FACTORIES; FACTOR Y-SYSTEM. 



FACTORIES ; FACTORY-SYSTEM. 



10 



factories, and to inquire respecting their condition, employment, and 

 education ; and one of the secretaries of state shall have power, on the 

 application of an inspector, to appoint superintendents to assist in 

 carrying out the provisions of the act. 9. The inspectors are to make 

 all rules necessary for the execution of the act, and to enforce the 

 attendance at school, for at least two hours daily out of six days in the 

 week, of children employed in factories ; from whose weekly wages a 

 deduction, not exceeding a penny in every shilling, is to be made for 

 the expense of schooling. 10. No child shall be employed who shall 

 not, on Monday of every week, give to the factory master a certificate 

 of his or her attendance at school for the previous week. 11. The 

 interior walls of every factory shall be whitewashed every year. 12. A 

 copy or abstract of the act shall be hung up in a conspicuous part of 

 every factory. 13. The inspectors shall regularly, once a year, report 

 their proceedings to one of the secretaries of state. There are other 

 clauses regulating the hours of working in mills where the use of 

 water-power instead of steam-power disturbs the uniformity of the 

 working; the steps to be taken in order to obtain regular certi- 

 ficates of age for the children requiring them ; the erection of 

 schools, where necessary ; and the mode of enforcing the provisions 

 of the act. 



In the following year a short explanatory act was passed, to render 

 more clear the meaning of the legislature on certain points ; but with 

 this exception, no further change was made till 1844. Committees of 

 the House of Commons sat in 1840 and in 1841, and bills were from 

 time to time introduced by individual members ; but the Act of 1833 

 remained the groundwork of all the proceedings in respect to factories. 

 The Act itself was, as we have already stated, in great part the result of 

 a commission which had been appointed in the early part of 1833, and 

 which had collected information by means of district commissioners in 

 all the factory districts. This local machinery formed a groundwork 

 for the inspectorship afterwards established by the government when 

 the act was obtained. Four inspectors were appointed, and the British 

 Islands were mapped out into four great divisions ; the cotton and 

 woollen district of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the immediate neigh- 

 Ixiiirhood, forming the 1st; the eastern and southern counties of 

 England the 2nd ; some parts of the West of England, nearly the 

 win 'le of Wali-3, and the southern half of Ireland, constituting the 

 !rd ; the northern half of Ireland, the whole of Scotland, and the four 

 northern counties of England, the 4th. Each district was placed 

 under one inspector, who made arrangements for becoming personally 

 acquainted with every factory hi his district employed for textile 

 manufactures. Surgeons were appointed to grant the certificates 

 required for the children; a system of occasional supervision was 

 iihed; the inspectors communicated with the chief mill-owners 

 mi nny points of difficulty which occurred ; and the schooling of the 

 children was gradually entered upon. One great difficulty however 

 was this, that many manufacturers, as a means of escaping from the 

 provisions of the Act, gradually discharged the children who were 

 within the specified ages, and employed others of an age to which the 

 education and the working-hours clauses did not apply; and many 

 young children were thrown out of employ in consequence. 



The Act rendered imperative some sort of schooling for the factory 



children ; but it did not lay down rules for its government. The 



arrangements accordingly became of a very crude and heterogeneous 



character. The factory children received their education from five 



nt sorts of schools, Sunday School*, Dame and Private Srhou/s, 



>l ,S/-/Wx, Chunk nf England Schools, and Dissenters' 81 



d of the children on Sundays was a matter which did not 

 come under the control of the inspectors; but the four classes of 

 ' lay schools were those which affected the daily regulations of the 

 factories. The dame-schools or private schools, kept by mistresses 

 or masters for their own profit, and not under the control or manage- 

 ment of any other person, were of a very mean and inefficient kind, 

 utterly wanting, in respect to instruction, books, and discipline, in the 

 - of working out the required object. The factory-schools were 

 < were held in or near the factory where the children were 

 ved, and were under the control and management of the owner 

 of the factory. The Church Schools and the Dissenters' Schools, sup- 

 ported in many cases by powerful religious denominations, partook of 

 the general character of such classes of schools, in respect to education 

 and discipline. Many of the factory-schools, where the owner cared 

 very little about the matter, were as bad as the dame-schools ; whereas, 

 io cases the mill-owners took great interest and expended con- 

 siderable sums in giving efficiency to the schools. At Messrs. Marshall's, 

 at Leeds, for instance, a neat building was erected purposely as a school- 

 t'ur the factory children, admirably fitted with every requisite 

 :rge school. 



