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Factory Act Legislation 
 
 3|tgf 31nliu0tnal anli Commercial (Effects, 
 actual auD Pro0pectit3e 
 
 THE COBDEN PRIZE ESSAY FOR 1891 
 
 VICTORINE JEANS 
 
 " Spero Meliora^^ 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 MDCCCXCII 
 

CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Historical Sketch of Early Legislation 
 
 Effective legislation dates from 1850. 5 
 
 II. Effects on the Textile Industries . . 19 
 Anticipated results. 
 Real results on : — 
 
 1. Production. 
 
 2. Distribution. 
 
 (i) Wages. 
 (2) Profits. 
 
 3. Foreign Trade. 
 
 III. Effects on Non-Textile Industries . . 66 
 
 IV. Prospective Effects of Newly Proposed 
 
 Changes 81 
 
 1. In scope of legislation, to include : — 
 
 (i) Labour in " domestic " industries. 
 
 (2) *' Services" of railway and tram- 
 
 way officials, &c. 
 
 (3) Labour in workshops where men 
 
 only are employed. 
 
 2. In stringency, e.g. : — 
 
 (i) Raising of maximum age of half- 
 timers. 
 (2) Further reduction of hours. 
 
 V. Short Notes on Recent Debates . ,91 
 
 M 9806 
 
CoBDEN Prize. 
 
 Victoria University. 
 
 A prize of the value of ^"60, to be awarded once in 
 three years, was offered to the University by the Com- 
 mittee of the Cobden Club, and was accepted by resolution 
 of the University Council on the 13th December, 1880. 
 
 The following are the conditions : — 
 
 1. The prize shall be awarded for an Essay on some 
 subject connected with Political Economy, and shall be 
 pa3^able in money to the successful candidate. 
 
 2. The candidates for the prize shall be members of the 
 University, who, having commenced residence, are not of 
 more than six years' standing from matriculation on the 
 first day of the Easter Term of the academical year in 
 which the subject is announced. 
 
 3 . The Adjudicators shall be the Professors or Lecturers of 
 the University in Political Economy for the time being, 
 and two persons to be nominated by the Vice-Chancellor 
 and the Donors respectively, and appointed by Resolution 
 of the University Council ; and the prize shall be awarded 
 to the writer of the Essay which, in the judgment of a 
 majority of the Adjudicators, certified under their hands 
 to the Vice-Chancellor, is the most deserving. 
 
 4. The subject of the prize shall be fixed by the 
 Adjudicators or a majority of them ; but the subject of 
 the first prize shall be fixed by the Donors, subject to the 
 approval of the Vice-Chancellor and the Professors or 
 Lecturers in Political Economy. 
 
 5. The times when the Adjudicators shall be appointed, 
 the subject announced, and the Essays sent in, shall be 
 fixed from time to time by Resolution of the University 
 Council. 
 
 6. The Donors of the prize reserve to themselves the 
 right to determine the said prize on giving one year's 
 notice to the Vice-Chancellor. 
 
 7. The prize shall be called the " Cobden Prize." 
 
 This prize was awarded in 1891 to Victorine Jeans, B.A., of the 
 Owens College, Manchester. 
 
FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION. 
 
 A THOROUGHLY detailed and precise treat- 
 ment of this subject would presuppose an 
 intimate and technical knowledge of the 
 conditions of all the great branches of 
 industry which have from time to time been 
 brought under the Factory Acts, and of their 
 development during the last hundred years. 
 For reasons, then, which will only be too 
 painfully obvious, no attempt will be made 
 in this paper to do more than summarize, in 
 the fewest possible words, what seem to have 
 been in the past, and what, by inference, will 
 be in the future, the main marked general 
 results of Factory Legislation. 
 
 I. — Historical Sketch. 
 The best historical sketch is Herr Ernst 
 von Plener's, first Secretary of the Austro- 
 
FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION, 
 
 Huftgari^n' Eitiba^sy in London. A point 
 //-ti^fcftcJ cJeariv brings out is that the legisla- 
 tion of the first thirty years of this century 
 was practically without any result at all ; it 
 was almost inoperative, for the very simple 
 reason that it was never properly enforced ; 
 the local justices were to appoint visitors to 
 inspect the mills, but as they neglected to 
 do so the law became virtually useless. The 
 first four or five factory Acts may be 
 neglected then as far as any actual results 
 were concerned. Progress was made in 1833, 
 when the system of Crown-appointed in- 
 spectors was introduced. But as their number 
 was limited to four, the staff soon proved 
 quite inadequate, and Lord Ashley called 
 attention in the House of Commons to the 
 fact that their reports for 1835 showed that 
 no less than one out of every eleven mill- 
 owners had been convicted of infringing the 
 Act, and that no doubt the proportion would 
 have been much larger but for the defiant 
 attitude of the local magistrates, themselves 
 very often connected with or interested in 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 7 
 
 the trade. For it was one of the weak points 
 of Lord Althorp's Act that it had failed to 
 re-enact the wise provision introduced in 
 1825 by Sir J. Cam Hobhouse, to the effect 
 that, no justice being a proprietor or master 
 of a mill, or the father or son of such, should 
 act as justice in respect of factory law. 
 During this, the first period of their existence, 
 the inspectors met with strenuous opposition 
 from all classes, masters and foremen, parents 
 and operatives (Reports, 1874 — Redgrave). 
 Every kind of device was resorted to 
 in order to evade their vigilance. One 
 very great source of difficulty was the 
 newly-invented false relay system, of which 
 Karl Marx says so much (" Capital," I. 
 264). The commissioners of 1832 had pro- 
 posed the employment of children in double 
 sets. Out of this suggestion arose what has 
 been called the " false relay " system, or 
 system of " shifts " as opposed to regular 
 relays. Children, instead of being employed 
 in double sets, each set working six con- 
 secutive hours, were subject to be brought 
 
« FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 into the mill and discharged again several 
 times in the day ; and as long as they were 
 not employed altogether more than the total 
 48 hours in the week, the terms of the Act 
 were not infringed. 
 
 But the real result was that where the false 
 relay system obtained, it was impossible for 
 the inspector to detect even actual and 
 flagrant disobedience. 
 
 To keep a record of the complicated 
 arrangement of hours mapped out for each 
 child was out of the question ; and so the 
 abuse grew from bad to worse. Hampered 
 at every turn, the poor inspectors were very 
 despondent in their reports from 1833 ^^ 
 1844; and the upshot of it all was that 
 in 1844 they went to the Home Secretary, 
 Sir George Grey, and pointed out that the 
 Act as it stood could not be administered. 
 The whole question of the hours of labour 
 was fast becoming one of burning and public 
 interest. At the elections of 1839 the 
 electors catechised their candidates on four 
 points ; — The property qualification for Mem- 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 9 
 
 bers of Parliament ; primogeniture ; the Poor 
 Law Amendment Act ; and the Factory 
 Question. And this last, says Lord Shaftes- 
 bury's biographer, was probably the most 
 important of all. So by the year 1844 the 
 subject of an amended factory Act was fully 
 ripe for discussion. The statute of that year, 
 the second great factory Act, on the whole 
 very largely increased the powers of the 
 inspectors, and effectually checked the " false 
 relay " system by providing that the hours of 
 child labour should be reckoned from the 
 time any child or young person began work. 
 Von Plener says this Act was carried out 
 better than its predecessors, and certainly for 
 the next three years the normal working day 
 in the regulated industries did not exceed 
 twelve hours. But this was probably due as 
 much to the general depression of trade as 
 to improved administration. Manufacturers 
 made a virtue of necessity and ran their mills 
 short time because there was no demand for 
 their goods. In 1847 a sudden and, as it 
 proved, ill-judged step was taken, by the 
 
ro FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION. 
 
 passing of the Ten Hours Bill. The passing 
 of this Bill was more purely a matter of 
 party politics than had been the case with 
 previous factory legislation. It owed its 
 success to the support of Tory voters, at 
 once anxious to set themselves right with 
 the labouring classes, and to take revenge for 
 the part the manufacturers had played in the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws. Manufacturers 
 were up in arms against what they looked 
 upon as a thoroughly capricious piece of 
 State interference ; and they either openly 
 defied or secretly evaded the new law. It 
 was soon found out too that, after all, the 
 Act of 1844, which still regulated child labour, 
 was not absolutely clear and explicit in the 
 matter of " relays." The " false relay " system 
 — whether intentionally or not — seemed not 
 to be forbidden in so many terms. The 
 masters read the clause one way, the in- 
 spectors the other, and different magistrates 
 in different parts of the country took opposite 
 views. To put an end to this confusion and 
 bring matters to a head, a test case was 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 1 1 
 
 carried before the Court of Exchequer in 
 1850. The verdict went against the in- 
 spectors, and the " shift-system," now legalized, 
 threatened to become general. Once again 
 it was impossible to carry out the law. ** If 
 there were twenty inspectors we could defy 
 them all, if relays were allowed," wrote one 
 manager, and his words, quoted authorita- 
 tively in the debate of 1850, probably ex- 
 pressed the general feeling of employers. 
 And so the legislation of half a century was 
 rendered inoperative and things were brought 
 to a deadlock. Those for whose protection 
 the Bill of 1 847 had been, at least ostensibly, 
 brought forward, felt themselves betrayed, 
 and believed the Ten Hours Bill had been 
 passed only to disgust them with all legisla- 
 tion. Clearly something must be done. 
 
 Judge Parke, who tried the test case, had 
 given it as his opinion that the framers of 
 the law had meant to prohibit the false 
 relay system, but had failed to draw up the 
 Act in terms clear enough to bear that con- 
 struction. Lord Shaftesbury therefore argued 
 
1 2 FACTOR y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 that the House was in honour bound to see 
 to the carrying out of its intentions. But 
 Judge Parke's opinion did not go wholly 
 unchallenged, and there was considerable 
 scepticism concerning the real intentions of 
 the Parliament of 1844. Still it was gene- 
 rally felt that some amendment was impera- 
 tively needed, and even Mr. Bright, the most 
 staunch and consistent opponent of factory 
 legislation, decidedly desired to put an end 
 to the uncertainty of the law in its present 
 state. 
 
 The result was a compromise, in the shape 
 of Sir George Grey's Bill, which fixed the 
 normal working day for young persons and 
 women in textile factories at ten hours and 
 a half ; children's labour to be regulated, as 
 before, by the Act of 1844. Thus there came 
 into existence the Act which has been called 
 the " Great Charter " of English factory 
 legislation, the basis of all succeeding statutes. 
 From time to time the scope of the factory 
 Acts has been enlarged, new industries have 
 been brought within their compass, but the 
 
FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION. 13 
 
 general terms of the law have altered com- 
 paratively little since 1850. 
 
 It is most important to notice that this 
 Act of 1850 practically made the normal work- 
 ing day ten and a half hours, not only for the 
 protected classes — women and young persons 
 — but for men as well. There is a very 
 great deal written and spoken against further 
 legislation to-day on the ground that Govern- 
 ment must not interfere with the labour of 
 adult males. But it is a rather quibbling 
 argument to use after all ; because though 
 not actually directly, yet indirectly and quite 
 as effectually, men's labour has been regulated 
 ever since limits were set to the hours of 
 women and young persons. For the various 
 processes in a factory are so closely connected 
 that it is impossible for one class of operatives 
 to go on working alone after the others have 
 left the mill. This result was clearly foreseen 
 For instance, in 1844 Sir James Graham had 
 pointed out that the real question was not 
 so much as to what should be the legal hours 
 of women and children ; but rather whether 
 
1 4 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 men should be employed ten hours or twelve 
 (Hansard Ixxiii. 1103). Without a fixed 
 normal working day, any real administration 
 of the law had over and over again proved most 
 difificult. The Act of 1850 made ten and a half 
 hours the standard day in the textile factories, 
 and from that time to this the intentions of 
 Parliament have been, on the whole, well 
 carried out by an efficient staff of inspectors. 
 The recent return by the Board of Trade 
 shows, I believe, that ten and a half hours 
 have been the general rule in the textile 
 trades since 1850. Effective legislation began 
 then, and practically not till then. 
 
