--The direct pressure
of certain tangible and painful forms of industrial grievance and of
poverty has forced upon us a large mass of legislation which is
sometimes called by the name of Socialistic Legislation. It is necessary
to enter on a brief examination of the character of the various
enactments included under this vague term, in order to ascertain the
real nature of the remedy they seek to apply.
Perhaps the most typical form of this socialistic legislation is
contained in the Factory Acts, embodying as they do a series of direct
interferences in the interests of the labouring classes with freedom of
contract between capital and labour.
The first of these Factory Acts, the Health and Morals Act, was passed
in 1802, and was designed for the protection of children apprenticed in
the rising manufacturing towns of the north, engaged in the cotton and
woollen trades. Large numbers of children apprenticed by poor-law
overseers in the southern counties were sent as "slaves" to the northern
manufacturer, to be kept in overcrowded buildings adjoining the factory,
and to be worked day and night, with an utter disregard to all
considerations of physical or moral health. There is no page in the
history of our nation so infamous as that which tells the details of the
unbridled greed of these pioneers of modern commercialism, feeding on
the misery and degradation of English children. This Act of 1802,
enforcing some small sanitary reforms, prohibited night work, and
limited the working-day of apprenticed children to twelve hours.
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