Factory reform after 1850

The Factory movement as such disappeared in the 1850s with great success to its credit. As yet the legislation applied only to textiles and Lord Ashley, who in 1851 become the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, continued the battle in Parliament to extend legislation to unprotected trades. In many respects, however, 1850 remained the legislative high water mark. There were three stages to the development of factory reform:

1. The first phase occurred naturally, if somewhat illogically, on the hitherto excluded textile industries and their satellites such as bleaching and dyeing. This process had begun in 1845 when the 1844 legislation was extended to calico printing.
2. Next the great range of other child-employing industries where working conditions and arrangements were similar to those in cotton manufacture came under review. These included pottery, the metal trades, paper-making, chemicals, glassworks and printing.
3. Finally the principle of comparability was applied to units of production, whatever their size.

In 1862 Shaftesbury suggested the establishment of the Children's Employment Commission to inquire into the conditions in the unregulated trades. By 1866 the Commission had published five reports that the Russell government was preparing to act on. The last report was published in 1867 and drew attention to the practice of employing women and children in gangs in some agricultural counties[1]. The minority Conservative government took up these plans and in 1867 produced two measures: the Factory Act Extension Act and the Hours of Labour Regulation Act, that applied to premises including private houses with less than fifty workers. The former applied to premises with more than fifty employees in industries such as metalwork, printing, paper and glassworks, while the main effects of the latter were felt in clothing. Children under eight were forbidden to work and older children were required to have ten hours' schooling a week. Young people and women were also protected, and in all the measures affected 1.4 million people. The second measure was left to the local authorities instead of the factory inspectorate to enforce and they did it badly. The extension of the jurisdiction of the inspectorate to cover the handicrafts had to wait until 1878.

By the late 1860s over a wide range of industries the abolition of infant labour, the reduction of the hours of children to six and a half, the principles of 'protected classes' [children, young persons and women] in the mills and workshops, the 60 hour week all round, compulsory education over the age of eight and rudimentary forms of the modern working week and of factory safety and health codes had been achieved. The circle of exceptions was ever-widening but it remained and this meant continued gross abuse of infant, child, adolescent and female labour elsewhere -- to say nothing of adult males.

The next decade saw the final rounding off and consolidation of early Victorian factory reform. The electoral consequences of the 1867 Reform Act were felt much more powerfully in the general election of 1874 than in that of 1868. Factory hours were an issue, especially in Lancashire during the election. The result was a spate of legislation on factories and trade unions introduced by Disraeli's Conservative administration [1874-1880]: in 1874 and 1878 there were factory acts and in 1875 the Trade Union Act, Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act and the repeal of the remaining master and servant legislation.  The Factory Act 1874 was the work of Richard Cross, Disraeli's Home Secretary. It

1. Finally established the ten-hour day, the historic working class goal, as far as the factories and workshops embraced in the 1867 legislation were concerned.
2. Carried forward for the first time in a quarter of a century the frontier of regulation:

• The minimum age of half-time employment was raised from eight [which it had been since 1844] to ten.
• The minimum age for full-time employment was raised from thirteen [which it had been since 1833] to fourteen.
• Women and young persons were specifically included in the body of 'protected persons', who were to receive the benefits of the ten-hour day.
• Men were deliberately excluded: they gained the ten-hour day not in their own right but through the accident of working side by side with the protected persons.

The Factory Act 1878, followed from a Royal Commission established in 1876, and, though the more comprehensive act, it was essentially a consolidating Act pulling together all the provisions into one scheme.