 Starting from 1850 we may broadly dis- 
 tinguish three main periods in the history of 
 factory legislation. From 1850-64 it was con- 
 fined, speaking generally, to the textile fac- 
 tories. It is true a Printworks Act had been 
 passed as early as 1845, but that proved only a 
 dead letter ; and the Bleachworks and Dye- 
 works Act of i860 allowed so much overtime 
 that it, too, was practically useless. For it may 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEG I SLA TION. 1 5 
 
 be taken as an axiom that if you allow overtime 
 to any very great extent, you quite do away 
 with the efficacy of your law. To-day there 
 are plenty of trades where overtime is the rule 
 instead of the exception ; and if a permissive 
 Eight Hours Bill, say, were passed to-morroWj 
 merely defining a " day " to mean eight hours, 
 which seems to be all that the American Bills 
 have done (see Mr. Bradlaugh, New Review^ 
 1889), then the only result would be that over- 
 time wages would begin an hour or a couple 
 of hours earlier. The great majority of the 
 working class desire more pay, not more 
 leisure. The first period of efficient factory 
 legislation may be taken to lie between 1850 
 and 1864. In 1864, 1^ consequence of the 
 early reports of the Commission on Children's 
 Employment, certain non-textile branches of 
 industry were brought under the law ; such 
 as the manufacture of earthenware, fustian 
 cutting, the manufacture of cartridge and 
 percussion caps, &c. The Bleachworks Act 
 was also amended. Three years later, again 
 the list was very considerably enlarged. This 
 
1 6 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 year, 1867, ought to have been still more im- 
 portant a date than it actually was in the 
 history of factory legislation, for it saw the 
 passing not only of the Factory Acts' Exten- 
 sion Act, but also of the Workshops Regula- 
 tion Act. But this latter was left in the hands 
 of the local authorities, who failed to carry it 
 out. Our second period vfOVild be from 1864 to 
 187 1, when factories non-textile as well as tex- 
 tile were under State inspection. The third 
 stage was reached in 1871, when the workshop 
 Act was transferred to the hands of the factory 
 inspectors. We have, then, these three groups 
 of years — 1850-64, when the law touched only 
 textile factories; 1864-71, when it was ex- 
 tended to include non-textile factories ; 1871 
 to the present time, when workshops have also 
 been brought, to some extent, at least, under 
 supervision and regulation. Every system of 
 classification must be more or less arbitrary, 
 but this seems fairly convenient, and as good 
 as any other. It corresponds tolerably well, 
 too, to Marx's classification of the different 
 kinds of industry. He says something to 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 1 7 
 
 this effect : that industries may be grouped 
 under four heads, according to the nature of 
 the tool or machine used, its simplicity or 
 complexity. Every kind of labour, roughly 
 speaking, is either a form of domestic industry ^ 
 or of handicraft y or else a branch .of mamifaC' 
 ture^ strictly so called, or, lastly, a type of the 
 factory system proper. " Domestic industry '* 
 is the earliest kind of work, it includes all un- 
 skilled manual labour, all the labour that can 
 be done with the least help from tools, other 
 than those which nature supplies in the shape 
 of human muscles. As soon as a tool is 
 invented, unless it is of the very simplest 
 kind and accessible to all, so soon specializa- 
 tion and division of labour begin ; and it may 
 be truly said that the man who first used a 
 tool set on foot an industrial revolution which 
 is not completed at the present day. The 
 adoption of some simple manipulating tool 
 characterizes this second form of industry, the 
 " handicraft " form. And if the introduction 
 of simple tools leads to division of labour, so 
 division of labour in its turn brings about a 
 
i8 FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION. 
 
 concentration of population. Improvements 
 in modes of transit, improvements in the trans- 
 mitting mechanism of production, a general 
 tendency towards production on a large scale 
 — these are the main features of the '^ manu- 
 facturing " age. Finally, the concentration of 
 many machines is followed by the use of steam 
 power, and the " factory" system is reached. 
 
 Legislation has been brought to bear on the 
 last three forms ; hardly on the first. The 
 textile industries, specially the cotton and 
 worsted branches, are types of the most highly 
 developed "factory" system. The trades 
 newly added in 1864 and 1867 may stand as 
 fairly representative of "manufacture" in the 
 more correct sense of the word ; and the Act 
 of 1 87 1 brought the law down to the level of 
 " handicrafts." 
 
 The only kind of industry which has never 
 been more than nominally subject to control 
 is industry carried on in a private house — 
 domestic industry. 
 
 A " workshop " was defined to mean only a 
 place to which the employer had the right of access. 
 
FACTORY ACT LEGISLA TION. 19 
 
 This definition at once put beyond the pale of 
 protection all the many workers in, for 
 instance, the sweated clothing trades. 
 
 It is true that the Consolidating Act of 
 1878 has certain provisions concerning "do- 
 mestic workshops," but these are, for the most 
 part, very meagre and inadequate. 
 
 II. — Effects on Textile Industries. 
 
 Experience, then, has shown us the factory 
 Acts at work in the sphere of the factory, the 
 manufactory, the workshop. The most im- 
 portant point of all for consideration now is 
 the effect of legislation on the great staples 
 of our national trade — the textile industries. 
 " What," we may ask, " have been the economic 
 effects of the factory Acts on the textile 
 trades during the last forty years ? " and 
 perhaps we may pay particular attention to 
 the years 1850-64, because then the experi- 
 ment in this special direction was being the 
 most narrowly watched, and the precedents 
 for all future legislation were being built up. 
 
20 FA CTOR V ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 Factory legislation has always been primarily 
 sanitary or educational in aim. Its champions 
 have always supported it mainly on these 
 grounds. As economic measures the various 
 Acts have stood almost entirely on the defen- 
 sive. " The Factory Act of 1844 was passed," 
 writes Mr. Walker, " against the opposition of 
 the majority of English economists in Parlia- 
 ment and out" (" Wages," footnote, p. 162). 
 Indeed, by way of direct argument in favour 
 of such legislation, on its economic side, very 
 little has been said in the many debates on 
 the subject. In the old days Lord Shaftes- 
 bury and his opponents played a veritable 
 game of cross questions. They attacked him, 
 for instance, with the threatened ruin of 
 English trade and the pauperization of the 
 working class. And he would reply by point- 
 ing to the great sanitary or moral or religious 
 benefits which must accrue. And so it has 
 always been, to some extent at least. There 
 has remained throughout a decided reluctance 
 to discuss the matter from other than a sani- 
 tary or educational standpoint ; a distinct 
 
FACTOR V ACT LEGISLA TION. 21 
 
 hesitation about facing the problem in its 
 more purely economic aspect. So that as 
 late as 1878, Mr. Cross could say no more for 
 his Bill than that " it would infringe no prin- 
 ciples of Political Economy further than they 
 had been already infringed by the operation 
 of the Factory Acts which had received the 
 assent of the Legislature." " It only carried 
 out the principles which had been admitted 
 in all previous legislation, for it was based on 
 sanitary and educational grounds " (Cunning- 
 ham, " Politics and Economics "). 
 
 To find the economic arguments on the 
 question of factory legislation, one must look, 
 then, chiefly to the speeches of its opponents. 
 In other words, most of the prophecies were 
 prophecies of woe. It is well to glance for 
 a moment at these anticipated results. Herr 
 Plener has tabulated them, and the principal 
 were these : — 
 
 1. Diminution of production. 
 
 2. Rise in cost of production. 
 
 3. Fall in rate of wages. 
 
 4. Fall in rate of profits. 
 
22 FACTOR V ACT LEG/SLA TION. 
 
 5. Rise in prices. 
 
 6. Loss of foreign trade. 
 
 I have underlined the first, because that 
 seems to be the basis of all the others ; all 
 the others, to a very great extent, stand or 
 fall with it. If it were certain that the 
 factory Acts would tend to decrease the 
 amount of material wealth produced each 
 year, then there would be very good ground 
 for presuming that both wages and profits 
 must fall. Somebody must bear the loss. 
 Would it be the employer or the employed, 
 or the consumer, or all three? It seemed 
 madness for the mill hands to expect twelve 
 hours' wages for ten hours' work ; wages must 
 inevitably fall. But, since to reduce wages in 
 proportion to the reduction in the amount of 
 work done, would simply be to bring the 
 working classes to the verge of starvation, it 
 stood to reason that much of the burden 
 would have to be borne by the manufacturer. * 
 The manufacturer, failing to obtain an eco- 
 nomic return in the shape of profit, would 
 doubtless leave the business, or else, if 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 23 
 
 possible, adopt the readier plan of raising 
 prices ; in other words he would shift part of 
 the loss on to the shoulders of the consumer. 
 And grant ever so slight a rise in prices, you 
 predict grave danger, if not absolute ruin, to 
 foreign trade. 
 
 Such, very briefly, are the objections which 
 have been raised against the Factory Acts 
 from the earliest times till now. They were 
 used in 1833, in 1844, and again in 1874 and 
 1878. And the identical predictions are 
 being made to-day in and out of Parliament 
 in reference to the several proposed inno- 
 vations now before the public. The old 
 debates, as far as I have been able to read 
 them, constantly re-echo these mournful fore- 
 bodings. Sometimes it is one, sometimes 
 another of the different points that is most 
 emphatically insisted upon; as in 1844, for 
 instance, when Sir Robert Peel and Sir 
 James Graham, who virtually constituted the 
 Government then, opposed the Bill of that 
 date, the former chiefly on the ground of 
 danger to foreign trade, the latter by laying 
 
24 FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 special stress on the probability of a beggared 
 labouring class. But one or, other, or all of 
 these objections have always from 1833 till 
 the present day formed the ultimate basis of 
 everything that has been written or said 
 against this form of State interference. Dr. 
 Cunningham calls the debate of 1874 "the 
 last great battle on the subject of factory 
 legislation." It was then that the whole 
 question of interfering with women's labour 
 came up for discussion, and then that the 
 last great step was made in the law as it ap- 
 plied to the textile industries — the reduction of 
 the hours of women and young persons to ten 
 instead of ten and a half a day. Mr. Fawcett 
 was the chief opponent of the Bill, and he 
 certainly spoke most powerfully. But in the 
 main his speech had in it nothing really new. 
 And one old member, Mr. Baxter, had the 
 courage to get up and say that he could 
 remember the debate on the Ten Hours' Bill, 
 and that then precisely the same arguments 
 had been used as Mr. Fawcett had used that 
 day. The great question therefore is : Have 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 25 
 
 or have not these predictions proved right 
 and true ? Have they been justified by the 
 event? And, first, as regards that funda- 
 mental prediction about diminution of 
 produce ; what has experience to teach on 
 that head ? Now it surely needs no very 
 abstruse reasoning to prove that the prophecy 
 in its extreme form — utter ruin to English 
 trade — as, for example, Mr. Senior and Miss 
 Martineau had it, proved altogether at fault. 
 It is a fact patent to every one, that the 
 English textile industries during the years 
 1850-63, developed enormously, instead of 
 dwindling. The exports of cotton yarn were, 
 in round numbers : — 
 
 In 1850, 1,000 million yards\ 
 „ i860, 2,000 „ „ [ (quoted in debate of 
 
 „ 1870, 3,000 „ „ \ 1874). 
 
