The factory inspectors of England, Scotland and Ireland, having 
issued their regular half-yearly reports, ending October 31, 1858, 
on their different districts, I send you my usual abstract of those 
most important industrial bulletins.* The joint report is this time 
condensed into a few lines, and states only that, with the single 
exception of Scotland, the encroachments of the manufacturers 
upon the legal time for the employment of young persons and 
women,’ and especially upon the time reserved for their meals, 
are rapidly increasing. They consequently feel it incumbent upon 
themselves to urge that these evasions of the law should be 
prevented by an amending act. 

“The imperfections,” they say, “in the Factory acts, which make it extremely 
difficult for the inspectors and sub-inspectors to detect and convict the offenders, 
and to fulfill the evident intentions of the Legislature in regard to the all-important 
subjects of limitation to the hours of work, and the securing of sufficient 
opportunities of rest and refreshment to the workers in the course of the day, 
render some alterations in the law necessary. If Parliament had imagined that such 
evasions could be resorted to, they would doubtless have been guarded against by 
adequate provisions.” 

Now, since I have conscientiously studied the stormy parliamen- 
tary debates from which the present factory laws emerged, the 
factory inspectors must allow me to dissent from their concluding 
passage, and to stick to the opinion that the factory laws were 
formed with the express purpose of allowing every possible facility 
for evasion and circumvention. The bitter antagonism between 

landlords and mill lords which gave birth to them, was still 
mitigated by the common spite the two ruling classes entertain for 
what they call “vulgar interests.” At the same time, I willingly 
embrace the opportunity of paying my respects to those British 
factory inspectors, who, in the teeth of all-powerful class-interests, 
have taken up the protection of the down-trodden multitude with 
a moral courage, a steadfast energy, and an intellectual superiority 
of which there are not to be found many parallels in these times 
of mammon-worship.* 

The first report proceeds from Mr. Leonard Horner,’ whose 
district comprises the industrial center of England, the whole of 
Lancashire, parts of Cheshire, Derbyshire, the West Riding of 
Yorkshire, the North Riding and the four northern counties of 
England. The factory laws being still the object of unmitigated 
opposition on the part of the manufacturers, and almost every 
year witnessing a parliamentary campaign in favor of their repeal, 
Mr. Horner starts with an apology for the legislation which 
exempted children and women from the absolute sway of the 
inexorable laws of Free Trade. The official economists pro- 
nounced the factory legislation to be contrary to all sound 
“principles,” and certain to prove most injurious in its conse- 
quences to trade. In reply to the first objection, Mr. Horner states. 

‘As in all factories, there is a very large amount of fixed capital in buildings 
and machinery, the greater number of hours that machinery can be kept at work 
the greater will be the return; and, most assuredly, if that working could have been 
carried on without injury to human beings, there would have been no legislation to 
interfere with it. But when it was shown that, in order to derive a greater return 
upon the capital, children, young persons of both sexes, and women, were 
employed daily, and often in the night, for a length of time wholly inconsistent 
with their health, morals, education of the young, domestic comfort, and with any 

reasonable enjoyment of life, the clearest dictates of moral principles called upon 
the Legislature to put an end to so enormous an evil.” 

In other words, Mr. Horner propounds that, in the present state 
of society, a principle may appear “sound” on the part of the 
economist and the classes of which he is the theoretical mouth- 
piece, and may, nevertheless, not only prove contrary to all the 
laws of human conscience, but, like a cancer, eat into the very 
vitals of a whole generation. As to the alleged interference of the — 
factory laws with the progress of industry, Mr. Horner opposes 
facts to declamation. In the return ordered by the House of 

Commons on the 19th of March, 1835, the numbers of mills, and 
the numbers of persons employed therein, were, in his present 
district, as follows: 

Factories. Persons emp’d. 
COMO o2ic bs seesds eodecscee tracts teusvelesteeovees ahs 775 132,898 
Woolen and Worsted .....00....:0cccccsceeeeeee 220 8,738 
AS oi cstbecs coecadeuk Satineseche diet es eae saat oon 60 5,546 
SIDR deed beets Heccaee Sig Aor eiecel nese teetoemee 23 5,445 

