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. In
1819, another Act was passed for the benefit of unapprenticed child
workers in cotton mills, prohibiting the employment of children under
nine years, and limiting the working-day to twelve hours for children
between nine and sixteen. Sir John Cam Hobhouse in 1825 passed an Act
further restricting the labour of children under sixteen years,
requiring a register of children employed in mills, and shortening the
work on Saturdays. Then came the agitation of Richard Oastler for a Ten
Hours Bill. But Parliament was not ripe for this, and Hobhouse,
attempting to redeem the hours in textile industries, was defeated by
the northern manufacturers. Public feeling, however, formed chiefly by
Tories like Oastler, Sadler, Ashley, and Fielden, drove the Whig leader,
Lord Althorp, to pass the important Factory Act of 1833. This Act drew
the distinction between children admitted to work below the age of
thirteen, and "young persons" of ages from thirteen to eighteen;
enforced in the case of the former attendance at school, and a maximum
working week of forty-eight hours; in the case of the latter prohibited
night work, and limited the hours of work to sixty-nine a week. The next
step of importance was Peel's consolidating Factory Act of 1844,
reducing the working-day for children to six and a half hours, and
increasing the compulsory school attendance from two hours to three, and
strengthening in various ways the machinery of inspection. In 1845 Lord
Ashley passed a measure prohibiting the night work of women. In 1848, by
the Act of Mr. Fielden, ten hours was assigned as a working-day for
women and young persons, and further restrictions in favour of women and
children were made in 1850 and 1853.

It must, however, be