 „ 1872, 3,500 „ „ J 
 
 Or to take a rather different point of view : 
 From 1839-50, the number of mills in Lan- 
 cashire increased 4 per cent.; from 1850-56, 
 19 per cent. ; and from 1856 to 1862, 33 per 
 cent. (Marx). 
 
26 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 There is not the slightest necessity to 
 waste words on proving what is so self- 
 evident — that English industry flourished and 
 spread amazingly during the twenty years 
 immediately succeeding the introduction of 
 the factory Acts. But the point is, would 
 this prosperity have been more or less, had 
 there been no legislation ? Can we establish 
 any connection between this rapid growth, 
 and the simultaneous interference of the 
 law ? It has been said that the " State is the 
 least of the Powers which govern us " ; and it 
 is well to remember, as Herr Plener admits, 
 that, after all, the subject of factory legis- 
 lation is not one of the first importance. If 
 there was one cause which far more than all 
 others contributed to this great development 
 of English industry, it was not State inter- 
 ference but the abolition of it. Free Trade it 
 was that opened up the markets of the world 
 to England's wares. 
 
 The Duke of Argyll writes, however, in his 
 " Reign of Law " that " During the present 
 century two great discoveries have been made 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 27 
 
 in the science of government ; the one is the 
 immense advantage of abolishing restrictions 
 on Trade, the other is the absolute necessity 
 of imposing restrictions on Labour." This 
 seems paradoxical. 
 
 At first sight the principle of Free Trade 
 and the principle of Factory Legislation 
 appear to be entirely at variance; and the 
 results of these two principles in action must 
 be, it would seem, quite opposite. Free Trade 
 vastly increased the demand for English 
 goods ; and then came legislation which to 
 all appearance would of necessity curtail the 
 supply. 
 
 But did the Factory Acts really tend to 
 decrease the amount of annual produce ? 
 That is the all-important point. 
 
 On the whole, all experience seems to 
 warrant an answer in the negative. 
 
 The assumption that production must 
 necessarily be diminished, rests on a fallacy 
 — the fallacy that quantity of work done is 
 always in proportion to the time spent. 
 
 There are two other factors which have to 
 
28 FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 be taken into account in any question of 
 work. Besides the time a man spends, there 
 is, first the nature of his tools ^ and secondly 
 his own capacity for work ; the objective and 
 the subjective efficiency of labour. 
 
 Other things remaining the same, amount 
 of work done varies as the time spent. But 
 other things did not remain the same in this 
 present case. Moreover, all evidence goes 
 to prove that legislation had much to do 
 with altering these " other conditions," the 
 efficiency of the labourer, and the efficiency 
 of his tools. 
 
 Given an increased demand^ due to Free 
 Trade, the other element necessary to the 
 growth of industry — an increased supply^ was 
 rendered possible only by the marvellous 
 extension at this time of the factory system. 
 The whole natural tendency of modern 
 industry has been towards the factory system 
 and production on a large scale ; nevertheless, 
 the Factory Acts may be said to have given 
 just the needful stimulus to the adoption of 
 the new great machinery, and so to have 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 29 
 
 played a very material part in building up 
 the factory system on what Karl Marx deems 
 its only firm and adequate basis. 
 
 Dr. Taylor, in his " History of the Factory 
 System," writes that : " The popular saying 
 that ^ Necessity is the mother of Invention ' is 
 a concise summary of the philosophy of the 
 whole subject/' 
 
 And what necessity could be more pressing 
 than a well administered Act of Parliament 
 reducing the hours of labour by, at the very 
 least, one and a half a day ? 
 
 Mr. Redgrave wrote in 1852 : " More econo- 
 mical application of labour has been rendered 
 necessary by the diminished length of the 
 working day, and in most well-regulated mills 
 an intelligent mind is always considering in 
 what manner production can be increased 
 with decreased expenditure." 
 
 Marx points out that at the time he wrote 
 (1873), a weaver could make in a week of 
 sixty hours with his new power loom no less 
 than twenty-six " pieces " of cloth, whereas 
 the old loom had made only four. 
 
30 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 And soon after 1850 the cost of weaving 
 such a piece had fallen from 2s. gd. to 5^d ! 
 
 Marx quotes an interesting passage from 
 the "Journal of Arts " for 1872, by Inspector 
 Horner. There, the inspector looks back to 
 his own views on factory legislation in 1844. 
 He himself had quite believed then that the 
 perfection of economy of time and labour had 
 already been reached, and that the manu- 
 facturers were right in thinking that any 
 further quickening of the speed of prime 
 movers was impossible, consistent with " the 
 preservation of the quality of the article 
 manufactured ; the preservation of the ma- 
 chinery from too rapid deterioration ; and the 
 capability of the workman to follow the 
 motion without a greater exertion than he 
 could sustain for a constancy." 
 
 Mr. Horner then proceeded to point out 
 how erroneous his former opinion had been ; 
 how much he had " underestimated the 
 elasticity of machinery, and of man's labour- 
 power, both of which," says Marx, "are 
 stretched to an extreme by the compulsory 
 shortening of the working day." 
 
FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION, 31 
 
 Various quotations might be made from 
 the inspectors' reports of this time to the 
 same effect. " The great improvements," 
 wrote one of them in 1858, *' made in 
 machines of every kind have raised their 
 productive power very much. Without a 
 doubt the shortening of the hours of labour 
 . . . gave the impulse to these improvements. 
 The latter, combined with the more intense 
 strain on the workman, have had the result 
 that at least as much is produced in the 
 shortened (by two hours, or one-sixth) 
 working-day as was previously during the 
 longer one." (See also Reports 1854, 1856, 
 i860, 1865, &c,) 
 
 We may fairly conclude, then, that the first 
 result of the factory Act was this — it fostered 
 the growth of the factory system. 
 
 With regard to the second great result, the 
 increase in the vigour and intelligence of the 
 labourer, and, therefore, to some extent at 
 least, in his capacity for work — with regard 
 to this result, it will be easier to speak 
 
32 FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 definitely when we come to consider the 
 effects of the Act on industries other than 
 textile, where the individuality of the work- 
 man is better preserved, and any improvement 
 in his efficiency is more clearly traceable. For 
 where the factory system attains its highest 
 form, there the personality of the labourer is 
 to a great extent lost, and he becomes part 
 and parcel of the whole complex mass of 
 mechanism which constitutes the "factory." 
 Nevertheless, though it may not be so easy 
 to trace the exact amount of the economic 
 advantage here, as in the case, say, of such an 
 industry as the potteries, yet it is perfectly 
 certain that a fair portion of the increased 
 production may quite justly be put down to 
 the improved physical and mental energy of 
 the mill-hands themselves. That was Lord 
 Shaftesbury's great argument. In May, 1847, 
 for example, when he went down to the 
 House purposely armed for once to defend 
 his Bill against economic attacks, he brought 
 forward a great many cases of equal or 
 increased production arising simply from 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 33 
 
 improved vigour on the part of the workmen 
 in mills where the owners had voluntarily 
 reduced their hours by way of experiment. 
 " I could not understand," one master wrote, 
 " how it was that our men could turn off as 
 much work (and some a little more) in eleven 
 hours as ever they did in twelve. I said to 
 one of them, * John, will you tell me how it is 
 that you can do more work in eleven hours 
 than you did in twelve ? ' * Why,' said he, 
 * we can lay to in eleven hours a day better 
 than we could in twelve, because we get more 
 rest at night and we are in better spirits all 
 the day through, and besides, the afternoons 
 were not so long/ He could spin, he said, 
 
 ten years longer if Mr. G would keep on 
 
 eleven hours." 
 
 The truth is, there is a law of " Diminishing 
 Returns" from labour as from land. The 
 difficulty is to determine when that law 
 begins to come into operation. The critical 
 point varies in different countries, among 
 different races, in different industries ; and it 
 3 
 
34 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 varies, too, between individual workmen. 
 There can be no doubt that before the 
 passing of the factory Acts Httle children, and 
 adults as well, were worked beyond this 
 limit ; a false economy was practised. Dr. 
 Cunningham's verdict is concise and to the 
 point. " There is an amount of tension," he 
 writes, " which the human frame can bear, 
 and to prevent men from going beyond it 
 was really to establish the textile industries 
 of Great Britain on a far firmer economic 
 basis " (" Politics and Economics "). Factory 
 legislation thus helped forward produc- 
 tion in the textile industries in two ways : 
 by hastening the development of production 
 on a large scale or the factory system, and, 
 secondly, by heightening the efficiency of 
 each individual worker. But just one warn- 
 ing thought occurs here, and it is this : the 
 first result has always a certain tendency to 
 weaken the force of the latter. Indeed, the 
 great increase in the speed of the machinery 
 which followed on the introduction of the 
 Act of 1833, and the consequently greater 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 35 
 
 strain on the labourer, was made one of the 
 grounds of attack on further legislation by 
 Sir James Graham in the debate of 1844. 
 And again it was one of Mr. Fawcett's points 
 in 1874. He referred, for instance, to the 
 advice given by a doctor at Dukinfield, who 
 warned the mill-hands not to exchange less 
 speed and longer hours for greater speed 
 though coupled with a shorter day. 
 
 Saving of labour was effected by two 
 means : the speed of the machinery was 
 increased, and the labourer was given more 
 machinery to watch. In 1841 one spinner 
 with three piecers attended to one pair of 
 mules with from 300 to 400 spindles. Thirty 
 years later one spinner and five piecers 
 watched 2,200 spindles producing seven times 
 as much yarn! As early as 1863 evidence 
 was given by Mr. Ferrand before the House 
 of Commons on this question of the wear and 
 tear of the physical powers of the operatives, 
 caused by the constantly increasing rate of 
 the machinery. " I have been informed," he 
 said, " by delegates from sixteen districts of 
 
36 FACTOR V ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 Lancashire and Cheshire, on whose behalf I 
 speak, that work in factories is, in consequence 
 of the improvements in machinery, constantly 
 on the increase. Instead of, as formerly, one 
 person with two helps tenting two looms, one 
 person now tents three looms without helps, 
 and it is no uncommon thing for one person 
 to tent four. Twelve hours work, as is evident 
 from the facts adduced, is now compressed 
 into less than ten hours. It is therefore self- 
 evident to what an enormous extent the toil 
 of the factory operative has increased during 
 the last ten years." This was one of the most 
 prominent arguments brought forward by the 
 champions of a Nine Hours Bill in 1873. 
 The manufacturers retorted that the new 
 machinery had brought about a diminution 
 of actual labour, and that the workmen were, 
 on the whole, the gainers. Of course it is 
 very difficult indeed to strike the balance 
 between these conflicting assertions (see Red- 
 grave Reports, April, 1872). All one can 
 safely say is this, that the general tendency 
 of legislation has always been to improve thd 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEG I SLA TION, 37 
 
 health of the workpeople ; but there seems 
 fair ground for believing that, to some extent 
 at least, this tendency is thwarted in the case 
 of the gi^eat textile industries by the continual 
 improvements in large machinery, specially 
 in prime movers. The growth of the factory 
 system made labour laws a necessity ; and if 
 it is one of the inevitable results of legislation 
 that that system shall become more and more 
 universal, may we not venture to suggest that 
 there is an element of soundness in the 
 seemingly paradoxical argument, that in 
 every successive Factory Act we have in 
 some degree the justification for another? 
 