The depression of the 1870s inclined some to argue that factory reform had gone too far and indeed was a major cause of the country's failure to keep up with her new industrial competitors. By that time, however, the principle of state intervention had been well established and could not be reversed. Children, young people and women at work were the responsibility of the state, secured by legal provisions enforceable through a bureaucratic machine. The effectiveness of the provision depended on the effectiveness of the inspectorate itself.  The size of the inspectorate meant that it was always unlikely that there would be comprehensive coverage. In coal mining only one inspector [H.S.Tremenheere] was appointed in 1842 and it was not until the Coal Mines Inspection Act 1850 that officials were empowered to make underground inspections. The number of inspectors was raised to four in 1850, six in 1852 and twelve in 1855. Even this gave each inspector an impossibly large area to administer and this was equally true of the factory inspectorate where a reorganisation in 1839 left each inspector some 1500 mills to supervise with the assistance of four superintendents. The total establishment for the factory inspectorate was raised to about twenty in 1839, at which level it remained for some thirty years. The inspectors were also hampered by inadequate budgets: in the mid 1860s the mines inspectorate had a budget of only £10,000 while that of the factory inspectorate was about a third more.

The inspectorates were never intended as an industrial police force supervising industry's every move. They were intended to create a moral climate of observance by the principle of inspection. Indeed, it was strongly believed that inspectors should not take from employers the ultimate responsibility for running decent industrial establishments. Almost inevitably the inspectors did not act in concert as a unified service -- in fact the 1876 Royal Commission questioned whether any unified policy existed. It was therefore common for inspectors to have different prosecution rates and to concentrate on different sorts of offences. In matters of fencing and safety at work the inspectorate was often quite ineffectual in raising standards but in other areas there was much greater levels of success. Well over three-quarters of prosecutions were successful and at times the rate was over 90 per cent. This was, in part, the result of prosecuting only in those cases that had a good chance of success.

The legislation of the 1870s represented the consummation of the early Victorian endeavour. 'Protection' was an unchallenged principle. Despite the changes in emphasis and disagreements within the factory debate, the combatants of 1833 soon found common ground in the notion of 'freedom of contract' as expressed by John Stuart Mill in his Principles of political economy[2]. Mill started from the overriding proposition that every individual was the best judge of his own interests and should be free to pursue them without interference from the state. However, he recognised that there were circumstances under which this was unacceptable. The issue was one of defining where and why the overriding proposition justified state action. Mill accepted three circumstances in which state intervention was acceptable:

1. Children and 'young persons' could not be the vest judges of their own interest: for them 'freedom of contract' was often 'but another name for freedom of coercion'. This is the essence of liberal paternalism.
2. In such an area as education, since good judgement itself might depend upon being subjected to it, compulsion was justifiable.
3. There were 'matters in which the interference of law was required, not to overrule the judgement of individuals respecting their own interests, but to give effect to that judgement'. So, if some employers wished to establish a ten-hour day, they might be restrained from pursuing what they conceive to be in their own best interests because their rivals resisted the innovation. Here all would have to be coerced if 'the judgement of individuals respecting their own interests' were to be given effect.

Central to Mill's entire position was the principle that full persons should be contractually liberated, altogether 'free' to pursue their interest, as they themselves judged it, in selling their time and labour. 'Interference' was rapidly accepted on all sides but only as an extraordinary suspension of a master principle. The principle was expressed as freedom of contract and the normal settled as the adult male. This can be seen in Cross's speech to the Commons in 1874 when he felt he must pay lip-service to the old Chadwick doctrine of the free agent: 'So far as adult males are concerned there could be no question that freedom of contract must be maintained and men must be left to take care of themselves.'

The legislation of 1874 and 1878 may have marked a 'victorious' climax to a phase but there were harbingers of a new era. In the early 1870s several bills were introduced in the Commons proposing a nine-hour day for men as for protected persons; and the royal commission of 1876 entered at length into the consideration of both health and hygiene in factories. There were early indicators that the battle was to move on to new ground.

New Horizons

Attention shifted to the sweated trades, those trades often carried on in domestic workshops or actually in a house, where hours were notoriously long and wages low. In 1888 a Select Committee of the House of Lords was appointed to report on the sweated trades and in 1892 another Royal Commission was established on labour conditions generally but which provided valuable information on both sweated and non-sweated trades. In 1901 the Factories and Workshops Act consolidated the law further.

