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STUDIES IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. Edited by HON. W. PEMBER REEVES, ^ • Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science* No. io in the Series of Monographs by Writers connected with the London School of Economics and Political Sr.ipnr'A A HISTORY OF FACTORY LEGISLATION. A HISTORY OF FACTORY LEGISLATION By B. L. HUTCHINS AND A. HARRISON (Mrs. F.: HCSpencer), D.Sc. (Econ.). WITH , BY SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B. Second Edition revised, 'with a new ||;hapter London: P. S. KING & SON, Orchard House, Westminster. 1911 NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION. The Authors desire to acknowledge the kind help of Mr. J.'MeKillop, who has rendered valuable assistance in the compilation of the Bibliography in Appendix C., and of Miss Catherine Preece, who contributed numerous notes and references to Chapters VII. and VIII., on the exten¬ sion of the Factory Acts to other than textile industries. They are also greatly indebted to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb for much kind help and encouragement. In the midst of many and more important duties Mr. Webb, with unwearied patience and ever-ready kindness, has found time to read the MS. and make many valuable criticisms and emendations, for which the Authors here return their best and most grateful thanks. B.L.H. A.H. PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. The continuous demand for the “ History of Factory Legislation ” since its publication in 1903 has more than justified the high opinion of its merits that was then expressed. The issue of a new edition has afforded an opportunity for a careful overhauling of the work, for the correction of sundry errors and omissions, and for bringing the story down to date. I gladly respond to the suggestion that I should add a few words, and give some necessary revision, to the original preface. During the past seven years both the idea and the application of Factory Legislation have made marked progress. What is perhaps even more striking than the legislation itself is the general acceptance of the principle that it embodies ; and also, perhaps, the better under¬ standing of what that principle really is. The merely empirical suggestions of Dr. Thomas Percival and the Manchester Justices of 1784 and 1795, and the experimental legislation of the elder Sir Robert Peel in 1802, were expanded by Robert Owen in 1815 into a general principle of industrial government, which came to be applied in tentative instalments by successive generations of Home Office administrators. We see now that this really meant the application of the principle of a “ national minimum ” in the standard of life, to be prescribed by the community, and secured by law to every one of its citizens. What is no less remarkable is the manner in which this principle has spread to every industrial community in the Old World and the New. Of all the nineteenth century inventions in social organi¬ sation, Factory Legislation is the most widely diffused. viii PREFACE. The opening of the twentieth century finds it prevailing over a larger area than the public library or the savings bank : it is, perhaps, more far-reaching, if not more ubiquitous, than even the public elementary school or the policeman. The system of regulation which began with the pro¬ tection of the tiny class of pauper apprentices in textile mills now includes within its scope every manual worker in every manufacturing industry. From the hours of labour and sanitation, the law has extended to the age of commencing work, protection against accidents, meal¬ times and holidays, the methods of remuneration, and in the United Kingdom as well as in the most progressive of English-speaking communities, to the rate of wages itself.1 The range of Factory Legislation has, in fact, in one country or another, become co-extensive with the conditions of industrial employment. No class of manual-working wage-earners, no item in the wage- contract, no age, no sex, no trade or occupation, is now beyond its scope. This part, at any rate, of Robert Owen’s social philosophy has commended itself to the practical judgment of the civilised world. It has even, though only towards the latter part of the nineteenth century, converted the economists themselves—converted them now to a “ legal minimum wage ”—and the advan¬ tage of Factory Legislation is now as soundly “ orthodox ” among the present generation of English, German, and American professors as 66 laisser-faire ” was to their predecessors. 1 For an interesting account of various modern develop¬ ments of Factory Legislation the reader should consult State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, by the Hon. W. P. Reeves (London : 1902). For a fuller analysis of the ideas con¬ tained in this preface, the writer may be permitted to refer to Industrial Democracy, new edition (London : Longmans, 1907), by S. and B. Webb, and Socialism and National Minimum (London : Fifield, 1909). The bibliography at the end of this book should also be consulted. PREFACE. ix So fruitful an experiment deserves a systematic record in the country of its origin. The series of enactments, beginning with the “ Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, 1802,” and ending, for the moment, with the “ Trade Boards Act, 1909,” has, indeed, a whole literature of its own, a select bibliography of which will be found in an appendix to this work. The movement has called forth several incomplete chronicles and historical