SECOND READING. (Hansard, 9 July 1874)

§ EARL BEAUCHAMP
, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, it was scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of the measure. The title of the Bill described it as "an Act to make better provision for improving the health of women, young persons, and children employed in manufactures, and the education of such children, and otherwise to improve the Factory Acts." The manufactures to which the Bill related were textile manufactures—woollen, worsted, silk, flax, and cotton—and the Bill was not confined to England, but would apply to the whole of the United Kingdom. There could be no doubt of the importance of the subject seeing that in the manufacture of cotton alone no less than 450,000 persons were employed; and it was too late to ask now whether this was a subject on which Parliament ought to interfere between employers and the employed, because the course of legislation for the last century disposed of any objection which might be raised 1327 against such interference. During the last 40 years, Parliament had interfered in that way more actively than ever; and no one could deny that the Acts relating to factories had worked most beneficially—they had done immense good to the working people, and they had been very beneficial to the employers themselves. He need not go through the various measures that had been passed during the last 40 years. This Bill was intended to give the finishing touch to that legislation. He hoped it would be accepted as a final settlement of all the questions now at issue in various branches of trade in reference to the regulation of the hours of factory labour, and would crown all that had been done before. It was gratifying to know that our previous legislation in the same direction had been watched with great interest by foreign nations, and that steps had been taken by some of them to adopt it in their own factories. It might be asked, why, if your past legislation had proved so satisfactory, should you now propose another Act of Parliament? The answer was that the increased trade and the improvement in machinery had very much increased the strain on the minds of the workpeople. Formerly, a woman attended to one loom—it was quite common to find a woman attending to four looms now. The consequence was that provisions respecting the hours of labour for women, young persons, and children which in other days were found sufficient were so no longer:—notwithstanding the regulations now in force, women and children suffered severely in health from that strain during so many continuous hours of labour. This Bill would not only diminish the number of hours in each week during which women and children might be employed, and so extend the time in which the latter might receive education, but it would break the continuity of their labour—a very desirable object in the case of work involving a mental strain. In the present Session, a Bill was introduced by an independent Member, but it made demands which did not meet with general acceptance: but in the course of a debate on that Bill the Secretary of State for the Home Department made a speech and sketched a measure which met with so much favour from the House of Commons and from both employers and the em- 1328 ployed, that the right hon. Gentleman brought in the present Bill, which encountered but very little opposition. It was not conceived in the interest of either one side or the other on the labour question, but proceeded on the principle that as women and children could not protect themselves it was the province of the Legislature to interfere for their protection without any undue interference with trade and commerce. The first part of the Act dealt with the time during which women and children were now employed in factories which was from 6 in the morning till 6 in the evening, with a variation in winter. By this Bill, the total number of hours during which women, young persons, and children might be employed in factories was 56½ in each week. A child, young person, or woman was not to be employed continuously for more than four hours and a half without an interval of at least half-an-hour for a meal. Between the hours of commencing work and that of leaving off for the day there were two hours to be allowed for meals on every day except Saturday; so that whether the working hours were from 6 to 6, or from 7 to 7, when the two hours for meal time were deducted, the hours of actual labour could not exceed 10. Then, as to Saturday, if the hours of work were between 6 and 6, and ordinarily if not less than one hour was allowed for meals on that day, no child, young person, or woman was to be employed in any manufacturing process after I in the afternoon or for any purpose whatever, after half-past 1. If less than one hour was allowed for meals, no child, young person, or woman was to be employed in any manufacturing process after half-an-hour after noon, or for any purpose after I in the afternoon. Where the ordinary hours of work were from 7 to 7 the time for leaving off on Saturday afternoon would be proportionately later. In Clause 6, there was a provision for the employment of children in alternate sets, so that they might be employed either in the morning or in the afternoon set every day, or for the whole day on alternate days; and it was required that every child employed in a factory should attend school in manner directed by Sec. 31 of the Factory Act. It was provided that the hours of meals should be simultaneous, and employment of these persons during meal times was forbidden. The second 1329 part of the Bill contained provisions as to the age of children to be employed in factories. It extended the age up to which a person should be deemed a "child," and not a "young person" to 14; and forbad the employment of any child under 9 years of age during the year 1875, and after that under 10 years. Clause 14 contained a particularly important provision, one bringing within the operation of the Bill, children employed in silk works. If there had been reasons for excepting those children from the Factory Acts, those reasons had passed away. In moving their Lordships to give their assent to this measure, he could not but remind them that they had amongst them one whose name was inseparably connected with factory legislation. In conclusion, he would express his hope that their Lordships would give a willing consent to this Bill which was, he believed, calculated to conduce to the health and prosperity of the workpeople engaged in one of the most important branches of our national industry.

§ THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
^* My Lords, as this may be the last opportunity, certainly the last to me, at my time of life, on which the factory question may be discussed in this House, your Lordships will, I am sure, excuse me if I venture to make a few observations on the Bill now before us, and on the past history of this great remedial measure. The noble Earl who moved the second reading of this Bill, called your Lordships' attention to the magnitude of the question. I trembled at the moment, for I thought that he was going back to establish principles, long since admitted, hesitating to take for granted conclusions now, I may say, of ancient date. The question, my Lords, is no longer one of principle; it is one simply of degree. My noble Friend has also well shown the necessity for further restriction by stating the present character of the work, the vastly increased velocity of the machines, and, in consequence, the demand for attention, we may say almost threefold, and a corresponding wear and tear of the strength and the nervous system of those engaged in it. No five or ten consecutive minutes of the labour can be considered severe; 1330 but when that labour is prolonged, the very continuity becomes oppressive. To stick pins in a pincushion is no hard toil, but were any of your Lordships compelled to do so, at the rate, perhaps, of 500 a minute, and to do it, moreover, accurately and well, a little relaxation would speedily be called for.
Now first, I presume to thank Her Majesty's Government for the bold and manly way in which they have come forward, and, stepping between the combatants, have settled a dispute which might have become serious. They have exhibited both sympathy and impartiality, and have, I verily believe, laid the question at rest for some 15 or 20 years. Legislation did so in 1850, and why should it not in 1874? Former Ministers have treated it as a Government affair. The principle of interference was first made effective in 1833, when Lord Althorp, then Leader of the House of Commons, having taking my Bill into his own hands, put a limit to the labour of children under nine years of age, and than laid down the rule of Factory Inspection. Next, in 1844, Sir James Graham introduced an amending Bill, which, for the first time, gave protection to women of all ages; and in 1850, Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary of State, introduced the long-desired and invaluable provision that the work of the textile fabrics should be taken between six in the morning and six in the evening. But it has been reserved to the present Government to give a reduction of the number of hours, and we find ourselves at last, after 41 years of exertion, in possession of what we prayed for at the first—a Ten Hours' Bill. The measure was, in this and the last Session, presented to the House of Commons by the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella), who urged it with great vigour and ability. The operatives will be deeply grateful to him—I am sure I am so myself—for the ready and disinterested way in which he surrendered his own opinions for the good of the cause, and gave up his Bill into the hands of the Minister. Being in a vein of thanking, I must not omit to mention how much gratitude is due to the vast majority of the employers, great and small, who have so generously co-operated in this work. It was not so formerly. When I began this cause in 1833, the opposition was hot, I may say, 1331 fierce. I numbered on my side but two mill-owners, John Wood and John Fielden, inestimable men. It is now the reverse; perhaps not more than two are against us; and I remember perfectly well that when, after the attainment of the principal objects of the factory movement, I went round from mill to mill, to see the several proprietors and thanked them for their concessions, one of the greatest of them received me in his counting-house, took me by both hands, and said—"I was long your most determined opponent, but you have carried the day, and now never part with a hair's-breadth of what you have gained. It will do no harm to us, and it will do great good to the people." And such have been ever since their sentiments and their action. Now, for the first time in its history, the measure is presented to Parliament as one for health and education of women and children. Hitherto it has been entitled one for the regulation of labour. The title is an improvement, for it explains in few words the scope and purpose.