In 1844 an Act was passed (7 & 8 Viet. c. 15) which came into 



i'>n in October of the same year, and effected certain changes in 



v as to factories. An Office of Factory Inspectors was established 



1' n. Persons beginning to occupy a factory were required to 



of it to this office. The powers of inspectors to enter 



"s and schools are increased. The certifying surgeons are to be 



ited by the inspectors ; and the certificates are to have a definite 



i ml expression. The whitewashing or painting of a factory is 



under strict regulations. Provision is made for the protection 



"f children from the effects of the water in wet-flax spinning, and from 



accidents by the machinery while in motion. Children may be admitted 

 and employed at eight years of age (the former minimum having 

 been nine years). The maximum amount of daily work for each child 

 is seven hours, subject to diminution in certain cases. All females are 

 regarded in the same light as " young persons " (that is, persons from 

 thirteen to eighteen years of age), as to the limitation of the hours of 

 work. The recovery of lost time by the stoppage of machinery, the 

 regulation of the meal-times in the factories, the holidays given to the 

 children, the control of their attendance at school, the inspection of 

 dangerous machinery, and many other points, are modified or extended 

 in this Act ; which however preserves the general character of the Act 

 of 1833. 



Before touching on the legislation of later years, we will present a 

 few statistics of factories. The number of pow-er-looms employed is to 

 a certain degree, an index to the extent of factory operations ; since 

 the substitution of a power-loom for a hand-loom involves the substi- 

 tution of a large and well-organised factory for, perhaps, the humble 

 cottage of the hand-loom weaver. In a return made to government in 

 1836, the number of power-looms then employed is stated to have 

 been about 92,000. There was another return concerning the number 

 of factories, and of the , persons working therein, in the same year ; 

 this gave about 304,000 persons in about 2860 mills, or 106 to each. 

 By the commencement of 1839 the numbers had thus risen : 420,000 

 persons in about 4200 mills, or 100 to each. A return for 1843 gives 

 a series of numbers under three different points of view ; the first 

 being according to the kind of textile material ; the second, according 

 to the location in different parts of the empire ; and the third, according 

 to the ages and sexes of the workpeople. 



No. of Ilorse-power Persons 



Cotton 

 Wool 



silk . 



Flax 



Total 



England . 

 Scotland 

 Ireland . 

 Wales . 



Total . 



Factories. 



. 1,819 



. 1,738 



268 



392 



. 4,217 



. 3,475 



. ' 492 



95 



155 



employed. 



65,785J 



15,5644 



2,977" 



9,585 



employed. 



259,385 



86,446 



34,318 



43,487 



4,217 



93,912 



77,8041 



12,4484 



3,001 



93,911J 



Males under 2 1 

 Males 2 1 and above . 

 Females under 21 

 Females 21 and above 



423,030 



347,007 



59,313 



14,870 



2,446 



423,636 



100,654 

 77,999 



163,252 

 81,560 



Total 



423,471 



It may be well to remark that these numbers relate to the work- 

 people actually employed within the factories at one or other of the 

 above four kinds of textile manufacture. The whole number who 

 earn a living by these trades, including those engaged in hand loom 

 weaving, stocking-making, calico-printing, dyeing, bleaching, &c., very 

 greatly exceeds the above, and has been variously estimated by different 

 writers. 



In 1845, Mr. Homer, whose district was very nearly co-extensive 

 with Lancashire, gave the following as the state of his district in that 

 year : 



Workers Workers Power 

 Mills. under 18. 18 & above. Looms. 



Cotton mills . 

 Woollen mill* 

 Flax mills 

 Silk mills . 



1,724 



241 



71 



32 



69,155 

 5,456 

 2,255 

 3,121 



128,305 

 0,485 

 3,33<i 

 3,324 



138,717 

 3,237 



Total 



. 2,068 79,987 141,450 142,949 



The great strength of the woollen and worsted trades lay in another 

 district, concerning which similar returns were not made. 



In September, 1848, the mills and works within the limits of the 

 town of Manchester, subject to the factory laws, were as follow : 



Mills. 



Cotton , 

 Silk 



Worsted 

 Small wares 

 Print works 

 Dye works 



3 

 17 



4 

 23 



Hands. 



20,809 

 2,850 

 109 

 1,752 

 1,172 

 1,847 



In 1850 a return was made to the House of Commons respecting 

 factories, more detailed and instructive than any before prepared. We 

 will give a few of the results, calculated to illustrate different aspects 

 of the subject. First, in respect to different parts of the United King- 

 dom, we have, 



