and others employed in the mills. This Act, which was passed largely through the continued effort of Sir Robert Peel, was intended chiefly to protect the little pauper apprentices. It reduced hours of labour for children to seventy-two per week, and regulated night work as well. Children living near the mill in which they were employed were not within the intention of the Act, for they were presumably under the care of their parents. Each apprentice was to secure instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and to be provided one suit of clothes a year Factories were to be white-washed annually and adequately ventilated, and the sleeping apartments of the sexes separated! This half-hearted measure was to be enforced under a penalty of not more than £5, nor less than 40s.! However, Parliament could not undertake sweeping reforms owing to the selfishness of mill owners and the dense ignorance of operatives, who had been taught to believe that a shortening of hours was inevitably accompanied by a fall in wages. Though the pauper slave market, so far as the cotton mills were concerned, was practically closed by the law, the horrors of child labour were not mitigated. By this Act, Parliament showed no intention of seriously interfering with the "right" of employers and employés to determine their own affairs. So generally accepted was the theory that social warfare was the natural condition of society that a select committee of the House of Commons reported in 1811 that "no interference of the Legislature with the freedom of trade, or with the perfect liberty of every individual to dispose of his time and his labour in the way and on the terms which he may judge most conducive to his interest, can take place without

violating general principles of the first importance to the prosperity and happiness of the community, without establishing the most pernicious precedent, or even without aggravating, after a very short time, the pressure of the general distress, and imposing obstacles against that distress ever being removed." In spite of these profound speculations, people were determined not to be "sweated or stunk to death." The tide had set in

toward ever stricter control of the conditions of labour.

In 1815, Robert Owen, the great and revered friend of the toilers of the world, lifted his voice in public protest against the iniquities of the industrial system. With him, interference was not a question of "economic theory," but one of human life. The manufacturers were anxious enough to use the strong arm of the law in their own interests, and Robert Owen seized an opportunity of presenting the claims of the operatives when the mill owners were considering the policy of applying to the Government for a remission of the tax on raw cotton. At a meeting of manufacturers, Owen's proposition for the abolition of the tax was enthusiastically supported; but he failed to find even a seconder of the motion to improve the condition of the employed. In the interest of the workers, he made an eloquent and passionate plea for factory regulation : "Shall we then go unblushingly and ask the legislators of our country to pass legislative acts to sanction and increase this trade-to sign the death-warrants of the strength, morals, and happiness of thousands of our fellow-creatures, and not attempt to propose correctives for the evils which it creates ? If such shall be your determination, I, for one, will not join in the application; nay, I will, with all the faculties I possess, oppose every

attempt to extend a trade that, except in name, is more injurious to those employed in it than is the slavery in the West Indies to the poor negroes. For deeply as I am interested in the cotton manufacture, highly as I value the extended political power of my country, yet, knowing as I do, from long experience both here in Scotland and in England, the miseries which this trade, as it is now conducted, inflicts on those to whom it gives employment, I do not hesitate to say, Perish the cotton trade! Perish even the political superiority of our country!-if it depends on the cotton trade-rather than they shall be upheld by the sacrifice of everything valuable in life."

Owen framed three proposals which he wished to have embodied in a second Factory Act: "(1) To prevent children from being employed in cotton or other mills of machinery until they are twelve years old; (2) that the hours of work in mills of machinery-including one hour and a half for meals and recreation-shall not exceed twelve per day; (3) that, after a period to be fixed, no child should be received in a mill of machinery until he shall have been taught to read, to write a legible hand, and to understand the first four rules of arithmetic; and the girls, in addition, to be taught to sew their common articles of clothing." For four years

Owen was at London attending the Parliamentary sessions, fighting for the passage of the Bill against ignorance, prejudice, selfishness, and personal abuse and slander. In 1819, after Owen's original draft had been mutilated beyond recognition, the Bill finally became a law. Owen tells us that he learned some things during the agitation. To use his own words: "My intimate acquaintance with these proceedings, for the four years

during which this Bill was under the consideration of both Houses, opened my eyes to the conduct of public men, and to the ignorant, vulgar self-interest, regardless of means to accomplish their object, of trading and mercantile men, even of high standing in the commercial world. No means were left untried by these men to defeat the object of the Bill in the first session of its introduction, and through four years in which, under one futile pretence and another, it was kept in the House of Commons."

The new law forbade the employment of children under nine in the mills, and limited the hours of work to twelve a day, exclusive of meal times, for all between the ages of nine and sixteen. The first Act had only made the State a sort of a guardian for the pauper apprentices; but the Bill of 1819 was "legislative interference between the free labourer and his employer," which the opponents of the measure considered "a violent, highly dangerous, and unconstitutional innovation." It was certainly the first expression of the new doctrine that the State ought to protect the interests of the weaker citizens, and it opened the way for the later restrictive legislation. Gradually it dawned on the consciousness of people that man was determining his own conditions of life. Slowly it began to be realised that beyond the problem of individual development and salvation was the still larger industrial and social problem, which could only be approached through collective action. In 1825, Saturday labour was shortened, and penalties provided for breach of factory regulation. These factory acts, however, did nothing toward assuring certainty of employment and living wages, and little toward improving the lot of the

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workers in any but the cotton industry. Misery, starvation, suffering, and degradation made up the common heritage of the labourers, in spite of the factory laws. The spirit of unrest, nevertheless, was abroad in the land. It became evident that the people themselves must assert their authority in the Halls of Parliament.

Sec. 5.-The Rise of Democracy. Democracy, as we know it to-day, is of modern development. As has been pointed out in previous chapters, England at the time of the Industrial Revolution was yet mediæval in its political organisation. George III. had wielded a wonderful power for several reasons: (1) In the hands of the king rested the power to bestow all the honours, preferments, dignities, and positions which turn covetous politicians into sycophantic supporters of the hands which give; (2) the privileges and position of the peers were inseparable from those of the crown, and the greater part of their support and political influence was with the king; (3) but what was still more important, and added most to the placing of unlimited authority in the hands of the king, was the non-popular character of the House of Commons. In the first place, the county representatives were nearly all under the dominion of the county aristocracy; (2) the boroughs which returned members were largely the property of peers or under their control; (3) election work done on behalf of the royal party was rewarded by positions and honour in the Government service; (4) bribery was open and corrupt, and there were even "borough brokers," whose business it was to dispose of the right of representation at the highest prices.

At the close of the eighteenth century the House of