I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

The object of this small Bill is a very simple one. It is to bring all the more backward educational authorities into line with their more advanced colleagues by providing that no child shall be allowed to leave a public elementary school at a less age than thirteen, and coupled with that is the proviso that if the child leaves school between thirteen and fourteen it shall only do so on the condition that it is to enter into beneficial employment; a provision to provide against the evil, to which this House is becoming more and more widely awake, of what is called blind alley employment. The effect of this Bill, the principal effect of it, is practically to put an end to what is called half-time employment in the textile districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Half-time, as the House no doubt is aware, is a system under which the child is allowed to leave school before the ordinary age, to work in the morning in the factory and go to school in the afternoon in one week and in alternate weeks the process is reversed and the child goes to school in the morning and to the factory in the afternoon. There is no doubt that when that system was originally introduced it was intended to be, and was for the benefit of the child, because there was no other means to ensure that children of a very tender age who were then sent into the factories could secure any education at all. Fortunately, public conscience has advanced since then. Step by step the age at which children were allowed to go into the factory has been increased so that at the present time this half-time system is not an aid to education, but stops education at perhaps the time when it is most needed. Previous Parliaments have raised the age step by step until it now stands at twelve, the age to which it was raised by the Bill introduced by the present Lord Robson, I believe, in 1899. That Bill was introduced in response to an agitation which was widespread throughout the country, and was not confined to any one party as was evidenced by the fact that the Motion for Second Reading of Lord Robson's Bill was seconded by the then Conservative Member for Bury, one of the textile towns in Lancashire. That Bill passed, although it had not the usual facilities for a Private Member's Bill, owing to the pressure of public opinion behind it, and it is generally believed that if Mr. Robson, as he then was, had the courage to put thirteen in his Bill instead of twelve as the minimum age at which children should leave school, he would have had no more difficulty in getting his Bill passed.

But my position is even stronger than that of Lord Robson, for during the thirteen years which have elapsed since he introduced his Bill, though no further step forward has been taken, there has been the Report of a very strong Departmental Committee which was appointed to inquire into the question. I had the honour of serving on that Committee, and I may say I was the only non-expert member of that Committee. Employers and employed were represented, Lancashire as well as Yorkshire. There were educational experts and there were agricultural authorities on it, and that Committee came to the unanimous decision that there was nothing to be said in favour of the retention of half-time, and recommended the raising of the minimum age to leave school to thirteen, and indeed went a long way beyond anything provided in the Bill I am asking the House to pass. The evidence was overwhelming as to the evil effects of half-time on the children physically, morally, and educationally. I am anxious not to overstate my case. I do not want to make too much of the physical elements, but there is no doubt from the evidence before us, which the hon. Baronet the Member for the City (Sir F. Banbury) will find amongst the volumes he has with him if he cares to look it up, that the effect of sending these young children into the mills at so early an age was distinctly detrimental to their health. The mill is not an ideal place of employment with the hard work no doubt and the bad atmosphere—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—the necessarily bad atmosphere in that it has to be kept hot. At any rate it has this bad effect on those children, as was proved by statistics placed before us, that when they reached manhood they were inferior to those children who had remained the normal time at school and had gone into factories at a later age. We also found that the percentage of accidents was higher amongst those small children than amongst those of a more mature age in the factories, proving that it was not an altogether suitable place for what we nowadays consider small childern of twelve years. Then, too, the moral effect was anything but satisfactory. Just at perhaps the most critical age in a child's development they are thrust in the factory, against which I have nothing very much to say, but one must admit the coarsening effect of putting those small children into factories to mix with their grown-up fellows, where the conversation at any rate is not as refined as it is in the school. There is no doubt from the evidence before us that there was a coarsening effect on the children.

But I base my case on stronger grounds than those. I do not wish to labour either the physical or the moral side of the question. It is the educational side that we found so disastrous. The teachers were practically unanimous in telling us that the half-time system was the ruin of the schools. It is perfectly true that attempts have been made in some districts to provide special classes for half-timers in special schools, but in almost every instance they have proved a failure, because the parents will not send their children to the special classes. The result is that the half-timers, are in the ordinary classes, and the senior classes, the most important in the school, are met with the difficulty that half or even a greater proportion of their children are absent, for half the time. There are a certain number of children, present in the morning and a different lot in the afternoon. This has a detrimental effect not only on the half-timers, but also on the teaching of the children who are present the whole of the time. It is found that the children who have been in factories from six o'clock in the morning until midday are too tired and sleepy to take advantage of the education offered them in the afternoon, and a number of teachers said that the best thing they could do with the half-timers was to let them go to sleep in their places in the school. The evidence was most striking on this point. We had a very illuminating illustration from Halifax, where there are a number of half-timers. A test was made of the efficiency of the education given to half-timers through attendance at evening schools. It was found that of the full timers who went to evening schools 79 per cent, remained until they got beyond the preparatory classes, whereas of the half-timers only 25 per cent, did so. The difference was even more striking in the more advanced classes, because of the full-timers who went to the evening schools 33 per cent. went on for two years beyond the preparatory classes, showing that they were getting real advantage from the evening schools, whereas of the half-timers only 3.3 per cent, found they were getting sufficient advantage out of the evening schools to remain there until they were fifteen or sixteen years of age. Thus it was proved conclusively that the half-timer was unable to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by evening schools.

I protest against this half-time system, more particularly on a ground which I am sure will appeal even to the hon. Baronet opposite—that it means a scandalous waste of public money. We spend millions of money in educating or attempting to educate children up to the age of twelve, and just when the education begins to be of value, when it is getting a grip on the children so that it may last them through life, we turn them out. We had evidence of innumerable cases where young men and women who had been half-timers were at the age of twenty barely able to spell their names or to read the evening paper.

The same applies to full-timers.

I quite agree, but by no means to the same extent, as was shown by the evidence put before us. If my hon. Friend will bring in a Bill to raise the age even further, he will have my support. I am here asking for a very modest step in advance to be taken. We were met throughout by the argument of the necessity of training these children early so that they might secure the necessary manual dexterity for the textile trades. We inquired very carefully into this point. It was hardly put forward from Lancashire, where the employers were ready to abandon half-time and the operatives were not so keen; but it was put forward from Yorkshire, particularly from the Bradford district. We investigated the trades in Bradford, where it was supposed to be necessary that the children should go to work at an early age to ensure manual dexterity; and we found that not half of the half-timers when they reached manhood could find employment. Although the children thought they were learning a trade, they were thrust upon the world as unskilled adults as soon as they reached an age when they required men's or women's wages. Therefore, in the textile trades, there was nothing to be said for the argument of early training. I admit that in connection with agriculture there was more to be said for early training and early familiarity with farming. But half-time in agricultural districts is quite different from half-time in textile trades. In the former case children go to the farm for six months and then return to school for another six months. The opinion was unanimous that that six months at school was of no educational value to the children. They had got out of school discipline; they had ceased to think they were school children. Most of the agricultural experts who gave evidence would have been much better pleased to let the children attend school to a later age, provided facilities were given, as they are in Switzerland and some other foreign countries, for the children to go to the farms at the times when their labour would really be, of value. There would be no difficulty in arranging the times of such attendance, holidays, and terms to meet that difficulty. Such, at least, was the evidence placed before us.

We were met also with the argument—familiar in this House whenever one wants to abolish an abuse—of the case of the widow, the need of these children's hard-earned pence to keep a family above water, the struggle to educate them, and so forth. That is a very pathetic argument when one hears it for the first time, but we are very familiar with it here. If the argument applies in Lancashire why should it not apply in London? There are widows in London, yet there is no half-time in London. Even in Lancashire half-time is not universal. If there is any particular reason why it is necessary for the sake of the widows and orphans in Oldham, how is it that Warrington can get on without it? It seems to me, too, from a labour point of view, very mischievous that reliance should be placed upon these wages of 2s. 6d. or 3s. brought in by the children. It is very much against the interests of the operatives, who desire wages to be raised, that children should be keeping wages down by working for 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week. That brings me to one of the most difficult points that I have to meet. I admit fully and frankly that the operatives concerned are in favour of retaining the half-time system. The majority in its favour, however, is a diminishing one, and some of the most respected leaders of the men are opposed to the maintenance of the system. Mr. David Shackleton, when leader of the cotton operatives in this House, was bold enough and man enough to declare publicly here and before the Committee his sympathy with our aims. Mr. Joseph Cross, the secretary of the United Textile Factory Workers' Association, was a member of the Committee, and signed the Report without qualification. Therefore I am entitled to claim that labour opinion in the textile districts is becoming less and less opposed to the change, and is beginning to realise the danger of the system. The argument is even stronger when you take, not those who have a pecuniary interest in the maintenance of the system, but labour as a whole. Organised labour as a whole is overwhelmingly opposed to the maintenance of the half-time system. That is evidenced here to-day by the fact that the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow will second the Motion. The fact is that the half-time system is a mere bad habit that has survived in some parts of the country. It survives in Bradford, but there is no great distinction between Bradford and the neighbouring town of Huddersfield. The industries, if not strictly identical, are similar. Huddersfield some years ago had a large number of half-timers. The Education authority there made up their mind to stamp out the half-timers, and the system has ceased to exist. Nobody feels the loss of it, and the educational system is enormously the better because of its abolition. In the same way, a typical Lancashire textile town is Bury. There they have made an effort to reduce the half-time system to a minimum. The numbers have enormously decreased. Employment for half-time is only allowed in cases of poverty, or where it is shown to be absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the family above the poverty line. By their regulations Bury has very largely reduced the amount of half-time employment without detriment to the trade of the town.

Enlightened educational authorities everywhere are raising the age for leaving school, and doing all they can to avoid allowing the children to drift into blind-alley occupations. There are just these two sections left in Lancashire and Yorkshire which remain as a blot upon the most prosperous industry in this country. I shall be told, of course, that the thing is dying a natural death, and that we had better leave it alone. It may be true that it is dying, but it is a very lingering death. There are 30,000 of these small children employed on half-time in the mills at present. We can do nothing for these. But unless we pass this Bill, or something like it, during the present Session, there will be a further 30,000 next year and a similar number the year after that again. It is on behalf of these small children, who are now growing up, that I appeal to the House to pass this Bill. I have no persuasive oratory to win Members to this cause; indeed, I very seldom trouble the House except on a question like this connected with children on which I feel very deeply indeed. I do beg the House to consider, after thirteen years inaction and in the face of the very strong Report of the Expert Committee which inquired into the whole subject, that the time has at last arrived when, without any very great serious risk to the prosperity of this great country, we can afford to give these children at least another year of decent profitable education.

I beg to second the Motion, and am glad to have the opportunity of doing so. My supplementary words shall be brief because I, like many more here, am more interested in getting the Bill than in making long speeches about it. I am very glad that my hon. Friend who has just spoken has left no dubiety on the mind of anyone present as to what is the real intention of the Bill. It is intended as a step forward—and as we believe a long step forward—towards the abolition of the half-time system in this country. It raises the age of exemption from twelve to thirteen, and by so doing practically abolishes the half-time system. I am content to leave the conditions that the local education authority have to be satisfied with in regard to the needs and circumstances of the district and the conditions of probable employment of the child in the vague manner suggested. The local education authority have to be satisfied as to what employment is beneficial to the child; if they are satisfied, then the certificate of exemption may be given. If they are not satisfied the certificate will not be granted, and that makes half-time more difficult to follow. That, I think, is a very important provision of the Bill. This Bill does not apply to Scotland. It has therefore been objected by some that I, as a Scottish Member, have no right to identify myself with it. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] I do not regard myself as a Scottish Member wholly: I am a Member of this House, and am within my rights in dealing with a matter that involves the interests of the people of this country. It is perfectly true the Bill does not apply to Scotland. That is an additional reason why I should second it. There is no need for the Bill to apply to Scotland. We have done in Scotland all that is sought to be done by this Bill. Once half-time was as prevalent in Scotland as in Lancashire or Yorkshire. I can go back from my own experience in the jute trade, when there was a large number of half-timers. Public opinion and various other agencies have operated. In Glasgow there used to be a large number of half-timers; there is not a single one now. Dundee, my own native city—I am ashamed of it in this respect—is now the only place in Scotland where there are half-timers. The last Report said there were only 250; probably that number has now almost disappeared, so that it may be said that half-time in Scotland is nonexistent.

Are there no half-timers in the agricultural districts?

The agricultural districts, as hon. Members know, are dealt with in a manner peculiar to themselves. Half-time in the agricultural districts is not half-time but certain parts of the year. We do not want to interfere with that.

This Bill does.

It will protect children up to thirteen in those districts, though not in Scotland, where it is unnecessary. Allow me to put the personal element first. I support this Bill because I have knowledge from experience, as well as by observation, of the ill-effects of the half-time system. I went to work before I was eleven, and therefore I think I may say that I have had some knowledge of what I have lost in going to work before my bones were well set, and at a time when I ought to have been improving my mind rather than earning my living.

You are not much the worse.

Exceptions prove the rule. I have heard Mr. David Shackleton when he was here speak to the same effect. He was a survivor of the half-time system. You do not know how many others succumb to the effects of the system. If Mr. Shackleton and others and myself have got over it, and have come through its troubles, that is not any evidence to justify the continuation of the system, which must necessarily have a bad effect upon the physique, morals, and education of those who undergo it. In the second place, I support this Bill because I am thereby voicing what has been voiced at the Trades Union Congress for the last few years, apart altogether from the Report of the Committee which took evidence a few years ago. The Trades Congress has repeatedly passed resolutions in favour of children attending school, not merely until they are thirteen, but until they are sixteen. Therefore this Bill only goes a step in the direction of those ideas of the Trades Union Congresses. I should say, with my hon. Friend who proposed the Bill, that half-time is really a survival of the barbarous and unfeeling times which have passed away, and that it depends more upon custom than upon any provable necessity. I can conceive no necessity which would justify the halftime system, if it can be shown, as I think my hon. Friend has shown, that the effects are bad from an educational, moral, and physical standpoint. But it has been proved that there is no necessity. I have already mentioned the case of Scotland as it existed twenty or thirty years ago. We had then all the arguments put forward as to the value of early training. All the arguments as to the low wages of the parents were used with much greater effect than they can be to-day in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Yet in Scotland half-time has been practically abolished, and I do not know anyone in Scotland who is the worse for it. I come to another instance in England. At Huddersfield half-time was prevalent thirty years ago, and, I think in 1879, a general movement was started there on the part of those interested in education, and also on the part of the education authorities, who circularised parents in order to get them to take a right view of it. From that time there has been a gradual diminution of the number of half-timers in Huddersfield, until now they are practically non-existent. Huddersfield does as well as any other town without the half-timers. I should like the House to realise what this half-time system means. Draw the picture of a child under this system; try to imagine what possible chance he has in after life.

He sometimes gets here.