My Lords, it is very remarkable how little we have heard of the political economy aspect of the question. In the late debates in the House of Commons, an assembly abounding in wealthy and enlightened mill-owners, it was, I think, left out altogether; and, indeed, whatever was urged last year in that view of the matter was urged on the point of a fall to 54 hours from 60 hours a-week, not on a 56 hours' limitation. The tremendous arguments which formerly alarmed and baffled every one, the arguments of foreign competition, loss of trade, reduced wages, and universal distress, had been answered by increased production, equal profits, higher wages, and universal prosperity. They ceased in 1850, at the last settlement of this dispute, to have any force; and those who pressed them partially in 1873, did so more from tradition than present necessity. But allow me to give a quietus to such alarms, should any exist, by quoting the statements of two very eminent occupiers of mill property—Mr. Hugh Mason, of Ashton-under-Lyne, and Mr. Lister, of Bradford. Mr. Mason, who is a very considerable gentleman, writes in a letter to The Times of the 8th of June as follows— In conclusion, allow me to say that I have not a particle of fear of ruin to our cotton trade 1332 by the adoption of 56 hours a-week. I think it is idle to talk about foreign competition, so long as the kingdoms of Europe are divided into half-a-dozen vast camps of soldiers, and the claims of commerce are subordinated to the strife for military glory. Not one of the great powers of Europe could hold its own for a year in cotton manufacture apart from the high protective duties which prevent the entrance of British goods. Some day, perhaps two centuries hence, our descendants may have to face the competition of their cousins in America, when the vast and fertile valley of the Mississipi has become settled with 200,000,000 or 300,000,000 of people, and when their cotton, corn, and wheat have ceased to be profitable articles of export. This is, I think, sufficient to satisfy the most timid. Now for the second— At a meeting of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce, held in June last, called for the special purpose of considering the Government Bill now before Parliament, Mr. S. C. Lister, undoubtedly the largest silk manufacturer in the world— This gentleman's testimony is specialty important on this point, for children in silk-mills have hitherto been but half protected, and have suffered great hardships. To proceed, Mr. Lister said— He certainly thought that the Bill was called for. A short time ago he did not think so, but when he read the Report of the Inspectors, he could not help thinking that a large amount of injury was caused to children by the present long hours. The operatives had shown the necessity for shorter hours, and the mill-owners had certainly not shown that such shorter hours could not be safely adopted. As a large employer of labour, and as having to meet competition from all parts of the Continent, he said unhesitatingly that the measure was a wise one, although it was a compromise, and he hoped that as such it would settle the matter for many years to come. He moved that the Chamber approve the principle of the Bill, and petition Parliament in its favour. A resolution in favour of the Bill was unanimously adopted. No necessity, it is clear, exists for additional testimony on this point. But the main resistance, though made by very few people, has been against the protection afforded to adult women. This question is as easily disposed of as the other. We know, my Lords, that the opponents, both in writing and speaking, have treated this protection as something new. New! Why, it was affirmed first in 1844, and has been confirmed by many succeeding Acts of Parliament. To effect their purpose, then, they must retrograde for 30 years. But before they take that step, let them be asked, and let them give an answer—"Has anything but good come out of 1333 that protection? Name an instance, if you can; you have had time enough for experience." Consider, too, the reasons why women were first included. The evidence is abundant and terrible. I will adduce but two witnesses. Sir James Graham, the stoutest opponent I ever had, though he afterwards relented, and expressed it in the most generous manner, declared when Home Secretary, in 1844, that women of all ages—so dreadful was their condition in the mills—must be protected by law. Mr. Cob-den, talking of the print works, said the same. "I object," he said to me, "to all legislation of this kind, but I cannot resist the fearful evidence of the sufferings to which the women are exposed; "and so satisfied was he that married women, at least, were not free agents, that he assented to a clause in the Bill which provided that "any husband conniving at the employment of his wife in night work should be subject to a heavy penalty." Here was a bold and open declaration, made with his sanction, in an Act of Parliament!
