Factory Act.

I regret that your opportunities of inquiry as to the working of the Act were not more extensive; because, if they had been so, I am firmly persuaded that you would have come to conclusions in several respects different from those you have formed. I know some of the persons from whom you derived your information, and I trace their opinions in your letters, because they have been again and again expressed to myself. It was very natural that you should be disposed to listen with attention to their statements, for they are able, good, and benevolent men; and they have done much to improve the moral condition and add to the comforts of their work-people. But you were not sufficiently well prepared to cross-examine them, and to test the soundness of their reasoning, by an acquaintance with the internal economy of mills, and by an appeal to facts at variance with their opinions, of which I could produce many. Some of them, at least, I know to be men of a warm temperament and of a proud spirit, who wish to have their own way of doing good, and who kick against any attempt to force them to do good in any other way. Some were sore from having been fined: they were proceeded against, not for acts of inadvertence, but for doing that which their neighbours did not do, and which they might easily have avoided, if they had taken a little pains, and had been actuated by a disposition somewhat more submissive to a law, which they knew the inspector had received strict orders to enforce; full warning having been given to them by public advertisement, and by direct communication from myself. I allude to some for whom you know me to entertain great respect, and of whose benevolent exertions for their people I have spoken to you and others with the highest praise. The statements of these gentlemen are to be received, therefore, with an allowance: the most honest men sometimes view things through a medium which distorts the truth.

Another circumstance does not appear to have been sufficiently considered by you. The law was not passed for such mills as those of Messrs. Greg and Co., at Bollington, Messrs. Ashworths, at Turton, and Mr. Thomas Ashton, at Hyde: had all factories been conducted as theirs are, and as many others I could name are, there would probably have been no legislative interference at any time. But there are very many mill-owners whose standard of morality is low, whose feelings are very obtuse, whose governing principle is to make money, and who care not a straw for the children, so as they turn them well to money account. These men cannot be controlled by any other force than the strong arm of the law; and the Gregs, and Ashworths, and Ashtons, and others like them, must consider that the Act, and the rules and regulations issued under its authority, have been framed to check the evil practices of those who have brought discredit upon the trade; and they must submit to some inconveniences in order that their less scrupulous neighbours may be controlled. If these gentlemen were distillers, or soap-boilers, or paper-makers, they would not, I am very sure, knowingly rob the revenue of a shilling; but would they, on account of their high character, be listened to for a moment, if they were to complain of the trouble of keeping books, and observing regulations ordered by the commissioners of excise, or were to demonstrate against being subjected to the indignity of a public officer entering their premises without their leave? And if such restraints are indispensable for the sake of the revenue, ought they not to be submitted to with cheerfulness when the sole object of the interference is to improve the condition of thousands of children, and therefore ultimately, that of the whole factory population of the United Kingdom? If the restrictions do cause a reduction in some degree of present profit, by raising the wages of children, is there not the most well-grounded reason to expect that that outlay will, in the end, return with interest, by their having a more moral and intelligent set of work-people, who will be more regular in their attendance, will take better care of the machinery, and be less apt to be misled into strikes; and that thus there will be less interruption to the productive powers of the fixed capital, the great point to be aimed at, as you so clearly demonstrate?

You state, that “the relay system appears on the whole, as far as this district is concerned, to have failed.” If you had said that it has not been much acted upon, as far as that district is concerned, the statement would not have been liable to be misunderstood, as it is in the way you put it; for, in so far as the practicability of the system is concerned, the experiment has not only not failed, but has, in my opinion, succeeded beyond what its most sanguine advocates could have anticipated, considering the many obstacles it has had to contend with. It was to be expected that, for a time at least, a system which at first occasions some trouble, would not be adopted unless from necessity; and up to the present day, in such populous places as Manchester, Stockport, Ashton, and Staly Bridge, there has been comparatively little scarcity of children certified to be 13 years of age. From the great imperfection of the Act, in all that relates to the enactments for the determination of the ages of the children, it is impossible for the inspector to check the most palpable frauds, and to prevent the admission of children to work full time, long before they are 13 years of age. I have tried various checks, but with very partial success; and I am persuaded that fully one-half of the children now working under surgeons’ certificates of thirteen, are in fact not more than twelve, many not more than eleven years of age. Until this defect in the fundamental part of the Act be remedied, the object of the law will, to a great extent, be defeated. Had it not been for this facility of finding children nominally of thirteen years of age in the above named places, I have little doubt that the relay system would have been much more extensively in operation. In every instance which has come to my knowledge, where it has been fairly tried, it has succeeded. But I have entered so fully into this subject in my Reports, that I cannot do better than refer you to them; and I rest the proof of what I assert, upon what I have there stated, and on the special return I made to the House of Commons on the 6th of the present month. I shall quote a few passages from those Reports.

