While the rise and extension of the factory system, when looked at from the point of view of material economics, must be pronounced a decided improvement, it cannot be denied that, socially and politically considered, it has its dark side. The greater the capital and the training necessary for carrying on an extensive establishment, the less prospect the workman has of ever raising himself to independence. The chasm that separates the mill-owner from his dependants is infinitely greater than that which exists between a master artisan and his journeymen. The hope of gradual advancement afforded in the last case supplies a powerful moral support and means of discipline; the impassible gulf in the other acts as a stumbling-block and temptation. Factory-workers are especially disposed to enter heedlessly into marriage, as they require to make no provision for a workshop, tools, and other outlay once necessary for entering life; while they have the prospect of the wife, and soon of the children, as contributors to the support of the family. It may, at all events, be affirmed, that the increase and accumulation in masses of the class called invletaires, who have no provision for a week but the labor of that week, is favored by the factory system. Moreover, the employ ment of wife and child as fellow-laborers endangers the old and sacred bonds of the family; the father can no longer remain, to the extent that he ought to be, master of the house of which he is no longer the sole support; and how much the family affection is thus weakened, is painfully exhibited in the ill-treatment of the younger children, who are prematurely put to labor, and literally robbed of their childhood. At the same
time, it cannot be allowed that these evils are incapable of remedy; legislation and pub lic opinion can here do much; nor must it be forgotten that the evil is not peculiar to factory labor, but is a feature of the whole of our more recent industrial economics. The greatest abuses of the kind in England are found in the mining districts, and among the small domestic manufacturers. The very circumstances that give rise to the evils afford the means of obviating them, if they were only taken advantage of; for, the larger the establishment, the more good can an owner do for his people, and the less it is possible to conceal abuses. It cannot with justice be charged against factory labor that in itself it has a demoralizing tendency. Whatever brings together numbers of human beings increases, no doubt, opportunities and temptations to aberrations, espe cially in the intercourse of the sexes; but not more so in the case of a factory than in that of all large towns, and even less so than in some other cases of assemblage, as armies and garrisons.