to 15 hours by the aid of the children. The experience of the three following years showed that such an attempt must come to grief against the resistance of the adult male operatives. The Act of 1850 was therefore finally completed in 1853 by forbidding the "employment of children in the morning before and in the evening after young persons and women." Henceforth with a few exceptions the Factory Act of 1850 regulated the working day of all workers in the branches of industry that come under it.[1] Since the passing of the first Factory Act half a century had elapsed.[2]
Factory legislation for the first time went beyond its original sphere in the "Printworks' Acts of 1845." The displeasure with which capital received this new "extravagance" speaks through every line of the Act. It limits the working day for children from 8 to 13, and for women to 16 hours, between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., without any legal pause for meal times. It allows males over 13 to be worked at will day and night.[3] It is a Parliamentary abortion.[4]
However, the principle had triumphed with its victory in those great branches of industry which form the most characteristic creation of the modern mode of production. Their wonderful development from 1853 to 1860, hand-in-hand with the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers,
- ↑ During 1859 and 1860, the zenith years of the English cotton industry, some manufacturers tried, by the decoy bait of higher wages for over-time, to reconcile the adult male operatives to an extension of the working day. The hand-mule spinners and self-actor minders put an end to the experiment by a petition to their employers in which they say, "Plainly speaking, our lives are to us a burthen; and while we are confined to the mills nearly two days a week more than the other operatives of the country, we feel like helots in the land, and that we are perpetuating a system injurious to ourselves and future generations.… This, therefore, is to give you most respectful notice that when we commence work again after the Christmas and New Years' holidays, we shall work 60 hours per week, and no more, or from six to six, with one hour and a half out." (Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1860, p. 30.)
- ↑ On the means that the wording of this Act afforded for its violation cf. the Parliamentary Return "Factory Regulations Act" (6th August, 1859), and in it Leonard Horner's "Suggestions for amending the Factory Acts to enable the Inspectors to prevent illegal working, now become very prevalent."
- ↑ "Children of the age of 8 years and upwards, have, indeed, been employed from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the last half year in my district." (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1857, p. 39.)
- ↑ "The Printworks' Act is admitted to be a failure, both with reference to its educational and protective provisions." (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1862, p. 52.)
