orders of an older boy while he is at the
public-house. He swears at the children,
and they catch up his oaths and use them to
each other. I have seen the children on a
Saturday evening waiting outside the public-
house until the drunken gang-master should
come out and pay them. I have seen the boys
of the gang, during their dinner-hour in the field,
bathing in a pond, while the girls were sitting
round on the bank. Need we be surprised at
the low tone of morality which prevails among
them? The parents of the children themselves,
at least the more respectable of them, speak in
the worst terms of the evils, moral and physical,
which attach to the system; but the wages of
labour here are very low (nine shillings per
week), and the parents are almost compelled to
make use of their children's labour, and the
easiest way of doing so is by sending them into
the gang. Hence the school is forsaken, often
before the child can read or write, and is seldom
resorted to again."

Girls of eighteen, be it remembered, are
frequently employed in these gangs, of which one
magistrate and employer euphuistically writes:
"The name 'gang system' puts one much in
mind of Newgate, and I believe if it were called
the Agricultural Juvenile Industrial Self-
Supporting Association it would lose much of its
odium." Boys, we are told, leave gang-work
by the age of fourteen or fifteen, and the
number employed over eighteen is very small; but
while in some places the females are very little
older, in others there is no upward limit of age.
Speaking broadly, from nine to fourteen may be
considered the average age; a large number,
however, begin gang-work as young as seven,
others at six, and a few little workers may be
found at five years of age. The general form
of labour is where both sexes work in what is
called a mixed gang. Sometimes the gang-
master "takes" the work, namely, undertakes it
by the acre or piece, at a given price the acre
or load, and in this case the bargain is of the
kind we have described. At other times he
"lets them out," that is, he places the labour
of the children at the service of the farmer at
a fixed price per day, acting himself as overseer.
An exceptional gang-master is quoted, who
formerly had gangs of one hundred men and
women in his employment at one time, and who
by his shrewdness in "taking" work and
enforcing labour from his serfs has risen in the
world, and now farms five hundred acres of
land. Another is reputed to have built a row
of houses out of the profits of his calling.
"The poor children, as young as they are,
always know whether it is piece-work or not; as
they say when it is by the piece they are not
allowed to stop one moment to rest, and
occasionally the work is longer then." The older
and stronger children of both sexes are selected
as "back-breakers," and are encouraged by
extra reward to perform a heavy task of work
as the standard to which the rest of the gang
must conform. The nature of the work varies
in different seasons and districts. Some is
performed with the hand alone, such as
weeding and stone-picking. Other kinds are
performed with tools, such as hoeing and
forking manure, thrashing corn, beating out flax;
and nearly all kinds of agricultural work not
requiring too much muscular strength are
performed by gangs. In the fen and open districts
where gangs are employed most extensively,
it is often impossible to get shelter of any kind;
and as the work is invariably a considerable
distance from the little labourers' homes, it follows
that in bad weather they remain out in the
fields and labour on in the rain without a chance
of changing or drying their wet clothes. Even
in fine weather, the dew makes the crops so wet
that the workers, especially the females, are
soaked through up to the knees and waist, and
children even higher. Petticoats are squeezed
and wrung, and then put on again; and one
young woman, entirely crippled with rheumatism
caught in gang-work when she was eleven
years old, says: "We have had to take off our
shoes and pour the water out, and then the
man would say: 'Now then, go in again.'"
Although the extent to which the children are
exposed to the wet depends mainly upon the
judgment and consideration of the gang-master,
he is not quite free in the matter. The farmer,
employer, and, under certain conditions, even
the workers themselves, complain if he is too
scrupulous; and though the exposure is proved,
especially in the case of females, to end in
disease and premature death, it is consistently
carried on whenever the exigencies of the work
require.

There are various kinds of out-of-door labour
performed by children which do not come under
the definition of gang-work, such as frightening
birds from fields or stacks, watching cattle,
sheep, pigs, or poultry in fields; and one of the
local authorities referred to by the government
commission insists upon the importance of
having this strictly defined. Hop-picking, for
example, is frequently carried on under the
objectionable conditions described, but was not
considered to come within the scope of the
inquiry. In Suffolk this work is contracted for
by one man, and apportioned out by him to a
number of overlookers called "lords," each of
whom has a gang under him; but, in many other
districts the labourers are hired without the
intervention of a middleman. The hours of
labour of the different gangs vary considerably;
but are in most cases shorter than an ordinary
labourer's day. In Norfolk, the full day for a
gang is nine hours, including an hour for dinner,
or eight hours' actual work; and when daylight
grows shorter, work ceases at three or four P.M.,
in which case no dinner-hour is allowed, but a
rest of ten minutes only for eating. At some
places in the south of Norfolk and in Suffolk,
the custom is in the long days to give two hours
for dinner, and to continue work an hour longer
in the evening. In miscellaneous farm-work,
where the children are let out to work singly,
the hours are the same as those of ordinary
labourers. "Bird-keeping children" are