“The factory where the relay system is in operation on the largest scale in my district, is at the cotton works of Messrs. Finlay and Co., at Deanston, near Doune, in Perthshire. This factory is on a great scale, the water power being equal to 300 horses, and 800 persons being employed, of whom 442 are under eighteen years of age. Mr. Smith, the able and enlightened resident partner of the establishment, is a zealous advocate for the limitation of the hours of the children, and for the enforcement of their attendance on school; and immediately upon the Act coming into operation, he adopted the relay system. He has now 106 children under eleven years of age working upon that plan, and attending school for at least two hours a day for six days out of the seven in each week. I visited the works on the 18th of June, and conversed with Mr. Smith, and with two of his overseers, in order to ascertain how the plan was working after a four months’ trial. The account I received was, that at first there was some awkwardness, but that the difficulties were overcome, and the plan was going on smoothly, without inconvenience of any sort to the business of the factory.”—Report of 21st July, 1824, p. 11.

I saw Mr. Smith in London a month ago, when he informed me that the relay system has been going on at their factory uninterruptedly since he began it, more than three years ago, and that he is more and more convinced of its practicability and advantages.

“The prejudices that exist against the system of so working with relays of children are, however, beginning to give way: and the assurances which I have been able to give of the success of that plan, in every instance where it has been fairly tried, have overcome the reluctance to adopt it in many cases. There are now sixty-five mills in my district, where it is in operation; some upon an extensive, but in general upon a small scale: the total number of children so working by relays being 776, by my last returns. More would have adopted the system, but for a strong expectation that the law is to be altered, and that it would therefore be better to wait for some time before they make the change in their works, and incur any expense about schools.”—Report 24th of February, 1836, p. 13.

“These arguments in favour of the relay system are not theoretical speculations, but the results of experiments fairly made. In my reports from my former districts I stated several instances where this plan of employing children had been extensively acted upon with complete success; and I am happy to say that I have already found several mills in my new district where it is adopted. I have seen it in operation in 30 factories, under various modifications, some employing double sets, but more generally three children are engaged to work eight hours for two who used to work 12. I found the plan more general in the West Riding of Yorkshire than in the other parts of my district which I visited; and Mr. Baker mentions 14 mills where he found it in operation in August. Mr. Marshall, of Leeds, has long acted upon it in his extensive works, indeed for nearly two years before the passing of the present Act; and his sons, who take an active part in the direction of the mills, informed me that they find no difficulty in it. I found it in full operation with 300 children in the admirable establishment of Messrs. Wood and Walker, at Bradford; and Mr. Walker, in a conversation I had with him on this point, bore equally decided testimony to its practicability, and he also can speak from the experience of several years. Messrs. Hives, Atkinson, and Co., of Leeds, who have more recently adopted it in their large factory, and under an excellent arrangement, told me that they even preferred it to employing the children full time, finding them more cheerful and alert, and that consequently they got their work better done. Were it necessary, I could mention other instances of the plan working successfully; and the testimony of those who have fairly tried it is so strong in its favour as to warrant the expectation that many, ere long, will become converts to it, even among those who most decidedly pronounced it, before trial, to be impracticable.”—Report of 12th October, 1836, p. 9.

“In my last report I mentioned a great number of instances where this system had been adopted; and within the last three months a great increase has taken place, especially in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Mr. Baker has just sent me a report, from which it appears that, in the town and neighbourhood of Halifax alone, there are forty factories where there are 635 children working by relays, and regularly attending school. I have seen it in operation in large mills and in small mills, in towns and in country situations, and all I have seen has confirmed the opinions I have expressed in former reports, formed upon experience in my last district, that this mode of working children is not only perfectly practicable, but attended with very little difficulty after it has been but a short time in operation. Masters, managers, and operatives, have, in numerous instances in the last three months, expressed the same thing to me.”—Report of 18th January, 1837, p. 45.

In my report of the 12th of October, I mention, that Messrs. Hives, Atkinsons, and Co., of Leeds, are acting upon this plan; and when I visited their factory ten days ago, they expressed their unqualified approbation of it; the best proof of which is, that, while on my inspection of their mill on the 9th of December last, I found 65 children so employed; on my visit to it on the 15th instant, I found 123.

