The reports of the Inspectors of Factories, which have been 
recently issued for the half year ending 31st October, 1856,*.form 
a valuable contribution to the social anatomy of the United 
Kingdom. They will not a little help to explain the reactionary 
attitude taken by the mill-lords during the present general 
election. 

During the Session of 1856, a Factory Act” was smuggled 
through Parliament by which the “radical” mill-lords first altered 
the law in regard to the fencing of mill-gearing and machinery, 
and secondly introduced the principle of arbitration in the 
disputes between masters and men. The one law purported to 
provide for the better protection of the limbs and lives of the 
factory laborers; the other to place that protection under cheap 
courts of equity.**’ In fact, the latter law intended to cheat the 
factory laborer out of law, and the former to cheat him out of his 
limbs. I quote from the joint report of the inspectors: 

“Under the new statute, persons whose ordinary occupation brings them near to 
mill-gearing, and who are consequently well acquainted with the dangers to which 
their employment exposes them, and with the necessity of caution, are protected by 
the law; while protection has been withdrawn from those who may be obliged, in 
the execution of special orders, to suspend their ordinary occupation and to place 
themselves in positions of danger, of the existence of which they are not conscious, 
and from which, by reason of their ignorance, they are unable to protect 

themselves, but who, on that very account, would appear to require the special 
protection of the Legislature.” 

The arbitration clause, in its turn, prescribes that the arbitrators 
shall be chosen from persons “skilled in the construction of the 
kind of machinery” by which bodily harm is inflicted. In one 
‘word, engineers and machine-makers are entrusted with the 
monopoly of arbitration. 

“It appears to us,” say the Inspectors, “that engineers and machine-makers 
ought to be considered as disqualified to act as factory arbitrators, by reason of their 
connection in trade with the factory occupiers, who are their customers.” b 

Under such provisions, it is not to be wondered at that the 
number. of accidents arising from machinery, such as death, 
amputations of hands, arms, legs or feet, fracture of limbs and 
bones, of head and face, lacerations, contusions, &c., amount, 
during the six months ending on the 3lst October, 1856, to the 
appalling number of 1,919. Twenty cases of death, inflicted by 
machinery, are registered in the industrial bulletin for half a 
year—about ten times the number lost by the British Navy during 
its glorious Canton massacre.*”? Since the mill-lords, so far from 
endeavoring to protect the lives and limbs of their laborers, are 
thus only bent on escaping payment for arms and legs lost in their 
service, and shifting the cost of the wear and tear of their 
animated machines from their own shoulders, it need not surprise 
us that, according to the official reports, 

“overworking, in violation of the factory act, is on the increase.” 

Overworking in the terms of that act means employing young 
persons for a longer time per day than is legally allowed. This is 
done in various ways: By beginning work before six in the 
morning, by not stopping it at six in the evening, and by abridging 
the terms the law has fixed for the meals of. the workpeople. 
There are three periods of the day when the steam-engine starts, 
viz., when the work begins in the morning, and when it is resumed 
after the two meals of breakfast and dinner; and there are three 
periods when it stops, viz., at the beginning of each meal-time and 
when the work ceases in the evening. Thus there are six 
opportunities when five minutes may be stolen, or half an hour 
each day. Five minutes a day’s increased work, multiplied by 

weeks, is equal to two and one-half days of produce in the year; 
but the fraudulent overworking goes far beyond that amount. I 
quote Mr. Leonard Horner, the Factory Inspector for Lancashire: 

“The profit to be gained by such illegal overworking appears to be a greater 
temptation than the manufacturers can resist. They calculate upon the chance of 
not being found out; and when they see the small amount of penalty and costs 
which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they find that if they should 
be detected there will still be a considerable balance of gain.” 4 

Beside the trifling fines imposed by the factory act, the 
mill-owners took good care to have it so framed, that the greatest 
facilities are afforded for passing by its enactments, and as the 
inspectors unanimously declare, “almost insuperable difficulties 
prevent them from putting an effective stop to the illegal 
working.” They also concur in stigmatizing the willful commission 
of fraud by persons of large property; the mean contrivances to 
which they have recourse’in order to elude detection; and the base 
intrigues they set on foot against the inspectors and sub-inspectors 
entrusted with the protection of the factory slave. In bringing 
forward a charge of overworking, the inspectors, sub-inspectors, 
or their constables, must be prepared to swear that the men have . 
been employed at illegal hours. Now, suppose they appear after 6 
o’clock in the evening. The manufacturing machinery is im- 
mediately stopped, and although the people could be there for no 
other purpose than attending updn it, the charge cannot be 
sustained, by reason of the wording of the act. The workmen are 
then sent out of the mill in great haste, often more doors than one 
facilitating their rapid dispersion. In some instances the gas ‘was 
extinguished, when the sub-inspectors entered the room, leaving 
them suddenly in darkness among complicated machinery. In 
those places which have acquired a notoriety for overworking, 
there is an organized plan for giving notice at the mills of the 
approach of an inspector, servants at railway stations and at inns 
being employed for this purpose. 

These vampyres, fattening on the life-blood of the young 
working generation of their own country, are they not the fit 
companions of the British opium smugglers, and the natural 
supporters of the “truly British Ministers ***?” 

The reports of the factory inspectors prove beyond doubt that 
the infamies of the British factory system are growing with its 
growth; that the laws enacted for checking the cruel greediness of 

the mill-lords are a sham and a delusion, being so worded as to 
baffle their own ostensible end and to disarm the men entrusted 
with their execution; that the antagonism between the mill-lords 
and the operatives is rapidly approaching the point of actual social 
war; that the number of children under 13 years, absorbed by that 
system, 1s Increasing in some branches, and that of females in all; 
that, although the same number of hands are employed in 
proportion to the horse-power as at former periods, there are 
fewer hands employed in proportion to the machinery; that the 
steam-engine is enabled to drive a greater weight of machinery 
than ten years before by economy of force; that an increased 
quantity of work is now turned off by increase of speed of the 
machinery and other contrivances; and that the mill-lords are 
rapidly filling their pockets. 

The interesting statistical facts illustrated in the Reports may 
properly claim further notice. Thus much will be understood at 
once, that the industrial slaveholders of Lancashire are in want of 
a foreign policy able to distract attention from home questions. 

Written on April 7, 1857 Reproduced from the newspaper 

Tribune, No. 4994, April 22, 1857