But we are told that the women do not desire the protection. I maintain that they do. But, whether they desire it or not, the State has a deep interest and a right of interference to secure the health of their offspring. It is, however, the very reverse. I would undertake to go from town to town in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and carry in every town the overwhelming majority of female suffrages in behalf of the Bill. That some women may have petitioned against it I can well believe. I could tell, in my long experience of those counties, ugly stories about mothers who would have sold their children for a pair of shoes. But such as they are very few; and the only vigorous and open opponents of the measure are the ladies of various associations, who in watching the progress of contagious disease—I quote their own words—declare that protection will lead to exclusion from the mills, exclusion to prostitution, and prostitution to disease. To these ladies I reply—"Produce your facts; 30 years are sufficient for experience; sustain your assertions, or accept the answer of contempt and indignation from every female of the working classes throughout England, and the more so as the Returns of the police, received this morning, show a decrease of 23 per cent in the immorality 1334 of factory women." My Lords, the medical evidence is complete; and it will appear to be so to any of your Lordships who have time to study it. To say, as has been said, that there are divers statements from local practitioners, is no argument to those who are acquainted with the factory districts and the influence there exercised. Two physicians of eminence were employed to make the inquiry, collect the evidence, and decide on its value. Having weighed it minutely, their decision is that every consideration of health demands this measure.
Now, if your Lordships will permit me, I will in a very hurried manner just run over the successive periods of legislation. The evil had become so shocking, that in 1802, Sir Robert Peel, the father of the Minister, having retired, or being on the point of retiring from business, introduced a Bill for the better treatment of pauper children who were sent down by canal in boat loads from London, and immediately lost sight of. Language would fail to describe their horrible sufferings; but their lives were shortened, and they died off rapidly. The Act was useless. Again, in 1815, an attempt was made, and with no greater effect. In 1819, Sir John Hobhouse carried a Bill which limited the labour of all under 18 years of age—children of tender years enjoying no greater protection—to 69 hours in the week. This produced no alleviation, all failing in great measure through want of an established system of Inspectors. The question was taken up in 1831 by Mr. Sadler and Mr. Oastler—marvellous men in their generation, and without whose preceding labours nothing could have been effected, at least by myself. Mr. Sadler lost his seat in 1832, and in 1833 the Bill passed into my hands. The first measure was enacted in 1833. Then followed Bills of various kinds in 1844 and 1847, and 1850, and now the Bill before your Lordships' House. The noble Lord (Lord Aberdare) has called my attention to the Act of 1854, passed when Lord Palmerston was Home Secretary. It was a most valuable Act. I did not mention it, because it was not one that imposed any reduction of hours. It simply brought children of tender years within the protection of the 6 to 6 period of work, and saved them from remaining oftentimes from 15 or 16 1335 consecutive hours on the mill premises.
My Lords, the death, recently announced, of a distinguished Member of this House (Lord Dalhousie), recalls an events which I must pray liberty to mention, because it is, I venture to assert, so highly to his honour. In 1840, having been oftentimes rebuked that I was exclusive in my attention to the textile fabrics, omitting other trades that equally required protection, I had often replied—"Give me time; I cannot do everything at once." In that year, having comparatively a little leisure, I determined to move for a Commission to inquire into the state of all the children and young persons unprotected by the Factory Acts. Lord Dalhousie, then Mr. Fox Maule, was Under Secretary of State. He approved the Commission, but considered it necessary that a statement, and a full statement, should be made on which to found it. I could not obtain a day before the 4th of August; and on that day, with nobody in the House but the Speaker, Mr. Fox Maule, Mr. Ewart, and myself, the speech was made, and the result of it was the Commission out of which arose the Collieries Bill, and then the second Commission of 1862, which I obtained from Sir George Cornewall Lewis. Hence the Acts of 1864 and 1867—so that, beginning when Lord Aberdare was Secretary of State, the protective Acts on the Statute Book now cover a population of nearly 2,500,000 persons. I hold that the memory of these Gentlemen—for either of them could have extinguished me by a "count out"—should be kept in grateful remembrance.
