36. BRITISH FACTORY LEGISLA TION. In the year 1784 there raged at Rad cliffe, near Manchester, an epidemic fever in the cotton spinning works, where long hours of labor and a total absence of sanitation had undermined the strength of the juvenile opera tives. The conditions of work in the Radcliffe mills were not worse than those prevailing throughout the neighboring industrial district, in which the new factories were multiplying fast. The epidemic of fever was but one among many similar epidemics. But when, at the request of the Lancashire justices of the peace, this particular outbreak was investigated by a committee of Manchester doctors, and when the leading physician among them, Dr. Thomas Percival, and the chairman of the Quarter Sessions, Thomas Butterworth Bayley, persuaded their fellow magistrates that the gravity and rapid diffusion of the sickness really arose from the 'putrid effluvia" of the 'num bers crowded together) in the new mills, and the 'injury done to young persons through confinement and too long continued labor," they were close to the discovery of the great device of factory legislation. At once the Manchester justices, who were not at that date pecuniarily interested in cotton mills, decided henceforth to refuse to allow the 'indentures of parish apprentices whereby they shall be bound to owners of cotton mills and other works in which children are obliged to work in the night, or more than 10 hours in the day." In 1796 Dr. Percival and his friends definitely formulated certain resolutions, in which they again drew attention to the physical and moral evils of excessive hours of labor, of the unsanitary conditions of the factories and of night work; and in which they proposed, "if other methods appear not likely to effect the purpose," that Parliament should enact "a general system of laws for the wise, humane and equal government of all such works." Here we have expressly suggested the ex pediency of factory legislation. Within half a dozen years the first tiny instalment of that legislation — the "Health and Morals of Ap prentices Act, 1802" —had, at the instance of the greatest mill owner of the time (Sir Robert Peel), passed into law. This experimental legislation of 1802, expanded by Robert Owen in 1815 into a general principle of industrial government, and applied in tentative instalments by successive generations of unwilling states men, has spread to every industrial community in the Old World and the New. Of all the 19th century inventions in social organ ization, factory legislation is the most widely diffused. The opening of the 20th century finds it prevailing over a larger area than the public library or the savings bank; it is, perhaps, more farreaching if not more ubiquitous, than even the public elementary school or the policeman.
It is sometimes said that England has lost the lead in factory legislation; that New Zea land and several of the Australian states now outstrip her; and that in one respect or an other France, Germany, Switzerland, and even Austria, surpass the United Kingdom in the protection of labor. This is not the place to
examine into the accuracy of these assertions. It is by no means easy to ascertain, even from the laws of a country, exactly what national minimum it proposes to enforce, in all the varied circumstances of place and process, age and sex. Still less easy is it to discover to what extent the law is really obeyed and en forced. Though the policy of a national mini mum is, in the United Kingdom, as yet inade quately embodied in law, and still imperfectly enforced, yet it may well be that- the scope of the factory legislation is, taken as a whole, and as applied in actual practice, more extensive than that of any other state.
What is often overlooked is that the law on the subject is in the United Kingdom, not contained in any single code, or in any one act of Parliament. but has to be collected from among eight different branches of English law. There is first the law as to sanitation, which applies to factories as to other places, and is administered by the town council or other local governing body under the supervision and, more or less, the control of the Local Government Board. With this we may name the law as to education, with its incidental restrictions on the employment of children under 14, and as regards certain classes of young persons even up to 16, enforced by the town and county council under the supervision of the Board of Education. It is partly in connection with education, too, though partly also in con nection with the prevention of cruelty to chil dren, that the town and county councils are empowered to make by-laws, subject to the approval of the Home Office, regulating or pro hibiting the employment of children and young persons under 16 in certain occupations. The law regulating the conditions of employment as such is itself scattered over six distinct series of acts of Parliament, relating respectively to (a) factories and workshops generally, includ ing all manufacturing industries, laundries, docks and works of engineering; administered partly by the Home Office itself and partly by the local governing bodies under the Local Gov ernment Board; (b) mines, administered wholly by the Home Office; (c) retail shops, adminis tered wholly by the local government bodies, under the Local Government Board; (d) ships, and (e) railways, both administered wholly by the Board of Trade; and, finally, (f) the indus tries subjected to the Trade Boards Act (such as tailoring, boxmaking, chain and nail making. confectionery, etc.), in which a legal minimum wage is enforced by the Board of Trade.