 So far the question has been purely one of 
 Production ; it now remains to be seen how 
 legislation affected Distribution. To begin 
 with the effect on Wages. The opponents 
 of the Factory Acts have often charged its 
 supporters with deluding the labouring classes 
 by leading them to believe that State agency 
 could enable them to earn as much or more 
 pay for less work ; such a result was incredible, 
 
38 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 said they; wages must fall. The precise 
 amount of the predicted fall varied. An 
 example of an extreme estimate is to be 
 found in Sir James Graham's speech in 1844. 
 Masters would have to deduct at least one- 
 seventh from their workmen's wages, he said, 
 in consequence of the decrease of quite that 
 amount in their labour, and another twelfth 
 to recoup themselves for the depreciation in 
 value of their fixed machinery. The total 
 fall, therefore, would be about 23 per cent. 
 Lord Shaftesbury, on the contrary, was con- 
 fident that the fall would not be more than 
 one-tenth or one-twelfth, though he pointed 
 out the small economies by which the working 
 classes were prepared to meet a loss of even 
 one-sixth in consideration of the many sani- 
 tary and other benefits they would derive 
 from the operation of the Act. Naturally it 
 IS difficult to say what exactly was the view 
 of the majority of the working population ; 
 but the probability is that they held a very 
 different opinion from that set forth by the 
 manufacturers. Herr Plener shows that in the 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEG IS LA TION. 39 
 
 early days of factory legislation the operatives 
 argued somewhat as follows : — 
 
 They thought the factory Acts would 
 bring about — 
 
 1. Decreased Production ; hence 
 
 2. Rise in the price of goods and wages 
 alike, so that in the end the workmen would 
 receive twelve hours pay for ten hours work. 
 
 3. Notwithstanding the higher prices, 
 general consumption would not decrease, 
 and therefore 
 
 4. The unemployed would find work. 
 Here again it is noteworthy that the 
 
 primary assumption was a decrease in the 
 amount of produce. That assumption was 
 not borne out by the event. Therefore there 
 is no a priori probability that any of the 
 arguments based on it should prove sound. 
 Granted an increase instead of a decrease in 
 production, and the possibility and indeed 
 probability is at once admitted of a rise 
 rather than a fall in wages. The amount of 
 produce is the fund from which wages are 
 drawn ; it constitutes the maximum limit of 
 
40 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 wages. "I hold," writes Professor Walker, 
 "that the moment the aggregate product of 
 labour and capital is increased by inventions, 
 which are a clear gain of power for the benefit 
 of all, that moment a sufficient economic 
 reason exists for an advance in wages in 
 some degree corresponding." 
 
 But to look a little more carefully into the 
 matter. The rate of wages prevalent at any 
 time is determined by the ratio of the number 
 of labourers desiring places to the number of 
 places open for them ; in other words, by the 
 Supply of labourers as compared with the 
 Demand for them. How did factory legis- 
 lation affect the Demand for labour? The 
 Factory Acts reduced the hours of labour for 
 children from twelve or more to six, and of 
 young persons and women to ten and a half. 
 The practical result was the fixing of the 
 normal working day at ten and a half hours 
 for all hands employed except children, and 
 at something less than an average of six for 
 all children. Roughly speaking, the hours ot 
 child labour were reduced by at least one- 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 41 
 
 half, and of all other labour by at least 
 one-sixth. Hence, if the old amount of pro- 
 duction was to be kept up, it would seem 
 that six men, women, and young persons 
 must be needed under the new regime instead 
 of every five employed in previous years, and 
 two children where before only one had been 
 required. 
 
 But the question of the results of factory 
 legislation is too complex to be settled at 
 once by simple rules of arithmetic. We have 
 seen that as soon as legislation was brought 
 to bear on the textile industries, every effort 
 was made to economise time and labour by 
 the introduction of better machines. What, 
 then, is the general effect of the adoption of 
 new machinery in any given industry on the 
 demand for labour in that industry ? 
 
 Perhaps it may be briefly stated as follows : 
 The immediate result is a lessened demand 
 for labour. But this effect is rarely permanent. 
 New and better machinery means diminished 
 cost of production, and diminished cost of 
 production leads to a fall in price. With the 
 
42 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 fall in price comes an increased consumption, 
 and the final result is an extension of the 
 industry and a greater demand for labour. 
 Something of this kind happened in the case 
 in point. Manufacturers, under pressure of 
 the Factory Act, resorted to better methods 
 of work to keep up production. These better 
 methods proved even more satisfactory than 
 had been expected. Cost of production fell 
 enormously, prices could be lowered without 
 loss of profit, consumption increased, more 
 capitalists were attracted into the business, 
 new mills were established to meet the grow- 
 ing market, and new mills meant more work- 
 people (see Reports 1854, 1855, &c., for great 
 increase in number of factories at this time). 
 Mr. Horner's report for the half-year ending 
 October 1859, is specially interesting from an 
 economic point of view. He writes : " The 
 experience of nearly twenty-six years, extend- 
 ing throughout the whole time the existing 
 law has been in operation, convinces me that 
 the legislative interference for the regulation 
 of the labour of children, young persons, and 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 43 
 
 women in factories is now viewed by many 
 of the occupiers of those works as having 
 done, and as continuing to do, a great amount 
 of good, without any injurious interference with 
 the prosperity of those trades." And he goes 
 on to note, as two of the chief effects of legis- 
 lation, its non-limitation of production, and an 
 increase in wages. " In no branch of textile 
 labour are wages reduced since 1833," wrote 
 Mr. Baker the same year ; " there is an average 
 increase of 12 percent, and in one instance of 
 40 per cent." There is a fairly significant 
 table given fourteen years later by the same 
 inspector, comparing the rates of wages in 
 the cotton trade under the old system and 
 the new (Reports, 1873). A great rise in 
 the wages of factory operatives has been one 
 of the marked features of the industrial history 
 of the last forty years. There can be little 
 doubt that this rise was, to a great extent, 
 the result of legislation. The hours of labour 
 in textile factories have been successively 
 reduced from ninety to fifty-six and a half 
 a week, and the rate of wages has uniformly 
 
44 FA CTORY A CT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 risen (See Contemporary Review, December, 
 1889. Sidney Webb, " The Limitation of the 
 Hours of Labour "). " PoHtical economists are 
 emphatic in their conclusion that the effect of 
 the Factory Acts has been undoubtedly to raise 
 the real wages of the working classes as a 
 whole." 
 
 But there are two parts to every wages 
 problem. First we must ask, What effect has 
 such and such a measure on the rate of wages ? 
 And secondly. What effect had it on the mi^nber 
 of those employed ? Naturally there is a close 
 connection between these two questions ; but 
 they are not absolutely dependent the one on 
 the other. The answer to the one is not 
 determined entirely by the answer to the 
 other. It is quite possible for an increase to 
 be effected in the rate of wages, without a 
 corresponding increase taking place in the 
 number of workpeople. If it is an incon- 
 testible fact that during the last forty years a 
 great rise has taken place in the rate ofwages^ 
 it is no less certain that the increase of pro- 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 45 
 
 duction has not been accompanied by a pro- 
 portionate increase in the numbers employed. 
 The report of the inspectors for the six months 
 ending October, 1862, shows that, while in 
 Lancashire the number of mills increased 
 enormously during the period 1839 to 1862, 
 the number of mill-hands diminished relatively. 
 There was a rather interesting description 
 the other day of a gathering of old hand 
 wool-combers at Keighley.^ One of the 
 speakers, Mr. Holden, M.P., "referred to the 
 beginnings of his attempt to invent ma- 
 chinery for the combing of wool, and the 
 compunction he felt at doing anything that 
 might cause an old industry to go down. 
 He was convinced, however, by a pamphlet 
 on *The Results of Machinery,' by Lord 
 Brougham, that all the successive improve- 
 ments in machinery tended to increase the 
 number of people employed, and to benefit 
 the whole community by cheapening the cost 
 of production. And he now felt quite sure 
 
 I Manchester Guardian, March 31st. ** An Old Yorkshire 
 Handicraft." 
 
46 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 that, at a moderate estimate, ten times the 
 number of persons were now engaged in the 
 wool industry that there were when wool was 
 combed by hand." Marx, quoting from the 
 inspectors' reports, wrote : " It was only during 
 the decade preceding 1866 that isolated details 
 of the wool manufacture, such as wool combing, 
 were incorporated into the factory system." 
 In this particular instance, then, we may say 
 legislation tended to augment very consider- 
 ably the number of persons employed. But 
 one could hardly prove this to be an altogether 
 typical case, I think. 
 
 The wealth of Great Britain in 1881 
 amounted to treble what it was in 185 1 ; yet 
 practically the same total number of wage 
 earners were employed at the two periods in 
 the five great staple industries of agriculture, 
 mining, textile manufactures, transport, and 
 machine making {Nineteenth Century, April, 
 1890; Macdonald, "The Case for an Eight 
 Hours' Day "). The throwing out of employ- 
 ment of great numbers of workpeople was one 
 of the generally anticipated results of factory 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 47 
 
 legislation. The prediction proved true up to 
 a certain point. But not for the reasons 
 alleged ; not because capital was withdrawn 
 from the protected industries, and mills were 
 shut up, but because machinery came into 
 competition with human labour. There can 
 be little doubt that the factory Acts had, 
 specially during the earlier years of their 
 operation, a tendency to throw certain classes 
 of workers out of employment. Every period 
 of transition brings pain to some section of 
 the community. But we may venture to 
 believe that those thrown put of work by the 
 factory Acts were precisely those who never 
 ought to have been employed — the very young, 
 the old, the infirm and diseased. Prior to the 
 factory Acts persons were employed in fac- 
 tories who were physically unfit to do the 
 work. Legislation put a stop to this, and 
 what was the result? Simply that masters 
 found it was in the end better even for their 
 own interests that the health of their work- 
 people should be respected. 
 
 What they had done from compulsion they 
 
48 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 soon did voluntarily ; they refused to employ 
 any but the strong and able-bodied. 
 
 " To judge from the evidence of the Factory 
 Employment Commission," writes an inspector 
 in 1868, " it was absolutely necessary to inter- 
 pose some machinery by which little children 
 should not be put to work when physically 
 unfit. 
 
 " A generation has passed. The manufac- 
 turer calculates the worth of every hand he 
 employs ; the number of children rejected by 
 the certifying surgeons is so small as to be 
 inappreciable." Above, when we said that 
 the demand for labour increased, it would 
 have been more correct to say that a change 
 took place in that demand. It was not so 
 much that a larger total number of workpeople 
 were wanted, but rather that the employers 
 insisted on having only the vigorous and 
 intelligent. In other words, the standard of 
 labour in the protected industries was raised, 
 and the wages paid for that labour rose 
 too. 
 
 If we ask, then, what became of the un- 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 49 
 
 employed? the answer must be that they 
 took refuge in those branches of industry not 
 yet under the Acts. 
 
 Clearly the constant tendency of modern 
 industry is towards the perfection of the 
 factory system, as distinguished from the 
 earlier stage of " manufacture " proper; 
 "handicrafts " are dying out and passing 
 into " manufactures " ; and lastly, " domestic 
 industries" are being converted into "handi- 
 crafts." 
 