Yes, as I said, the exception to the rule. The vast majority have to suffer in after-life, and do the fetching and carrying for those who were not half-timers. Let us try to visualise the position of that child. That child goes to work in the morning at six o'clock. He has to work in the mill for thirty hours each week. It is only after doing his tale of work in the mill that he can go to school. What chance has a child like that, after doing his work in the mill, to absorb education? It is ridiculous and absurd for us to expect it. It is a stupid waste of public money to provide education under those circumstances. If the child does not go to work in the morning he goes to school in the morning, and finishes his day in the mill and makes himself unable to absorb the education which is provided for him on the following day. Whatever may be said about the moral or physical effects, it means the arrestment of the education of the child. We have to remember that there is no educational test now imposed when the child leaves school. If a certain number of attendances have been made during the last five years, I think that is sufficient to get a certificate, and therefore these children actually start handicapped after the half-time period. My hon. Friend has given some figures with regard to secondary schools. The half-timers do not get any secondary education at all. As the Advisory Committee said in their Report some time ago, secondary education for them is practically closed. He gave figures in regard to secondary education, showing that only 3.3 of the half-timers were in a position to take advantage of a secondary school as compared with 33.5 of the others who had gone full time. Let me give another figure. It has been said there is nothing to prevent them going if they win free places in a secondary school, but they are not in a position to win those free places. Take the evening schools. Even there the figures, although not showing the same enormous disparity, show a great difference, and show that the half-timer who has been handicapped in his early teens feels himself unable to keep pace with his fellow boys in going to an evening school. We found that 79 per cent. of those who have attended full time attend also an evening school, whereas only 25 per cent. of the half-timers attend an evening school. Leaving the educational point of view and coming to the question of accidents, what do we find? That these children actually suffer almost double the risks of those who go full time. The figures are given in the Advisory Committee's report of the accidents to adults and young persons as compared with children. In 1901 the accidents were 68 per 10,000 in adults, against 65 per 10,000 to the children; in 1904 the figures were 65 per 10,000 for adults, compared with 59 per 10,000 to the children; and in 1907002C 62 per 10,000 adults and 51 per 10,000 children. When we come to consider that the children are in the mill only half the time that the adults are there, and we see that the accidents suffered by the children are almost as great in number as those suffered by the adults, it follows that the risk to the children is nearly double the risk to the adults. I need not go into the point of physical defects, as my hon. Friend has dealt with it. No one can go into the mill districts in this country without seeing in the lump the ill-effects on the physique after three or four generations. Go into the mill districts of Lancashire or Yorkshire, and then into the agricultural districts of Scotland, and if anyone had any doubt before of the effect of the half-time system and of factory life generally upon those people, I venture to say that that doubt ought to be dispelled from the mind of any reasonable man or woman.

Compare them with London.

I have no objection to compare them with London, if you like to compare them with the West End, where there has been no half-time, and where people in early life had a chance. I say the contrast would be quite as marked in a comparison with the West End of London, and it would show a very great improvement in comparison with the mill districts. On going through the evidence of the Committee mentioned I was glad to note that the employers of Lancashire are themselves weakening in opposition to the abolition of the half-time system. It is on record that they themselves are ceasing to regard its retention as necessary, and it is left on record as coming from their representative that they would not go back to the half-time system as they had known it. It has been said that the workmen are coming round to this view. I know the votes which have been recently taken, but on the other hand the representatives of Lancashire and Yorkshire are now going against the continuance of half-time. I have already mentioned Mr. Shackleton, and I may say that Mr. Joseph Cross, the Secretary of the Northern Weavers' Association, signed a report recommending to this House that the age of exemption should be raised to thirteen years. Something has been said about the value of early training, but I characterise that as absolute nonsense. If there was anything in the early training or in the plea that the person ought to go to work at the age of ten, eleven, or twelve in textile work, then it ought to apply to any other kind of work and to other occupations. As a matter of fact, it was found and admitted by the witnesses before the Royal Commission that even in the textile mill the boy or girl at thirteen or fourteen years of age, made quite as capable a worker as a half-timer, who went in a year or two earlier.

Reference has been made to the poor widow, an argument which is always put forward in regard to other subjects as well as educational reform. They ask what about the poor widow who is dependent upon these children? I think the State owes an obligation to the widow which ought to be met in another way altogether. What is the poor widow argument? Would the House believe that the evidence given before the Advisory Committee at the Board of Education three or four years ago is to the effect that only one half-timer in ten is the child of a widow, and even then their average earnings amount to a paltry 2s. 7½d. per week, which, in my opinion, had far better be paid to the widow by the public authority. As a simple matter of fact it is not the child of the widow that goes half-time, but often the child of a man who is in a position to keep his child. It is said as a further argument that the children rather like to go half-time, and are smartened up by it. I think that is very likely. I think a child twelve years of age coming into contact with older people may be temporarily smartened up, but it is a smartness that will do him no good in his after life.

Sir Walter Scott said that when he saw the smart child brought in with the walnuts and the wine he always found that child turned out a dull dog in after life, and I think there is a great deal of truth in that as applied to half-timers. A child may be smartened up temporarily, but a child of twelve cannot determine what is good for him, and on reaching eighteen or twenty years of age then only does he begin to realise what he has lost during the early years he was in the mill. We ought to protect the child of twelve years who goes into the mill willingly. It is perfectly evident from all the evidence and observation and experience of those who have any knowledge at all on this matter that half-time is bad from every point of view for the child who is a victim of it. I hope the House will pass this Bill to-day, and I trust the Government, if the Bill does pass, will take it up and pass it into law. I can conceive of no better measure which would have the effect of improving the physique and character generally of the future generations than this Bill. I say again that the half-time system is a survival of barbarism. It is a system that enables employers of labour to take advantage of cheap labour, and a system moreover, which enables greedy and unscrupulous parents to exploit their children for purposes of profit. I am absolutely against it, and I hope the House will pass the Bill and do something by passing it to give the children amongst us who are growing up a chance of living all round decent and wholesome lives.

I beg to move, as an Amendment, to leave out the word "now" and, at the end of the Question, to add the words "upon this day six months."

The hon. Member who moved the Second Reading of this Bill stated that he was sincere in his Motion, and that he felt deeply upon this subject. I think everybody in this House who listened to the speech of the hon. Member will admit that he was sincere and that he felt deeply upon this subject. But the question before this House is not the sincerity or the feeling of any individual Member, but whether the Bill, if passed, would be advantageous to the State. I am sure that the hon. Member and those who differ from him—and they are not confined to this side of the House only—will give us equal credit for the sincerity of our motives in opposing this Bill. I hope, before I sit down, to be able to give some very good reasons which I trust will induce the majority of this House not to pass the Second Beading of this Bill. The hon. Member who seconded the Motion began by excusing himself on the ground that he was a Scotch Member. I think it is a most absurd doctrine that the man who sits in this House cannot speak because he does not happen to sit for a particular part of the country affected by the legislation under consideration. I think the hon. Member was right in seconding this Motion, and I do not think anyone who regards the welfare of the United Kingdom—I am not certain if the hon. Member supports Home Rule, or, if he does, I do not know how he reconciles his position in regard to that—anybody who represents any part of the United Kingdom has a right to speak on every Bill which comes before this House. The hon. Member said he was not going to make a long speech, and he gave a startling reason for that statement. Whether he felt that he had no good reasons to advance in favour of the Second Reading, and had to make some excuse by saying he was in favour of the second Order on the Paper, I do not know. I should like to point out that it will be a bad day for this country and for this House if reasons in favour or against a particular measure are not to be advanced because hon. Members desire to get the Bill over in order to bring on something else. Nothing could be more fatal than that to the position of this House. I remember the late Sir William Harcourt saying this House was the great debating chamber of the people, and that was the meaning of the word "Parliament." It was not a chamber to hurry through one measure in order to get at another. That is quite a novel idea, and one which I hope the House will not take up. We are getting on, according to the hon. Member, in our notion as to what is going to happen if this Bill passes. The hon. Member dismissed the argument about the widow on the ground that she would only receive a very paltry sum for the service of her child, and that the proper authority to pay that sum was the local authority. That is Socialism of the very worst description. We are now not only to relieve the children of an opportunity of earning an honest livelihood, but the ratepayers are to keep the parents because the children are not earning any money. I commend that to my Noble Friend (Lord A. Thynne), who so ably represents the London County Council. The hon. Member also said that the officials and leaders of the trade unions were in favour of this Bill. Of course they are; they want to keep out boy labour, and are against apprentices and all sorts of things. I think it will be a long time before I am convinced a Bill is good because the leaders of the trade unions say it is. The hon. Member was asked if he could define the word "beneficial" in the Bill, and he said he could not. He says he likes it vague.

There is a definition in the Bill.

Perhaps my Noble Friend will define the "definition" in the Bill when he comes to speak. The hon. Member could not. He wants to leave it to the local authority and to my Noble Friend. I have not so much confidence in my Noble Friend. I want to put definitely in the Bill what he may do.

Section 1, Subsection (3).

I pointed out that the employment was to be "beneficial as regards his health, training, and his future prospects," and said I was willing to leave the local authority to say what that was.

That is exactly what I said. The local authority is to define what "beneficial" is. I do not want to leave it to the local authority. Then the hon. Member said Scotland did not do these bad things, but, when questioned by my hon. Friend, he had to admit children in attendance at school were employed part of their time in agriculture. This Bill will prevent children being employed in a similar way in England.

It is dying out.

I want to continue the employment of children in agriculture, but my hon. Friend (Mr. Courthope), who is going to second the Amendment, will deal with that point. A very interesting Report was made in 1909 by a Departmental Committee, of which the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill (Mr. Walter Rea) was a distinguished member. At the end of that Report there is a recommendation confirmed by all the members of the Committee. It begins as follows:—

Why has the hon. Gentleman gone dead against the recommendation of his own Committee? This Bill is not "a thorough revision and consolidation of the existing law"; it only makes confusion worse confounded. That alone is a very strong argument why the Second Reading of this Bill should not be passed. The hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division (Mr. Barnes) suggested that the Government should give facilities for this Bill after this stage has been passed, and take it up. My Noble Friend (Lord A. Thynne) cheers that. That is a very bad thing to do. The Government do not want encouraging to do that sort of thing. If a Bill is to be a Government measure, let us know it is a Government measure. Let them bring it forward as a Government measure, and do not let them smuggle it through as a private Member's Bill on a Friday afternoon, when there are only thirty Members in the House. We have had an example of that; and, if hon. Members realised what it meant, I am sure they would pause before encouraging the Government to do any such thing. A Constituent of mine wrote to me the other day asking me to oppose all Bills which legislated by reference, .and he gave as one of his reasons that in the days of the Roman Empire they used to pass their Bills in very small writing, and then place them on a wall so high that no one could read them, and in that way they interfered with the liberty of the subject and placed their subjects entirely in their hands. That is exactly what you are doing at the present moment. The tendency to pass Bills which legislate entirely by reference is growing every day. The Bills are perfectly incomprehensible, and I can see no advantage in them, except, possibly, for the members of the legal profession. It is only to their advantage, because they must be called in to interpret the meaning of these Bills. The ordinary person has not got the opportunity to find out what all this reference means, and the Bills themselves and all the various references are perfectly incomprehensible. This is particularly a bad subject for legislation by reference, because already it is complicated by a very large number of Acts dealing with it. It is quite impossible to understand the Bill unless one looks at the Schedule. The first line in the Schedule repeals Section 74, from "provided that" to "such by-law" of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, and in order to understand that one must get the Elementary Education Act of 1870 and turn to the chapter and Section. I find that Section 74 deals with the attendance of children at school, and the words that are repealed provide that—

"Any by-law under this Section requiring a child between ten and thirteen years of age to attend school shall provide for the total or partial exemption of such child from the obligation to attend school if one of Her Majesty's Inspectors certifies that such child has reached the standard of education specified under such by-law."

In listening to the hon. Member one would have thought that the Bill dealt only with half-timers, I do not want to misrepresent the hon. Gentleman, but I do not think he said a word about anyone else but half-timers. He alluded in very eloquent terms to the physical effect of the system on half-timers in factories, and he certainly gave the impression that the Bill deals only with half-timers. Yet the very first Section of the Act which is repealed, and which I have read to the House, provides not for half-timers, but for the total exemption of children under certain conditions. Therefore, my argument that in order to understand this Bill it is absolutely necessary to refer to these various Acts of Parliament has been completely justified. Then we come to the Elementary Education Act, 1873, Chapter 86. There, in Section 24—but I do not think I need read this. [Hon. Members: "Oh!"] Of course, hon. Members do not want the Bill explained. I can well understand. They would like it smuggled through. That is the thing to do on a Friday afternoon, when no one takes the trouble to read the Bill—get the Second Beading, especially when you are introducing all sorts of controversial measures as well. Therefore, it has to be got through, although no one knows anything about it, and what they want to know they must pick up afterwards. I object to that, and I intend as far as I am able to frustrate the intention of the Government to do this sort of thing. As I have said, I will not read the Section.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman what the context is? It all depends on the context.

I will make the hon. Member a present of the book if he will come round, and then he can read it afterwards. I do not think I need trouble reading it to the House. Then we come to the Education Act of 1876, Chapter 79. Section 5, Section 24, and the First Schedule are repealed of this Act of 1876. Section 5 says:—

"A person shall not, after the commencement of this Act take into his employment any child who is under the age of ten years, or, being of the age of ten years or upwards has not obtained such certificate, etc."

That does not deal with half-timers, but it says that no child of a certain age shall be employed at all. That is a very different question to the question of half-timers. Then the Bill repeals Section 24, which is an administrative provision, and deals with certificates of proficiency of a child in reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic, and gives power to the education authority from time to time to make, revoke, and vary regulations in respect to certificates of age for the purposes of this Act. I do not know why that should be repealed. No argument has been given by the Mover and Seconder of the Bill why that should be repealed. The First Schedule, which is to be repealed, is a very long Schedule. It extends over three pages, and it apparently deals with various standards and the number of attendances which are necessary to enable a child not to become, as I understand it, a half-timer, but to go and do some useful work if it is to his advantage so to do. Then we come to Section 18 of the Act of 1880. I think, however, that I have read enough to show that there are very serious alterations made in the various Acts of Parliament by this Schedule, and I do not think I need read the next three. There are eight Acts of Parliament to be repealed or altered. I would like to draw attention to the last one—the Factory and Workshops Act, 1901. Of that Act Sections 25 and 27 are to be repealed. This is really an important repeal, because it has very little to do, so far as I can see, with half-timers, but deals with the manner in which children shall be employed in factories. In Section 25, which is repealed, there is a marginal note, "Hours of employment in textile factories—children." What has that got to do with an Education Bill? Why is it repealed? The hon. Member has said nothing about that. It may be my stupidity —probably it is—but I cannot for the life of me see what the " Hours of employment in textile factories—children," has got to do with half-timers or with this particular Bill. This particular Clause says:—

"Children shall not be employed except on the system either of employment in the morning and afternoon sets, or of employment on alternate days only."

Why should that be repealed? Section 27 is repealed. That again deals with regulations in respect of the employment of children in non-textile factories and workshops. It practically repeats the regulations which are in force in regard to the employment of children in textile factories. If I were to quote to the House all the enormities which are contained in the first Schedule of this Bill I should keep hon. Members here until five or, six o'clock. I do not want to do that, but I do want to point out seriously to the House that they really do not know what they are doing. I do not believe there are more than three or four Members, if so many, who have ever read these Acts or the parts of these Acts which are repealed by this Bill, and I venture to say that at least hon. Members should thoroughly acquaint themselves with what they are going to do before they pass the Second Reading of this Bill. I should have thought that the substitution of the age of fourteen for thirteen, which I should say is the real meaning of this Bill, was sufficient without repealing all these various Sections which are mentioned in this Bill. May I point out that the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill referred to the very elaborate Report of the Committee of which he was a member, and he made various statements in regard to it which I think are quite mistaken. At any rate I do not think they are quite borne out by the Report. I have taken the trouble to provide myself with a copy of the Report, and I propose to read one or two paragraphs which bear upon this particular subject. Paragraph 31 refers to the effect on the health of the children. The Mover told us that the effect on the health of the children of being employed in factories was extremely bad, and the hon. Member who seconded the Motion said he had been employed in a factory from eight to ten years of age, and that his bones had not grown. I do not want to pay the hon. Member an undue compliment, but I venture to say that for development he compares favourably with any man in this House, and I do not think he himself has anything to complain of with regard to the growth of his bones. This is what paragraph 31 says:—

Will the hon. Baronet read the paragraph at the bottom of the same page? Perhaps he will allow me to read it:—

"But child labour, especially indoors, is liable, except under the most ideal conditions, to be inferior to school life; and there hare been placed before us the results of several statistical investigations made in more than one half time town, which indicate distinctly that the weight and chest measurement and sometimes the height of half-time children are less than those of full-time children in the same place and of the same age."

