TEE STORY OF ENGLISH EDUCATION. 273 



elementary education in the modern sense was carried through Parlia- 

 ment in 1802 — just a century before the great statute of last year. 

 The factory act of 1803 was intended to deal with the health and 

 morals of children employed in cotton and other mills and factories. 

 The state of the children in these factories and mills was deplorable : 

 ignorant beyond all imagination; housed under conditions subversive 

 of all health, of all morality; working by methods that involved the 

 stagnation of intelligence; these children presented a fearful problem 

 and constituted a positive menace to the future of society. The act 

 of 1803 was passed without discussion: it directed the mill rooms to 

 be whitewashed twice a year and to be ventilated; it ordered an ap- 

 prentice to have one suit of clothes a year and not to work more than 

 twelve hours a day exclusive of meal times; it forbade work between 

 nine at night and six in the morning ; it provided that male and female 

 apprentices should sleep in separate rooms and not more than two 

 r.pprentices should sleep in one bed; it made medical attendance com- 

 pulsory in case of infectious disease; it directed the mills to be in- 

 spected by visitors appointed by the justices and ordered the children 

 to be taught the elements of knowledge and the principles of Chris- 

 tianity. It is an awful picture; a picture for which the discovery of 

 machinery and of the usefulness of children in machine work are re- 

 sponsible. This reformatory measure was petitioned against in the 

 following year by both manufacturers and parents and it was never 

 enforced. Many generations of little, seven-year-old slaves — the 

 thought is heart-breaking — were to be worn away in the mills before, 

 late in the century, effective relief came. Until 1878 children under 

 nine years of age could be employed in silk mills. At the present time 

 every child in the country — who is not specially exempt on the ground 

 of adequate private teaching, sickness, inaccessibility of school, or 

 other reasonable excuse — is compelled to attend school full time between 

 the ages of five and at least twelve years (save in the case of children 

 employed in agriculture when the child may be partially exempted at 

 eleven). Moreover every local education authority may make by-laws 

 compelling attendance up to the age of fourteen years. The child can, 

 however, be employed during holidays or during hours when the school 

 is not open ; and this is a source of abuse. A child can not do his school 

 work and school play and also be an up-hill down-dale errand boy. 

 However, the change in the matter of child labor is remarkable since 

 that year of grace 1803 and it may be admitted that some forms of 

 employment in non-school hours are better than idleness with its con- 

 comitant evils. 



From this time parliamentary interest in educational matters in- 

 creased very rapidly. Mr. Whitb read's bill of 1807 provided for the 

 establishment of schools and the appointment of schoolmasters by 



VOL. LXIII. — 18. 



