overstrung humanity runs amuck; and innocent children witness scenes and hear words which corrupt their whole lives. Toil and sin—this seems the hard, the terrible lot of these poor fen-children.
After all, it is the system itself as applied to children of all ages and both sexes, not its mere accidents, which is the motive cause of vice.
A justice of the peace in the Isle of Ely says: "I fail to see how the children thus usefully and profitably employed in the field are likely to have their morals less safely guarded than they would in a school-yard or in the village streets." Happy man! he can never have known what it is to have the mind oppressed by a monotonous and disagreeable employment, or the nerves overstrung with protracted labour. If he had, he would have been aware how fearfully open such a condition of body and mind leaves even a man of strong principle to the most horrible temptations. And when the subjects of it are children of all ages, any one who has had the slightest experience of such a life will acknowledge that it is only too natural for them to run into all kinds of devilry.
Strong artisans, strong in the consciousness of their power, consider nine hours a day enough work for the father of a family, with all the responsibilities of life upon him, and they could quote the wisest of our kings in their favour; but here in Lincolnshire children are made to work ten to twelve hours a day.
Ernest Hare, a boy of eleven, living at Deeping, St James's, told the commissioner that he was in a private gang. He left home at 5 and got back at 7. He was employed by a farmer who had two farms, the nearest of which was three miles from his home; the other at Deeping St Nicholas, six miles away; and with reference to this latter he adds, "We'd have sometimes to go to t'other end of it," which was three miles further.
Well might an inhabitant of this same village tell me that some people in Deeping never see daylight there all the winter from Monday morning to Saturday night. They go off in the dark, and come home in the dark. Well might the police superintendent at Spalding say, " They go too far, and work too long; ten or twelve hours is too much for a young child."