That is all I said. I expressly guarded myself against placing too much importance on the argument as to health.

The hon. Member has read one portion; I have read another. My portion is quite clear, and I prefer to refer him to my portion. If the hon. Member, after having written the first portion of the paragraph, thought it was too strong, and wrote another, I cannot help it. He should have made up his mind which of the two should have gone out. Now we come to the question of agriculture in paragraph 42. That was alluded to by the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division, but not to any great extent. Both the hon. Member and the Mover of the Motion said they did not see any advantage in half-timers at the age of thirteen being employed in agriculture, or in any other pursuits, because they did not really gain any insight or learning in those pursuits. The paragraph to which I am going to draw the attention of the House rather confirms that. It begins with stating that in the case of partial exemption for agriculture very little attempt was made to argue that it had any value as training. The Committee go on to give arguments supporting that belief, and they say that certain cases were brought before them, and they give these cases. Case A was a boy who was employed in weeding carrots. They say that does not yield any training. I venture to say it does give training; it teaches him to find out which is a weed and which is a carrot. Although the hon. Member shakes his head, I think, if he were to try to weed a field of young carrots, with the carrots just coming up above the ground, if he had no experience he might pull the carrots and leave the weeds in, which would have a bad effect upon the farmer in that particular district.

What does it say about the next day?

The next day the boy was found at home doing nothing. That, no doubt, is the result of Free Trade, which does not give sufficient employment to agriculture on an arable farm to enable enough carrots to be grown and enough weeds to appear for the boy to pick them. Then there is gardening. Surely gardening is a pursuit which requires a great deal of learning in early life. I am sorry I know nothing about gardening, and I am too old to learn, but surely gardening is a very healthy employment. Even the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division will not deny that it is one that requires learning. Another employment is tending cows. Anyone who has had experience of agriculture knows perfectly well that looking after animals requires a great deal of learning, and that unless you are brought up, when young, to understand animals and their needs, you never learn the work that you ought to learn. The next paragraph to which I wish to draw the attention of the House is paragraph 45. The hon. Member said that the employers were coming round. Paragraph 45 says there is a very wide variety of views amongst the employers as to whether it is any advantage to get the children into the mill early or not. It is not by any means an agreed question that it is not to the advantage of the children to get them into a mill at a very early date. The next paragraph I wish to refer to is paragraph 58, which is very important:— who is above thirteen and under fourteen to do work, provided, in their opinion, he is about to enter some employment which will, in the opinion of the authority, be beneficial to him. The definition of "beneficial" is— They are going shortly, I believe, to introduce a Universal Suffrage Bill. They say that everyone in the country is fitted to vote as to who should be returned to the House and govern the country, but they are not fitted to decide what ought to be done with their children. A more absurd proposition was never raised in this or any other House. But I shall be told there are blind alleys, which must be prevented. What grounds have they for supposing that the local authority is going to be any wiser than the parents? After all, who are the local authority? They are ordinary people, many of them are working men themselves, and they are generally elected on a very small poll. Why should they be any wiser because they become members of county councils or urban councils? They are just as wise and as foolish after they become members of a local authority as they were before.

Another point is this: supposing the local authority take the view that this employment must not be a blind alley by which I understand is meant that you must not be employed in the Post Office. The Government is one of the worst offenders in what are called blind-alley pursuits. Supposing a local authority say, "Here is a boy who is anxious and willing to work; he has learnt a very considerable amount at school, quite sufficient to fit him for his after career in life, and he wants to find some remunerative employment." Where is he going to get it except in these blind alleys? Hon. Members opposite and below the Gangway have stopped the old-fashioned system of apprenticeship where a boy did learn a trade which in after life would be beneficial to him, and they seem to be under the impression that if he sits in a schoolroom and learns things which will be of no use to him in after life that will fit him for the struggle which is to come far better than teaching him a trade, which is vital for a man if he wishes to succeed. That is not because the parents do not want the blind alleys, but because the actual conditions of employment in this country are such that there is very little else for a boy to do except to put on a black coat and become a clerk, and to suppose that you are going to improve this by telling the local authorities that they may do certain things is, to my mind, perfectly absurd. I venture to say that I have shown that, though this Bill is brought forward with the best of motives, it is a mistaken Bill, that it will not do what its promoters think it will do, that it will weaken the sense of responsibility of manhood which should be encouraged in the people of this country, and that it will further strengthen the idea which, I think, is much too prevalent already, that everybody should be dependent on the State and trust to the State if in an awkward position, instead of to their own unaided efforts.

In rising to second the Amendment. I wish to say that when notice was first given of the introduction of the Bill I did not suppose I should have any reason to object to it except from the purely agricultural and horticultural point of view, but after the Bill came into our hands, and when I had an opportunity of examining it with some care, I found—well, I do not think it is using too strong an expression to say that the Bill is a fraud. It goes very much further in the change it proposes to effect on the legislation relating to elementary education than either its title, or preamble, or the speeches made by the Mover and Seconder would give the House the slightest idea of. On that point I shall have a word or two to say later on, hut that has helped me to make up my mind that the Bill should be opposed in toto , rather than, as I had originally intended, dealt with merely by the proposal of Amendments dealing with the agricultural question. It is very noticeable that the Mover and Seconder of the Bill left severely alone practically every question except the mill and factory question. The only reference made to outdoor occupations—and I may class them generally as agricultural occupations—that fell from the lips of the Mover was to the effect that he would like to do away with the half-time system and put in its place, in order to meet the views of agriculturists, the Swiss system, which enables children to be withdrawn from school during the months of the year when work is required, and when there is beneficial occupation for them, both from their point of view and from the parents' point of view, on the land.

I should like to point out at once that in many districts of this country the effect of the Swiss system and the effect of the present half-time system, as applied to agriculture, would be the same. Take districts such as parts of the county of Kent, where fruits and hops are grown, the opportunity for the beneficial employment of children will begin next month and end in the last week of September. That is very nearly the whole period for which half-time is applied and has effect at present. Of course, I have taken an extreme case; I admit that at once. The period is nothing like so long in some districts, and there are some districts where the half-time arrangements have little value.

Are there any half-time arrangements or partial exemptions in Kent?

You mean this year? Of that I have no knowledge at all.

Were there half-timers last year?

If the county council made a mistake, that is no reason why I should not express my view. I am quite certain that if they have abolished the half-time system, it is on the lines suggested by the examination of one of the Kent witnesses, Mr. Champion, who suggested that total exemption would serve the agricultural purpose nearly as well, and be better from the purely educational point of view, than partial exemption at the age of eleven or upwards. It may have been done on this ground. From the point of view of the schools, of course, agricultural half-time is bad. I am looking at the question not from the point of view of the schools, but from the point of view of the children and their parents. The Seconder of the Bill (Mr. Barnes) went further and said he did not wish to touch the arrangements as affecting agriculture at all. If his wishes were put in the Bill, my objection to that part of the measure would fall to the ground at once. He seemed to be hardly aware that the Bill was going to affect agricultural half-timers or whole-timers, and his principal argument on the matter was a somewhat misleading one. He talked of the provision for poor widows. He gave the House to understand that the great majority, or a very large proportion, of those half-time children were not the children of poor widows. That is hardly a fair picture of what takes place. Let us look for a moment at the effect which the abolition of half-time before the age of thirteen, and the raising of the age generally, will have upon the agricultural community. The effect will be felt by that portion of the agricultural community which, I think I am right in saying was not represented in any shape or form before the Committee whose report, excellent in many ways, has been referred to to-day. It is true there was a representative from the big agricultural bodies; but it is not the kind of people represented by the big agricultural bodies who will feel this most. It is the small holder—the man who makes his holding pay by the labour of himself and his family—who can manage his holding in the winter months by their own unaided labours, but requires many more hands for the later work of spring, summer, and early autumn. That man is provided with labour in almost every case by his own family, and in a great majority of cases no hired labour is required at all. That class of small holder will suffer very severely if deprived of the opportunity of having the labour of his children owing to the total abolition of half-time.

Another class who gave no evidence were the agricultural labourers who are affected even more than the small holders. The labouring portion of the agricultural community is almost unanimous in its desire to maintain the opportunity which now exists, too small in many cases, for the exemption or partial exemption of children from school attendance for the purpose of working on the land. To turn for a moment to the effect on the children themselves it has been stated—I admit with some qualification—that the effect of the half-time is bad morally and physically for the children. I go so far as to say that, as far as agricultural half-time is concerned, the effect is exactly the reverse. It is good morally, physically and educationally. From the point of view of the child of an agricultural labourer whom we all agree we want to encourage to stay on the land, it is good to learn the class of work which has maintained his father and his grandfather before him, and which is open to him in his own neighbourhood. Everyone will admit that the open air life during the summer season and the light work carried on in that season must be good physically, and I cannot believe for a moment that it has any bad effect morally or that the children will hear worse language or see worse habits or anything of that kind during the daytime on the farm than they would see, whether they were attending school or not, in the evening outside of school hours. Educationally I maintain very strongly indeed that one of the most valuable items of the education of a child —using the word in its broadest sense—particularly a child who lives among rural scenery and pursuits, for after life, is that -it should early become acquainted and familiar with nature, the nature and growth of plants, the habits of animals, etc. These are forms of knowledge which are very difficult to acquire unless acquired when very young, but if acquired by the young they become almost a habit. In addition to giving a child a knowledge of nature itself it invariably leads to the habit of observation, and the habit of observation is a most useful quality in after life.

I have no doubt that the withdrawal of a number of children from the senior classes in a rural elementary school for five or six months of the year is bad from the point of view of the school itself. I am quite prepared to admit that it might be better from the school education point of view, if an early total exemption was maintained in the rural districts rather than an early partial exemption. That is a matter we are not concerned with now, because the Bill sweeps both away. I want hon. Members opposite to give consideration to the effect which the education now carried on in the rural districts has upon agriculture. I have not the slightest doubt—it may be the fault of the conditions rather than the fault of the age—that the system in most of our rural schools to-day does not fit the child for rural pursuits, but it fits him and inclines the bent of his mind towards urban, industrial pursuits, and promotes rather than decreases rural depopulation. The most keen advocates of this Bill, those most anxious to do away with the half-time system, will also admit that in the rural districts you will find the vast majority of the half-timers stay on the land, while a comparatively small proportion of the children who have not taken the half-time system in the schools live on the land and find adult occupation there for their labour. I am sure that that has a very strong bearing upon this Bill and adverse to it. I do not wish to deal with the cotton or other industries referred to by the hon. Member. I content myself with having tried to state a very brief part of the agricultural case, as it would take a long time to deal with it all.

I now want to refer to the justification of the statement with which I opened my remarks, that the Bill was a fraud, and goes very much further than has been suggested by the title or by either the Mover or Seconder. I shall have to trouble the House with one or two references to legislation referred to in the repealing Section. I can only refer to points which the hon. Baronet did not touch upon. The first point arises out of Section 74 of the Act of 1870, and here I should like to say that I am nearly certain that this point only arises through carelessness in draughtsmanship, and that probably the promoters of the Bill will be willing to meet it. But that is all the more justification for pointing it out now. What neither the Mover of the Bill nor the hon. Baronet noticed, is the fact that there are two provisos in that Section, and as it stands now the Bill will repeal all Clause 74 from the first word "provided" down to the end of the second proviso. The first proviso is as follows:—

"Provided that no such by-law shall prevent the withdrawal of any child from any religious observance or instruction in religious subjects, or shall require any child to attend school on any day usually set apart for religious observance by the religious body to which the parents belong, or shall be contrary to any Act for regulating the employment of children employed in labour."

I hardly think that enthusiastic supporters of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill and other pillars of undenominationalism in this House will support this Bill if they realise that it is doing that. Further, it goes on—I am only reading the words which will be cut out if the Schedule is left as it stands:—

"For remission of payment of the whole or any part of the fees of any child where the parent satisfies the School Board that he is unable through poverty to pay the same."

If that is passed it will be impossible for fees to be remitted or paid on behalf of the parent. It imposes penalties for breach of any by-law, and provides for revoking or amending any by-law previously made. Then comes this second proviso, which the hon. Baronet referred to, dealing with half-time and whole-time exemption. That is the first point I desire to make, and it probably is really a matter of carelessness which will be put right. But the other points to which I desire to call attention are not matters of carelessness at all, and they go very considerably further than the scope of this Bill. The Bill repeals or tears down matters, and puts nothing in the place of what has gone. One point arises on Section 24 of the Act of 1873. The result of the repeal of the Schedule will be that the certificate of an inspector as to the standard will be no longer evidence in any Court of Summary Jurisdiction by law. What can be the object of a provision of that kind? I hardly think it can be generally realised by those who are in favour of this proposal that the Bill has that effect. Another point arises on Section 24 and the First Schedule of the Act of 1876. That Section and Schedule deal with the whole question of the standard of proficiency for the purpose of employment. What has not been stated is that the Schedule and Clause go much further than that. They make provision for the standard of proficiency and for the purpose of paying the fee as well.

2.0 p.m.

That is all to be swept away—the provisions with reference to payment of tees, as to the standard and attendance required, authorisation of the payment of fees, the powers of the Education Department to "make, revoke, or vary any regulations and conditions in respect of this Act," together with" a number of other Sub-sections, one dealing with attendance at certain day industrial schools and workhouse schools, and another dealing with the code of the Education Department. Surely it is not intended to sweep all these away in a Bill dealing with the age of school attendance, yet that is the effect the Bill will have. There is a number of other small points, but I do not think it is necessary for me to draw attention to them point by point, because I think I have already drawn attention to the most important. I am sure that the subjects which I have touched upon are of sufficient importance to make this House realise what is in the Bill, and to reject it at once, unless a definite undertaking is given by the promoters that Amendments will be accepted in Committee dealing with all these matters. There is one other point I should mention. The Bill does away with all the powers, if I may use the phrase, to "go" for the employer who employs a child, while it retains power to "go" for the parents. I say that the one is ineffective without the other. If I looked at it from a purely personal point of view, I should not have touched on this point. I confess that my one recreation is shooting, and shooting nowadays is a very much more complicated matter than formerly, owing to this very condition, which prevents one from getting boys to act as "stops," and so on. One does not, of course, on a question like this, pay any regard to one's personal point of view. It is a great mistake, I submit, not to "go" for the employer and merely retain power to "go" for the parent. That is another point on which I hope some Amendment will be promised before the Second Beading is taken.