The following are extracts from my journal of inspection at Manchester:—28th of October, 1836.—“Visited the mill of Mr. Bazley, New Bridge Mill, in Water Street. Here I found the relay system in full operation. I did not see Mr. B., but John Powdrell, the manager. They have at present twenty-eight children on half time, and would have double the number, but the children leave them for mills where P. said they still get full-time employment. They work by a double set. P. said that he is very friendly to the short-time, mainly for the sake of the education; and when I said to him that I saw no impracticability in the working by relays, he replied, that there is none—‘Where there is a will, there is a way.’ ”

5th of November.—“I visited the mill of J. Pooley and Sons, at Hulme. It was in excellent order in all respects; I have seen none better, and few so good, if any, in Manchester. They employ about fifty children by relays of three for two, and send them to the National School, which is near at hand, and to the Sunday Schools of different sects. Mr. Pooley, jun., said, that the men who employ the children did not like the plan at first, but now that they have got used to it, and that they know that their masters desire it, it goes on very well.”

On the 6th of the present month, I made a return to the House of Commons of the number of mills in my district that are acting upon the relay system; and if you refer to it you will find that 524 out of 1289 factories are working upon that plan.

I have cotton mills, woollen mills, and flax mills, working on this plan, in large towns, small towns, and country situations; and I think you will admit that I am justified in maintaining that its practicability has been abundantly established.

With regard to the losses stated by you to be consequent upon the restriction of the labour of children to eight hours a day, I have to observe, that, where the relay system is adopted, the mill-owner pays, at least, the same gross amount of wages, and generally more; so that the working classes receive as much or more than they did before the interference of the law. A man with three sons, who formerly sent two of eleven and twelve years of age to the factory, and received six shillings a week for their labour, now sends the little fellow of nine years old, who was not employed at all, because twelve hours a day were too much for him, and he still receives his six shillings; with the advantage that the two elder boys have now time for their education, which they had not before, and have a game at football in the green fields besides. It seems to me perfectly reasonable that a man who receives two shillings a week by the labour of his child—and few receive less for the eight hours’ work—should be obliged to spend one-twelfth part of it, two-pence a week, for the education of that child.

On the subject of education, I agree with you that little has yet been effected. Except in those cases where good schools are attached to the mills, or in their immediate vicinity,—and these are comparatively rare,—little more can be said to have been hitherto accomplished, than the establishment of the principle, that attendance at a factory for a part of the day and at a school for another part, are two things perfectly compatible; but that is no inconsiderable step in our progress to a better state of things. In nine cases out of ten, the instruction given is very little, and the incompetence of the teachers is eminently conspicuous. If we stop where we are, we shall be far short of what ought to be done for the benefit of the factory children, because the necessity of interference for the sake of their bodily health was trifling in comparison of that called for by their destitution as regards moral training. The country insists, and most happy I am that it does insist, that the factory children shall be educated; but the order cannot be complied with, unless schools and teachers be provided, where the children may be able to purchase that commodity with which they are required to supply themselves. I hail the Factory Act as the first legislative step in this country towards that to which, under some modification or other, we must sooner or later come—a compulsory education for all classes. Among the more wealthy classes, shame of exposure would compel a man to educate his children if he were unwilling to do his duty to them; but there are many ignorant uneducated parents among the working classes who cannot perceive the advantages of sending their children to school, and nothing short of compulsion will induce them to spend a portion of their earnings for that purpose.

As to what you say of the difficulty of getting the children to go to school, the representations made to you have been greatly exaggerated. They are true, I have no doubt, in many cases, where no pains have been bestowed to impress upon the children and their parents; that attendance at school must be as regular as attendance at the mill;—but I have made particular inquiry upon this point, and the certificates show, in a great many cases, as regular an attendance as you would find in most schools. Since I have had some parents punished, under the 29th section, for neglecting to send their children to school, the attendance has been better. I have recommended the masters to fine the children for playing truant; to make the master or an overlooker the treasurer, in order to avoid all suspicion of the fines going into his own pocket, and to distribute the sum collected periodically, in the form of rewards in the school. By contrivances of various kinds, the difficulty will soon be got the better of; if we had good schools, where the children were evidently deriving useful instruction, a large proportion of parents would set a just value upon the opportunity, and look after the attendance of their children.

What you say of many of the operatives being hostile to the Act, accords with my experience, as I have stated in my Report of the 18th of January, 1837, page 46. But this applies chiefly to the Ten-hour Bill men, and those under their influence. When all hope of the limitation of the labour of adults is set at rest by some strong expression in Parliament, the opposition will greatly diminish. Operatives in numerous instances have expressed to me their approval of the Act, and particularly of that part of it by which their children “get a bit of schooling.”