My Lords, though I once heard Mr. Canning say, in answer to an argument from statistics—"Nothing is so fallacious as figures, except facts," I cannot resist the production of a short statement to show how the trade has thriven under the protection of labour. I speak of the textile fabrics. In 1835, the number of children under 13, male and female, was 56,455; in 1871, 80,498; male young persons between 13 and 18, in 1835, 44,573; females between 13 and 18, in 1835, 167,696; but in 1871 the same classes were—males, 78,118; females, 496,267—mark, my Lords, the vast increase of female labour—and of all ages and both sexes in 1835, 354,684; ditto, in 1871, 880,920. Now, 1336 of the children and young persons in 1835, I will venture to affirm that seven-tenths could neither read nor write. In 1874, I am satisfied that seven-tenths have had a tolerable, if not a sufficient, education. As to produce in cotton goods—I will leave out all the rest of the textile fabrics—I will speak only of cotton. I confess when the figures were put before me, I was too much amazed to believe them; I went over them backwards and forwards, fancying that I must be wrong in enumeration. But here they are! We exported in the year 1850 of yards of cotton in piece goods, 1,358,182,941; but, will you believe it, my Lord? in 1870, 3,266,998,366 yards. How often were we told'—"You will extinguish the trade; manufactures will cease; England will become a fifth-rate commercial power, and there will be an end of you!" I ever had a deep and immovable conviction that all would be well. The rule that what is morally wrong cannot be politically right, was a guide, and the issue has been prosperous.
I have no statistics to show the abatement of disease and mortality among the workers. It is still far more than it ought to be; but in comparison with the past we have much to rejoice at. Well can I recollect in the earlier periods of this movement, waiting at the factory gates to see the children come out—and a set of sad, dejected, cadaverous creatures they were. Then one asked—Can any of them reach their homes alive? But now it is far different; and you may perceive them rushing forth full of health, elasticity, and joy. In Bradford especially, the proofs of long and cruel toil were most remarkable. The cripples and distorted forms might be numbered by hundreds, perhaps by thousands. A friend of mine collected a vast number together for me; the sight was piteous, the deformities incredible. They seemed to me, such were their crooked shapes, like a mass of living alphabets. All that has passed way. When I was last at Bradford there was, it was believed, not a crippled child to be found in the town. And so, also, with mill accidents. In earlier days the cases of death were frequent, and so were terrible mutilations. In one of the great towns, and, doubtless, it was so in many, the chief surgeon deposed that he had oftentimes at the hospital as many as 1337 six serious cases in the course of a single week. The Inspectors tell me that accidents have diminished at least one half, reaching, however, at present, some 2,000 or 3,000 a-year of all cases. But I anticipate very great improvement from the care of the workers and from the liberality of the employers in the more extensive sheathing of the machinery. Nor must I omit the modern construction of many of the mills and places of work. They are vast public workshops, built at enormous cost, and with every regard to health and comfort. No part of the conduct of the employers towards their people is more striking than this, and no one who remembers the pestilential and deadly dens of former days, though there are still too many of them, can hesitate to admit what untold benefits have thus arisen to the labouring population.
One more instance, and I have done. Your Lordships will recollect the period of the Cotton Famine in Manchester and elsewhere, the stoppage of the mills, the thousands thrown out of employment, with misery, starvation, and death staring them in the face. Yet, with one or two trifling exceptions, and those only momentary, all in these districts were under order and in peace. Such a spectacle was, perhaps, never seen before in any free country whatever. It would not have been so in former times. On the first symptom of difficulty, the Government of those days would have sent down whole companies of infantry, troops of cavalry, and parks of artillery. But it was not so in the cotton famine; hardly a constable was added to the force; and do you ask why? Why, because the ruling powers had in various ways, and specially in this, respected the rights of the working people; shown them sympathy; had done for them all that law could do, and so had taught them to regard these visitations, not as the work of man, but as the dispensations of Providence. Here were great lessons, lessons to be read by every statesman, by every one of influence or authority; lessons of wisdom, lessons of truth, lessons of consolation; for they showed the responsive sympathy in the hearts of the people, and that justice and respect are seldom thrown away. It was, too, the fulfilment of a promise often made during the career of factory agitation. "Give us our rights," 1338 said they to me, "and you will never again see violence, insurrection, and disloyalty in these counties." And so it has turned out. My Lords, there are few now remaining who can compare the present with the past. I am one of the few; and I am bold enough to say that the existing generation, in its physical, moral, and political character, seems to have sprung from a higher race of men.
