with nonohalance "
that her infant had died at t.he nursing-house, while ehe herself
ww at the factory? The social system, like the human
frame, may become so far diseased that the intervention of
the physician is imperative.
Speaking of liberty and rights, it must be apparent, too,
that the parties most seriously concerned in the matter are tho
infants. They have no means of raising a public agitation,
or, if they venture to protest in their own manner, are soon
stilled with 1c Godfrey." But surely if thero is any right
which is clearly founded in tho natural fitness of things, it is
the right of the infant to the mother's breast. She alone can
save from virtual starvation nnd death. She alone can add
inches to the stature, fulness to thc muscles, and vigour to tho
mind. It is in the present state of things that rights and
principles aro most 11:qpntly cnst aside. And the origin of
all this evil is often some idle and dissolute young man, who
marries or seduces a young girl, knowing thRt he can afterwards
live upon her wages.
All sorts of objections were made, time after time, t,o
the Factory Laws as they gradually rose, step by step,
from their first small beginning in 1802. Now all classes
recogniso that these laws were absolutely necessary to guard
the population against the dangers of a novel state of things,
as to which evolution had not had time to work out its spontaneous
care. No doubt, in the course of generations, the
manufacturing population would become fitted to its environment,
but only through suffering and death illimitable. W e
can help evolution by the aid of its OWR highest and latest
pmdncdscience. When all the teachings of medical and
social science lead us to look upon the absence of the mother
from home as the cause of the gravest possible evik, can we
be warranted in standing passively by, allowing this evil to
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