Attention called to the fact that forty Members were not present. House counted; and forty Members being found present—

I should like to ask the Mover of the Bill to state to the House what effect, if any, this Bill, in view of Sub-section (4), Section 1, will have upon the private education of children at home. I have been unable to absolutely satisfy myself upon the point, but it seems to me that if we pass this Bill as it is, neither the hon. Member nor I will be in a position to educate our small daughters at home. That is a point on which I hope to be reassured. The Bill appears to me, primâ facie, to interfere with the power which a parent now enjoys to educate his children privately at home where he can afford to do so. My last point in reference to this Bill is the increased odium which it places upon local authorities. Everything legislative is to be swept away, and there is increased obligation—if there is to be any exemption at all of children below the age of fourteen—thrown upon local authorities. It can only be an unpleasant and complicated task to the local authorities, whose jurisdiction covers industrial, urban, and rural districts. I think it is objectionable that duty after duty should be piled up on the shoulders of local authorities. I do not suggest that this is an entirely new duty, but it increases the obligation, because many of the detailed provisions which have hitherto had statutory effect, and which have controlled the matter, are being swept away under the Repeal Schedule of this Bill, and the whole obligation will in future be placed upon local authorities. For those three reasons, the general agricultural standpoint, the fact that the Bill goes much further than it appears; and, thirdly, the fact that it places unpleasant and undesirable duties on the shoulders of the local authorities, I beg to second the Amendment.

I admit there is distinction to be clearly drawn between the half-timer employed in an urban and in a rural district, but that is, after all, a point which can be dealt with during the Committee stage, and the Second Reading of the Bill ought to stand or fall by the Bill as a whole. There are several ways of getting over the difficulties to which the hon. Member who has just spoken alluded. Everybody will recognise that he did not regard this Bill from the personal point of view. Perhaps, though, he was too pessimistic about the situation in the rural districts. Surely eleven years of age is too low a limit to allow children to be employed during certain months of the year on farms. At least one might increase the limit to twelve without affecting very considerably the agricultural industry of this country, particularly as the selling price of the produce is going up in the market. I should have thought that the real remedy for the insufficiency of agricultural labour was not less education, but more. That insufficiency is due largely to an absence of cottages to live in, so that it is a building problem. The building problem affects the villages tremendously. The reason why your young labourer will not remain on the land is that his prospects there are totally inadequate in comparison with those he may obtain by going to the town, and the question of education has not much to do with that. It might have if education were properly arranged, but not in the way the hon. Member suggests. According to him, the proper thing to do in the public elementary school in a rural district for children of eleven years of age was not to give so much acquaintance with reading or writing or arithmetic, or upon some study of geography or upon some knowledge of English history, but to spend the time for those children in studying the habits of animals. What they want to make them satisfied to remain on the land is to have some intellectual culture to give them the habits of reading and writing, so as to make the life more tolerable to them than would otherwise be the case. It has been asked what is meant by the term "beneficial employment" as used in this Bill. The term has always been interpreted by the local authority as having regard to the whole circumstances of the child in question. It might be specified in Committee that the only child of a widow might be exempted under this Bill and allowed to work from the age of twelve years. Those are Committee points which ought not, I submit, be allowed to interfere with the passage of the Second Beading. I need not go over the ground, which has been already covered, as to the physiological objections to half-time and as to the moral intellectual, and educational dangers; but there is one point in this connection which has not been mentioned, and that is that the leaving of school at half-time by certain children is not only bad for them, but bad for all thè other children in the school. Take the cases of three children. A is not a half-timer, and goes to school morning and afternoon; B, a half-timer, goes to school in the morning; and C, a half-timer, goes to school in the afternoon. B and C do not receive half the education A receives, but A is in the class with them, and his education has to be retarded morning and afternoon for B and C. Therefore the half-time system is lowering in its effects all round. There are one or two general considerations having reference to this particular Bill that I should like to bring before the House. Take the question of the money now spent on education, which is largely wasted because not only of the half-time system, but of the early withdrawal of children from school. The Bill suggests a minimum age of thirteen. I suppose there is not a man in the House but who, having had the advantage of school attendance at a later age than thirteen, will remember in his own case that it was not until he was fourteen or fourteen and a half that he began to apply in his own mind the preliminary education that the had received before that age. At fourteen comes a physiological change which is of the greatest possible importance, both to the body and to the mind. The great bulk of elementary school children are withdrawn from school before that age is reached. This Bill does something to prevent that, and to bring the school age nearer to the age of a new start in the child's education. In that respect it is a good Bill. There is one other general point raised partly by this Bill. We have passed again and again in this House Acts intended to deal with the hard cases of particular children and young people, such as the Act enabling a local authority to forbid the employment of children under fourteen years of age from street trading and labour of that kind within school hours. That Act is already almost a dead letter. Recently we considered a Bill proposing to afford similar protection above the age of fourteen. That Bill also, if it becomes law, will soon become a dead letter. The safest plan to prevent abuses of child labour is to arrange a minimum age for all children in all schools. Since this Bill raises the age from eleven in the country, and from twelve in Oldham, for example, to thirteen all round, it is a Bill which, on Second Beading, ought to receive the hearty assent of the House. It can be amended in Committee, if need be, to deal with cases of hardship. It will also be a great step onwards towards the time when the real school age shall be not eleven, twelve, or thirteen, but fourteen or fifteen. I heartily support the Bill.

I should like to consider this Bill from a standpoint which is not quite similar to that of my hon. Friend (Sir J. Yoxall). I do not think that any of the critics of this Bill are without sympathy with its objects or do not acknowledge the work done by those who have education as their one object. But I think the Bill touches a phase of working-class life which no rough and ready method such as that here suggested will ameliorate. This Bill is mere repression. It appears to me that its promoters have given no thought to and have no appreciation of the special difficulties which surround particularly the question of half-time. It is not a solution of the half-time difficulty as found in the cotton districts. One must look upon this question, so far as it is a problem of poverty, so far as it affects the health of the children, and so far as it touches the advance of education, not so much from the standpoint of the parents, or of the public, or of the trade or manufacture. There is one consideration alone that must decide whether our policy is right or wrong, and that is the welfare of the child. I think the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division (Mr. Barnes), who is certainly an excellent specimen of the half-timer, put the disabilities rather too high. He said that half-timers do nothing but the fetching and carrying for those who are not half-timers. I know a district in Lancashire where it is claimed that every man who has risen in the trade has himself been a half-timer. So that you cannot say half-timers are absolutely condemned by being half-timers to no advance whatever in the trade. My hon. Friend also compared the operatives of Lancashire with the labourers of Scotland. I do not think that that comparison ought to leave out of account the difference in race. There are in these Islands a great mixture of races. There are some small, clever, handy races, and others of fine, tall men, such as the hon. Member himself. You cannot compare height and physical development and say that conditions are; necessarily responsible for the difference.

No one of whom I ever heard defends the state of the children who worked in the mills of Lancashire two or three generations ago. The factories were practically charnel-houses of children's bones. No page in history is so sad as that which relates to the condition of child labour in Lancashire a century ago. Before 1819 there were babies of six or seven years of age in the mills. In 1819 children of nine years of age were allowed to work twelve hours. The hours were gradually reduced—in 1833 to eight, in 1844 to six and a half, and in 1874 to five. Then the age began to be raised—in 1875 to ten, in 1893 to eleven, and in 1899 to twelve. Instead of six years and twelve hours we have twelve years and five hours. So terrible was the condition of the population of Lancashire that I have read quite recently that the death-rate of the population which supplied the cotton operatives was such that the average age at death was nine years. Nowadays a great deal of prejudice exists—perhaps the word "prejudice" is too strong, but a strong feeling of opposition to this labour very naturally exists. But the age has been raised to a point when we should very carefully consider and weigh what our next step, if any, should be. This Bill professes to be an education Bill. I should like to put before the House the point that it destroys one method of, so to speak, dove-tailing education and employment. It is quite possible that our present system of half-time employment is not satisfactory, but it is a system that links education and employment in a way which, in my opinion, if we stop it now, we shall have to develop again at some future time.

What are the faults of the present system? Is it not the fact that education is only carried to a point at which when a boy leaves school his mental growth is entirely stopped? He is glad to throw off the restraint of school. He goes into some kind of work, perhaps of a most uninteresting description, which makes no demand whatever upon his intellect. Going to work full time, he is too tired to attend evening classes, and he is frequently prevented by his employer, on the slightest excuse, from following up some course of study, because it is not convenient for him to get off a little earlier in order that he may attend classes at the proper hour. Too often the child leaves before any mental initiative has been aroused in him. If it has been aroused, it is very soon quenched by his full-time work. I do not think that it is to be taken without examination that the absolute cessation of school life and the immediate commencement of full-time -work in the way suggested by the Bill is any very great improvement in the system. Education ought to be continuous. There is nothing in which there is so many dropped stitches; and to plunge the child into full-time work and expect much evening study is to demand too much from him. Dr. T. W. Heywood, the certifying factory surgeon, of Darwen, says:— work commend the system, educationally, physically, and morally. I say the system has had a trial under enlightened conditions. It is in a school connected with the works of Messrs. Don Bros., Buist and Coy. The children have there the eight hours' day. These are the remarks of the observer in regard to what has happened in that connection:—

Can the hon. Member tell me how many of these children there are in this particular school at Dundee?

I am not quite sure. There are certainly over 100; I think 110 or something like that. Possibly there may be a greater proportion of teachers than in other schools, so that more individual attention is given to the scholars, Taut that is only an argument for a better development of the system. Similar testimony is given from Lancashire by Dr. Heywood, certifying surgeon at Darwen. He says:—

"The effect upon the general education of half-timers is that it tends to sharpen up and brighten them. Having a portion of the day at school and the other half at wakes makes them take a much greater interest in both. That, as a whole, they are well able to hold their own with whole-time scholars is shown by them being able to carry off more than 50 per cent, of the prizes."

I have a comunication from a manufacturer who is well known for his consideration for his employés. One point in his letter, which I have already put before the House, is the necessity for a continuation of the education of the girls who become weavers, etc., and of the boys who go into the mill, jointly with a commencement of work and earning. He says:—

"I think there is a great deal of foolish talk about mill life being so prejudicial to health. We have had many cases of improvement in a child's physical condition through coming to work in the mill. The modem conditions in our mills are healthy. I often thought that a way out of the difficulty would be, in order that the children might attend the night classes, to allow them to come at breakfast time until they are, say, fourteen or fifteen years of age. I do not think this would be an insurmountable difficulty. In the warehouse and twisting departments some difficulty might arise, but some latitude might be given to meet the case. Children do not need a lot of technical knowledge at the night classes to fit them for many trades. I do think, however, they should attend night classes to make them better and more cultured citizens."

Perhaps I may not weary the House if I just mention the kind of curriculum that is undertaken for these Dundee schools, in view of what has been put before the House by my Friend, the Member for Scarborough. My Friend says this Bill does not apply to Scotland, but surely what they can do in Scotland in the way of developing these schools they can do in England. I do hot think we should be debarred from taking as an example the schools that exist in Scotland. The programme they have in these Dundee schools includes: English Literature; the Laws of Health; Consumption: what it is and how to prevent it; The Temperance Syllabus; Institutions of Government: The Franchise, the Ballot, Parliament and its Functions. This is a girls' school, and we are preparing to educate our masters when they get the vote. It includes: The Empire, British Trade and Industries, Housekeeping, Cookery, Marketing, Accounts, Nature Study, Drawing, Designs in colour based on the flowers which they study, Physical Training, and Singing. This is a pretty good curriculum for those children for two or three hours every day. It may specially interest hon. Members to know, in view of the hon. Member's remarks about the evening paper, that these managers have the wisdom to give to their scholars the opportunity of reading "The Little Paper," which is a supplement to the " Children's Magazine." That paper is edited by a friend of mine, Mr. Arthur Mee, who is a strong supporter of this Bill. I wonder whether his views would be altered if he knew that the half-time scholars have "The Little Paper" as their special reading. This evidence is sufficient to show that it must not go without argument that a girl will be better off going that full time at thirteen than by having this course of study betwixt the ages of twelve and fourteen. Dealing with the question of health, I would like to emphasise my view that home surroundings, a condition of poverty or neglect, are a more important factor than half-time. With these the Bill, at all events, does not profess to deal; it does not deal with any circumstance whatever connected with the home life of the child. I may quote an opinion of a certifying surgeon who has had 20,000 children under his observation. This is Dr. Hey wood, of Darwen, to whom I have already referred. He says:—

"I measure each child and register the particulars on its birth certificate, which is produced to me twelve months later, and I have therefore the opportunity of judging whether the half-time employment in the factory has a deleterious effect upon the child during that period.… Between the ages of twelve and sixteen they frequently come under my observation, and because of my records on the birth certificate I have their factory history before me, and am in a position to judge the effects of factory life on children and young persons.… Of the children admitted to the factories at the age of twelve years, experience shows me that with the maintenance of the same standard of home conditions prevailing before they become half-timers, as a rule, they maintain the rate of progress they have made before. There are fluctuations of course, but they are only such as I find in the life history of many children. I have not found that these fluctuations can be attributed to the system of working half-time in fac'ori s. They are only such as might occur if the child never became a half-timer at all.… Where a child has been reared under unhealthy conditions and goes to work in a well-ventilated mill, I have knowledge of benefits accruing. The child very o'ten improves in health. I am not prepared to admit that because of twelve months' work as a half-timer a child deteriorates in physique. That may happen when a young person, in law, but a child in years, has to do work continuously in a mill as a full-timer. A great deal of harm may be done by the abolition of the half-time system. I am not opposed to the age being raised—"

I am giving the whole of the evidence of the medical officer; I am not making selections. He says:—

"I am not opposed to the age being raised, but I consider that it will be a huge blunder if the system of gradually accustoming a child to factory life is entirely abolished.… It is absolutely cruel to take a child straight from school life and place it in a mill for the full number of hours an adult is allowed to work. The changed conditions of life are much too sudden for the child and cannot be other than harmful to its health."

I do not suppose there is any medical man who would not say that a girl would not probably receive more harm from working full time a year or two later than twelve than from working half-time from twelve to fourteen. As to the point of bad language mentioned by my hon. Friend, I do not know that the bad language will become harmless as soon as a girl reaches thirteen or is fourteen or fifteen Now, another aspect of this poverty problem is brought out by the inquiries of the school medical officer of Bury. There is an immense amount of information being in that way brought out which sets before us, in my opinion, a great deal of work in regard to the social conditions of the labouring population. What is revealed by this medical inspection of school children? We are only at the beginning of the work which will have to be done—in the establishment of school clinics and other ways. These are matters which will do far more good for the health of the growing population and of the young people than this Bill will do. Over 1,800 children were examined in 1910. There are some particularly striking resuits shown in the records of the state of nutrition of the children. One particularly striking fact is the progressive deterioration as the children rise in age. These 1,800 children are divided into four classes, "Excellent," "Good," "Medium" and "Poor." Adding "Medium" and "Poor" together, this shows a rise in the lower stages of nutrition of the percentages as the children increase in age. At three years of age 14.5 per cent, of them were in the lower class of nutrition; at four years of age the percentage was 19 per cent.; at five years of age, 25 per cent.; six years of age, 25.8 per cent.; seven years of age, 32.1 per cent.; and, at eight years of age, 41 per cent. There are special circumstances connected with that. I suggest that the increasing deterioration with the age of the children indicates increasing poverty with the growth in the number of the children in the homes. The most intense point of the problem is when there are five or six children. My hon. Friend suggested that there should be an exemption in the case of an only child of a widow, but that is not the most acute case. The most acute case would be not the only child, but where there are a number of young children. A special inquiry was made into the condition of half-time children attending elementary schools, and they were divided into four classes as the result of an examination:—

"(1) Those children in poor circumstances who have lost one or both parents and whose condition at the time of examination indicates a long previous period of deficient nutrition.

"(2) Those elder children of large families in poor circumstances and whose eondition at the time of examination indicates a long previous period of deficient nutrition.

