redoubled. The manufacturers had grown more and
more bitter and vindictive in their opposition. In
their almost fanatical enthusiasm for the repeal of the
corn laws — the agitation for which was then at its
height — they made great pretence of sympathy for the
hardships of the poor ; yet they sneered at, ridiculed,
and often personally abused all who favored the de-
mand of the operatives for a ten-hour law.*

* The extent to which this bitter opposition was carried is shown
by the fact that even John Bright, the Quaker and much-lauded re-
former, was so unrelenting in his opposition to the ten-hour bill (he
was a large manufacturer), and became so personally abusive in his
attacks on Lord Ashley (whose motives and character were always
above suspicion) for his advocacy of that measure, that in the House
of Commons he was compelled to publicly apologize for his ungentle-
manly conduct. See Grant's " History of Factory Legislation," p. 75.



BITTER OPPOSITION OF JOHN BRIGHT. 301

The manufacturers and free-traders generally, led
by Cobden, Bright, Roebuck, and others, backed by
all the prominent political economists, who were ad-
vocating cheap bread that they might obtain cheap
labor, again indulged in their doleful predictions of
the calamities that would befall the laborers and the
community if this bill became a law. If that measure
were passed capital would leave the country, manu-
factures would decline, England's power and prosper-
ity at home and her influence abroad would diminish,
and she would fall from her high place among nations
to that of a third or fifth-rate power in Europe. In
short, all the evil prophecies which had been repeated
on every occasion since 1802 — not one of which had
been fulfilled — were again proclaimed with as much
vigor as if they involved a new discovery or a special
message of warning from heaven. Professor Senior's
argument — which was invented to defeat the exten-
sion of the elder Sir Robert Peel's apprentice law to
factory children in 18 19 — " That all the profit of the
manufacturer was made in the last hour," which if
taken off would ruin him' — was urged with increased
vigor and emphasis.*

Fortunately, however, the result of the various
reductions in the working time during the previous
twenty years was such that the operatives and their
friends had good reason to remember it, as Lord Ash-
ley in his speech (1845) conclusively showed. In this
speech, which was, in many respects, one of the most
remarkable orations ever delivered in Parliament, his
lordship, by data obtained from manufacturers' books,
pay-rolls, and other authentic sources, exposed the

* See Hansard's " Parliamentary Debates," 1S42-47.



302 WEALTH AND PROGRESS.

fallacies of these sham prophecies. He proved that
wages had not fallen, profits had not been lessened,
production had not been diminished, and business
prosperity had not been injured. On the contrary,
he showed that wages had advanced, profits had risen,
prices fallen, and production greatly increased ; and,
instead of capital leaving the country, " we see gentle-
men, brokers, merchants, doctors, lawyers, drapers,
tailors, etc., leaving their respective professions and
trades, and see them building mills in almost every
town in Lancashire." Referring to the Senior " last-
hour'' subterfuge, his lordship declared : ," It has al-
ways been urged, and has never been verified, and yet
experience should go for something in these great
considerations. It was broached in 1816, repeated
and enforced in evidence before committees in
speeches and pamphlets in 1817, 18 18, and 18 19, and
utterly refuted by the whole subsequent history of the
cotton trade from that day to the present. You had
no diminution of produce, no fall in wages, no rise in
price, no closing of markets, no irresistible rivalry
from foreign competition, although you reduced your
hours of working from sixteen, fourteen, thirteen to
twelve hours in the day. What change has there oc-
curred so mighty as to prevent a similar result in

1845?"*

While this speech did not convert the Brights and
Cobdens, it diminished the influence of their oratory
in the community against the ten-hour movement.
Although it was then defeated by a majority of sixty-

* Hansard's "Parliamentary Debates," 1844. See also Grant's
" History of Factory Legislation," pp. 95, q6, 97 ; Hodder's " Life
of Earl Shaftesbury," 1886, and Edinburgh Review, April, 1887,
p. 366.



THE TEN-HOUR LA W ADOPTED IN 1847. 303

two, in 1847, only two years later, and three years
after the passage of the half-time law, it was adopted
after seven divisions, in each of which it was carried
by an average majority of over two to one.*

This completed the reduction of the working time
during the twenty-eight years (18 19 to 1847) from six-
teen to five hours per day for children under thirteen
years of age, and from sixteen to ten hours per day
for women and for minors from thirteen to eighteen
years of age. What the effect of this was upon the
industrial and social condition of the masses we shall
see in the next chapter.

* Grant's " History of Factory Legislation," p. 138.



CHAPTER VII.

THE PHENOMENAL EFFECT OF THE TEN-HOUR LAW
AND HALF-TIME SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND.

Section I. — The Striking Success of these Laws Con-
verted Sir James Graham, Mr. Roebuck and Other
Opponents.

