IT is difficult to realise that there are people living today who escaped by only a few years the fate of those poor wretches who as "parish apprentices" were dragged off at the age of five, six or seven to toil until they died from overwork or starvation in the mills or mines. Here and there a human being, a Richard Arkwright, a Sam Oldknow, a Robert Owen, tried to improve the conditions of work for factory hands in general and children in particular, but the pass- ing of the "hungry forties" did not see the end of the struggle between the children and the pigs for the contents of the swill tub.