"(3) Those children from homes showing evidence of parental neglect, and whose condition at the time of examination shows some evidence of malnutrition. Children with pre-existing disease.

"(4) The apparently healthy children from homes-where the circumstances may be considered good."

Take the first two classes. Take the children in poor circumstances. In every case, except cases of pre-existing disease, after a period of half-time work they show an unusually rapid increase in weight, which can only be attributed to the improved circumstances associated with increased family income. The children under the heading of parental neglect show no such increase, the weight between the examinations remains stationary, and in some instances, and in one or two cases, a decrease in weight. Statistics are given of the growth of the children in height and also their increase in weight. The boys grew as fast as the normal boy, but the half-time girls did not grow quite as fast. But in the weight a most singular thing, in my opinion, happened, and that is that the boys not merely increased in weight as much as the normal boy, but made up the deficiency, so that at the end of less than twelve months of half-time the boys who were five or six pounds behind in weight were equal to the normal boys. The girls were not quite so good, and if they were half-a-dozen pounds lighter at the beginning they were still one pound or two pounds lighter at the end. To summarise:—

"It would appear from this that any legislation in the direction of raising the age at which children may obtain half-time exemption would merely prolong a period of semi-starvation for many children unless provision were made for adequate maintenance during the proposed further period of school life."

Dr. Heywood confirms this. He says:—

"Instead of deterioration, I have seen poor children improve after starting half-time, owing, I think, to the extra nourishment, better clothes, etc., which the money they earn will provide."

We have had the case of the poor widow introduced, and one would not expect anything else from the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division, but he did not introduce it in any improper way. He said that the State owes an obligation to the poor widow, and that her case should be met in another way. It is not merely the child of the widow we are concerned with, but the child of the poor family. But why not allow the State to do its duty concurrently with this Bill and make conditions for half-time. The two things depend upon one another, and why not let the remedy and the hardship go together. I daresay most hon. Members will have received a pamphlet from Mr. Harold Shaw-cross, of Rochdale, who admits:—

"It is hard for these people, and I should be the last person to deny it, but I say the State has no right to ease the parent by injuring the child, and the proper way to treat cases of hardship is to see that such people have enough to keep their families on. I should be pleased to see money given in this way, for it would bring to the front at once the question of the minimum wage, a reform that is long overdue."

Is he not forcing that question to the front by the use of child hunger? Our argument is that you should not diminish half-time at the expense of child hunger, and that is quite as strong as the argument which Mr. Shawcross brings forward. My hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough spoke of backward educational authorities. I rather think I may claim that the education authorities at Bury are free from this taunt. I must admit that there is a strong feeling in Bury against the premature working of children, and in favour of providing an extended system of education. They have established there recently, although they are quite a young education authority, new secondary and technical schools; there are enlarged grammar schools, and full advantage is being taken of those opportunities. This half-time problem is being taken notice of by local public opinion. My position has been as to half-time to give to the local committee the power to deal with cases with some opportunity of discrimination. I claim that the committee of the county borough council has done so, and that there is no exploitation of labour either by the mill-owners or by greedy parents. I think this was admitted by the hon. Member for Scarborough, who said the committee there discriminates where it is absolutely necessary to the maintenance of the family above the poverty level. I will take his own words. He says:—

"This half-time in some cases is absolutely necessary to the maintenance of the family above the poverty level."

Our position is that this matter might be very well left to the action of the committee, who are enlightened on this subject, who consider not merely the health, but also the needs of the child.

3.0 P.M

I think hon. Members must feel a considerable amount of relief in finding themselves in a somewhat more peaceful atmosphere than that which prevailed in the House yesterday. This is a discussion upon what seems to me to be a very useful measure of practical reform, and we are not listening to learned disquisitions and fervent appeals about the iniquities of Henry VIII. and various other members of the aristocracy. It seems to me that we have got before us a measure which I hope will be of considerable advantage, if passed, to those engaged in the administration of our educational system, as well as to the advantage of those children who are in the schools of this country. I should have thought that no one would have objected to the age at which children might go to the factories being made later than it is at the present time; and to provide that they should not go till thirteen years of age, seems to me to be only a continuation of the factory legislation which this House has passed and which was initiated by hon. Members on this side of the House. The only point in which it seems to me there may be any difficulty is whether any hardship is likely to arise in the case of the children in the rural districts, but I dare say it would be quite possible in Committee, while increasing the age to some extent, to insert some Amendment to leave it open to the children in those districts to be engaged on the farms for half-time as they are at present. I hope to see in the rural districts a new type of school, where, instead of simply teaching children the three "R's" and the various refinements of education—French, the violin, and subjects of that sort—practical teaching of advantage to the children in those districts will be given, such as woodwork, gardening, and the study of the various pests that infest the crops, and, on the other hand, of those insects which are useful to the farmer. There are some schools in the country where teaching of that sort is already given. I know one in the county of Derbyshire, with which I have been connected for some considerable time, and which, I believe, is mentioned by the Board of Education in its memorandum on the subject of Rural Education. Children from the schools around come to that school, and in the upper standards they get instruction in those various subjects I have mentioned. It seems to me, if we could get a system of that sort spreading over the country, we should be doing the children and farming far more good than we should by keeping the children somewhat longer in school, providing, of course, while they were at school we gave them instruction which would be useful to them in after life. It is no use keeping them there unless we do that; it would be merely a hardship to them. Unless they get some advantage, it is no use upsetting the present arrangements. That subject, I think, can be dealt with in Committee; and, if we cannot get the Board of Education to assist and encourage-local authorities to set up this new system of agricultural education throughout the country, we may find we shall have to make an exception in favour of the children for the rural districts, I regret in rising to support this Bill I differ with various hon. Members sitting on the same side of the House as myself. The hon. Baronet, in his opening words, said there was no advantage to the State in this Bill. He there expressed an opinion directly contrary to the opinion I myself hold. I think any improved system of education is of the utmost advantage to the State. In fact, I am one of those cranks, as some people call us, who have a great belief in education; indeed, I go so far as to think it is only through improved education we shall get that social development which lies, I suppose, at the heart of every hon. Member in this House. One objection raised to this Bill was that it would put additional duties upon the local authorities. The duty placed upon them by this Bill is not a very heavy duty, and it is one which will fall upon the attendance committees of the local education authorities. The local education authorities, as hon. Members know, appoint attendance committees to see whether children should be allowed to have certificates of exemption, and whether the employment to which they are going is beneficial or not. They are quite accustomed to this work, and they complain at the present moment that there is very little for them to do. Instead therefore of putting an additional burden on their shoulders, we shall be giving these attendance committees work they will be glad to do. I do not know that there has been any other objection raised to this Bill. I for my part can see no objection to it. It is a small and useful measure, and I think it is a step in the right direction. I hope in time we shall have the age extended even further. I believe most education authorities, both of the various boroughs and of the county councils, are in favour of this measure, and, if it does not come now, there is not the least doubt it will come in the near future. On these grounds, I hope the House will give this Bill its approval and will pass it, and so advance one more step —a very small one, it is true—along the path of educational progress.

It is with no feelings of pleasure that I address the House this-afternoon, because I have to speak in opposition to the great body of the party with which I am associated, but I should feel I was wanting in my duty to the textile workers Of Lancashire if I did not try to express their views on what is to them a most important question. In Lancashire and Yorkshire there are a greater number of half-timers, a much larger number, than in any other part of the United Kingdom; and it is for the purpose of dealing with that particular problem in those two counties this Bill is brought forward. Those people who know least about half-time employment and who have had no experience whatever of it are most opposed to it; but those who have been in it the whole of their lives have expressed a very strong feeling that no raising of the age ought to take place. I should not be able to speak as I do on this question if the conditions to-day were as they were about forty years ago, when the age was eight years at which children were allowed to go to work. I think the conditions at that time were of such a character that the textile workers made a mistake in objecting to the raising of the age in those days. I am prepared to admit that there was a considerable amount of physical deterioration at that time, and any close observer of the textile districts of Lancashire during that period could not fail to see a difference in the people there, compared with what was general amongst other classes. It was common in those days to see the people engaged in the textile industry very much deformed, their legs crooked and sometimes their shoulders very rounded. If you walk through the textile districts to-day you would not find the same condition of things existing. I challenge anyone—I do not care who he is—to go through the streets of Lancashire to-day, and they will find, generally speaking, the condition of the textile workers there equal to that of the great bulk of the community. The conditions in the mills are entirely different to what they were thirty or forty years ago. Thanks to factory legislation, which the Lancashire operatives have been the first to advocate, there is a different condition of things existing. There is more air space, there is a greater amount of ventilation in the mills, the sanitary conditions of the factories are better than they were formerly, and, on the whole, the conditions are so much different that the comparisons that have been made by hon. Members are not as good as they might be. There has been a good deal of talk lately in regard to referendum. We have had a referendum in Lancashire on this particular point.

There has been a good deal of talk also in regard to secret ballots, and urging trade unions to have secret ballots. This has been a secret ballot. The matter has. been referred to those who are engaged in the textile industry, and who are connected with the whole of the trade unions, in that industry, on two occasions recently,, and on the last occasion I think there were 116,573 members of the unions who voted against raising the age to thirteen, while for raising it to that age there voted 29,933. I think those figures are not complete. One or two districts are left out, but when those districts are included, I do not think it alters the proportion against raising the age to thirteen, which is something like a proportion of four and a-half to one. It is true that a good many leaders of the textile workers are in favour of raising the age, but the rank and file are not, and anybody who represents the textile workers in this House is bound to take notice of what the rank and file say. He is not here to express any one's particular opinion, but to express the opinion of those he represents. Something has-been said in regard to half-time scholars, not going into the secondary school. They have no opportunity of going into the secondary school. In some instances they are not allowed to compete in any way whatever, and even if they were allowed to compete they would be compelled to go to a secondary school for a period of three years, from thirteen to sixteen, and the general body of the people in Lancashire are opposed to that system. Then reference has been made, but no attempt has been made to show 'how it could be, that by taking half-timers into the Lancashire mills you create blind-alley employment.

This Bill will not make the slightest difference in that respect. You put lads into-the mills at twelve years of age, some in connection with the spinning mules as piecers, and some as tenters to weavers, and after they are thirteen they follow exactly the same occupation when they begin to work full time, and they get permanent employment in the same trade. So that it is a false argument to attempt to show that this Bill will deal with blind-alley employment. It will not make the slightest difference whatever. One would think, after hearing the speeches of hon. Members, that Lancashire must be an exceedingly dull place, and that on account of this half-time system Lancashire must be behind the rest of the community, but,, instead of that, Lancashire is the greatest commercial centre in the country. There is no county in England which shows a greater capacity for commercial affairs than Lancashire, and a very large number of these people who are now captains of industry in this particular industry of Lancashire have been half-timers in the mills themselves. I have been interested in reading this Bill as to what is meant by the word "beneficial," and I asked my hon. Friend behind to explain the word "beneficial." The word demands explanation, and as it is attempted to be explained it would seem that what the local authorities have to do is to see that the employment of the child is likely to lead to permanent employment. I do not envy the local authorities their job. It is a most difficult thing for them to do, because the full-timer is exactly in the same way as to blind-alley employment — exactly the same thing will occur if a child goes full time as would occur if he goes half-time, so far as permanent employment is concerned.

Reference has been made also to the question of cheap labour. As a matter of fact, the half-timer gets half as much as the full-timer. There is no such thing in the cotton trade as exploiting the half-timers and getting them for cheap rates, because they are paid exactly half of what the full-timer gets. Therefore, there is no gain in that particular direction. One would think, from the argument of my hon. Friend, that morally Lancashire was a hot-bed of crime; that it is one of the worst places that could possibly exist in this country. If the argument is to be taken to its logical conclusion, that these half-timers are subject to immoral surroundings, and that it has an effect upon their future life, it would surely show itself in regard to the crime of the county of Lancashire. I do not think that can be proved in any way whatever. Some reference was made in regard to the ballot which took place, and it was said that everybody was allowed to vote, even children themselves. If that is the case, I do not want to take that into account. I have taken the opportunity of analysing the votes of those who are adults only in some sections of the trade—spinners, bleachers, and dyers, overlookers, and twisters and drawers. I have left out the weavers, although there are a large number of adults among the weavers, but I have left out the weavers in order that the analysis should not be wrong. I find that of the adults in the particular sections of the trade I have mentioned 15,096 men voted against raising the age to thirteen and only 5,311 for, so that the difference is not very great. It is about three to one in these circumstances.

In regard to another side of the question I think that Lancashire parents are as fond of their children as any other parents are of their children. They are as anxious for their children to get as good an education, and be able to fit themselves for the battle of life, as any other people in this country, and they believe that what they are doing in sending their children half-time is the best for them. They believe that they are doing the best for the child in letting it have its education half the day and training it to work in the other half of the day. I think there has been a great deal of exaggeration in regard to the so-called evil of this system, and I maintain that it does not strengthen the case to exaggerate the evils of the half-time system. Reference has been made to children being asleep in the afternoon at school after they have been to work in the morning. I do not believe it. Within the last few days I have spoken to two schoolmasters. I told them this Debate was coming on, and I said that sometimes the evils of the half-time system were exaggerated. I asked them had they ever in the whole course of their experience, and both of them have had a long experience in school life in the textile district with half-timers, known an instance of a child going to sleep in school after working the other half of the day in the mill, and they said they had never known an instance of a child going to sleep in the afternoon in their lives. This is the evidence of schoolmasters, however much hon. Members may sneer.

I was not sneering.

This is a teachers' agitation very largely. I do not blame the teachers for it in any way whatever. They are entitled to do the best for themselves. When this question was raised on the last occasion I took some interest in it, and I took the opportunity of getting out some very interesting figures in regard to the condition of the number of half-timers in ten different districts connected with my own association. I found there were 717 half-timers in 200 mills. There were 201 up to eleven years of age, 483 up to twelve years, and 33 up to thirteen years. As regards educational ability 305 were in the fifth standard, 242 in the sixth standard, and 55 in the seventh standard. It has been said that the textile parents exploit the children, but the textile workers are not the only persons who send their children to work as half-timers. In connection with the figures I have quoted, I found that ninety-two trades were represented; cotton operatives numbered 181, miners 159, labourers 94, and carpenters and joiners 12, the others being small numbers engaged in other trades. With many of these people it is an economic problem. It is the fashion for some people to sneer at the poor widow. It is painful at times to hear the remarks which are made regarding these persons, who are doing their utmost to keep their children in food. It has not been done in this House to-day, but it has often been done outside. I took the opportunity at the time to find out how many of the parents of these children were widows, and I found that in no less than sixty-two out of 717 cases the breadwinner had died. It is an economic problem so far as they are concerned. During the last election, or the last but one, I had a most pathetic letter from a labourer working in a machine shop who earns something like £l a week and has four or five children. He said:—

"I daresay you are opposed to the half-time system, but I wish to call attention to the hardships I shall have to undergo. I have a child twelve years of age. If the age is raised, that child will not be allowed to work. I am dependent upon that child to bring something in to get food for the family."

