misery in which they lived-suggested that "the safety of the rich is intimately connected with the welfare of the poor." Even had there been general agreement as to the need of factory regulation, no other form of social legislation was so difficult to render justly effectvie. A century passed between the enactment of the "Regulation of the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act" in 1802 and the "Factory and Workshop Consolidation Act" of 1901. During this period forty-one important factory laws were enacted by Parliament. The form of the evil which naturally appealed most strongly to popular sympathy was the employment of very young children through excessive workdays-or nights. Accordingly the first legislative efforts looked to the restriction of hours and the establishment of a minimum age for employment. But laws fixing hours and age limits had little effect, beyond that of recording a new standard of popular conviction, for it required the first quarter of the nineteenth century, as Walpole observes in his History of England, to restrict a child of nine to a sixty-nine hours week, and that only in the cotton mills. It was not enough to enact that children below a given age should not be employed, or that hours of labor be limited. Such laws require methods and machinery for enforcement. The Act of 1833 is therefore rightly regarded the most important early step in factory legislation, as by this act factory inspectors were appointed with power to enforce the law. The principle of factory inspection is opposed in America today on the theory that it infringes upon free labor. Age limits and regulation of hours are opposed on the ground that they will ruin industry or will promote poverty. A century ago the poet Coleridge wrote a friend to learn if Parliament had not passed some law to restrict "what is ironically called 'Free labor' (i. e., soul murder and infanticide on the part of the rich, and self-slaughter on that of the poor!)" Practically every position then held in England against public regulation of "private enterprise” is now occupied in many American commonwealths by employers and their political retainers, who are apparently ignorant that their arguments long since passed into senility. But the public-spirited manufacturer will be interested to know that the most important features of the English factory laws were enacted either upon the suggestion, or with the direct aid, of manufacturers. The Commission appointed to review the need for legislation in 1833 noted this fact, and remarked that the demand for factory inspectors came chiefly from "those manufacturers who desired to see the hours in other factories restricted to the level of their own." This observation upon enlightened self-interest was probably just, for the most progressive employers of labor in England, as also in other countries, have consistently followed the policy of Sir Robert Peel who proposed the Act of 1802 for the purpose of correcting certain abuses in his own factories, and of Robert Owen who, having established many radical reforms in his extensive manufactories, urged Parliamentary action to enforce the same conditions in other mills. The opposition to government inspectors, presented by factory operatives in 1833 was probably due not so much to an unwillingness to have their work places inspected, as to the feeling that the inspectors likely to be appointed would be but the paid representatives of the employing class. The Leeds Intelligencer, representing the sentiments of the operatives, said: "The inspectorships are a lumbering affair and will turn out, in practice, we suspect, a nullity; their chief recommendation with their projectors is probably the patronage they afford." It is impossible within the limits of this paper to even sketch the various changes that have been wrought during the century of legislation in England. The chief advances have been a higher age limit for employment, a decrease in the length of the working day, requirements of educa tional and physical fitness for labor, a constant widening of the field of legislative regulation through the inclusion of an increasing number of industries, and a steady improvement in the power and methods of factory inspection. The labor of children in factories and workshops is now regulated by two acts: (1) The Factory and Workshop Consolidation Act, 1901, and (2) The Employment of Children Act, 1903. The first law is practically a codification of existing laws relating to workshops and factories, while the second law confers upon local governments the power of making regulations supplementary to the specifications of the first named law. These local regulations must be confirmed by the secretary of state who may receive objections to the proposed regulation and may investigate local conditions. The details of these laws, referring to meal-times, holidays, special industries, exemptions, etc., it would be impossible to include in this paragraph, but the main features may be noted. (Summarized from Bulletin 59, Bureau of Labor, Washington, 1905.) It is forbidden to employ children under twelve years of age in factories and workshops, or children under eleven in street trades. Local authorities have power to make regulations concerning street trading for persons under sixteen years of age, and in making such rules "shall have special regard to the desirability of preventing the employment of girls under sixteen in streets or public places." The mining laws prohibit the employment underground of boys under thirteen and of females of any age. As to hours of labor children twelve to fourteen years of age may be employed in factories and workshops only half time, i. e., either in the morning or afternoon, or on alternate days. Night work for children and young persons is prevented through the limit placed on the time during which most of these establishments may be operated-not earlier than 6 a. m., nor later than 8 p. m. There are, however, special exceptions in certain industries. The present law lays great emphasis on proof of the مر age of a child or young person seeking employment-failure to require which has proved to be the ruin of so many child labor laws in the United States. The following statistics from the 1902 report of the Chief Inspector of Factories show the extent of child labor in the textile mills: Half-timers (ages 12 and 13)........... 71,707 148,888 220,595 This is a total of 257,106 children and young persons under eighteen years of age, of whom 88,605 are boys and 168,501 are girls. These tables do not give the number under sixteen years. The report for 1904 gives the following statistics for non-textile factories (1901): Boys. 327,142 Girls. Total. 1,352 5,033 175,014 502,156 This report also shows a steady decrease in the number of half-timers employed in both textile and non-textile factories, the total number in 1889-90 being 98,888 as against 41,544 in 1901. The development of factory inspection marks the most important feature of factory legislation. The value of the public service rendered by these officials in England is so highly regarded that those who aspire to this work are encouraged to prepare, by special university and technical training, for their difficult and delicate task. The creditable work performed by many factory inspectors in America is in the absence of adequate public support. The niggardly appropriations provided for the departments in some states and domination of corrupt political influence in others, are elements that naturally tend to deter able men and women from entering this highly honorable calling. Yet it is disappointing, after reviewing the legislation of a century to record that the principle of factory regulation, especially the restriction of child labor, has not yet been consciously accepted even in England. Every advance in legislation is fought, as in this country, by arguments so specious that only greed or ignorance could advance them. Large groups of industries are still practically without government regulation, and thousands of little children are "free" to be employed through long days or nights, at wages which fasten the millstone of permanent poverty upon them, and under conditions that offer the maximum menace to health and morals. The half-time system, so popular a few years ago, has been condemned alike by manufacturers, educators and parents. It has been wholly barren of educational valuethe only claim it has to social favor-experience having proved that it is impossible to successfully operate a system which seeks to teach the child during one half the day and to exploit him during the other half. But though it is gratifying to know that this system is being abandoned, the factory acts, which have dealt only with children working in places subject to legal inspection, have had the effect of driving an increasing number of children to work out of school hours "in the streets, in the fields, in shops, or at home, for the longest possible hours and in the hardest and most irksome work without any limit or regulation." In 1901 a Commission was appointed, representing the Home Office, the Board of Education and the Board of Trade. Extensive investigations were made and a large number of witnesses examined. The inquiry demonstrated that not less than 200,000 juvenile workers were employed in industries wholly outside the scope of factory inspection or regulation. Miss Nettie Adler, Secretary of the Committee on Wage Earning Children (which presented 7,000 cases to the Commissioners), reports the following facts in "Juvenile Wage-Earners and their Work" (July, 1906): The occupations carried on by the children were roughly divided under the following heads-shops, street trading, domestic work and home industries, and agriculture. More than 76,000 were found to be working in shops under conditions that produced fatigue, anaemia, deformities, nerve and heart signs of serious character. About 17,000 children were described as engaged in street trades carried on, in the words of the report, "by a worse class of children and under worse moral influences than any other." |