Lotal ouitacintactneiieasnlences 1,078 152,627 

In the return made to the House of Commons in February, 
1857, the account stands thus: 

Factories. Persons emp’d. 
GOUMOM shoei adbeteei eet eee 1,535 271,423 
Woolen and Worsted ..........ccccccceeseeeeees 181 18,909 
PAX 2.5) .5 soled veateedeonntean ahancetecesaseiequane ees 49 6,738 
Silo ksseudeawen Gina 2 lisence atanaeats 46 10,583 
QUAL 5S. cy sup seoutivatieanciaadencee: 1,811 307,653 

From this tabular statement it appears, that in twenty-two years 
the number of cotton mills has nearly doubled, while the number 
of persons employed therein has more than doubled. In the 
woolen and worsted manufactories the considerable decrease of 
the number of mills simultaneous with an increase of more than 
two-fold in the persons employed therein, shows the concentration 
of capital and the extinction, to a great degree, of the smaller mills 
by the larger ones. The same process, although on a smaller scale, 
may be observed with regard to the flax mills. As to the silk mills, 
their number has been doubled, and the number of persons 
employed in them nearly so. 

“But,” as Mr. Horner remarks, “the increase in the actual number of mills is 
not the only measure of progression; for the great improvements that have been 
made in machinery of all kinds, have vastly increased their productive powers.” 

The important point is, that a stimulus to these improvements, 
especially as regards the greater speed of machines in a given 
time, was evidently given by the legal restrictions of the hours of 
work. : 

“These improvements,” says Mr. Horner, “and the closer application which the 
operatives are enabled to give, have had the effect, as I have been again and again 
assured, of as much work being turned off in the shortened time as used to be in 
the longer hours.” 

It is principally in Mr. Horner’s district that willful and 
deliberate violations of the enactments that restrict the hours of 
work, as well as those respecting the age of the workers and the 
attendance to school of children from eight to thirteen years, who 
by law are to work half-time only, have been on the increase since 
the recent improved state of trade. I quote from the report: 

“The temptation of increased profits is yielded to by those mill-owners in whose 
code of morality disobedience to an act of Parliament is no crime, and who 
calculate that the amount of any fine they will have to pay, if found out, will form 
a very small proportion of the profit they make by disregarding the restrictions of 
the law.” 

To understand this trite complaint which we meet in all the 
successive reports, it must be first considered that, for the 
greater part, the magistrates consist of manufacturers or their 
relations, that secondly the fines imposed by law are very small, 
and lastly, that young persons and women are only held to be 
employed “unless the contrary shall be proved.” Now, as Mr. Horner 
states: 

“Nothing is more easy for a fraudulent mill-owner than to preserve the contrary. 
He has only to stop his steam engine so soon as the Inspector appears, and then all 
work ceases, and in every information the Inspector must prove that the individual 
named in the complaint was found actually at work. So soon as the illegal working 
begins, and it takes place at six different periods of the day, the gross daily amount 
being made up of small installments, a watch is set to give notice of the approach 
of an Inspector, and immediately on his being seen, a signal is given to stop the 
engine and to turn the people out of the mill.” 

Convictions can, in fact, be obtained only by the Sub-Inspectors 
overcoming the repugnance natural to gentlemen to resort to 
measures akin to those of a detective police officer. The persons 
of the Inspector and his Sub-Inspectors becoming soon well known 
in their respective districts, they thereby cease to be able to detect 
those most skillful in breaking the law, and the only resource left 
to them is to call in their colleagues from neighboring districts 
who, being mistaken for foreign merchants coming to buy, may 
escape the notice of the scouts posted by the mill-owners on the 
different railway stations. 

The following bulletin of the wounded and dead of the 
half-yearly industrial campaign in Mr. Horner’s district, is sure to 
afford a curious theme to the students of military science who will 
see that the regular tributes of human limbs, hands, arms, bones, 
feet, heads and faces offered to modern industry exceed in 
dimension many battles thought most murderous. :