That shows that this is not altogether a widow's problem, but an economic problem. There is another reason why Lancashire workers are opposed to raising the age. They do not believe it will operate for that improvement in the education of their children which is claimed for it. There are large numbers of children of twelve years of age at school, who are merely marking time and learning next to nothing. That is admitted by schoolmasters, who will tell you that if asked straight out. I have here a quotation which appeared in the " Manchester Guardian." It was a meeting of the Lancashire County Association of the National Union of Teachers held on the 25th February, 1911, at the Municipal Secondary School, Manchester. It was the annual meeting and 140 teachers were present, representing 10,000 teachers. Mr. W. Meredith, of Ulverston, was elected President, and in his presidential address he said:—

"Mr. Trevelyan had asked for a mandate to raise the age of attendance at elementary schools to fourteen years, and he supposed some extension was imminent This had an important bearing on the question of grouping on the number of classes or teaching units. Gould any of them honestly claim that in the schools to which he specially referred an extended school life would result in commensurate educational advantage to the child? Children of average ability commonly reached the highest division of such schools at eleven or twelve, and an extension of the time now spent there would at least intensify the injustice under which such children and their parents suffered."

Mr. Meredith spoke what was in his mind, and he said what was true, and what is known by every schoolmaster in regard to this particular question. If there is to be an alteration then I claim that if the parents are deprived of the possibility of their children being allowed to work they should have full educational value. They are entitled to a much better education than they can possibly get at the present time. The method of education existing now is largely wasted. I do not think the children are getting what they ought to get. There is too much a smattering of too many subjects; they are dealing with twenty subjects in a week; they can give only a little attention to each, and can give thorough attention to none. We are simply making a nation of clerks at the present time. We want to fit them for industrial occupations. I have often asked day scholars of fifteen years of age some simple problems in arithmetic which they ought to have been able to answer straight off. They have failed to do so, but have said they could do them if they had their pencils and paper. We want to teach them some initiative, and to apply the knowledge they gain at school. If they had a good grounding in five or six subjects, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, English, and history, they t would be better off. A better solution of the problem than that of raising the age to thirteen would be attendance at continuation schools.

After when?

After they have given full time. So far as evening continuation schools are concerned, I believe it will do-no harm if the children have to attend two-nights in the week during the winter season, at any rate. The best parents are doing it at the present time. There is a large number of children between fifteen and sixteen who attend technical classes and continuation schools, and are all the better for it. So far as I am concerned, I am prepared to make that compulsory and to register a vote in that direction for the purpose of getting full value for the money we give for education. It will enable the children to retain what they get. Reference has been made to the question of legislation by reference. It has been difficult for anybody who reads the Bill straight off to really know what it contains. He must go through the Schedules and through the different Acts of Parliament to see what is repealed. I have tried to do that. I object to the Bill because there is a want of uniformity in it. I do not believe in giving power to the local authorities in the way it is given. If the House desires to deal with the education question they should take their courage in both hands and say what should be done, but they should not put the onus upon one locality to say one thing and upon another locality to say another. Take a large town like Bolton, for instance. There are five or six different local authorities in and around it. It may be that the local authority in Bolton will decide for fourteen, and perhaps across the street—and it will be across the street all round the town—the other local authorities may decide for thirteen. That is very unfair to those parents who happen to live just across the way. Whether it is thirteen or fourteen everybody should be treated alike. This Bill abolishes half-time altogether. It abolishes the attendance limit and it abolishes the attendance certificate. If a child attends for 350 times for five years in two schools, even if he has not attained the educational standard, which most of the children do, he is entitled to go to work. That is abolished by this Bill. Does anyone believe that, from the health standpoint, it is better for a child to go full time straight off at thirteen years of age than half-time at twelve? It seems to me an unreasonable thing to go straight off at thirteen full time, and from the physical standpoint it appears it will do the child more harm than the present system. I am speaking about something of which I have bad a long experience. I have been a half-timer myself. I went in the mill at ten years of age. That is altogether different from twelve as it is to-day. It is much better to-day. I agree there is not the physical deterioration that there was some time ago, but there are hundreds in Lancashire to-day who have occupied the position of half-timers, men who have risen from the ranks, men who are needed in the different industries of Lancashire to-day, and it cannot be said that half-time has that deteriorating effect which the promoters of the Bill say it has. A very large number of the people who are engaged in the limited liability industry who are engaged as directors and managers of mills and leaders of trade unions and friendly societies, passed through the mill as half-timers, and even a few have seats in this House. So far as Lancashire is concerned, I do not accept the statements which have been made in regard to the effect that half-time has had upon the people in that respect. The Lancashire textile workers feel strongly. I represent them in this House, and I should not be doing my duty unless I expressed their views, and in order to emphasise their protest I shall vote against the Second Reading.

Our Debate has been most instructive in one way, inasmuch as the speeches of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway show us how much practical knowledge and practical experience may do to correct the impulses of benevolence. This Bill is really partly based on the benevolent notion that almost anyone knows better than the parent what is good for the child, and partly on the impression, which I have always regarded as a somewhat pedantic impression, that so long as you can get the child at school and keep him there, he is learning something and must be improving in some way or other. This Bill has been presented to us as a Bill for doing away with half-time. It really is a good deal more than that; it forbids any form of exemption up to the age of thirteen, and raises the statutory limit to fourteen years of age. To begin first with the question of half-timers. The hon. Member (Mr. Walter Rea) based his case on the Report of the Committee, which no doubt did make out strong reasons for the abolition of half-time. It affected the education of the children, so far as the evidence went, and affected their discipline though it did not apparently affect their health. But the one serious and undeniable fact is that the children engaged in half-time work were more liable to accidents than adults, and that is a serious question which will have to be considered under any circumstances whether or not the Bill becomes law. But the question whether half-time is good or bad for the child now seems, after what we have heard from two" very interesting speeches which have been delivered in the last hour and a half, to depend partly on the character of the work and partly on the character of the school, and if the work is work which is not purely mechanical and is interesting to the child, and if the work of the school is adapted to the conditions of half-time, half-time is all to the good, and the child is better mentally and physically, and increases in size owing to the better conditions under which it lives from the income which it brings to the family chest, and it is mentally better because of the additional interest and quickness which is imparted to it by taking some share in the practical work of life.

I think one may say that a very strong case has been established against this Bill on the ground of half-time only, but the case is stronger against the prohibition of exemption of any sort which the Bill lays down. All that part of the Bill seems to me to ignore some very important subjects which ought to be considered before we legislate in this way. First of all, what does the elementary school do for the child in most cases after it is twelve years old? The child has gone to school at five and remains in the elementary school up to the age of twelve; seven years have been occupied in giving it what we call elementary education. Is another year of any real value? It may be that the staff of the school is so constituted that nothing more can be done unless work of a practical character is given, and some additional interest is imparted to the knowledge which has been already acquired. That may be, but take the case of a great many schools throughout the country, rural schools in particular. The staff is not sufficient to provide that additional instruction which is necessary if the child, after having this seven years at the school or more, is to stay on for another year and to do nothing more than merely mark time and go over the old routine, which is already perhaps wearisome and repulsive to it. The scheme of the Bill is a very mechanical scheme. It does not consider what are the qualifications of the child when it reaches the age at which half-time is permissible; it merely considers attendance at school. Surely the real question at what has the child learnt? Is it getting any good from the school? What is it fit for, and what is it going to do? Is the work which it has to do suitable for it? Will it carry it any further, and is it reasonable or desirable to keep it at school in view of its existing attainments and of the possibility or probability of its learning more? These are the questions which should lie at the root of the matter. They should be embodied in the Bill. The qualifications and attainments and not mere attendance ought to be the conditions under which exemption should be allowed.

Then I protest against the theory that education is only to be got at school. You do not make a boy learned or clever simply by keeping him within the four walls of a school any more than you make a man a Christian by keeping him within the four walls of the Church, or a Statesman by ensuring that he walks periodically through the right Lobby. Employment which exercises the intelligence of the child, which brings out his character, which strengthens him, from the sense that he is doing something for the benefit of the family, and is contributing to the general support of his parents and brothers and sisters, has an educational value which far outweighs the mere routine work which he has very likely done before, and which very likely is a weariness to him to do over again. The things which ought to be considered, and which I do not find touched in the Bill, are what I have already mentioned, the attainments of the child, next the suitability of the employment, for the mere fact that the local education authority is to say in a general way whether the employment is beneficial to the child, does not seem to me to do all that ought to be done in that way, and a Bill of this sort ought to contain something like the Choice of Employment Bill provides, and the local authorities ought to have the specific duty put upon them that they should have a Committee which should help them, through the managers of the school or in some other way, to watch" the children at the time they are about to leave school and see what can be done to start them in a course of life which will lead them to some regular subsistence or some possibility of advancement. Another matter which the Bill wholly ignores is the needs and wishes of the family. We must not ignore in these matters either the wishes or interests or responsibilities of the parents. The parent has to choose in the matter of the employment of his child. The parent is entitled to express his wishes, and he is bound to exercise his responsibilities. He is surely also justified in acting with some regard for the needs of the family, and especially the younger members, who will be benefited by the money which the eldest son or the eldest daughter is able, without any sacrifice of his or her educational interests, to bring to the family stock.

Lastly, there is what appears to me to be a serious omission from the Bill. There is no provision made for the continuation of the education of the child as a condition for exemption from school attendance. It would be quite possible to exempt them from school attendance at the age of twelve, and make it a condition that there should be a certain amount of attendance at continuation classes by which the child's education should be prolonged and his interest in intellectual matters sustained, while at the same time he gets the practical interest and the strength of character which is attendant upon entering the practical work of life and helping his family. These are points which, I think, should have been dealt with. Regarding the Bill in its general aspects, you ought to consider first of all whether it is desirable to keep a child necessarily at school up to thirteen—and I maintain it is not—and then you ought to consider under what conditions he should be allowed to leave school at twelve. I should say that ought to depend on the employment provided, on the needs and wishes of the parents, and on attendance at certain continuation classes, which will prolong the child's education and sustain his educational interest. There is another aspect which was dealt with by the hon. Member for Rye (Mr. Courthope), and that is that in this matter our rural districts need special consideration. There is no doubt that if you wish to keep the man on the land you must get the boy on the land, and you cannot do that, and you do not do that, simply by teaching children in the rural elementary schools gardening, nature study, and things of that sort. That does not give them what they want—namely, a knowledge of the way to deal with horses and cattle, and the sort of things which require familiarity and manual dexterity, which are only obtained by practice from an early period of life. It is quite possible in a rural area to maintain continuation classes. I gather from the reports of the Board of Education that although the attendances are not so numerous at continuation classes in the rural areas you do get a very respectable attendance, and there is no reason why, if the Board of Education and the local authorities give their minds to it, the matter might not be worked out in such a way as to enable our rural population to be brought to the land and kept on the land more satisfactorily than they are at present without detriment, probably with an improvement, to. the education of our rural people.

There is this further consideration. This Government has brought in a Small Holdings Act, and that was supposed to be an important step towards establishing the people on the land. But, having done that, you must recollect that if you brought, a class of people on to the land who have no means to employ labour, and if a man cannot employ his sons on the small holding, very likely he will have to abandon the small holding simply from lack of the physical appliances to attend on the crops, and to do what is necessary in keeping the holding in a proper condition. I am sorry to oppose a Bill which is brought in with such excellent intentions, and which is no doubt based on the Report of the Committee, which, until I heard the practical information given by the hon. Member for Bolton (Mr. Gill) and the hon. Member for Bury (Sir G. Toulmin), did make me feel that there was a great deal to be said against half-time. But I would impress upon the House that, whatever we may say about half-time, this Bill makes it impossible, or very difficult indeed, for the Board of Education to do what I very much desire to see it do, namely, to take up this whole question of the employment of children at the time they leave school and make provision for continuation classes as a condition. It touches part of a large question and very much prejudices the proper treatment of the other part. It is-mechanical in its treatment of the matter, because it depends entirely on school attendance and not on the attainments and qualifications of children or what is to be their future object in life. It is mechanical and unintelligent. I hope the Bill may not pass the Second Reading, and that the Board of Education will take the matter seriously in hand and bring forward a considered measure as early as the congested state of our legislative programme admits, and so enable us to treat this matter that children may be set free from school when the school has done all it can for them, and may enable them to get some work which will advance them in life, which will assist their families for the time being, which will do this without the sacrifice of their intellectual interest, and which will induce the habit of reading and the following up of other topics besides those with which they are daily concerned. I believe I if the Board of Education were to bring forward a measure of this sort the question would be very much more satisfactorily dealt with once and for all, and for the time being we should not pursue a subject which we can only pursue to the detriment of its proper treatment on a larger scale.

I think the hon. Member who brought in this Bill (Mr. Walter Rea) deserves considerable credit for his record of persistency. He has this question very much at heart. He puts his case with skill and ability, and I hope he will be rewarded with a majority on this Bill to-day. I do not know that the House has any great doubt as to the attitude of the Government, because last year a more elaborate, complicated, and far-reaching Bill was presented to the House on behalf of the Government, and the present Bill, as compared with that, is a simple, and, indeed, a modest measure. 'Something has been said about the Bill in its present form being complicated and difficult to understand. I think those who read it with any real knowledge of the present state of the law must feel that it is very plain. What it does is very plain. It reduces all the reasons for full-time exemption to one. That is to say that if a child is exempted full time he has to be employed beneficially. That is the only excuse allowed in the Bill. The other change is the abolition altogether of partial exemption, or what is commonly known as half-time. That places a very simple issue before the House. As far as the Board of Education are concerned they are extremely glad to have some simplification of the law. At present there is a very confusing variation of by-laws as between the different local authorities, Some authorities always take what is now supposed to be the national standard that all children should remain in school until they are fourteen. Others have adopted by-laws which enable children sometimes to leave at eleven and practically all children to leave school at thirteen. There is enormous variation throughout the country at present.

I want to deal with full-time exemption first. I will come to partial exemption afterwards. There are two chief types of full-time exemption in the country. The first is an exemption between twelve and fourteen for children if they reach a certain standard, which is never lower than the fifth standard. It is worth remarking that very nearly half the by-laws in existence in the country have adopted that standard. It is impossible to say exactly how many children leave school on that exemption, but in any particular district it is not very many. Take London, which has adopted, as its standard, standard seven. Only 400 claimed exemption under fourteen. That is to say, a very large part of the local authorities at the present time have adopted a standard which practically keeps the great mass of the children in school until they are fourteen. I do not know whether if the Bill went to a Committee the Committee would think fit to abolish this exemption altogether. Personally I should like to see it abolished, because I do not think it a good thing to let off just the cleverest children, those who are most likely to profit by good schooling. But the exemption under which most children now escape full time is what is known as the attendance exemption, by which children who have made 350 attendances in five years in not more than two schools can get away at the age of thirteen. That exemption I take to be throughly bad, for this reason. It is no real check on leaving school. If you regard it as a check it is dishonest and unreal, because all children get away under that exemption, who have not had some very long illness which has prevented them from attending for a considerable time. What this Bill does is to say there shall be only one full-time exemption, and that exemption shall be if a child in The opinion of the local education authority is beneficially employed. The local education authority will be able to take one of two courses. They will be able to adopt the general law that all children should stay in school until they are fourteen, or adopt the exemption that they may leave school at thirteen if they are. beneficially employed. I think that is a simple provision and a good provision. I think that any other sort of exemption is difficult to work and unsatisfactory, and I think there are great merits in that particular exemption. It is true that it is a little difficult to define beneficial employment and an attempt to define it more thoroughly is made in the Bill. I think that it is a fair attempt. It might possibly be improved on, but in the main it will as now lie with the local education authority to decide whether the employment is beneficial or not. I think that the hon. Member for the City of London misunderstood the existing state of things in which it now lies with the local education authority to decide whether the employ- ment is beneficial or not. I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University (Sir W. Anson) would probably agree with my description of the attendance exemption, and I certainly agree with what I understood him to say, that if there were any exemption it would be a good thing to make it a condition of that exemption that there should be some sort of attendance at continuation classes. I can assure him that if any workable proposition were brought forward of that type, I personally would be very glad to help him.