Meanwhile in the major industries a new practice had grown up that had a further influence on the limiting of hours. This was the setting up of Wages Boards or Trades Boards on which both employers and employees were represented. In determining wages, working hours had also to be taken into consideration and this was particularly important as there was still no legislation specifically restricting the working hours of men. The Nottingham Hosiery Board dated from the 1860s while the Midland Iron and Steel Board came into informal existence in 1872, being re-constituted more formally in 1876. The Midlands Mining Wages Board also began informally in 1874, having an official existence from 1883 onwards. In addition, in the Birmingham area, the 'alliance system' was used from time to time. Under this arrangement employers would fix wages and employ only one union, while the workmen would all join the union and work only for employers in the alliance. In this way it was hoped to avoid competitive wage cutting by employers.

If one explanation for the early opposition to factory reform was simple ignorance of conditions, there could be no such excuse by 1900. In addition to Royal Commission and Select Committee reports there were the annual Reports of the Mines Inspectors and the Inspectors for Factories and Workshops which became more detailed as the century advanced. Early in the twentieth century two further advances occurred:

1. In 1908 the Liberal government passed the Eight Hours Act, the first Act regulating the hours of work for men fixing the working day for miners.
2. In 1909 the Sweated Industries Act [sometimes called the Trades Board Act] was passed, made necessary by the continued sweating of workers in certain trades. The Act required wage boards to be set up in specified sweated industries such as tailoring so that even these notoriously difficult to control industries came under increasing supervision. The Shops Act 1912 extended rights to shop assistants.

The working week after 1850 was gradually reduced in length. Although it was still a six day week, Saturday labour was less than before and only a half-day was worked in many trades from the 1870s onwards. Working men acquired four statutory holidays with the passing of the Bank Holiday Acts in 1871 and 1875. By 1900 a week's holiday a year was not unknown though it was more likely to be enjoyed by skilled workers than unskilled workers.

Regulations grew increasingly complex in the area of safety at work. The Coal Mines Acts provide a good illustration of this. By 1900 safety regulations were very extensive and the 1911 Act added further regulations covering many different matters: the fixing of hours for engine men, the provision of baths and facilities for drying clothes at the bigger pits and the searching of men for matches and other forbidden items. Accidents still happened and the rules were not always obeyed but the contrast with the 1850s is very striking. At other places of work employers found themselves under increasing pressure to make their premises safe. The Employers Liability Act 1880 and the Workman's Compensation Act 1905 required employers to pay compensation to any workman injured of suffering disease resulting from unsafe or unhealthy working conditions. National Insurance after 1911 and voluntary insurance before were no longer the only ways of coping with industrial injuries.

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[1] These gangs worked long hours under so-called gang-masters who frequently exploited and abused their workers. By the Agricultural Gangs Act 1888 all gang-masters had to be licensed by JPs, no boy or girl under eight was to be employed, and a licensed gang-mistress was necessary when women and girls were included in the gang.

[2] On the question of 'freedom of contract' see the illuminating and contentious study P.S. Atiyah The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract, OUP, 1971.

The Languages of Factory Reform

Industrialisation is as much a process of cultural as economic and social change. Workers, employers and observers formulated languages in which to negotiate the relationships between each other and to a changing environment[1]. The factory was a concentrated metaphor for hopes and fears about the direction and pace of industrial change and its significance extended beyond the direct impact of factory labour. Language and the construction of public debate is a central concern. Power in society is exercised partly through the privileging of certain modes of discourse and the disqualifying of others. Different discourses address different areas of life and, even in relatively stable periods, the boundaries can be ill defined, debated and re-negotiated. The debate over the 'factory question' was one of the creations of discourses addressed to different audiences in the early 1830s, a narrowing of this range during the 1840s and an effective closure of the debate in the 1850s and 1860s.

Early thrusts: a movement for conflict?