The masters maintained to you, that factory children are better educated than the children employed in other trades; so have mill-owners maintained to me, but they failed in giving any evidence of the assertion. For proofs of the deplorable ignorance of factory children in the cotton trade, I beg to refer you to my Report of the 12th of October, 1836, (p. 10,) and to that of the 18th of January, 1837 (p. 47,) where you will find that out of 2000, of 13 and 14 years of age, who were individually examined, 1067 could not read. I say cotton, because your inquiries were restricted to that branch; but it is no better in the woollen and flax mills; and, by an extraordinary inconsistency, children in silk mills are not required to attend school by the present Act; an absurdity which I hope to see corrected in the proposed amending act.

The masters complain bitterly, you say, of the machinery of the Act. They know perfectly well that without other machinery than what is contained in the Act itself, the law could not be enforced; and so, doubtless, parliament was aware, and they gave the inspectors the power of making such regulations as, in the working of the Act, might be proved to be necessary; a power which has been represented as novel, and as being unknown to the constitution; whereas there are precedents without number. The principle upon which the inspectors have all along acted has been, to endeavour to discover in what way the law could be carried into effect with the least possible inconvenience to the mill-owner or his work-people. To those mill-owners who have complained of the machinery, I have said again and again—“You see what the law requires as well as I do; and if you will point out a mode by which it can be carried into execution, with less trouble to you than attends compliance with our regulations, we shall give it our best attention, and will gladly adopt it if we can.” Nothing practicable has been suggested. Objections have been made in abundance by some mill-owners; but they have proposed no substitute;—the demand is, “Do away with your troublesome machinery;” which is another way of saying, “Do not put the law in force.”

The inspectors could not stir a step without some regulations; and we framed, at first, such as appeared to us to be necessary. After these had been put to the test of practical application, some were found unnecessary, others unreasonably troublesome; and we found too that some additional regulations were called for, in order to check frequent and gross evasions of the law. We, therefore, set earnestly to work last October, and issued a new code, which had previously received the sanction of the Secretary of State, by which the labour of the mill-owner is greatly diminished from what it was under the former regulations. This proceeding has been represented to you as if we had been capriciously and arbitrarily using vexatious rules, “not easily comprehended, and, by the time they have been understood, revoked.” No rule or regulation has been issued without a copy having been sent, free of expense and postage, to every mill-occupier; and there was also an advertisement in the county newspaper twice, in addition to that delivery of notice. No rule or regulation has been attempted to be enforced by legal steps, until a considerable time had elapsed after the delivery of such notice, and after such advertisement.

With regard to the complaints stated at pages 20 and 21, under the heads 1, 2, and 3, I may challenge the complainants to bring forward a single instance of a mill-owner having been proceeded against for any such frivolous cause. They have been prosecuted for allowing a child to remain in the factory longer than the law allows; not because they were humanely protecting the child from the inclemency of the weather, but because they were employing it to clean the machinery, while the adult was at his dinner, or after the mill stopped at night; a practice which would be very common, if it had not been enacted that the child must not remain in the mill longer than the hours specified; because, cleaning machinery not being one of the enumerated processes in the 1st section, they could not otherwise be prevented from working the children any number of hours at other things than the processes so enumerated. No mill-owner has been prosecuted for making a false entry, “because one of 80 children has one day come at half-past 8,” &c.; but because he was working the 80 children 12 hours a day, and falsely stating in his Time Register that they worked only eight hours. No mill-owner has been prosecuted “because he has been unable to force a child to school,” but because he has for weeks and months paid no attention to the enactment requiring school attendance.

I shall next notice the suggestions stated at p. 12:—

1. I have already said that, to be consistent, Parliament must do something to provide schools and teachers where none already exist.

2. I do not see how the mill-owner can be relieved from the obligation now imposed upon him, viz. that he must not employ any child that does not produce proof of having attended school during the preceding week. The impossibility of getting work, unless the school be regularly attended, is the grand compelling power both over the parent and the child. It has been suggested by some, that children should be excluded from factories until they are 11 years of age; when, if they could read and write, they should be admissible to work 12 hours a day. There are strong objections to this. It is a great injustice to the parents; because children, by the time they are eight or nine years of age, can, with perfect safety to their health, be employed in a factory for eight hours in the day, and thus earn a large proportion of the sum necessary for their maintenance and education: by coming into the mill they acquire habits of regularity and industry,—no unimportant part of their education; and they are in a warm, dry place, generally far more healthy than the dwellings of their parents. Besides, if they were to be examined as to their education before getting work, it could only be as to the mechanical power of reading and writing,—the mere initiatory step in that process which alone is entitled to be called education. There is, moreover, the great objection that they would not be long enough at school for the formation of habits.