Does the hon. Gentleman know that it is now worked in Scotland?

Yes, I am aware of that. If this Bill went into Committee I should be very glad to consider and, at any rate, to co-operate with the right hon. Gentleman in bringing in some such proposal. I should imagine that my hon. Friend who brought in this Bill, who like myself was on the Commitee, "would rather recommend this course.

indicated assent

Could that be done?

You mean as a matter of order—yes. I now come to what is regarded as the centre of the Bill, the abolition of partial exemption, or what is commonly known as half-time. The question of half-time is a diminishing problem. There has been a practically steady decrease in the number of half-timers from 1890 down to the present day, partly due to custom and partly due to the operation of restrictive Laws. But that decrease is now going on quite steadily since the last restriction in the law. The last figures which we had at the Committee over which I presided were that there were 47,360 half-timers throughout the country.

Industrial half-timers?

No, all half-timers. 'That number had fallen in 1910 to 36,148, and in 1911 to 34,076. There are two kinds of half-timers. I want, first of all, to deal with partial exemption in agriculture, which hon. Members opposite have spoken of. I am sorry the Member for Rye (Mr. Courthope) is not here, as he spoke specially about it. In the case of agriculture, partial exemption is going out with extreme rapidity. All the evidence given before the Committee over which I presided three years ago went to show that the rural population did not care about half-time. I am not speaking about full-time exemption; I am talking about partial exemption. All the evidence went to show that it was not regarded as useful by practically any part of the agricultural population. At the time the Committee was sitting, three years ago, the last figures we had for 1906; were 3,800 half-timers who were employed in the agricultural industry. The three chief counties in which those half-timers were found were Cambridgeshire, the East Biding, and Kent. The largest numbers were found in those counties. All these three counties since then have abandoned the half-time system. There is not a single half-time agricultural child in any one of those counties. I cannot tell the House exactly how many agricultural half-timers there are, because we got the figures by a special inquiry. But this we do know, that in the county areas, including Yorkshire and Lancashire, there are only 2,130 half-timers at all. The agricultural half-timers must come out of those, and, as Cheshire and Staffordshire, I presume, have a good many industrial half-timers, I put it to the House that there is a very small and very rapidly diminishing number of partially exempt children in the agricultural districts of England. Therefore I hope that those Members of the House who are chiefly interested in agriculture will not oppose this Bill, and I hope they will do it on this ground, that in Committee my hon. Friend, I am perfectly certain, will be ready to consider any special Amendment with reference to agriculture.

4.0 p.m.

I do not think any Committee of this House is likely to wish to continue partial exemption in the agricultural districts, because it is not desired, and is rapidly disappearing. The question of full-time age in regard to agriculture is another matter. I have no doubt my hon. Friend will be open to consider whether thirteen is an age too high or not. But I am inclined myself to think that the considerations which my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster Division (Mr. Wright) put in the course of his speech are really considerations to which the House would attend. He said he thought that children should stay at school, even in agricultural districts, until thirteen years of age at least, and that -what the House should rather consider was giving a more practical turn to education in agricultural districts. I thoroughly agree that consideration should be given to what he said. But I would point out that, although the efforts of the Board of Education in recent years have been to make education in the agricultural districts more and more practical, you cannot change a system of education in a day; you cannot expect the local authorities in a day to have a change of system in every school; they have to get the managers to do it; they have to get the teachers who are interested in the matter; they have, it may be, to teach a great many of the teachers, or they have to wait till they get a new generation of teachers interested in the subject. You cannot change the whole system of education in the country districts at once, but it is being rapidly done. There are many counties in which school gardens are gradually becoming part of the ordinary course. A very large number of local authorities at the present time are rapidly making education more and more practical. I suggest that if the local authorities had the full and free opportunity which they would obtain under this Bill, of allowing children to go at thirteen provided they are beneficially employed in agriculture, it would practically meet the interests of agriculture. However, the battle ground in this matter is of course in regard to the textile industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire. My hon. Friend who seconded the Bill said one thing in regard to the half-time system in factories which was perhaps rather unkind. He said it was a survival of a barbarous and unfeeling time. That is not historically correct, because as a matter of fact the factory half-time system was the first beginning of compulsory education in Great Britain. The Factory Acts of 1833 and 1844 came into operation at the time when there was no compulsion for any child to attend school, and it was made necessary for employers before they employed children in factories to send them half the week to school. Although it began in order to ensure to the child an opportunity of attending school, now the exemption has a restrictive and narrowing effect.

I think this House, certainly the Board of Education, are bound to consider this question chiefly from the education point of view. I think we all ought to do so, and I do not think really that any case can be made out educationally for half-timers. There is not the slightest question in my mind—on all the evidence which we have it was not really contested—that it does disturb the organisation of the school to begin with. It stands to reason that it should. If half the children who attend the school do not come for half the day, one of two things must happen. Either those children going to school for half a day have to receive the separate attention of the teacher in order to bring them up to the standard of the full-time children, or the teachers have to neglect them in order to give attention to the full-time children. You cannot in the nature of things carry on education as effectively under those conditions as if you had all the children in the school at the same time. It has been found by a variety of local authorities to be absolutely impossible to arrange for separate half-time classes, for the reason that-most of the half-timers are in large towns, and, being drawn from different parts of the same town, they naturally go to the school which is nearest to their home. It has been found absolutely impossible to congregate all the half-timers in special schools; they always want to go to the schools nearest to their home, like all other children, and you very seldom, get enough in one school to make a class or any number of classes. From the educational point of view, therefore, half-time is, and must remain, a great disadvantage. I must say that the evidence which we have is very conclusive as to the effect of the half-time system on children going to school in the afternoon. Nothing can get round this fact, that the child is really likely to be more active minded in the afternoon if he has got up at nine o'clock in the morning than if he has got up at six o'clock in the morning. I am not at all surprised that every teacher, or anybody who has anything to do with schools, says the same thing. There may be some exceptions, but we could not find them. As a matter of fact, the child who is working in the factory and at school as well is doing half as much work again as the child who is full-time at school. It stands to reason that it is very difficult to do that work. There is, no doubt whatever that the future chances of the half-time child are not as good as those of the full-time child. There is no doubt whatever that they do not go to secondary schools as much as the full-time children. It is conceivable that that may be due to the fact that the parents do not want them to go, but I do not think so.

What they do, then, is to make provision for the younger brothers and sisters to go.

Where families send children as half-timers to the mills they generally send all. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Yes, they generally send all. As it is the custom in a district, so it is the custom in the family once it is begun. I very much doubt if any great benefit is done to the brothers and sisters of those who go into factories. The fact does remain, I am afraid, that the half-timers do not get those opportunities, and they do not get the opportunities either in the continuation classes. Sometimes they go to those classes. The hon. Member who moved the Second Reading gave some figures on this point. Halifax is a town where there is a very elaborate system of continuation classes, and in that town they took the figures of full-timers and half-timers. Whereas of the full-timers who went into the continuation classes I think 36 per cent. stayed on in order to take advanced classes in the continuation classes, of the half-timers only something like 3 per cent. stayed on. The truth is the half-timer gets out of touch with the school much earlier than the full-timer.

The principal at Halifax states that 78.2 of the boys who attend full-time at day schools passed from the preparatory courses in the evening schools, and only 23 per cent, of those who had been half-timers passed through those preparatory courses.

And then he goes on to give the figures for a year or two later, showing that practically none of the half-timers go on. I rather fancy all the Committee who investigated this matter with regard to the educational side of the question will remain entirely unrepentant in thinking that there is nothing to be said from the educational point of view for the system. I do not press, and I never have pressed, the questions of health or character. I think those questions are very difficult. There are figures of the weighing and measuring of half-timers and full-timers. They are very plausible both ways. It is rather like vaccination and anti-vaccination, where there are splendid figures for proving either side. I should not lay very much stress on the matter of health myself. The hon. Member for Bury (Sir G. Toulmin) spoke on this Debate. I am sorry I had not the opportunity of hearing him, but I understand that one I of the things on which he laid stress was that it is not a good thing to send children straight from the school into the mill, because they ought to be gradually made accustomed to industrial life. If that had f any force, I should not think that a two years' half-time system, which creates a sham system of education, makes it worth while continuing that system. If it is true that a young child going into a mill is really seriously prejudiced in health or anything else by so doing and working full time, I say that it is time the House took the matter into consideration and legislated to prevent such loss of health. But I very much doubt whether, as a matter of fact, a child does very seriously lose by going full time if he goes at a reasonable age. Nor do I wish to lay much stress on the loss of character sustained by children going into mills. I only say that the mill and not the school begins the child's world. Directly he gets into the mill, he naturally thinks it a very exciting and amusing place. His companions are older than himself, and he begins to be interested in the ways of grown-up people. That may or may not be good for the child, according to the character of the mill and according to one's view of how soon it is a good thing to begin hardening children and bringing them up with grown-ups. That is a very arguable question. Personally, I am in favour of leaving children in what I may call the softer surroundings of school and companions of their own age as long as possible. There may be those who think it a good thing that they should be thrown into the hardening circumstances of ordinary life as early as possible. I do not wish to say by any means that this extra year is necessarily injurious to the character of children. I merely think that it brings them into the big world sooner, and that fourteen years of age is quite soon enough for that.

There are two objections with which I wish to deal. The first is that half-time is of great wage value to parents. No doubt the £5 or £10 addition to the family income is an attraction to a certain number of working-class families. That is perfectly clear from the views of the operatives of Lancashire. None of us can possibly deny the attitude of the average operative in the industries in question, and I do not see any signs that the objection to the abolition of half-time will disappear rapidly, though there has been a slight reduction in the majority in favour of the system in the last year or two. The Textile Council is against the abolition, and the hon. Member for Bolton (Mr. Gill) said that he spoke with reluctance as a delegate, or words to that effect. I know that in the district of Yorkshire that I represent many of those who would like to keep half-time in existence regard it as doomed. They know what the general feeling of the country is on the matter. I believe that there would be practical acquiescence in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the abolition of half-time if it were done by this House. Only the other day in the West Biding of Yorkshire they abolished half-time for their area. It is true that they have gone back on their decision: as I understood it that is because they feel they could not differentiate between towns with exactly the same industry as independent municipalities in the same area. For instance, Shipley would be in the West Riding area, and Bradford would be independent. Bradford would keep half-timers: Shipley could not. Therefore the West Riding felt that they could not differentiate between the different parts of the West Biding. I take it that the effect of that is a practical invitation to us to set about equalising matters in their area. There remains one argument, and that is that the training that the children get in the mills is of great industrial value. I must say with regard to this I am increasingly sceptical. Men with equal right to speak say absolutely different things. Some owners and managers of mills, and foremen, will say that the half-timer is eternally defter than the child who has gone into the mill a year later. Others will say that the full-timer is as good in a month or two as ever the half-timer was. It is really impossible to make certain in regard to this matter.

I would remind the House of one or two facts in connection with it. In the great areas of industry in the country where half-timers a few years ago were quite the thing, and the ordinary thing, they have ceased to be utilised at the desire, or with the willing acquiescence of employers in those districts. Huddersfield has been mentioned to-day. It is perfectly true that the Huddersfield trade is in some respects different from the Bradford trade. In Huddersfield in 1880 there were nearly 2,000 half-timers. They thought it just as necessary to have them as Bradford now does. Owing to an educational movement in Huddersfield, down went the number of the half-timers. In 1882 there were 1,000 half-timers; in 1891, 750; and in 1901, 94. Then they disappeared altogether. Huddersfield never now complains of its disadvantage with any other towns. Take Scotland. Scotland has got textile industries. I understand my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bury (Sir G. Toulmin) spoke about Dundee, and quoted matter concerning some very sensible half-time classes. His information is different from mine. Those half-time classes cannot exist now, because the figures of half-timers in Dundee run as follows: For the year ending June, 1910, 239; for 1911, 60; and for the present year 29 half-timers. The truth is that half-time as a custom has disappeared in Scotland. Therefore it is not wanted. Really at the bottom the whole thing is a matter of custom. There are a large number of half-timers who do not belong to the textile industry. Where do you find those? You find them in domestic work, for golfing, and for all sorts of purposes. Only where you have got the textile half-timer do the parents of those children say that it is absolutely necessary to have half-time—in Bradford, Oldham, and other places. Parents who have got just the same necessity—if the necessity exists—in London, Leeds, Huddersfield, do not send their children to work. The thing is a matter of custom, and a custom it will remain; and I am certain that the House will be wise to take upon itself the responsibility for the breaking of that custom by passing the Bill which has been brought forward to-day.

Is the hon. Gentleman right in saying that it is possible to introduce an Amendment making it a condition that a child shall attend a continuation class, having regard to the title of the Bill: it is a Bill to amend the law with respect to the attendance of children at elementary schools?

I should say so. Here are two conditions of exemption laid down, ( a ) and ( b ). Surely it would be possible to put in a third.

I hope the House will not give this Bill a Second Beading this afternoon. This is a Friday, when not many Members are ever in attendance at the House. What will happen if this Bill is given a Second Reading? It will go upstairs, and will probably be considered by one of the Grand Committees. I venture to say it is far too important a Bill, and raises far too wide an issue with regard to the whole of the country, than such a Bill as ought to be sent upstairs. This is a Bill to do away with half-timers and to amend education in this country, as its title says, and if it is to become law the Government ought to bring it forward properly in this House and not allow it to be brought forward by a private Member and then adopted as a Government Bill. A good deal has been said about agriculture. From my own experience among a great many agriculturists, I would say that if this Bill becomes law it will inflict a great hardship upon them. I have heard agriculturists in various parts of the country over and over again complain that at the present moment their children are kept at school fully as long, and rather longer, than they think is beneficial, and the result is that very often the effect of the last year at school is to turn them away from agricultural work, the work they would naturally be put to, and make them turn to be clerks or something of that sort. I am certain that if the Government wishes to regain some of its popularity in the country it would do well to consider this point. This giving of children excessive education is most unpopular in the country.

The hon. Member who spoke for the Government put forward what I thought was a curious argument to come from this Government. He said that one advantage of this Bill would be that it would, if passed, lead to centralisation of the towns as regards half-time labour; all the educational authorities in the country would have to adopt the same plan. He thought it would be an advantage that there would not be one educational authority letting in children at one age and another authority at another age. That seems extraordinary, coming from this Government, because what we have heard on other Bills from them is that, the various parts of the country know what suits those parts of the country better than the country as a whole does. The result would be that Lancashire, Yorkshire, or Warwickshire, or any other part of the country, might wish to lay down regulations as to this matter which, in their belief, would suit the children in that district, but they would not be able to do so any longer if this Bill became law. The hon. Gentleman talked a good deal about technical education, and he said that, in order to teach children to be practical, technical education has become part of the curriculum of education in this country. He seemed to forget that one way to become practical is by going to work at all years. He talked about children learning about gardening and carving, but he forgot to mention, as the right hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) reminded us, that as regards agricultural children, although they may want gardening and carving, yet if they wish to be practical agriculturists they must know something about stock, cattle, horses, pigs, and so on. Young people can only do that by going early on farms. The speeches we have heard to-day certainly reinforce my argument that this Bill ought not to be sent upstairs. We have had a. most remarkable Debate, and neither from one side of the House nor the other has there been any sort of agreement. One of the most remarkable speeches against the Bill came from the hon. Member for Bolton, whose speech I have listened to with great pleasure and sympathy, and I am in agreement with every word he said. There are other hon. Members who have-spoken in the same sense, and there are some hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House who agree with this Bill. If this House passes the Second Beading I ask the House not to allow it to go to a Standing Committee upstairs, because this measure ought to receive more careful consideration than it is likely to get before a Committee upstairs.