 Those thrown out of employment in the 
 factories found work in some branch of manu- 
 facture, allied, probably, to their old calling. 
 No doubt they would be tempted, in the first 
 instance, by the hope of higher wages in the 
 as yet unprotected trades ; but this increased 
 rate of wages would not be long maintained, 
 while the workers would be constantly subject 
 to an ever-increasing pressure of overwork. 
 Then, when a further extension of factory 
 legislation brought about a fresh revolution in 
 industrial methods, the weakest again must 
 go to the wall, and so at last sink down to 
 4 
 
so FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TIGN. 
 
 the level of the poorest paid unskilled manual 
 labourers. 
 
 On the 26th of last February, Mr. Buxton 
 pointed out, in the debate on the second 
 reading of the Government Factories and 
 Workshops Bill, that " it was proved before 
 the Royal Commission that the result of 
 carrying factory and workshop regulations 
 down to a certain point, and no further, was 
 that to a large extent work was driven out of 
 the regulated establishments and into places 
 unregulated and uninspected." 
 
 On the whole, then, factory legislation tends 
 to press heavily on the very weakest class of 
 workers. Their last asylum is some hitherto 
 unregulated branch of domestic industry. 
 Such a refuge, for instance, the " wearing 
 apparel " trade has been. In the light of 
 recent revelations it is interesting to read an 
 early warning on this point by Karl Marx : — 
 
 "The number of those employed in this 
 particular trade during the year 1861 was 
 1,024,277, or about as many as are absorbed 
 by agriculture and cattle breeding. We 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 5 1 
 
 begin," says he, " to understand what becomes 
 of the immense quantities of goods conjured 
 up by the magic of machinery and of the 
 enormous masses of workpeople which that 
 machinery sets free " (Capital 11. 475). And 
 he also quotes the evidence of Mr. White, 
 one of the commissioners of 1863, "who 
 visited a military clothing manufactory that 
 employed 1,000 to 1,200, almost all females, 
 and a shoe manufactory with 1,300 of these, 
 nearly half being children and young 
 persons." 
 
 Therefore, without attempting to endorse 
 Marx's sweeping conclusion as to the general 
 effect of machinery on the demand for labour, 
 we may take note here perhaps of one more 
 incidental argument for extending factory 
 legislation, when once the first step has been 
 made. 
 
 But at the same time one is warned not 
 to regard legislation, in the shape of any 
 of the proposed new Bills, as a final solution 
 of a great social problem like that of the 
 unemployed. For instance, to take the case 
 
52 FACTORY ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 of the most advanced proposal, now before 
 the public — the Eight Hours Bill, — it is 
 argued by some that the passing of such a 
 Bill would give work to a large proportion 
 of those now out of work. Thus Mr. Cox 
 (in the Nineteenth Century for July, 18S9), 
 calculated to a nicety the number of persons 
 at present unemployed to whom such a law 
 would give the means of earning a livelihood. 
 He evidently left out of his reckoning the 
 fact that all past legislation has been attended 
 by an increase in the efficiency of labour, 
 brought about by one of two means — either 
 by the adoption of better machinery, or by 
 the employment of a more vigorous class 
 of workers. Though the total result has 
 undoubtedly been a rise in the rate of wages, 
 yet it is by no means so easy to show that 
 this rise has always been accompanied by a 
 like increase in the number employed. 
 
 It seems unwise to speak with such 
 absolute mathematical certainty as Mr. Cox 
 does on this point All that can be reason- 
 ably expected as a consequence of a measure 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 53 
 
 like this, is not that the actual number of 
 wage earners will be enormously augmented, 
 but that strong able-bodied workers will be 
 sought after more and more in every branch 
 of industry. 
 
 The great opposition offered to the passing 
 of the Acts by a large majority of manu- 
 facturers shows the general fear to have really 
 been rather that profits would be cut down 
 than that wages would fall. In the light of 
 what actually did happen, one is tempted to 
 doubt the entire sincerity of those mill- 
 owners who so loudly foretold a fall in wages. 
 The event proved that neither a fall in wages 
 nor a fall in profits must of necessity ensue ; 
 because the grand assumption, a decrease in 
 production, on which both predictions were 
 based, turned out, as a matter of fact, to be 
 fallacious. Yet even granting the possibility 
 of an increased production, due to the substi- 
 tution of better methods of work, there was 
 much force in the argument that manu- 
 facturers would already have introduced those 
 
54 ^A CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 better methods if they had foreseen any- 
 chance of benefiting themselves thereby. 
 
 "Why, I should like to know," said Mr. 
 Fawcett in 1874, "should the great textile 
 manufacturers be singled out as so peculiarly 
 deficient in independence and wanting in 
 experience to manage their own affairs that 
 they must be taken under the special 
 patronage of a Government, whose peculiar 
 mission it is to harass no industry and worry 
 no trade." Evidently Mr. Fawcett laid bare 
 the very weakest part of factory legislation. 
 
 But perhaps even here such legislation is 
 not absolutely indefensible. It was a strong 
 position to take up that an employer may 
 well be left to look after his own interests. 
 Nevertheless, there are a few considerations 
 which lead one to think this position not 
 altogether unassailable. Mr. Walker has 
 summed these up. He shows that for 
 employer and workman each to understand 
 and pursue his own true permanent interest, 
 perfect competition is necessary; and that 
 while this condition is the more conspicuously 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 5 5 
 
 absent in the labourer's case ; yet neither is 
 the requirement ever perfectly fulfilled even 
 where the employer is concerned. For " the 
 employer on his part is always in a higher 
 or lower degree unduly under the domination 
 of immediate purposes." And then Mr. 
 Walker goes on to enumerate some of these : 
 " Haste to be rich, which often makes waste ; 
 greed, which is always unwise ; parsimony, 
 which disables from business success many a 
 man who has every other qualification, 
 rendering him incapable of ever taking a 
 large and liberal view of his industrial rela- 
 tions ; rivalry, mutual jealousy among manu- 
 facturers, affecting the temper of business 
 and warping production from its best course 
 — these passions and infirmities among 
 employers, quickened at times by stringent 
 financial necessity, must more or less make 
 a separation between their seeming present 
 and their true permanent interests. Thus it 
 becomes possible that an employer shall seek 
 to crowd down wages, extend the hours of 
 work, quicken the movement of the machinery. 
 
56 FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION. 
 
 admit children of tender age to painful and 
 protracted labour, scrimp in the conveniences 
 of production and neglect ventilation and 
 sanitary care of his shop or his factory, all 
 in the effort to increase the month's and the 
 year's profits, though such a course is in the 
 long run prejudicial alike to himself and his 
 hands. Perfect competition would make the 
 employer the guardian of the labourer's 
 interests" ("Wages," p. 172). It is in such 
 arguments as these that Mr. Walker finds 
 the economic justification of factory legisla- 
 tion even from the point of view of its effects 
 on profits. 
 
 We turn then to actual facts and ask 
 " How has legislation affected that part of 
 the total produce which falls to the manu- 
 facturer's share ? " Mr. Hyndman {New 
 Review^ August, 1889) maintains that the past 
 limitations of the working day have not 
 decreased profits. " Far from it." And he 
 refers for the truth of this assertion to the 
 returns under Schedule D. Even had I con- 
 
FACTORY ACT LEGISLA TION. 57 
 
 suited these returns, I should perhaps hardly 
 trust my judgment to decide whether or not 
 the increase noticed by Mr. Hyndman is in 
 any way traceable to the factory Acts. But 
 I have seen the factory inspectors' reports 
 from 1852 till 1883, and perhaps, on the whole, 
 one may venture to take their evidence as 
 more direct and fairly trustworthy. Their 
 reports have been, as a general rule, quoted 
 authoritatively in the House of Commons. 
 Of course at times doubt has been thrown on 
 their ability to form correct and impartial 
 judgments on the weightier questions with 
 which they are brought in contact ; Mr. 
 Fawcett, for example, said that though their 
 evidence might be taken with regard to 
 technical points of detail concerning, say, the 
 proper ventilation of a factory, &c., yet they 
 were not the people to be consulted on topics 
 of more general interest and wider import, 
 such as the effect of legislation on trade. 
 But on the whole, Mr. Fawcett's opinion 
 hardly seems to be the generally accepted 
 one. Perhaps in the main we may agree 
 
58 FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 with the writer of a leading article in the 
 Manchester Guardian of last February (27th), 
 when he says, after summing up the principal 
 features of the Government Bill, that "Mr. 
 Matthews evidently relies largely on the 
 judgment and discretion of the inspectors, 
 and it may be freely admitted that the past 
 records of such officials, not merely in this 
 country, but wherever Factory Acts are in 
 force, justify his confidence." Allowing, then, 
 for a certain natural bias in the inspector's 
 minds in favour of the Acts which it is their 
 business to administer, I think we may fairly 
 gather from their reports that but a very few 
 years' experience of the actual working of 
 the law was needed to materially alter the 
 attitude of the employers. Thus in 1859 Mr. 
 Redgrave wrote : " The law is fairly observed, 
 the inspectors generally received cordially, 
 rare are the instances when our duties are 
 regarded as antagonistic to the interests of 
 the manufacturer, even after proceedings." 
 And in 1881 the inspector reports that "very 
 few employers of any class are to be found 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 59 
 
 in the occupations under the operation of the 
 Factory Acts prepared to say they would 
 willingly return to the old system." 
 
 Probably it would not be going too far to 
 say that the great majority of manufacturers 
 to-day would not desire to see the Acts 
 repealed, and they would no doubt indignantly 
 repel the insinuation that they are at the 
 present time swayed chiefly by interested 
 motives in their endeavour to bring about 
 a further restriction of the hours of factory 
 labour in India. 
 
 But just as, side by side with the general 
 effect of factory legislation in raising the rate 
 of wages ^ we had to notice an opposite ten- 
 dency in the particular case of the very lowest 
 and weakest class of workers ; so, too, if 
 profits generally did not fall in consequence 
 of the factory Acts, but rather showed some 
 disposition to rise, that result was, nevertheless, 
 accompanied by, and indeed was almost 
 impossible without this further result, that 
 certain classes of profits were utterly annihi- 
 lated. The first effect of the Acts was the 
 
6o FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 introduction of new machinery. This entailed 
 increased expenditure of capital. Naturally 
 the small masters were powerless to compete 
 with the large mill owners, who were able to 
 invest in the new improvements, and ulti- 
 mately to succeed better than before. During 
 the decade 1853-63, no less than three hun- 
 dred cottage factories were shut up. The 
 struggle between the cottage factories and the 
 factory system proper lasted twelve years, 
 and ended in the complete ruin of the smaller 
 works (Reports, 1865). This concentration 
 of industry in the hands of fewer and fewer 
 great employers of labour was being gradually 
 effected by other and inherent forces ; but it 
 was most certainly accelerated by factory 
 legislation. 
 
 If we had to sum up in a single sentence 
 the general effects of the Factory Acts on the 
 textile manufactures, we should say that that 
 legislation tended to enforce everywhere the 
 principle of the selection of the fittest ; in 
 other words, it helped to bring about the 
 fittest use of capital, of invention, and of 
 
FACTOR V ACT LEGISLA TION. 6i 
 
 human skill and energy ; and therefore it did 
 not diminish production, nor lower wages ; 
 neither probably did it lead to a fall in profits, 
 nor a permanent loss of foreign trade. 
 
