First published in 1969, John Fielden was a businessman, Radical, humanitarian and Parliamentarian, often bored haughty politicians and shocked respectable middle-class opinion. This is a reprint of his work Curse of the factory system’, or ‘A short account of the origin of factory cruelties; of the attempts to protect the children by law; of their present sufferings; our duty towards them; injustice of Mr Thomson's Bill; the folly of the political economists, a warning against sending the children of the South into the factories of the North.’