completely altered the face of industrial England. From time
to time, in respect of particular trades, provisions against
truck and for payment of wages in current coin, similar to the
act of Edward IV. in the woollen industry, were found necessary,
and this branch of labour legislation developed through the
reigns of Anne and the four Georges until consolidation and
amendment were effected, after the completion of the industrial
revolution, in the Truck Act of 1831. From the close of the
17th century and during the 18th century the legislature is
no longer mainly engaged in devising means for compelling
labourers and artisans to enter into involuntary service, but
rather in regulating the summary powers of justices of the peace
in the matter of dispute between masters and servants in relation
to contracts and agreements, express or implied, presumed to
have been entered into voluntarily on both sides. While the
movement to refer labour questions to the jurisdiction of the
justices thus gradually developed, the main subject matter for
their exercise of jurisdiction in regard to labour also changed,
even when theoretically for a time the two sets of powers—such
as (a) moderation of craft gild ordinances and punishment of
workers refusing hire, or (b) fixing scales of wages and enforcement
of labour contracts—might be concurrently exercised.
Even in an act of George II. (1746) for settlement of disputes
and differences as to wages or other conditions under a contract
of labour, power was retained for the justices, on complaint of
the masters of misdemeanour or ill-behaviour on the part of
the servant, to discharge the latter from service or to send him
to a house of correction “there to be corrected,” that is, to be
held to hard labour for a term not exceeding a month or to be
corrected by whipping. In an act with similar aims of George
IV. (1823), with a rather wider scope, the power to order corporal
punishment, and in 1867 to hard labour, for breach of labour
contracts had disappeared, and soon after the middle of the
19th century the right to enforce contracts of labour also disappeared.
Then breach of such labour contracts became
simply a question of recovery of damages, unless both parties
agreed that security for performance of the contract shall be
given instead of damages.
While the endeavour to enforce labour apart from a contract died out in the latter end of the 18th century, sentiment for some time had strongly grown in favour of developing early industrial training of children. It appears to have been a special object of charitable and philanthropic endeavour in the 17th century, as well as the 18th, to found houses of industry, in which little children, even under five years of age, might be trained for apprenticeship with employers. Connected as this development was with poor relief, one of its chief aims was to prevent future unemployment and vagrancy by training in habits and knowledge of industry, but not unavowed was another motive: “from children thus trained up to constant labour we may venture to hope the lowering of its price.”[1] The evils and excesses which lay enfolded within such a movement gave the first impulse to the new ventures in labour legislation which are specially the work of the 19th century. Evident as it is “that before the Industrial Revolution very young children were largely employed both in their own homes and as apprentices under the Poor Law,” and that “long before Peel’s time there were misgivings about the apprenticeship system,” still it needed the concentration and prominence of suffering and injury to child life in the factory system to lead to parliamentary intervention.
3. From 1800 to the Codes of 1872 and 1878.—A serious outbreak of fever in 1784 in cotton mills near Manchester appears to have first drawn widespread and influential public opinion to the overwork of children, under terribly dangerous and insanitary conditions, on which the factory system was then largely being carried on. A local inquiry, chiefly by a group of medical men presided over by Dr Percival, was instituted by the justices of the peace for Lancashire, and in the forefront of the resulting report stood a recommendation for limitation and control of the working hours of the children. A resolution by the county justices followed, in which they declared their intention in future to refuse “indentures of parish Apprentices whereby they shall be bound to Owners of Cotton Mills and other works in which children are obliged to work in the night or more than ten hours in the day.” In 1795 the Manchester Board of Health was formed, which, with fuller information, more definitely advised legislation for the regulation of the hours and conditions of labour in factories. In 1802 the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act was passed, which in effect formed the first step towards prevention of injury to and protection of labour in factories. It was directly aimed only at evils of the apprentice system, under which large numbers of pauper children were worked in cotton and woollen mills without education, for excessive hours, under wretched conditions. It did not apply to places employing fewer than twenty persons or three apprentices, and it applied the principle of limitation of hours (to twelve a day) and abolition of night work, as well as educational requirements, only to apprentices. Religious teaching and suitable sleeping accommodation and clothing were provided for in the act, also as regards apprentices. Lime-washing and ventilation provisions applied to all cotton and woollen factories employing more than twenty persons. “Visitors” were to be appointed by county justices for repression of contraventions, and were empowered to “direct the adoption of such sanitary regulations as they might on advice think proper.” The mills were to be registered by the clerk of the peace, and justices had power to inflict fines of from £2 to £5 for contraventions. Although enforcement of the very limited provisions of the act was in many cases poor or non-existent, in some districts excellent work was done by justices, and in 1803 the West Riding of Yorkshire justices passed a resolution substituting the ten hours’ limit for the twelve hours’ limit of the act, as a condition of permission for indenturing of apprentices in mills.
Rapid development of the application of steam power to manufacture led to growth of employment of children in populous centres, otherwise than on the apprenticeship system, and before long the evils attendant on this change brought the general question of regulation and protection of child labour in textile factories to the front. The act of 1819, limited as it was, was a noteworthy step forward, in that it dealt with this wider scope of employment of children in cotton factories, and it is satisfactory to record that it was the outcome of the efforts and practical experiments of a great manufacturer, Robert Owen. Its provisions fell on every point lower than the aims he put forward on his own experience as practicable, and notably in its application only to cotton mills instead of all textile factories. Prohibition of child labour under nine years of age and limitation of the working day to twelve in the twenty-four (without specifying the precise hour of beginning and closing) were the main provisions of this act. No provision was made for enforcement of the law beyond such as was attempted in the act of 1802. Slight amendments were attempted in the acts of 1825 and 1831, but the first really important factory act was in 1833 applying to textile factories generally, limiting employment of young persons under eighteen years of age, as well as children, prohibiting night work between 8.30 p.m. and 5.30 a.m., and first providing for “inspectors” to enforce the law. This is the act which was based on the devoted efforts of Michael Sadler, with whose name in this connexion that of Lord Ashley, afterwards earl of Shaftesbury, was from 1832 associated. The importance of this act lay in its provision for skilled inspection and thus for enforcement of the law by an independent body of men unconnected with the locality in which the manufactures lay, whose specialization in their work enabled them to acquire information needed for further development of legislation for protection of labour. Their powers were to a certain extent judicial, being assimilated to those possessed by justices; they could administer oaths and make such “rules, regulations and orders” as were necessary for execution of the act, and could hear complaints and impose penalties under the act. In 1844 a textile factory act modified these extensive
- ↑ From an “Essay on Trade” (1770), quoted in History of Factory Legislation, by B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison (1903), pp. 5, 6.