3. If the mill-owner were not punishable for mere formal violations of the law, he would very soon contrive to escape from all punishment for substantial violations. Any public officer who should prosecute for such informalities as are here stated must be a fool, and would be unfit for his situation; but if the mill-owner will not observe the forms by which the inspector can alone judge whether the law has been substantially obeyed, he surely deserves punishment. But the punishment ought to be very different for neglecting to obey a regulation and for overworking a child. As bringing a mill-owner into court is a very serious, and to many the most serious punishment, it is worthy of consideration whether it would be safe, or sound in principle, to authorize the inspector summarily, and without bringing the party into court, to impose a fine not exceeding a small sum, for all such minor offences, giving the party the option to pay the fine, or to be proceeded against by information in the usual way.

4. To a control by government over the promulgation of rules and regulations by the inspectors, I see no objection, but, on the contrary, should rejoice to see it established. The inspectors, however, ought to have a full opportunity of stating to the controlling party why they consider the rules they have proposed necessary. As to an appeal, that is more questionable, and, with the supposed control, hardly necessary. What better mode of publication could be devised than that now practised, I am at a loss to conjecture. We could not employ any more expensive messenger than the postman; and the transmission of a copy, free of charge, to every mill-occupier, and two advertisements in the county paper, appear to me to be very full notice of what mill-owners are required to attend to.

You make me assume a tone of decision, which I am not conscious of having employed, when in your third letter you speak of my making “requisitions.” On the subject of magistrates, who are themselves mill-owners, or nearly connected with them, sitting on factory cases, all I have said is contained in the following paragraph in my Report of the 12th of October, 1836:—“It is, in my opinion, a matter very much to be regretted, that magistrates, who are themselves mill-owners, or who have property in mills, or who are by trade or near relationship connected with factories, should sit on the bench in cases of prosecution for offences against this Act. They must often, unconsciously to themselves, have a bias in favour of such offenders; and, at all events, this serious evil will arise,—that, however uprightly they may act, their motives for leniency will always be liable to misconstruction, and a doubt will be thrown on the purity of the administration of the law.” I have also joined with my colleagues in recommending that the disqualifying clause in Sir John Hobhouse’s Act, 1 and 2 Wm. IV. c. 39, sect. 10, should be introduced into the proposed amending Act.

When I tell you that I have had mill-occupiers trying cases against other mill-occupiers living in the same town, upon several occasions;—a mill-owner, sitting as a single magistrate upon an information against his own sons the tenants of his mill; a mill-occupier deciding upon an information laid against his own brother; and all these giving, in every instance, the lowest penalty which they had power to award in the case of a conviction, in some cases for a second and even a third offence, I think I was bound to bring the subject before the Secretary of State. Whether it be practicable to have the law administered in such cases by magistrates who are not interested parties, Parliament is best able to decide.

If you will examine the return of convictions laid before the House of Commons in the present session, and printed, No. 97, you will find that the prosecutions have not been for mere formal offences, but for grave violations of the great enactments in the statute, or wilful neglect of regulations without the observance of which the law would speedily become a dead letter; as its predecessors became, for want of a proper machinery to enforce obedience to them.

I have recommended that, in place of the superintendent getting admission to the interior of the factory by sufferance, he should be able to go there as a matter of right; because, at present, it is in the power of a mill-owner, by excluding him, to set the law at defiance so long as he is out of the immediate reach of the inspector. I remain of the opinion, that such a right is wanting for the due enforcement of the law. If a power were given to the inspector to issue a warrant to the superintendent to enter the interior of a mill upon his declaration in writing that he has good reason to believe that the law is violated there, the evil perhaps might be remedied to a great extent, without conferring the right upon the superintendent to go at pleasure into the factory. Two of the mill-owners whom you saw, and whom I met with in London at the beginning of this month, and who spoke to me on this point, stated to me that their objection to the admission of the superintendent would be very much diminished if he were more under the control of the inspector than he is at present, by holding his appointment from him; and if thus the inspector were made responsible for the good conduct of his deputy. Upon this last subject you agree, I know, with these gentlemen; and you have adverted to it shortly in the postscript to your second letter. There are few things less to be envied than the possession of patronage when it is to be exercised in the selection of a proper man for such an office; but I am satisfied (and I speak from experience) that, until the inspector has a very different control over his assistants than he possesses at present, the public service will be exposed to suffer from collisions between them.