The early ten hour movement had a number of strands, loosely held together by a rhetoric variously composed of evangelical religion, conceptions of a due social balance threatened by unregulated economic change, populist radical ideas of fair employment and labour as property, and patriarchal values. Such rhetoric embodied notions of a 'moral economy' in opposition to the aggressive economic liberalism of the manufacturer's lobby. This clustering of views can be represented in terms of appeals to tradition and a paternalist mutuality of interests, with the values of 'rural' society taken as a touchstone to judge the excesses of industrialism. This articulation of a moral voice is seen best in the writings and speeches of Richard Oastler, who played a pivotal (if self-dramatised) role in organising the ten hour movement round such feelings.  Oastler brings together the elements of the early factory movement to produce a kind of populist traditionalism or 'Tory Radicalism'.  Evangelical religion and gothic romanticism are particularly important. Oastler speaks of the 'monstrous' nature of the factory system and the 'terrors' of child labour. He denounced political economy as 'earthly, selfish and devilish' and pointed to the abnormality of 'the tears of innocent victims [wetting] the very streets which receive the droppings of an Anti-Slavery Society'.

Substantial sections of the propertied classes, merchants, gentry and professional men saw their interests and values as identified with he artisans and domestic economy and feared the threat of unchecked factory concentration to community cohesion and social balance. These attributes cut across the political spectrum from traditionalist Tories to Whigs, to a patrician radicalism. The radicalism of artisans and factory workers shared many of these views. It was saturated in romantic imagery, of the 'golden age' of domestic production and of seeing their labour in terms of 'freedom', 'tyranny' and 'slavery'. The difference was that their accounts of abuse were based on experience rather than observation.

1. Textile employers did not constitute a homogeneous group. There was a significant Tory and Anglican presence and, within the liberal community, differences between the narrow economism and the broader vision of more established manufacturing firms. The claims of 'Manchester Liberalism' to speak for the manufacturing interest as a whole, or even for Manchester itself, are open to question:
2. Attitudes to factory reform arose from readings of the legitimate economic interests of employers and of the 'manufacturing interest' of which they felt themselves to belong but also from wider considerations of their status, cultural aspirations and claims to authority.
3. Economic interests were rarely understood in narrow cash nexus terms and the aspirations of the average businessman was perhaps less to maximise profits than to reproduce his position and that of his family. Paternalism was not confined to Oastler and the ten hour movement and many manufacturers accepted their civic duty as men of property to engaged actively in schooling, management of housing, charity and moral surveillance. Paternalistic controls over the labour force were justified in a language of mutual obligations and the mission of the enlightened manufacturer as improver of the poor. Conversely competitive effectiveness and further accumulation of capital enabled employers to fulfil their moral mission -- in this sense there was no contradiction between the economic ethics of political economy and the moral imperatives of industrial paternalism.
4. Textile manufacturers found themselves in a vulnerable and isolated position when the factory issue exploded in the early 1830s and were divided over their response to it. 'Evils' were recognised, but in terms far removed from the language of factory slavery.
5. The language used by employers, whether in favour or against legislation, provided interesting contrasts between sectors and regions. In the cotton districts opponents pointed to the diminished rate of profit and the material increase in the cost of manufacture with a consequent reduction in labour employed. The responses from woollen and worsted manufacturers were less standardised. Opponents emphasised the threat from foreign competition and the absolute rights of property.

The variation in employers attitudes and opinion cannot adequately be explained in terms of big, technically progressive and small, technically-backward factories. Legislation had different implications for cotton with its higher proportion of steam power and great urban concentration. The question of stopping the moving power is only the best known aspect of such differences. Even employers who favoured reform could differ on the proper balance between state and voluntary initiatives.

Redefining the question: towards conciliation?

