First published in "Reports on the Iron Trades and other Manufactures of South Staffordshire and the neighbouring parts of Worcestershire and Shropshire" in Children's Employment Commission: Appendix to the Second Report of the Commissioners. Trades and Manufactures. Part II. Reports and Evidence from Sub-Commissioners. (1842)
Such "Blue Books" were reports of the investigations into myriad aspects of the life of the nation that were one of Parliament's major activities and provide a vast record of the effects of early Victorian industrialization. In addition to the text, which related shocking facts about the inhumane working conditions, treatment, and living conditions of the industrial poor in minute detail, and often in quasi-interview or testimonial form, the blue books contained illustrations of the conditions that they described.
These investigations helped contribute to the gradual improvement of the working conditions of children, women, and eventually men through legislation, such as the 1847 Factory Act, which regulated industrial labour. Such reports as Horne's also provided writers of protest literature such as Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, and Elizabeth Gaskell with information which they incorporated into their fiction. Elizabeth Barrett's The Cry of the Children was a particularly effective attack on the exploitation of children detailed in her friend Horne's report.