I want to say something about the wishes of the parents. Surely in this Bill those wishes are absolutely disregarded, and apparently the parents are to have no say as to whether their children are to be half-timers or not. Under this Bill the wishes of the education authorities are to prevail. I do not know whether that is the modem policy of the Liberal party, but, in my opinion, the people who know best of all what is good for their children are the parents, and they ought to be consulted. For pecuniary purposes, and in order to enable the parents to support themselves better, it may be argued that they would not look after the health of the children. I would remind the House that at the present time the children attending schools are supervised medically at regular intervals, and if anything goes wrong as regards those children that medical supervision ought to deal with it. Therefore I hope that objection will not be considered. Personally I have a much deeper objection than any I have mentioned so far. The Bill is practically one to keep children longer at school than is the case at the present time. I do not know whether many hon. Members will agree with me, but my opinion is that you ought to teach children up to a certain point all that they can learn in the elementary schools of the country. You will find that when they have learned a certain amount you cannot put any more knowledge into the brains of the children, and they do not get any "forrader," and any further expense upon them is a waste of money. On the other hand, you do find that there are children in every class of life who, if they had the opportunity of getting the very best education, would be able to do something for themselves and for the country, and would be of use to their generation. To my mind the only possible way of doing the best we can for the children is when they reach the age of twelve or thirteen, if they prove that they cannot take in any more knowledge they should be given facilities for leaving school, earlier, if anything, than they are allowed at the present time; but, instead of a Bill like this for the benefit of those children who have got something in them, and who, in the opinion of the school managers and the teachers, have got good brains and would be able to do a good deal with those brains, it would be better that the Government should take up their education after they leave the elementary schools, should send them to the secondary schools and to the universities, and pay for them and do the best they can to get the best results from the brains of the children of this country. I hope with all my heart this Bill will not receive a Second Beading; and, before any Bill like this comes in force, I hope there will be some reconsideration of the educational system, so that the best results may be got out of the brains of the children, instead of the worst, as is very often the case.

The hon. Member who has just sat down has urged that there are Members on all sides of the House who have criticised it; but the supporters of the Bill might also urge that there are Members on all sides of the House who are in favour of it. I know there are Members on his own side of the House who have not spoken who would join with the admirable speech of the hon Member for the Leominster Division of Herefordshire (Mr. Wright) in support of the main principle of the Bill, and many of us who support it would willingly see further facilities given for the bright children, and also a lightening of the educational programme for the dull child.

This is a Bill " to amend the law with respect to the attendance of children at elementary schools."

That is the case, and the hon. Member proposes an alternative. He wishes to see further scholarships given to the clever children while he wishes to keep the age of exemption low for the dull children. He also, I gather, wishes to see a simplification of the school programme. I think there is an agreement on all sides of the House that there might be a simplification of the school programme, but I do not think that has anything to do with the object of this Bill. If by this Bill we compel a number of children who now go away to stay at school we shall give an additional motive to the local education authorities, and to the Board of Education to work for those educational reforms which have been urged on this side-, of the House and by other Members.

May I with great respect urge that if I am not allowed to discuss the point, the Bill ought to have been called "A Bill for doing away with the half-time system." That would have been a more honest title.

I will not pursue the matter further. I think the House will, see it is quite possible to agree with the? hon. Member on certain points, while at the same time strongly supporting the main principle of this Bill. Many of us. were surprised, and regret that the right hon. and learned Member for Oxford University (Sir W. Anson), a former Education Minister, should have cast such reflection upon our school system as a whole, and should have had so little hope of its. value to the child attending the ordinary school. Personally, as one of his constituents, I regret that a University Member should take the line that the right hon. Gentleman felt it his duty to take. "We are not in the main principle of this Bill dealing merely with the recommendation of one Departmental Committee. We are also-dealing with the recommendation of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education, and we have behind us the immense support of both sections of the-Royal Commission on the Poor Law. Both the Majority and the Minority Members of the Commission recommended that the school age should be raised, not to fourteen but to fifteen, and that there should be very few exemptions allowed under fifteen years of age. We have not acted yet by legislation on the Report of the Poor Law Commission, and I think that on all sides of the House Members regret that action has not been taken yet at least on those portions of the recommendations of the Commissioners where the Commissioners were agreed. This question of raising the school age is one of those enormously important points where all sections of the Poor Law Commission were in complete agreement. Surely, therefore, when we have the support of the whole weight of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education, the Poor Law Commissioners, and the Departmental Committee, on whose Report especially this Bill is based, it is amazing that we should have a distinguished educationalist like the right hon. and "learned Gentleman opposing the principle of this Bill. I venture to say that he stands alone as the only distinguished educationalist—[An HON. MEMBER: "No, no"]—who is opposed to the principle of this Bill on educational grounds. Certain educational grounds have been mentioned T>y the hon. Member for Bury, who wished the present system to be continued. As an advocate of compulsory continuation classes he wished to see the present half-time system maintained. The compulsory classes which are advocated by the Consultative Committee are entirely different from those which we have at present under the half-time system. The half-time system is only a partial system applying to certain districts, and as we have seen in the course of this Debate, those districts are gradually coming to see that it must be abandoned.

I think it would be a great mistake for the House to be misled by that apparently educational argument. It was very noteworthy that the hon. Member had to go to Scotland to get his satisfactory instance of half-time classes, and that he was only able to quote one medical officer who was able to give strong opinions in support of the present system, and even that gentleman said that he was in favour of raising the school age. "We have, too, the overwhelming feeling of the thoughtful working classes in favour of this great change. I think we must all sympathise with the position of the hon. Member for Bolton. He spoke evidently with some reluctance, because he knew that the feeling of the Trades Union Congress, and of the Labour party as a whole was strongly against him, and he spoke distinctly as a delegate on behalf of his own constituents. I think we need to remember that years ago it was Lancashire Members who opposed the Factory Acts, the restricting of child labour, and that probably when the last measure was passed raising the age of exemption for school children the same class of people who object now to this change would object then. The House, in spite of the objections that were then raised, carried that reform as I hope they will carry this. We are not simply here as delegates. Though we may feel that certain of our constituents will oppose a change like this, and regret it, we have to think not only of what our constituents wish to-day, but what they will approve of to-morrow. I think we can see, looking back over the course of history, that the very districts in this country that opposed the Factory Acts and opposed the raising of the school age in the past now see the full advantage of those changes, and would not oppose them again, and the very men who oppose this change to-day, in a few years time, when it is carried, will be willing to recognise that it has been beneficial.

On behalf of those who are promoting the Bill I welcome the suggestion that the particular case of the agricultural child should be dealt with in Committee, for it is a Committee point. We are perfectly prepared to consider this, if the House gives the Bill a Second Reading. I think that by the extension of what is called the Swiss system of dealing with holidays, the particular difficulties of harvest time and fruit-picking time can be dealt with, and that, at the same time, it may be possible, without in any way prejudicing the decision of the Committee, if there is to be any lower age accepted for any trade or occupation, to make special exemptions for agriculture, in view of the healthful nature of the occupation. That is a Committee point, and it should be dealt with on its own merits in Committee, and ought not to prevent any Member voting for the main principle of the Bill.

May I deal, very briefly, deal with the Bill as it affects the industrial districts in the West Riding of Yorkshire, with which I am more especially connected. The statistics that we get now from the Labour Exchanges in different parts of Yorkshire show that in many districts where the half-time system exists, there is practically no problem of juvenile unemployment for the time being, but the same statistics show that at a later stage you do get the problem. Although in Bradford there are hardly any boys or girls unemployed under eighteen, you get a considerable number after that age who are unemployed. The abolition of half-time there would simply mean that, at the worst, you would have to re-adjust the time of the work. The boy who is now unemployed at eighteen would stay longer at school at the one end. It would not in any way complicate the problem. On the other hand, in Leeds, where there are hardly any half-timers, you have a very large number of cases of juvenile unemployed. Outside London, the Labour Exchange statistics show that there are more juveniles in Leeds applying at the Labour Exchanges than in any city in the United Kingdom where there is little or no half-time employment. The effect of this Bill in that case would be very great and very good. It will keep at school a large number of children who are now unemployed. At present the child leaves too often at thirteen, sometimes earlier. Between thirteen and eighteen he has, on the average, months of unemployment. It would, surely be better to put those months together, and to have the boy or the girl employed at school for a year longer, and to save them the unemployment which, in most cases, is almost inevitable under the present system, because there is really a surplus of juvenile labour under the age of eighteen in the city of Leeds, although a large number go outside by tramways to adjoining towns, where the textile industries employ a large number of young people. That shows the position of the West Biding towns. I think we may claim that the Bill will do a great deal not only for half-timers, but for young children in the towns where there is no problem of half-time labour, but where at present too many children are allowed to leave the schools simply on the ground that they have attended a certain number of times. At present, out of 327 education authorities only 153 refuse to give exemption certificates on the ground of attendance only. We want to bring up the lagging authorities to the standard set by the good education authorities for the benefit of the children as a whole. Finally we have to remember that every argument which has been brought against this measure has been brought in the past against the successive measures which have been taken to raise the age-limit and reduce the hours of child labour in factories. In particular the arguments, adduced by the hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) are all arguments not merely against this Bill but against the whole course of modern legislation, indeed I may say against the whole trend of our civilisation. I hope when the House realises that the hon. Baronet has frankly said he would gladly see the House close its doors and cease from legislating for a series of years they will not attach too great weight to the arguments he has brought forward, and will endorse the principle of this excellent Bill.

It is very apparent from the speech we have just heard that the real object of a great many promoters of the Bill is to raise the school age all round, and so far from its merely being an attempt to deal with the half-time question it is only a step towards raising the school age to fifteen all round. If that is the object, representing as I do an agricultural constituency, I feel bound to oppose this without any sort of attempt being made to meet the difficulties of those engaged in agricultural pursuits.

I distinctly said we should be prepared to consider in Committee the case of agriculture, and I am quite sure that what has fallen already in the course of the Debate shows that other hon. Members take the same view.

I very much mistrust the source from which this Bill arises. It has not shown very much sympathy for agriculture. The Committee on whose Report the Bill is based was formed almost entirely of industrial gentlemen, and I remember calling attention to it at the time and complaining that there was. practically no agricultural representative except Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, who certainly is a very excellent representative of agriculture; but to appoint one who is only a peer is hardly giving sufficient consideration to the agricultural interest. A large number of Gentlemen who dogmatise about the great advantage of staying at school till a very advanced age really do not approach these questions from the-right point of view with regard to children who are likely to spend the rest of their lives in farming or any other agricultural pursuits. There are two mistakes which seem to be invariably made. The first is the idea that by keeping a child at school a long time after he and his parents would like him to leave you are giving him a taste for education for the .rest of his life. You are doing exactly the .opposite. You are making him hate it. What you want to do is to give him the power of being able to teach himself afterwards, and I should be prepared to go a great way towards compelling him to continue his education by evening schools up to a very considerable age. The proper way, as I think, is to let him leave at an earlier age in agricultural districts than thirteen on condition that he attends evening school one or two nights a week during the winter months. You will then have given him a foundation, and if he is any good he can pursue knowledge on his own account. If you keep him up to fourteen, and perhaps a year or two years longer, he is longing to go all the time, and the moment he goes he drops the whole thing, and at sixteen probably he cannot do an ordinary sum. I am quite certain if you want to improve education in country districts you will not do it by raising the school age. No one has ever, as far as I can make out, attempted to prove to-day what good you do by keeping a boy who really does not want to learn at school a year or two after he has learnt all that he is likely to require. There is another thing which people always seem to forget. They talk a great deal about what can be done for children by this rural education in the schools. I have no doubt a certain amount can be done, but nothing is likely to be learned in school to equal what can be learned practically on a farm, or in a garden for that reason. A large majority of our teachers know nothing about rural life themselves. It is not a bit of good sending down to a school in the country a man who has got a certificate for agriculture learned from text-books, and expect him to teach children rural pursuits. Some of the children know more practically than the teachers do themselves. The mistake we make is in not selecting country people and training them for teacherships in the country schools. If you would make it more attractive and possible for children in the country districts to get an education which would qualify them for teacherships, they would teach in half an hour what a London-bred teacher would not teach in the whole of his life. In these ways we could do something for rural education.

What is proposed in the Bill is merely a clumsy process of raising the school age, and I do not think it will help us very much. As regards half-timers, I do not think there is very much difference of opinion. It is perfectly clear that it interferes very much with the organisation of a school to have half-timers there, and I sympathise with the teachers in this matter. At the same time the school is not for the teachers, but the teachers are meant to give the best sort of education they can to the children. I have always been very much astonished at the extraordinary power of organisation which the teachers of this country possess. I think it is perfectly reasonable for them to ask that they should not have the great difficulty which the half-time system imposes upon them. I wish they would confine themselves to asking that without mixing up the question with the raising of the compulsory age from thirteen to fourteen or fourteen to fifteen. The one is a reasonable demand, and the other does not seem to me to be so. I do feel that neglect of the agricultural interests has been shown in introducing this Bill, and I am not therefore disposed to support the Second Reading. I shall be sorry to oppose it, but I do not believe this is the right way to set about the matter. I do not profess to be a great educationist, but I probably know as much about educational matters as many Members of this House. I was for a good number of years a member of a school board. We are told that nobody who knows anything about education could possibly oppose this Bill. I do not think that so far as the rural districts are concerned it is going to do any good at all; on the contrary, I believe it will do a great deal of harm.

The hon. Member (Mr. Bridgeman) urged that facilities should be given for children in the country districts reaching an educational standard which would enable them to become teachers, and then he said that he was going to vote against this Bill which will give further education to children to do the very work he desires they should be able to do, and that forsooth in the interests of the children in the country schools. The attitude of the Labour party is distinctly in favour of this Bill, and something more than this Bill if it could be accomplished. But, inasmuch as this Bill is a step towards the ideal we have in our minds for children, we shall back it to the utmost of our ability. Although this is opposed by the representatives of the cotton operatives in their representative capacity, they speak for a very small portion of the great army of labour for whom the Labour Members as a whole speak. I happen to have asked the secretary to the Trade Union Congress about the decisions in Congress for a number of years past, and year after year the age of exemption asked for by the Trade Union Congress, the operatives of Lancashire only dissenting, has been the age of sixteen and not the modest age of thirteen. With regard to the vote of the operatives on this question, I understood from the hon. Member for Bolton that junior members of the organisation were allowed to vote. If that be so their decision has less force. Moreover, the operatives are not the only workers in Lancashire. The children of cotton operatives only represent something like 30 per cent., probably less, of the half-timers who are employed in Lancashire mills. There are thus 70 per cent, of the working-class population whose voice, I imagine, is to be ignored, yet who, when they elect to the Trade Union Congress, give votes which are sufficient to override the minority which give their vote for the retention of the half-time system. The Labour Party Congress, too, which is distinct from the Trade Union Congress, is in favour of raising the age. The colleague of the hon. Member for Bolton is in favour of raising the age. The best mills in Lancashire are dispensing with half-time workers. We have the Chairman of the Lancashire Education Committee himself who advocates raising the age and dispensing with half-time. Go where you will, the best educationalists, the best manufacturers, and many of the leaders of the operatives themselves are for doing away with the system, which, in my opinion, is sacrificing the child in the supposed interests of the parents.

Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 176; Noes, 52.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.