treatment there is really nothing, as a rule, to complain of in the ordinary factory. Yet the teachers report that from the very first day that he enters the mill the half-timer begins to lose all interest in school-work. A subtle change comes over him which it is really very hard to define. One would say that the organism is disappointed. It was in full career, as it were, yesterday, making for a bright goal, and lo! suddenly it is stopped. This is not a fanciful rendering of the facts; it is a statement borne out by the position which the children hold in the school before and after the date of beginning the mill labour, as well as their general behaviour and appearance.
And the teachers reported this for years. They talked of it at their meetings; they wrote articles about it in their papers, and they carried on a very keen battle against child labour and half-time in the mills.
The teachers of evening schools, too, and those who interest themselves in young people, were not silent. The noisy behaviour of the lads and girls in their off time, the horse-play of trippers, and the shouting and singing in excursion trains, had something in them that spoke more of defiant sadness than of gaiety.