 The difficult question of the bearing of 
 legislation on foreign trade can be only very 
 lightly touched upon in an essay like the 
 present. Perhaps the most obvious thought 
 is this — No nation can long maintain a 
 commercial supremacy unless its labouring 
 class is strong and intelligent. If, in any 
 country the hours of labour are such as to 
 ultimately impair the vigour and intelligence, 
 and therefore the productive capacity of the 
 workpeople, then at once there is ground for 
 legislative interference, and the truth of this 
 proposition is not lessened because the 
 country happens to have a great export trade. 
 "For industrial purposes England, France, 
 Germany, Switzerland, and the United States 
 form, in reality, only one community." Each 
 of these countries is in the position of hesi- 
 tating to adopt more stringent labour laws 
 
62 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 for fear of thereby giving a temporary advan- 
 tage to the other four (Cox, Nineteenth 
 Century^ July, 1889). 
 
 Yet, in the debate of 1878, Mr. Baxter went 
 so far as to argue that if foreign competition 
 had to be met, the best way to do it was to 
 reduce the hours of labour for our own 
 population ; and there are those w^ho will 
 assert to-day, as Mr. Webb does, that the 
 English cotton-spinner finds competition 
 keenest, not where the hours of work are 
 longest, as in Russia and India, but where 
 they are shortest, as in Massachusetts. Certain 
 it is that the most perfect machinery, the 
 largest system of production, the least amount 
 of waste time, are all features characteristic 
 of those industries and those countries where 
 the shortest working day obtains. 
 
 Then again, of course, it is argued that 
 many of the branches of trade which it is now 
 proposed to bring under State supervision 
 would be not at all, or very slightly affected 
 by foreign competition. But this argument 
 applies more especially to such proposals as 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 63 
 
 Lord Dunraven's, for instance. It touches the 
 question of an extension of the scope of legis- 
 lation ; the bringing of the law down to 
 domestic workshops, &c., rather than the 
 wider question of a further restriction of 
 hours in all trades. 
 
 On the whole it is pretty generally admitted 
 that this latter problem must be viewed not 
 from a national only, but from an inter- 
 national standpoint. A great international 
 federation of labour is becoming the more 
 and more generally accepted ideal of the 
 working classes ; there is ground for hoping 
 that in the future some approach towards 
 joint action will be made by the great in- 
 dustrial States. 
 
 No one can deny that the old objection to 
 the Acts, for the alleged reason that they 
 would endanger foreign trade, has lost much 
 of its force since other nations have followed 
 England's lead in the matter of factory 
 legislation. " Nor need we be any longer 
 afraid of foreign competition," wrote Mr. 
 Redgrave in his report for 1868 ; " nor of the 
 
64 FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 advantages which our continental neighbours 
 are said to possess over us in their unlimited 
 power to work all hours with children of all 
 ages, in their manufactories. Factory Acts 
 are being deliberated in France, for example, 
 by the manufacturers, in association with 
 scientific help, with the experience of thirty- 
 five years in England before them." Effective 
 French law dates from 1874 ; the North 
 German Parliament passed a Bill in 1869 
 limiting the age of children to twelve, and their 
 hours of work to six, &c. ; in Switzerland the 
 conditions are stricter still (For details, see 
 Walker, "Wages," and Plener). Mr. Mun- 
 della, in his introduction to Herr Plener's 
 book, wrote, " In almost all countries where 
 manufacture is conducted on an extensive 
 scale and where the social and educational 
 condition of the people is an object of public 
 solicitude, steps are being taken to adopt and 
 extend the principles of English Factory 
 Legislation." He notes, too, that others have 
 gone far beyond us. In various American 
 States, such as Illinois, New York, California 
 
FACTOR V ACT LEGISLA HON. 6$ 
 
 and Wisconsin, the working day has been 
 defined to nrican eight hours ; while in others, 
 Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Rhode 
 Island, Maine, Michigan and Nebraska, ten 
 hours is the limit. To these may be added 
 Florida (ten hours), and Indiana and Con- 
 necticut (eight hours) (see Fabian Society's 
 " Eight Hours' Bill") 
 
 The limitation, however, seems to be in 
 many cases permissive and nominal merely 
 (Mr. Bradlaugh, " Eight Hours' Movement," 
 New Review, 1889). 
 
 Three Bills are now before the legislature 
 of Massachusetts, for a reduction of the hours 
 of labour to fifty-eight, fifty-six, and fifty-four 
 respectively per week (^Manchester Guardian, 
 13th April, 1891). 
 
 With regard to Canada, Sir Charles Dilke 
 points out that the Royal Commission on the 
 relations of Capital and Labour has lately 
 recommended that all government contracts 
 should be subject to a maximum of nine hours 
 a day. " If in all that bears on co-operation," 
 writes he, " the colonies are behindhand, the 
 
66 FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 reverse is the case with regard to factory 
 legislation. The colonies possess legislation 
 equal or superior to our own, as regards 
 inspection, with the addition in some cases of 
 provisions against sweating, in which we are 
 likely to follow their example (Problems of 
 Greater Britain). 
 
 The argument against factory legislation, 
 founded on the fear of danger to foreign trade 
 has, therefore, lost much of its weight since 
 the early days of the factory Acts. 
 
 III. — Effect on Non-textile Indus- 
 tries. 
 
 We have seen the factory Acts at work in 
 the textile industries, and the importance of 
 this part of the subject can hardly be over- 
 estimated. Not only was the experiment in 
 legislation being tried on an enormous scale, 
 but since modern industry is ever advancing 
 towards the perfect factory system, in watch- 
 ing the effects of the Acts on the textile 
 industries one is in reality learning what tend 
 to be ever more and more the normal 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEG IS LA TION. 67 
 
 consequences of legislation. A very few 
 words will sum up the effects on industries 
 other than textile. On the whole they were 
 precisely the same as those we have noted 
 already. The inspectors' reports for the 
 years 1864-77 ^^^ ^^^1 of evidence as to the 
 economic results of the new Acts ; and there 
 is nothing which tells more for the general 
 soundness of the principles of factory legisla- 
 tion than the ease and rapidity with which 
 the conditions of the many various kinds of 
 ■"'new" works modelled themselves on the 
 pattern of the law. 
 
 On the first introduction of the Acts of 
 1864 and 1867 such complaints as these were 
 made : Factory legislation, it was said, might 
 be very good for the textile industries, where 
 everything was conducted with rigorous 
 regularity, and where the cessation of the 
 machinery entailed a loss of quantity merely, 
 but it was decidedly bad for industries 
 such as bleaching and dyeing, &c., in which 
 the processes were of a chemical, not a 
 mechanical nature, and where any sudden 
 
68 FACTOR V ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 break meant loss of quantity and ruin to the 
 quality besides. Then, again, complaints 
 came from the "season trades/' Overtime, 
 said the manufacturers, was an absolute 
 necessity in industries dependent on short 
 orders, specially short shipping orders ; or in 
 businesses like the clothing trades, ruled 
 entirely by fashion and the seasons, where 
 months of hard work alternated with as many 
 months of comparative idleness. Out-door 
 employments, too, influenced more or less by 
 the weather, such as the manufacture of 
 earthenware, building bricks, &c., seemed 
 hardly likely to adapt themselves well to 
 the new regulations. And then from various 
 quarters there came the plea that, if the half- 
 time system were introduced, enough children 
 could not be found to do the work ; adults 
 would have to be employed instead, and thus 
 both the cost of production must be increased 
 and great suffering be brought on many poor 
 homes where the children's wages were sorely 
 needed. But, on the whole, these obstacles 
 vanished wonderfully quickly. As before, in 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 69 
 
 the case of the textile industries, so now the 
 almost immediate effect of legislation was an 
 improvement in the instruments of labour. 
 Legislation forced on everywhere the adoption 
 of better tools or better processes, or changed 
 for the better the whole system of production. 
 For example, in th^ potteries, " power jiggers " 
 and '' turners " for turning the potter's wheel 
 soon took the place of little children, as an 
 inspector had predicted they would in 1865. 
 Improvements were made in the system of 
 stoveage ; five or six new inventions are 
 noted in Mr. Baker's report for 1865, and 
 he specially mentions the one adopted at 
 Minton's, which did away with all the old 
 evils of over-heated rooms. Two years later 
 the same inspector points to the great 
 contrast between a new " bank," with all the 
 modern appliances, and an old one. Mr, 
 Redgrave reported in 1874 that certain 
 patented " Regenerating Gas " furnaces had 
 been introduced into glass works to lessen 
 the necessity for employing young persons 
 at night. Great strides were made in the 
 
70 FA CTOR Y ACT LEG I SLA TLON. 
 
 bookbinding trade ; for instance, the general 
 adoption of the folding machine dispensed 
 with the labour of women, which had been 
 deemed absolutely necessary during one or 
 two nights a week. 
 
 By the year 1872 machinery had been 
 applied even to the weaving of cocoa fibre, 
 and — most surprising result of all, as the 
 inspector seemed to think — steam power 
 was beginning to be used for horsehair 
 weaving, previously an occupation of the 
 purely " handicraft " type. Indeed, it would 
 perhaps be hard to find a single trade brought 
 under the Factory Acts' Extension Act which 
 did not undergo some change for the better 
 in respect of the machinery used. Quite as 
 notew^orthy was the effect of the new law on 
 the workman. The shortening of the working 
 day enforced habits of regularity which left 
 their mark on both the quality and quantity 
 of the work done. The system of " piece " 
 wages, too, was almost always adopted as 
 soon as legislation was introduced, and this 
 incentive to industry, combined with greater 
 
I' A CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, - 7 1 
 
 vigour, worked wonders. Nowhere was this 
 effect more apparent than in the case of the 
 potteries. A full account of the state of the 
 pottery trade at the time of the passing of 
 the new Act is given by Inspector Baker in 
 his report for 1865. From his description it 
 would seem that many of the masters were 
 men of small capital who simply found the 
 shop and materials ; everything, in fact, 
 rested in the hands of the workmen; they 
 contracted to make certain articles within a 
 certain time at a fixed price, and they were 
 free to employ as many children as they 
 liked, pay them what wages they chose, and 
 work them all hours. As a rule these potters 
 were a most disorderly, drunken set of men, 
 and their constant practice for years had 
 been to spend Monday and Tuesday drink- 
 ing, and then make up for lost time by 
 over-w^orking their assistants for the re- 
 mainder of the week. The Factory Act did 
 much here, and in all the industries it 
 touched, to bring about increased order and 
 diligence, and something like a regular system 
 of working. 
 
72 FACTORY ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 On the whole the fears of the manufacturers 
 proved groundless. Overtime, in the vast 
 majority of cases, was shown to be not an 
 absolute necessity (see Children's Employ- 
 ment Commission and inspectors' reports 
 passim). The largest number of children 
 in the " new " industries were employed in 
 the potteries. There the threatened dearth 
 of half-timers did not come about. Inspector 
 Baker showed the fallacy of that outcry in 
 his report of 1865 by comparing the number 
 of children in the potteries during that year 
 (2,050) with the number (5,198) who, accord- 
 ing to the census returns of 1861, would have 
 been of fit legal age for work under the Act. 
 Great destitution had been foretold in conse- 
 quence of the wholesale dismissal of children 
 or the fall in their wages. But experience 
 showed that, as a general rule, it was not the 
 poor widow who complained that the children 
 did not get a whole day's pay for half a day's 
 work, but rather the idle, drunken father, 
 strong enough and well able to earn a 
 livelihood for himself and his family without 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEG I SLA TION. 73 
 
 forcing his little ones of five or six years or 
 younger to a labour far beyond their strength. 
 Again and again the inspectors report a 
 growing disposition in favour of the Act. 
 Thus Mr. Redgrave (April, 1866) speaks of 
 " The great success of the last series of Acts." 
 *' I constantly receive from employers and 
 operatives warm expressions of thankfulness 
 that their trades are under inspection with 
 evidences of the boons derived." Mr. Baker, 
 the same year, reports " The increasing accep- 
 tability of the Factory Acts' Extension Act. 
 Manufacturers who had previously objected 
 admit now that its operation has assisted 
 them in their views and wishes with regard 
 to their workpeople, and they have dismissed 
 their doubts and fears." In short, " when the 
 Act was introduced, nineteen-twentieths of 
 the masters w^ere against it ; now nineteen- 
 twentieths would be unwilling to part with it." 
 
