and prohibition of night-work, provision of education by attendance at school during working-hours, and insistance on elementary sanitary requirements, such as whitewashing, and the admission of fresh air by sufficient windows, were intentions common to this Act and its successors. It was due immediately to alarm

occasioned by ravages of epidemics in the factory 1796 districts. This led to the appointment, in 1796,

of a Board of Health, who, in their first report, charged overcrowding in the factories with large responsibility for disease. The Act, however, was limited to apprentices legally bound to service: for it was the duty of the law, which bound them, to protect their life and health. When manufacturers first sought the necessary power for their machinery on the banks of the rivers of the North, a system arose among the overseers of the South and elsewhere of binding parish apprentices to service in the mills. When the substitution of steam for water moved the factories from the rivers to the cities, parents also sent their children to work, to enlarge their earnings. They were, it seems, no less neglectful

of their future health than the masters of appren1819 tices had been. In 1819, accordingly, a new

Factory Act limited, for the first time, the age, at which children generally, whether legal apprentices or not, could be admitted to the mills, to nine years and upwards, and, as before, restricted the hours of labour (between the ages of nine and of sixteen) to twelve.

But, while the earlier Act applied to cotton and 1825 to woollen mills, the later was limited to cotton. 1831 In 1825 and 1831 further Acts were passed. The chief provision of the first was, perhaps, the approach made to a half-holiday on Saturday, and the most

notable characteristic of the second was that, unlike its predecessors, excellent in intention but of no avail in practice, it was, to some extent at least, carried into effect.

18. This was afterwards more effective than it was at first.

Factory Legislation now received support from the Tory party; for they were anxious to secure some counterweight to the popularity gained by Liberal politicians from the movements for Parliamentary Reform and the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The agitation for a "Ten Hours Bill" was actively conducted. 1833 In 1833, as the result of the inquiries of a Royal Commission, Lord Althorp's Act was passed. It applied to cotton, wool, worsted, hemp, flax, tow, and silk-mills, where steam, or water, or other mechanical power, was used to propel or work machinery. It drew a distinction between "children" of nine to thirteen years of age, and

young persons" of thirteen to eighteen. The former were not to work more than nine, and the latter more than twelve hours a day. It compelled attendance at school; for this condition seemed to offer the surest guarantee that a child was not at work. Finally-and this perhaps was of most importance-inspectors were appointed to prevent evasions of the Act. They were even intrusted with the magisterial powers, given before to the local justices, but rarely, if ever, exercised.

By the Act of 1844, a power to prosecute took the 1844 place of this penal jurisdiction; but the effective operation of the Laws has undoubtedly been due to the regular appointment of inspectors, to their possession of sufficient authority, and to the zealous fearless exercise of their important duties. The Act of 1844, passed by Sir Robert Peel himself, consolidated previous measures,

and introduced changes suggested by experience. Six and a half hours a day, or ten hours on three alternate days in the week, with five hours' schooling on the other days, were to be the maximum hours of labour for "children" of eight to thirteen years of age. All adult women were given the same protection as that accorded to "young persons"; and careful rules were laid down about the hours allowed for meals, the certificates of age,

and those of school-attendance. Provision was 1847 first made for the fencing of machinery.

In

1847 the Ten Hours Bill was passed, limiting, after May in 1848, the hours of work to ten for "young persons" and for women. The manufacturers, however, met the restriction of the law, and satisfied the demands of reviving trade, by a system of "relays." They thus kept their factories open for a greater period than the maximum time, but did not employ "protected persons" for longer than the legal hours. The inevitable com

plications of the system furnished opportunity for 1850 evading the law, and misleading the inspectors;

and in 1850 a compromise was reached, by which the legal working-day for "young persons" and women was fixed at ten and a half hours in the time between six in the morning and six in the evening, and, in the

winter months, with the consent of the inspectors, 1853 between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. On Saturdays work was to cease at two o'clock. In 1853 the same limits of time, between which the maximum hours must fall, were applied to "children.”

19. With the Factory Act of 1850 its main principles were settled.

With the Act of 1850 an important period of Factory Legislation closed. Its governing principles had been

laid down. The provisions, by which its observance was secured, were now established. The struggle between its advocates and its opponents had ended in the victory of the former; and subsequent development consisted mainly in its extension to industries not yet included. The conditions of employment in coal and metal mines also received the notice of Parliament even before 1850, and Royal Commissioners found there evils, which might be compared to the worst misery and oppression of the early factories. In their case, similarly, the law endeavoured to prevent their repetition by regulation and inspection. To non-textile factories, and to workshops, the Factory Acts have been extended by successive stages. The machinery of the Acts themselves has been improved; and greater emphasis has been given to certain principles. It would be rash to assert that practical experience has silenced opposition or distrust, but the general current of opinion is fairly represented by language used by the late Duke of Argyll. "During the present century," he writes, in his "Reign of Law,"*"two great discoveries have been made in the Science of Government: the one is the immense advantage of abolishing restrictions upon Trade; the other is the absolute necessity of imposing restrictions upon Labour." "If during the last fifty years it has been given to this country to make any progress in Political Science, that progress has been in nothing happier than in the Factory Legislation."†

20. Another evil of the period was the alarming growth of pauperism.

In the first instance, we have seen, Factory Legislation was applied only to those apprentices legally bound to † Ibid., p. 364.

* P. 334.

service, who had, in many cases, been brought, or sent, to the North by the overseers of the Poor Law from the parishes of the South and elsewhere. The overseers were influenced by a wish to relieve their parishes of the burden of pauperism. Among the evils of the last quarter of the eighteenth, and the first quarter of the nineteenth century, an extraordinary and alarming growth of pauperism fills a conspicuous place. It was due, in the

main, to lax administration of the law. In 1722 1722 the "workhouse test" had been established. Workhouses were to be erected by parishes uniting with one another; and relief was to be refused to all who would not enter them. Such, at any rate, was the theory; in practice the test may have been made impossible by neglect or refusal to build or provide the

necessary houses. Yet its formal abolition, sixty 1782 years later, by Gilbert's Act, marked a significant change of policy. The provisions of that Act were, it is true, permissive; for its adoption depended on the assent of a certain number of the ratepayers in any district. But the current of ideas was altered. A little later, the demand for soldiers to fight in the War against Napoleon made the encouragement of population a patriotic duty. This feeling was confirmed, or anticipated, by the urgent call for abundant labour in the factories, which the mechanical inventions brought in large numbers into being. In place of that destruction of cottages to avoid an increase of the rates, which had before commended itself to the influential classes, the

policy, begun by the Berkshire magistrates, meet1795 ing at Speenhamland in 1795, of granting allow

ances in aid of wages in proportion to the price of wheat and to the numbers of a family, met with