During the whole of the period of 1800 to 1820, and even to 1840, the results of their sufferings were seen in the early deaths of many of the children, and in the crippled and distorted forms of the majority of those who survived.1 On the women and grown-up girls the effects of long hours and wearisome work were equally disastrous. A curious inversion of the proper order of things was seen in the domestic economy of the victims of this cheap labour system, for women and girls were superseding men in manufacturing labour, and, in consequence, their husbands had often to attend, in a shiftless, slovenly fashion, to those household duties which mothers and daughters hard at work in the factories were unable to fulfil.3 Worse still, mothers and fathers in some cases lived upon the killing labour of their little children, by letting them out to hire to manufacturers, who found them cheaper than their parents. In fact there was, as one investigator expressed it, "a conspiracy insensibly formed between the masters and the parents to tax them with a degree of toil beyond their strength.'

"4

§ 225. Efforts towards Factory Reform.

Meantime, however, the Act of 1802 seems to have become, even as regards apprentices, a dead letter. White slaves could be bought and sold in England with as much impunity as in the West Indies,-in fact, with more, for by 1815, Wilberforce's wishes as regards trading in slaves had long since become law. The fact that such sales took place is attested by the debate in the Commons, on June 6th, 1815, introduced by Sir Robert Peel, in which one speaker (Horner) described the sending away of children to distant parishes, and gave an instance in which, “with a bankrupt's effects, a gang of these children had been put

1 Cf. evidence quoted in Alfred, u. s., i. 190, 287, 260, ii. 9. 2 Cf. evidence in Alfred, u. s.,

i. 181, 300.

3 Cf. facts quoted by Engels, Condition of the Working Classes in 1844 (English edition, 1892), pp. 144, 145.

4 Assistant Commissioner Power, in the famous 1833 Report. Reports, 1833, xx. 604; also, cf. Oastler's speech quoted in Alfred, History of the Factory Movement, i. 228, and Sadler's speech, p. 158.

up to sale, and advertised publicly as part of the property.1 A still more atrocious instance," he continued, "had been brought before the court of King's Bench two years ago, when a number of these boys, apprenticed by a parish in London to one manufacturer, had been transferred [i.e. sold] to another, and had been found by some benevolent persons in a state of absolute famine." 2 Facts like these, even though negroes were not concerned, could no longer be blinked, and at length, in 1816, a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to take evidence upon the state of children employed in the manufactories of the United Kingdom. Terrible evidence of overwork was given before this Committee, but the grasp of Mammon was cruel and relentless; and now that social reformers were in earnest, the inevitable opposition of capitalistic greed rose up in all its power to block the path of humanity. The surest block was the barrier of delay. Further Commissions were asked for by the opponents of factory reform; the same kind of evidence as before was repeated in 1819 before a Committee of the Lords; and when at last very shame demanded that something should be done, the ineffectual Act, 59 George III., c. 66, was passed. This Act, when originally introduced, was meant to apply to all factories, but it was afterwards limited only to cotton factories, so that it had only a very partial effect, and was even then frequently evaded. And in any case the worsted and woollen mills were not even touched.

§ 226. Richard Oastler.

So things went on again as badly as ever for year after year, and manufacturers grew rich, while children and

1 Quoted in Alfred's (Samuel Kydd) History of the Factory Movement, i. 43. 2 Ib., i. 43. 3 For the nature of the evidence, cf. History of the Factory Movement, Vol. I., ch. iv. 4 Ib., i 77.

"R. W. Cooke-Taylor in The Factory System and the Factory Acts (1894) remarks, p. 61, "It was generally ignored or evaded."

"It provided (1) nine years to be limit of age for child employment. (2) Twelve hours' day for those under sixteen years. (3) Time to be allowed for meals. (4) Ceilings and walls to be washed with quicklime twice a year.

young people of both sexes were beaten and overworked to make their profits; and philanthropists riding home late at night from heated meetings, after discussing the wrongs of the black slaves, looked with cheerful and ignorant complacency at the great factory windows blazing with light, and accepted them as signs of prosperity, little heeding or little knowing the misery and cruelty that prevailed within their walls. It was, however, one of these friends of the negro, and one who had often had such a midnight ride, who was suddenly aroused to the fact that actual slavery in the most literal sense was going on in England while he was agitating for its abolition abroad. Richard Oastler 1 was the man whose eyes were thus opened, a Yorkshireman by birth, and one well acquainted with the industries of the busy West Riding. He was once in 1830 staying at the house of a friend who lived at Horton Hall, near Bradford, and who was a large manufacturer. As Oastler was talking to him one night about his slavery reforms, his friend John Wood remarked to him:2 "I wonder you have never turned your attention to the factory system.' "Why should I?" replied the young abolitionist, "I have nothing to do with factories."-"Perhaps not," was the answer, "but you are very enthusiastic against slavery in the West Indies, and I assure you that there are cruelties daily practised in our mills on little children, which I am sure if you knew you would try to prevent." And then he went on to describe to his astonished hearer the horrors of the factories. Even in his own mill Wood confessed that little children were worked from six in the morning till seven at night, with a break of only forty minutes, while in many other mills no rest at all was allowed; and that various cruel devices were employed to goad them on to

