The home is largely destroyed where the mother follows the father into the factory,and where the hours of labour are so long that they have no time to see their children.The omnibus drivers of London,for instance,what time have they for discharging the daily duties of parentage to their little ones?How can a man who is on his omnibus from fourteen to sixteen hours a day have time to be a father to his children in any sense of the word?He has hardly a chance to see them except when they are asleep.Even the Sabbath,that blessed institution which is one of the sheet anchors of human existence,is encroached upon.Many of the new industries which have been started or developed since I was a boy ignore man's need of one day's rest in seven.The railway,the post-office,the tramway all compel some of their employes to be content with less than the divinely appointed minimum of leisure.In the country darkness restores the labouring father to his little ones.In the town gas and the electric light enables the employer to rob the children of the whole of their father's waking hours,and in some cases he takes the mother's also.Under some of the conditions of modern industry,children are not so much born into a home as they are spawned into the world like fish,with the results which we see.
The decline of natural affection follows inevitably from the substitution of the fish relationship for that of the human.A father who never dandles his child on his knee cannot have a very keen sense of the responsibilities of paternity.In the rush and pressure of our competitive City life,thousands of men have not time to be fathers.
Sires,yes;fathers,no.It will take a good deal of schoolmaster to make up for that change.If this be the case,even with the children constantly employed,it can be imagined what kind of a home life is possessed by the children of the tramp,the odd jobber,the thief,and the harlot.For all these people have children,although they have no homes in which to rear them.Not a bird in all the woods or fields but prepares some kind of a nest in which to hatch and rear its young,even if it be but a hole in the sand or a few crossed sticks in the bush.