Did William Pitt the Younger say, “We must yoke up the children to work in the factories”?

Question

Purdy (2016):

skilled adult labour was in such short supply that when his Chancellor of the Exchequer warned Prime Minister William Pitt that businesses were becoming unable to pay their taxes to fund the war, he is on record as saying, 'Then we must yoke up the children to work in the factories!'

Jane Humphries (2011):

During the war with revolutionary France, Prime Minister William Pitt was warned that British manufacturers weren't able to pay their taxes. They blamed high wages. With one in ten men away fighting, able adult workers came at a premium and cut into profits. Pitt's advice was short and simple—he is supposed to have told them, "Yoke up the children."

Collyer (1908):

It is told of the younger Pitt that, in looking round for more earners and still more to meet the demands for more money and still more to carry on the war with Napoleon, the great statesman said, "We must yoke up the children to work in the factories." And this was done. I cannot vouch for the story

Answer 1

The oldest example of the quote that I see is the 10 December 1903 Christian Register at page 1455:

It is told of the younger Pitt that, in looking round for more earners and still more to meet the demands for more money and still more to carry on the war with Napoleon, the great statesman said, "We must yoke up the children to work in the factories." And this was done. I cannot vouch for the story ; but there I was at work in the factory, with many more children of about my age or older...

So really the same author as the 1908 OP quote, but 5 years earlier.

Older references don't use the word "yoke".

Older references originate from French historian Jules Michelet who wrote, in The People (1846) what translates as:

when the English manufacturers represented to Mr. Pitt, that the rise in the rate of wages incapacitated them from paying the taxes, he pronounced the terrible words, “Take the children.”

The original French is "Prenez les enfants".

However, the 1867 Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Volume 4 (3rd edition), page 405, says that there is no basis for Jules Michelet's statement.

Yet, before Jules Michelet, the 1843 The hand book of silk, cotton, and woollen manufactures says:

Every man acquainted with the political history of the last half century must know, that the labour of children was actually pointed out to the manufacturers by Mr. William Pitt, as a new resource by which they might be enabled to bear the additional load of taxation which the necessities of the state compelled him to impose.

As for a true exact quote on the topic, according to The Speeches of the Right Honourable William Pitt in the House of Commons, volume 2, 12 February 1796 Pitt said:

Experience has already shewn how much could be done by the industry of children, and the advantages of early employing them in such branches of manufacture, as they are capable to execute.