sketches, the principal of which are Kydd’s “ History of the Factory Movement ” (1857) and the various essays by Mr. R. W. Cooke Taylor, Mr. George Howell, and Miss Victorine Jeans. English Factory Legislation has attracted at different stages the attention of competent French and German students, from Villerme, Wolowski, and Leon Faucher in the early “ forties,” to such able monographers as Ernst von Plener, in 1872, and Otto Weyer, in 1888, (not to speak of writers of more general works). But it has been left to the authors of the present volume system¬ atically to explore the origins of the Act of 1802, and to trace, in detail, from that small beginning, the century- long development of the present highly-organised system of factory and workshop regulation in the United Kingdom. This century of experiment in Factory Legislation affords a typical example of English practical empiricism. We began with no abstract theory of social justice or the rights of man. We seem always to have been in¬ capable even of taking a general view of the subject we were legislating upon. Each successive statute aimed at remedying a single ascertained evil. It was in vain that objectors urged that other evils, no more defensible existed in other trades, or among other classes, or with persons of ages other than those to which the particular Bill applied. Neither logic nor consistency, neither the over-nice consideration of even-handed justice nor the Quixotic appeal of a general humanitarianism, was permitted to stand in the way of a practical remedy viii PREFACE. The opening of the twentieth century finds it prevailing over a larger area than the public library or the savings bank : it is, perhaps, more far-reaching, if not more ubiquitous, than even the public elementary school or the policeman. The system of regulation which began with the pro¬ tection of the tiny class of pauper apprentices in textile mills now includes within its scope every manual worker in every manufacturing industry. From the hours of labour and sanitation, the law has extended to the age of commencing work, protection against accidents, meal¬ times and holidays, the methods of remuneration, and in the United Kingdom as well as in the most progressive of English-speaking communities, to the rate of wages itself.1 The range of Factory Legislation has, in fact, in one country or another, become coextensive with the conditions of industrial employment. No class of manual-working wage-earners, no item in the wage- contract, no age, no sex, no trade or occupation, is now beyond its scope. This part, at any rate, of Robert Owen’s social philosophy has commended itself to the practical judgment of the civilised world. It has even, though e only towards the latter part of the nineteenth century, converted the economists themselves—converted them now to a “ legal minimum wage ”—and the advan¬ tage of Factory Legislation is now as soundly “ orthodox 55 among the present generation of English, German, and American professors as “ laisser-faire ” was to their predecessors. 1 For an interesting account of various modern develop¬ ments of Factory Legislation the reader should consult State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, by the Hon. W. P. Reeves (London : 1902). For a fuller analysis of the ideas con¬ tained in this preface, the writer may be permitted to refer to Industrial Democracy, new edition (London : Longmans, 1907), by S. and B. Webb, and Socialism and National Minimum (London : Fiheld, 1909). The bibliography at the end of this book should also be consulted. PREFACE. IX So fruitful an experiment deserves a systematic record in the country of its origin. The series of enactments, beginning with the “ Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, 1802,” and ending, for the moment, with the “ Trade Boards Act, 1909,55 has, indeed, a whole literature of its own, a select bibliography of which will be found in an appendix to this work. The movement has called forth several incomplete chronicles and historical sketches, the principal of which are Kydd’s “ History of the Factory Movement ” (1857) and the various essays by Mr. R. W. Cooke Taylor, Mr. George Howell, and Miss Victorine Jeans. English Factory Legislation has attracted at different stages the attention of competent French and German students, from Villerme, Wolowski, and L6on Faucher in the early “ forties,” to such able monographers as Ernst von Plener, in 1872, and Otto Weyer, in 1888, (not to speak of writers of more general works). But it has been left to the authors of the present volume system¬ atically to explore the origins of the Act of 1802, and to trace, in detail, from that small beginning, the century- long development of the present highly-organised system of factory and workshop regulation in the United Kingdom. This century of experiment in Factory Legislation affords a typical example of English practical empiricism. We began with no abstract theory of social justice or the rights of man. We seem always to have been in¬ capable even of taking a general view of the subject we were legislating upon. Each successive statute aimed at remedying a single ascertained evil. It was in vain that objectors urged that other evils, no more defensible existed in other trades, or among other classes, or with persons of ages other than those to which the particular Bill applied. Neither logic nor consistency, neither the over-nice consideration of even-handed justice nor the Quixotic appeal of a general humanitarianism, was permitted to stand in the way of a practical remedy