1 He was born in 1789, and had succeeded his father as steward to Mr Thornhill on his Yorkshire estates, living at Fixby Hall, near Huddersfield. It is curious that no proper biography of him exists. In Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy, however, I have given a short summary of the main facts of his life; cf. also Taylor's Biographia Leodiensis, pp. 499-503; Hodder's Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury, i. 214-216, 304; ii. 189. 211; iii. 249; and "Alfred's" History of the Factory Movement, passim. Oastler died in 1861.

2 See the conversation in Alfred's History, i. 95-97.

renewed labour. They were fined, beaten with sticks and straps and whips; and the girls were also often subjected to shocking indecencies.1

§ 227. Factory Agitation in Yorkshire. For and

Against.

Oastler, when once he saw what was going on about him in his own country, made no delay in entering upon a warfare that was to last for many a weary year, and bring many a trial and disaster. The very next day 2 he wrote a long letter to the great Yorkshire daily paper, the Leeds Mercury, in which he took for his text the old, foolish, and utterly untrue statement, "It is the pride of Britain that a slave cannot exist on her soil," and proved very conclusively that slavery could and did exist in a most dreadful form. He pointed out that thousands of children, both male and female, from six to fourteen years of age, and chiefly girls, were compelled to labour thirteen to sixteen hours a day, under the lash of an overseer, in the mills of Bradford, Morpeth, Halifax, Huddersfield, and many other northern towns. This sudden revelation of English slavery created a remarkable sensation, but, of course, called forth a very powerful opposition. The simplest thing was to deny the existence of any such evils, and denials accordingly became remarkably frequent. A keen newspaper correspondence arose, chiefly in the columns of the Leeds Mercury; and from this controversy Oastler emerged triumphant, with all his facts proved over and over again, while confirmation of his statements began to pour in from every part of Yorkshire. Before a month had passed, a meeting of the worsted spinners of Bradford was called by some of the principal firms in that town (November 22nd), in order to promote legislation on the subject, and a petition was drawn up to be forwarded to Parliament., A similar agitation now arose in Lancashire, and a bill was laid before the Commons by Lord Morpeth to reduce the hours of labour and raise the limit of age for work in mills. Hope seemed to be dawn1 See the conversation in Alfred's History, i. 96.

2 Cf. The Leeds Mercury: Oastler's letter is dated September 29th, 1830. 3 For all the above, see Alfred's History, i. 104-107.

ing for the children of the factories, when suddenly the manufacturers of Halifax and district struck the first note of opposition in a counter petition. They set forth the "unimpeachable character for humanity and kindness" possessed by manufacturers as a class; the impossibility of making profits if hours were reduced; the overpowering force of foreign competition (almost non-existent then as compared with to-day); the general hardships of a manufacturer's lot, owing to taxation and other difficulties; and finally, "the pernicious tendency of all legislative enactments upon trade and manufactures," or, in other words, the necessity of following the golden rule of laissez faire.

I have quoted the arguments of this petition because they are in brief a summary of the arguments which were then employed, are now employed, and probably always will be employed against any interference between master and man. In this case the law had only been invoked to step in between master and child; but that mattered little; the "liberty of the subject" and "freedom of contract were questions too sacred to be trifled with. It was indeed soon seen that these arguments of the millowners and their friends were by no means lacking in cogency, for the proposed legislation upon the working of factories was modified to such an extent as to make it almost useless, and, in any case, the measure was to be applied to cotton mills only.2 Oastler felt that the day was lost, and said as much in a public letter to the Leeds Intelligencer of October 20, 1831, a letter which shows cruel disappointment of heart, indeed, but yet is as full as ever of fire and hope for the future. Incidentally it is curious to note, from a passage in this letter, that the Factory Reformers of that day were accused of being opposed to the abolition of negro slavery, and were said to be getting up a factory agitation "in order to turn the attention of the nation away from West Indian slavery." But in spite of calumny, prejudice, and

1 Alfred, History, i. 109 sqq.

So the 1 and 2 William IV., c. 39; and cf. Taylor, Factory System and Factory Acts, p. 63.

* See it almost in full in Alfred's History, i. 118.

4 Ib., i. 119.