My Lords, humanly speaking, there seems to be no fear for the prosperity of our textile fabrics. Our capitalists are wealthy, liberal, active, and intelligent; the people are full of life and energy; and, happen what may, employers and employed always seem to rise above the level of those around them. There are, no doubt, internal dangers; and what dangers are so great as the extensive and systematic adulteration of goods by size, China-clay, and now, I hear, by wax? It is the exception we know, not the rule. But it has gone far enough to weaken confidence. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce has protested against it; and the Natives of India, our best customers, have begun, in consequence, to erect mills of their own. A native gentleman assured me so the other day; and I see, by the latest statistical Re-turns, that in Bombay alone they have 404,000 spinning spindles. Only let all of us return to the principle and practice of the day when the Manchester mark on a bale of goods made it to pass as current coin, and then all possibility of rivalry will be at an end for ever. It has been said, too, my Lords, that, after all, the whole of this great benefit would have been effected without legislation. Possibly it might have been so; but, as legislation has done the work, let legislation for the present have all the glory. By legislation you have removed manifold and oppressive obstacles that stood in the way of the working man's comfort, progress, and honour. By legislation you have ordained justice, and exhibited sympathy with the best interests of the labourers, the surest and happiest mode of all government. By legislation you have given to the working classes the full power to exercise, for themselves and for the public welfare, all the physical and moral energies that God has bestowed on them; and by legislation you have given them means to assert and maintain their rights; and it will be their own fault, not yours, my 1339 Lords, if they do not, with these abundant and mighty blessings, become a wise and an understanding people.

§ LORD ABERDARE
said, their Lordships had, he was sure, listened with pleasure and profit to the statesmanlike speech delivered by the noble Earl who had just sat down, but he was sorry that his noble Friend had, however, omitted to allude to the Act of 1864, by which the benefit of the Act with which his name was so intimately associated had been greatly extended. There could be no doubt whatever that the Factory Acts had done very much in adding comfort and contentment to the working classes in the North of England. He would beg to say, in reference to a remark of the noble Earl, that notwithstanding certain factory proprietors had provided buildings affording ample accommodation for their workpeople, in some places the dwellings of the factory hands were far from satisfactory. He desired to call the attention of the public to one point of considerable importance. The Bill proposed—he thought wisely—to extend the period at which a child should not be allowed to work in a factory from eight until first nine and afterwards ten years of age, and to extend the half-time system to children up to the age of 13, unless the children produced a certificate that they possessed a certain amount of education. Now, one of the great complaints under the Factory Acts was that parents, knowing that under the Factory Acts their children would come under the half-time system at eight years of age, contrived to elude the beneficial provisions of the Act by neglecting to send them to school until that age, when they were consequently unable to derive much advantage from the schooling they then received. Now, he feared that under this Bill the temptation to keep children from school would be greater than ever if the children did not come under the operation of the half-time system until 10 years of age, unless some system of compulsory education were adopted by which the attendance of the children at school before that age could be enforced. He should propose to amend the Bill when it got into Committee by moving an Amendment that, as far as England and Scotland were concerned, the attendance of children under the half-time system should be at a school to be approved by the Education 1340 authorities. He would observe that they were bound to proceed with the utmost caution when they proposed legislation which restrained labour; but he did not oppose this measure, for the introduction of which satisfactory reasons had been given.