It is obvious that no such far reaching change in industrial organization could be effected without serious disorganization and readjustment. The transitional period during which the factory system was instituted wit nesses many serious evils, some of which have not yet been altogether eradicated, and which are consequently assumed by some writers to be inherent in the system itself. To a brief consideration of these we may turn. Five criticisms were noted by C. D. Wright in an account of the system given in the Tenth Cen sus, as follows:* (a) The factory system necessitates the em ployment of women and children to an injurious extent, and consequently its tendency is to de stroy family ties and domestic habits and ulti mately the home.
(b) Factory employments are injurious to health.
(c) The factory system is productive of in temperance, unthrift and poverty.
(d) It feeds prostitution and swells the criminal lists.
(e) It tends to intellectual degeneracy.
In answer to these criticisms it may be pointed out that the employment of women and especially of children has been regulated and greatly reduced by factory legislation. The employment of married women and of young children is, however, still unhappily too great. On the score of health the best equipped and managed factories undoubtedly compare very favorably with the environment under which work was carried on in the home under the domestic system, but the number of dangerous and injurious trades has multiplied. The result ing evils should, however, be cared for by legislation. The next two counts may be dis missed as untrue; the factory system as such cannot be held responsible for these evils and in fact works directly against such a vice as intemperance as inconsistent with efficiency. On the last point so eminent an authority as Prof. Alfred Marshall is of the opinion that the modern factory system makes higher demands upon the intellectual capacity of the workers than any system of industrial organization which has preceded it.
On the other hand certain positive advantages of the factory system of industry may be noted. It makes possible a vastly greater output. That this is not more equitably distributed is indeed a serious prob lem of social justice, but the inequity of our present system of distribution should not be made an indictment against the system of pro duction which gives us more to divide. It has, moreover, greatly lessened the cost of produc tion and hence lowered the price of thousands of articles, which have thus been brought within reach of everyone. One has only to point for illustration to the myriads of articles produced under the factory system which can be found in the 5 and 10 cent stores. And finally wages, both nominal and real, have increased under this system, so that the economic position of the average factory operative is better than that of a similar worker under the domestic system. All in all, in spite of certain dark spots, the factory system may be regarded as a long step forward in the march of industrial progress. Sec HISTORY, MODERN.
Babbage, Charles,