 After the final Report of the Children's 
 Employment Commission had been issued 
 in 1866, the law was again extended to a 
 
74 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 ^reat number of new industries. The ma- 
 jority of these already worked less than sixty 
 hours a week (see Tables Report, 1869). 
 What better proof could be given that the 
 principles of factory legislation were sound 
 and* practical ? Objections were made then 
 for the most part not to the fixed total 
 number of hours, but to the times for 
 beginning and leaving off work. There 
 were also, of course, complaints about the 
 necessity of occasional overtime. Under the 
 new Act the Secretary of State was em- 
 powered to grant certain relaxations in 
 special cases, should he see fit to do so. 
 It is a fairly significant fact that Mn 
 Redgrave was able to report in 1868 "not 
 a single prosecution." And again it is 
 remarkable that the next year, out of a 
 total of 12,000 works in his district, the 
 number of notices issued for special re- 
 laxations amounted only to 577. Of these 
 no less than 384 were for printers ; and 
 further, out of these 384, by far the greater 
 number were for the smallest and worst 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 75 
 
 regulated businesses of all — the " jobbing 
 printers" offices. [All the various kinds of 
 printing works are enumerated in the report 
 of October, 1868, and .a very full description 
 is given of the '* jobbing printer's" trade, in 
 particular, as affected by the Act] Sub- 
 tracting 384 from the total 577, we get only 
 193 notices for all the other trades in this 
 district put together. This proves, argued the 
 inspector, " That the Factory Act hours from 
 six to six are the most general, the most 
 convenient, and those which the working 
 classes as a rule prefer." " On a review^ of 
 what I consider to be the feeling of the whole 
 body of manufacturers in my division, and I " 
 have gathered it from all quarters as best I 
 could, I think I may say, that in as short a 
 space of time, nay even in a shorter time than 
 it took to reconcile the textile manufacturers 
 to the restriction, the industries now introduced 
 to it for the first time will be thankful that at 
 last the master's right in his servant's time and 
 the servant's right in his own time has been 
 legally recognized and settled" (Report, 1868). 
 
76 FA CTOR Y ACT LEG IS LA TION. 
 
 Passages like this are of constant occur- 
 rence. Perhaps one or two typical quotations 
 may be taken from the reports for 1877. For 
 instance, we get a short summary such as 
 this : " In many of the ' new ' trades the 
 hours were less than those allowed by law, 
 but in many a rearrangement of hours was 
 needed. This was granted, the difficulty was 
 removed, and all the better people concurred 
 willingly " (Redgrave). 
 
 A 7'esuini of the work in London during 
 the previous ten years shows that the fears 
 as to the effects of the Acts on the '' season 
 trades" were unfounded. "You have come 
 to ruin us," said a large manufacturer of 
 artificial flowers to the inspector in 1867. 
 A year afterwards he acknowledged that the 
 Factory Act was a positive blessing, that he 
 got as much work out of his hands in ten and 
 a half hours as in twelve or fourteen, and that 
 he effected a saving of ;^30 on his gas-bill 
 besides. Another declared in 1876 that he 
 ^**considered the alteration a great improve- 
 ment both to the men" and to himself; there 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEG IS LA TION. 77 
 
 was a saving of gas, and a clear gain of time 
 due to the fact that the workwomen were not 
 so subject to fits^ the result of over-exhaus- 
 tion ! Examples of this kind might be multi- 
 plied indefinitely : " Even in the case of work- 
 shops, where day wages rule, the result has 
 been satisfactory. In spite of the prophecies of 
 ruin from foreign competition, I know hardly 
 any branch of manufacturing industry which 
 has not grown enormously during the last 
 decade, and in spite of the vast variety of 
 new machinery, the number of persons em- 
 ployed has increased very largely, and a 
 substantial addition has been made to the 
 rate of wages, specially the wages of the 
 protected classes." 
 
 The great defect in the Act of 1867 was 
 that it did not go far enough. With the 
 exception of certain trades specially recom- 
 mended for regulation by the Commissioners, 
 the Factory Act applied only to places where 
 7iot less than fifty hands zvere employed, all 
 smaller establishments came under the Work- 
 shop Act. 
 
yS FA CTOR Y ACT LEG I SLA TLON. 
 
 The terms " factory " and " workshop " 
 were thus technical, the distinction often 
 purely arbitrary. There might be two work- 
 places close together, absolutely identical in 
 all other respects save the number of opera- 
 tives, and one business would have to conform 
 to the Factory Act, the other would be practi- 
 cally free, because the Workshop Act was 
 really a dead letter till 1871. Naturally the 
 larger employers were loud in their complaints, 
 and sought by every means in their power to 
 dispense with the labour of the protected 
 classes. The children flocked to the smaller 
 unregulated industries which were invariably 
 the worst organized ; thus this Act failed 
 signally as an educational measure and it was 
 precisely as an educational measure that it 
 had been passed. In 1871 the Workshop 
 Act was handed over to the factory inspectors, 
 and henceforth it was at any rate as effective 
 as a proper system of administration could 
 make it. But the old distinction between 
 ^^ factory " and " workshop " remained, and as 
 the terms of the Workshop Act were far less 
 
FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION. 79 
 
 stringent than those of the Factory Act, the 
 " fifty hands clause " still proved a stumbling- 
 block in the way of the inspectors. Progress 
 was made by the Consolidating Act of 1878, 
 which placed factories and workshops on a 
 more equal footing and established a better 
 system of classification. But the real question 
 lay deeper. There is much that legislation 
 still leaves untouched. 
 
 The present Factory and Workshop Act 
 applies to the following classes of industry : 
 
 1. Textile factories employing steam or 
 other mechanical power. 
 
 2. Certain specified non-textile factories,, 
 whether power is used or not. 
 
 3. Workshops employing women and chil- 
 dren. 
 
 4. Bakehouses. 
 
 5. Domestic industries regularly pursued 
 (other than straw plaiting, pillow lace making, 
 and glove making). 
 
 But these last three classes are almost 
 entirely free from control, as has been shown 
 by the Report of the Commission on Sweating 
 
8o FACTORY ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 (see Sidney Webb, Contemporary Review, 
 December, 1889). 
 
 As early as 1866 Mr. Redgrave wrote that 
 almost the only objection to the Act of 1864 
 was that it did not extend to trades " whether 
 carried on in what is technically called a 
 ' factory,' or in other places, notably to a 
 trade when carried on in a house by a father 
 and his family." A report for 1872 notices 
 the sweating among the " garret masters " in 
 the boot and shoe trade at Norwich ; and has 
 this warning, " We must be careful, therefore, 
 lest an evil grow up more fatal in its con- 
 sequences to morals and health than the 
 worst form of labour ever known in open 
 factories and workshops." In 1873 Mr. 
 Redgrave suggested the following amend- 
 ments in the existing law : — 
 
 1. The repeal of the Workshop Act of 1867. 
 
 2. All handicrafts not defined to be fac- 
 tories in any Factory Act to be declared to 
 be factories under the Factory Act of 1867. 
 
 3. Registers to be kept of such factories. 
 
FACTORY ACT LEGISLA TION. 8i 
 
 IV.— Prospective Effects of Newly- 
 proposed Changes. 
 
 Such proposals as these foreshadowed the 
 recent recommendations of Lord Dunraven 
 and of the other Commissioners. 
 
 At the present time the whole question of 
 State restriction of labour is thoroughly well 
 to the front. Two lines of departure from the 
 existing law are now being more or less freely 
 discussed. In the first place it is proposed that 
 the i'<:(9/^ of legislation be once more extended ; 
 secondly, there are those who advocate a 
 radical change in the restrictions now in force. 
 The former of these two suggested alterations 
 is the nearer to actual realizaton, and its 
 probable effects are the less difficult to forecast. 
 For this reason \- — the terms "factory," "work- 
 shop," and " domestic workshop," in the Act 
 of 1878, are now hardly more than survivals 
 of the past, which serve to mark the historical 
 progress of legislation. To-day there exists 
 no really fundamental distinction between a 
 "factory" and a "workshop," or an ordinary 
 6 
 
82 FA CTOR Y ACT LEG I SLA TION. 
 
 and a " domestic " workshop. The factory 
 system is becoming the typical form of modern 
 industry ; the older forms of manufacture and 
 handicraft are fast passing away ; and of 
 ^' domestic industry " in the old and only 
 proper sense of the term very few traces 
 indeed remain. 
 
 Experience has shown us factory legislation 
 at work in the textile factory, the non-textile 
 factory, and the workshop. The provisions 
 drawn up with special reference to one set of 
 trades soon proved admirably well adapted to 
 the conditions of a great variety of others. 
 
 We have seen the original sphere of the 
 factory Acts constantly enlarged to include, 
 first, in 1864, certain special forms of non- 
 textile industries ; then, agam, in 1867, all 
 workshops of a certain size ; and lastly, in 
 1 87 1, every kind of manual labour exercised 
 by way of hire or gain in textile factory, non- 
 textile factory, or workshop (the term " work- 
 shop," however, being defined to mean only 
 a place to which the employer has the right of 
 access). 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 83 
 
 Each succeeding experiment has proved 
 legislation to be justifiable not only on grounds 
 sanitary, educational, and moral, but also when 
 judged by the " strictest rules of Political 
 Economy." All the English economists were 
 against the Act of 1844; probably there is 
 hardly a single writer of note who would wish 
 to see that or any subsequent Act repealed 
 to-day. The expected economic results no- 
 where came to pass, because, wherever legisla- 
 tion penetrated it acted as a stimulus to 
 ^' invention " in the best and widest sense of 
 the word. 
 
 A three-fold waste of labour was the condi- 
 tion which rendered possible a result quite 
 other than that most generally anticipated. 
 There was, firstly, a waste of labour due to 
 the use of inferior machinery ; secondly, a 
 waste of labour due to bad systems, both of 
 Production and Distributon, e.g., the labour of 
 little masters, contractors, middlemen, &c. ; 
 and thirdly, a waste of labour due to over- 
 work on the part of the labourer. No one 
 doubts that these conditions exist to-day in 
 
84 FACTORY ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 the industries mis-called '' domestic ; " there- 
 fore it seems more than probable that the 
 extension of the Act to such forms of labour 
 would have substantially the same effects as 
 those which have always followed its introduc- 
 tion into larger, but not essentially different, 
 branches of trade. Production will increase 
 with the improved vigour of the workpeople, 
 and the use of better appliances ; wages will 
 rise ; foreign trade can be only temporarily 
 injured ; the whole basis of the industry must 
 in the end be made wider and stronger. 
 Temporary suffering there must be, that is 
 inseparable from a transition period. As in 
 all other instances we have noticed, the factory 
 Acts have fallen heavily on the smallest class 
 of employers and the weakest class of workers, 
 so, too, in the " sweated " trades of the present 
 day it is impossible but that the profits of 
 contractors and garret masters should be cut 
 off by a law which must inevitably tend to 
 abolish the pernicious system of which they 
 are a part. And equally certain it is that 
 along with the abolition of bad methods of 
 
FA CTOR V A CT LEGISLA TION. . 85 
 
 production will go the discharge of the least 
 capable among the workpeople. The standard 
 of labour will rise, and many a strong man now 
 out of work will take the place of the poor, 
 decrepit creatures, whose very infirmities alone 
 have driven them down to the lowest level, 
 where they earn smallest pay for hardest work. 
 What is to become of these poor wretches 
 depends much on the strength of the union 
 between the various classes of labourers. The 
 question of the '^ residuum" is a social question. 
 No doubt legislation eventually brings about 
 an increased demand for labour, by stimulating 
 production ; but those are unwise who look 
 to finally solve the problem of the unemployed 
 by an amended Workshop Act. 
 
