"...Many manufacturers employ upwards of 3,000 of these lace-makers, who are chiefly children and young persons of the female sex exclusively... From their fifth year and often earlier, until their tweflth or fifteenth year... during the first year the very young ones work from four to eight hours, and later on, from six in the morning till eight or ten o'clock at night...
'It is not at all uncommon in Nottingham to find 14 to 20 children huddled together in a small room, of, perhaps, not more than 12 feet square, and employed for 15 hours out of the 24, at work that is itself exhausting, from its weariness and monotony, and is besides carried out under every possible unwholesome condition... Even the very youngest children work with a strained attention and a rapidity that is astonishing, hardly ever giving their fingers rest or slowing their motion.'" --Capital, Karl Marx.
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