The redefining of the factory question is part of the shaping of the Victorian state and the accommodation of interests within it. If the 1830s saw the elaboration of Benthamite responses to reform and vigorous resistance to them, at both popular and ruling-class levels, the 1840s saw modifications to this project through its incorporation into a broader consensus that shaped the agenda of the 'condition of England' question. This had several dimensions:

1. The writing of the new public agenda owed something to expert knowledge and the role of the factory inspectorate. Initially the inspectors had been inclined to defer to the expertise of leading employers but the pressure of public agitation pushed them into taking a more independent line.
2. Popular unrest and the desire to contain unrest pushed inspectors, parliament and elite public opinion to take a firmer line on enforcement. In 1840, Leonard Horner, a leading inspector, presented the benefits of factory regulation in terms of the growth of more rational attitudes among both employers and employees. He presented a case of moral order and economic efficiency appealing to the longer-term rational interests of employers and workers and projected the role of state servants in monitoring this diffusion of rationality.
3. The issue became one, not of introducing new legislation, but fulfilling the intention of existing law by taking action to remedy defects in the 1833 Act. The key issue was enforcement, especially the vexed questions of age certification and the rights of entry to factories. Opposition to legislation was not solely in the interests of employers but of workers as well. Reducing instances of child labour led to reductions in family budgets, hence much working class opposition. Adult labour had been left unaltered by the 1833 Act.

Oastler and the ten hour movement in the 1830s had projected a vision in which the regulation of the factory, and the protection of labour generally was the key to remedying social distress. The factory question in the 1840s can be seen through the language of negotiation within a growing consensus in favour of further regulation: the prosperity of trade and the welfare of the nation were increasingly seen as two sides of the same coin. Two particular emphases worked to incorporate social criticism about the distress, moral degeneration and Chartist threat and the awareness of working class conditions, into a liberal vision of a rationalised factory system:

1. The development of state regulation and the associated public debate tended to project a series of distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' factories and of the need to improve the 'bad'.
2. The agenda of the 'condition of England' extended into mines, child and female labour generally, the weavers, out-work and sweating and urban conditions. As a result the factory lost its centrality as a focus of social concern.

Public opinion saw social problems as separate and the evils of the factory as by no means the worst, though possibly the most readily remediable form of social distress. Education and a morally improved working force became the key. The debate continued to embody distinctive workers' perspectives, though these were perhaps less challenging than in the 1830s. Ten-hour legislation insisted on the minimal protection of labour, including adult men's labour. This was constructed as a moral imperative and a necessary limitation of the sphere of political economy. The eventual introduction of a fairly effective Ten Hours Act could be seen as a logical development within this framework.

A symbolic resolution

The Ten Hours Act, together with the repeal of the Corn Laws, came to form part of the symbolic 'social settlement' underpinning the apparent social harmony of the mid-Victorian period. The absence of factory acts became part of a collective memory of the 'bad old days', an unacceptable face of capitalism that no doubt worked to make its current face seem more benign. From the 1860s the factory agitation could be recalled as part of the general progress of society. For employers, the improvements associated with the Acts became part of an image of the well-regulated factory as the site of that economic, social and moral progress that the Victorian middle classes liked to represent as its mission in life. The factory inspectors saw themselves as agents of moral improvement among the operatives, as much as their protectors from unscrupulous employers.

Factory reform had some bearing on the making of mid-Victorian industrial paternalism. The consensual rhetoric of factory reform could, however, have different meanings in particular contexts. For workers, they were important as a symbol of 'industrial legality', especially where trade unions were relatively weak. The construction of women and children as protected categories reinforced notions of the adult male 'breadwinner' as an independent free labourer. Much of the debate concerned the drawing of boundaries -- between morality and the market, dependent and free agents, the state and the rights of property, the household, the factory and the school. Factory reform reflected a recognition that the market of liberal economics existed in a moral and legal framework. This contention was open to debate in the 1830s but from the 1840s the boundaries appear more settled and with an authoritative discourse of reform and moral improvement framing economic and Benthamite language with a moralising social commitment.

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[1] For what follows see Robert Gray 'The languages of factory reform in Britain c.1830-1860' in Patrick Joyce (ed.) The historical meanings of work, pp.143-179.