 The workers in the " domestic " industries 
 were, perhaps, the largest section of labourers 
 ignored by the last really progressive work- 
 shop Act, that of 1 87 1 . But there was another 
 important class altogether omitted. The Act, 
 besides defining a " workshop " to mean only 
 a place to which the employer had right of 
 
86 FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLATION. 
 
 access, was also "based entirely on the idea of 
 handicraft" (see '' Reports," 1 87 1), the manufac- 
 ture, that is, of material wealth. Thus it gave 
 no protection to those classes of labour which 
 are generally termed "services;" it left un- 
 touched the labour of shop-assistants, railway, 
 and tramway officials, and, indeed, it ignored 
 all the great army of workers employed rather 
 in distribution than in direct production. A 
 " Shop Assistants " Act has since been passed,, 
 but the other forms of labour remain unregu- 
 lated, and the recent Board of Trade returns 
 show, I believe, that the average hours worked 
 are excessive. There is room for improve- 
 ment here, and it is worth noticing that in 
 such industries as these, the great fear of the 
 present time, the danger of foreign competi- 
 tion, is altogether absent, or at least reduced 
 to a minimum. The objection to the limita- 
 tion of the hours of labour of adult men was 
 long ago shown by Lord Macaulay to rest 
 on an insecure basis. As a matter of fact 
 State interference with the labour of grown 
 men is no new thing. Direct limits were set 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 87 
 
 to miners' work in 1842 ; and men in factories 
 have, to all intents and purposes, had their 
 hours fixed ever since the first factory Act 
 came into force. The practical argument 
 that interference will impair the moral energy 
 of the man, take away his self-helpfulness, and 
 make him trust to the State to do everything 
 for him — that argument has not been borne 
 out by experience. No more self-helpful and 
 independent set of workpeople are to be found 
 than the cotton operatives of Lancashire, and 
 they are the men whose hours of labour have 
 been longest subject to State regulation. It 
 is sometimes the bitterest irony to tell a man 
 to help himself It is the legislation which 
 must in many cases give the first taste, not of 
 dignity and self-respect but of freedom. This 
 applies, of course, with additional force to the 
 toilers in the smallest and worst regulated 
 " workshops, employing men only." 
 
 It was an objection often urged against the 
 early factory Acts that the condition of the 
 mill-hands was not one whit worse than that 
 of scores of other labourers. Mr. Bright, for 
 
SS FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION, 
 
 instance, in the debate of 1850, compared the 
 circumstances of the 15,000 young persons 
 under the statute with those of the 15,000 
 milliners in London. But when once the 
 first experiment has been made and has 
 succeeded, it would seem that such an argu- 
 ment as this can only be used effectively 
 not against a particular, but in favour of a 
 general application of the law. 
 
 Much more difficult is it to speak with 
 anything like confidence of that other class 
 of proposals — The suggested radical altera- 
 tion of the law as it affects all trades ; the 
 further raising of the age of half-timers to 
 twelve as in Austria and Switzerland, and 
 the further reduction of the working hours 
 to eight. 
 
 If the history of factory legislation teaches 
 any lesson at all, it is the extreme difficulty 
 of prophesying the effects of that legislation 
 even in the most general terms ; while to 
 attempt anything like quantitative precision 
 in one's forecasts is clearly out of the 
 
FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 89 
 
 question unless one possesses a very large 
 amount of special technical knowledge. 
 
 The same predictions are being made con- 
 cerning the " Eight Hours Bill " as were 
 uttered sixty years ago against the first great 
 factory Act. Men who fully admit that the 
 old arguments have proved fallacious, repeat 
 them again to-day. The general position of 
 the opponents of new legislation may be 
 summed up thus: — They regard the factory 
 Acts as an example of exceptional legislation, 
 framed to meet exceptional conditions. The 
 experiment has been made and has succeeded, 
 the desired result has been obtained, and the 
 whole thing is over. The old conditions 
 have completely passed away, and there is 
 neither any necessity for a repetition of the 
 experiment nor any reasonable ground for 
 believing that under circumstances so altered, 
 similar consequences would ensue. This was 
 Mr. Fawcett's attitude in 1874, and the same 
 line of argument has been taken up in recent 
 debates. But is it altogether true that the 
 old conditions have entirely passed away ? is 
 
90 FACTOR V A CT LEG IS LA TION. 
 
 it absolutely certain that there is no wasted 
 labour in any department of industry to-day? 
 Any great increase in the present speed of 
 machinery, at least at the textile factories^ 
 certainly seems impossible without an over- 
 straining of the workman's strength ; but 
 surely in the less perfectly organized in- 
 dustries there is room for progress. There 
 is always a too great readiness to regard a 
 present system of things as stereotyped and 
 final. If we consider the strides that have 
 been made in invention during the last fifty 
 years, it seems almost rash to attempt to fix 
 a limit to the possible developments of 
 modern industry in the years to come. 
 
 But the proposers of an Eight Hours Bill 
 lay more stress on the argument that such a 
 measure must bring about a great improve- 
 ment in the vigour, bodily and mental, of 
 great numbers of the working class. 
 
 Much has been done by past legislation 
 but there are those who believe that much 
 still remains to be done, who, like Dn 
 
FACTOR V ACT LEGISLA TION. 91 
 
 Cunningham, fear that even with the protec- 
 tion given by the factory Acts, the factory 
 population is deteriorating to-day. 
 
 " Some of the most important elements,'^ 
 he says, " in the maintenance of the national 
 life act indirectly upon it." Chief among 
 such we may rank the spread of education, 
 the growth of culture, the general increase of 
 intelligence among so large a section of the 
 community. 
 
 The bodily and intellectual energy of the 
 individual workman is, after all, the only true 
 basis of any kind of national greatness. 
 
 If the question of a special application of 
 the principle is always a difficult one, yet the 
 principle itself seems clear. Long experience 
 teaches this : that no law which promotes 
 the physical, intellectual and moral good of 
 the working classes can in the long run prove 
 economically unsound. 
 
 SHORT NOTES ON RECENT DEBATES. 
 
 Recent debates have raised questions which 
 have been but lightly touched upon or 
 
92 FA CTOR Y ACT LEGISLA TION. 
 
 omitted altogether in this essay. It seemed 
 well, therefore, to add one or two paragraphs 
 by way of [brief notes on a few of these 
 points : — 
 
 As regards the most important question of 
 all — that of raising the minimum half-time 
 age — there were very few new economic 
 arguments brought forward on either side. 
 Mr. Buxton defended his amendment chiefly 
 on sanitary and educational grounds ; but, 
 speaking also of the economic aspect of the 
 case, he denied that the proposed clause 
 would have the effect of reducing the aggre- 
 gate amount of wages received, because, under 
 existing conditions, children to a certain 
 extent enter into competition with adults, 
 and where children are employed there the 
 general rate of wages is low. 
 
 Sir W. Houldsworth did much to combat 
 that other equally time-honoured and still 
 more formidable bugbear of foreign competi- 
 tion by reminding his hearers of what was 
 being done by other nations in the matter of 
 factory legislation. He showed that in France 
 
FACTOR Y ACT LEG IS LA TION. 95 
 
 a Bill had passed a committee of the Senate, 
 and through the Chamber of Deputies, raising; 
 the age limit from ten to thirteen at one bound ; 
 while the same provision is already law in 
 Germany, and Switzerland has needed no 
 new Act to bring its labour statutes up to 
 the standard prescribed by the Berlin Con- 
 ference. 
 
 In the course of this debate (House of 
 Commons, third reading) some attempt was 
 made to prove that the training received by 
 half-timers in a mill is the best possible 
 preparation for their life's work. 
 
 Supporters of the amendment declined to 
 accept this theory ; they could not see their 
 way to regard the picking up of cotton-waste 
 and such like occupations in the light of a 
 highly organized technical education. Any- 
 how, whatever force there may be in the 
 argument, it would have been more to the 
 point if it had been used by some of the 
 advocates of the next amendment proposed 
 — the raising of the age limit of full-timers. 
 
 The most interesting speech on this subject^ 
 
94 FACTORY ACT LEGISLATION. 
 
 from an economical point of view, was Mr. 
 Bryce's. He pointed out that experienced 
 manufacturers were, he beUeved, of opinion 
 that if the age limit were raised, there would 
 be more inducement to bring into play better 
 machinery and a better organization of work, 
 and to lessen still further the margin of waste 
 and loss. He had a hopeful word to say, too, 
 on the vexed question of foreign competition, 
 for he considered that much of the success 
 of our continental rivals has been due to the 
 better general and technical education re- 
 ceived by their labouring classes. His words 
 really contained the gist of all that needs to 
 be said by way of economic justification of 
 such measures. 
 
 The proposal to include laundries under 
 the Act was met by the objection that 
 legislation has so far applied only to places 
 where the manufacture of goods for sale is 
 carried on, and that if it is to be extended 
 to laundries, why not to other forms of 
 domestic industry t If laundresses are pro- 
 
FA CTOR V ACT LEGISLA TION. 95 
 
 tected, why not cooks ? But the weakness 
 and incompleteness of this reply of Mr. 
 Matthews' was immediately shown by the 
 next speaker, who complained that it is not 
 fair for dyeworks to be regulated and laun- 
 dries which are in competition with them to 
 escape free. The fact is that it is no longer 
 possible to draw hard and fast lines between 
 the various grades of industry, they shade off 
 imperceptibly into one another, and all are 
 conforming more or less nearly to the general 
 outline of the factory system. 
 
 Another question of grave importance is 
 that of the handing over of workshops to 
 the care of Local Sanitary Authorities in- 
 stead of leaving them under the management 
 of the Government inspectors. 
 
 Without special knowledge of the practical 
 administration of the Factory Acts, and of 
 the particular exigencies of the present time, 
 it is, of course, impossible to speak with any- 
 thing like confidence on a point like this ; 
 but what we do know is that the result of 
 leaving the Workshop Act of 1867 to the 
 
96 FA CTOR Y ACT LEG I SLA TLON, 
 
 local authorities was simply that it became a 
 dead letter. 
 
 The last point to be noticed is the clause 
 to the effect that operatives engaged by the 
 piece shall be supplied with certain technical 
 particulars of the work they are given to do. 
 The grand objection naturally is that such a 
 measure would give dishonest workmen oppor- 
 tunities for betraying trade secrets. 
 
 Assuming that this danger could be effectu- 
 ally guarded against by the imposition of 
 a considerable penalty in such cases, one 
 would imagine that a regulation of this sort 
 would do nothing but good. 
 
 The introduction of the piece-work system 
 followed quickly on the early Factory Acts, 
 and its results were excellent. It gave the 
 operatives a direct interest in the amount of 
 work done and brought about habits of 
 regularity and industry. The adoption of 
 any measure which should tend to perfect 
 this system would surely be to the advantage 
 of all parties concerned in production. 
 
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