opposition of the manufacturers themselves to these education clauses, and in the tricks and dodges they put in practice for evading them. “For this the legislature is alone to blame, by having passed a delusive law, which, while it would seem to provide that the children employed in factories shall be educated, contains no enactment by which that professed end can be secured. It provides nothing more than that the children shall on certain days of the week, and for a certain number of hours (three) in each day, be inclosed within the four walls of a place called a school, and that the employer of the child shall receive weekly a certificate to that effect signed by a person designated by the subscriber as a schoolmaster or schoolmistress.”[1] Previous to the passing of the amended Factory Act, 1844, it happened, not unfrequently, that the certificate of attendance at school were signed by the schoolmaster or schoolmistress with a cross, as they themselves were unable to write. “On one occasion, on visiting a place called a school, from which certificates of school attendance had issued, I was so struck with the ignorance of the master, that I said to him: “Pray, sir, can you read?’ His reply was: “Aye, summat!” and as a justification of his right to grant certificates, he added: “At any rate, I am before my scholars.” The inspectors, when the Bill of 1844 was in preparation, did not fail to represent the disgraceful state of the places called schools, certificates from which they were obliged to admit as a compliance with the laws, but they were successful only in obtaining thus much, that since the passing of the Act of 1844, the figures in the school certificate must be filled up in the handwriting of the schoolmaster, who must also sign his Christian and surname in full”[2] Sir John Kincaid, factory inspector for Scotland, relates experiences of the same kind. “The first school we visited was kept by a Mrs. Ann Killin. Upon asking her to spell her name, she straightway made a mistake, by beginning with the letter C, but correcting herself immediately, she said her name began with a K. On looking at her signature, however, in the school certificate books, I