The ten-hour law of 1847, which did not go into
full operation till the first of May, 1848, was more
complete in its construction and more extensive in its
application than any previous legislation upon the
subject. Factory inspectors were appointed to see to
its enforcement, with heavy penalties for its violation.
Hence, notwithstanding the ingenious devices of mill
managers to evade the law, and the skill of the legal
fraternity to wrench the virtue out of it, by strained
interpretations in their defence, it was more literally
and uniformly enforced than any previous act had
been. Therefore, the effects of this law, together
with that of 1844, for half-time schools, which have
been in continuous operation ever since, may fairly be
taken as the test of the economic and social tendency
of short-hour or opportunity-creating legislation.

The industrial histoty of England from that time to
this conclusively shows that, instead of verifying the
pessimistic predictions of its enemies— the Cobdens,
Brights, and Roebucks — it more than justified the
claims of its most ardent supporters. The working



THE EFFECT OF INCREASED OPPORTUNITY. 305

children in the leading productive industries were now
for the first time receiving an education as the con-
dition of employment. And within a single decade it
became a rare thing to find an operative of either sex
under twenty years of age who could not read and write.

By this means the general intelligence of the labor-
ing classes was rapidly developed. What the school-
ing did for the children the increased social intercourse
— for that, in its broadest sense, is social education — did
for the adults. The increased leisure, with diminished
exhaustion, increased the opportunity and inclination
of the laborer for a greater variety of social life.
This, in accordance with the principles we have laid
down throughout this work, naturally tended to stim-
ulate and enlarge his social tastes, desires and wants,
raise his standard of living, and advance his wages.
It also brought about, as a necessary consequence, an
increase in the consumption and production of wealth ;
it promoted the use of improved machinery, and thus
reduced prices without lessening the income of the capi-
talist, thereby advancing the material prosperity and
also the intellectual, moral, social, and political prog-
ress of the whole community.

And this is what the industrial history of England
since 1850 shows has taken place. The marked im-
provement in the material and social condition of the
laboring classes in all industries affected by this legis-
lation, especially among the factory operatives, that
immediately followed these two last-named measures
— the half-time law of 1844 and the ten-hour law
of 1847 — was su ch that within less than a decade and a
half it had not only sustained the claims of its friends,
but it had completely silenced, and, in many cases, con-
verted its most bitter enemies into positive advocates.



306 WEALTH AND PROGRESS.

In 1859, eleven years after the final passage of the
latter act, Mr. Barker, chief of the factory inspectors,
read a paper on the condition of the factory operative
before the Social Science Congress, held at Bradford,
in which he said : " I have thus given you not only
the result of my own experience, but the local testi-
mony of gentlemen who weekly visit mills which em-
ploy in the aggregate upwards of seventy thousand per-
sons, of whom upwards of forty thousand are females
and forty-five hundred are children, and who all testify
to the same fact — viz., the almost entire disappearance
of deformity and the non-appearance of any other
disease specific to factory labor. And it is exceed-
ingly gratifying to find that an experiment which had
many opponents when it was about to be tried has
been productive of such great benefit to the working
classes, without, I believe, an atom of either personal,
commercial, or national wrong. I venture to make
this statement on three grounds : First, Because, al-
though the hours of work have been very much di-
minished, wageslmve increased in some cases forty per
cent, and generally about twelve per cent, and there-
fore the means of providing home comforts by the
people have been multiplied. Secondly, Because it
has not diminished any kind of textile production, and,
therefore, it has not injured our national prosperity."

In support of this he quoted the immense increase
in manufactured products and commercial prosperity,
showing that the volume of business had nearly doubled
from 1844 to 1858, a fact which has been fully sus-
tained by all subsequent investigations.*

* Mulhall, in his " Progress of the World in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury," p. 539, shows that the commerce of Great Britain not only



MR. ROEBUCK'S CONVERSION. 307

In support of his statement that the social condition
of the masses had been greatly improved, he pointed
to the great increase during the same period of schools,
lectures, public gardens, and other sources of pleas-
ure, " refinement, and civilization, which," he adds,
" only take their date from the possession of the priv-
ileges which restricted labor conferred upon the
people." *

In i860 a bill was introduced to extend the Factory
Acts to print works, whereupon, on March 21, Mr. J.
A. Roebuck, who, it will be remembered, was one
of the bitterest antagonists the half-time and ten-
hour bills had to encounter, rose in the House of
Commons, publicly apologized for his opposition to
those measures, and supported the bill. In his speech
he said : " I am about to speak on this question under
somewhat peculiar circumstances. Very early in my
Parliamentary career Lord Ashley, now the Earl of
Shaftesbury, introduced a bill of this description. I,
being an ardent political economist, as I am now,
opposed the measure, . . . and was very much influ-
enced in my opposition by what the gentlemen of
Lancashire said. They declared then that it was the
last half hour of the work performed by their opera-

actually doubled during that period, but that, including Ireland, it has
doubled per capita of the population. In 1841 the commerce of Great
Britain was six pounds and three shillings per head of the population,
and in 1861 it was twelve pounds and ten shillings. Thus, from three
years before the passage of the half-time act to two years after the
time Mr. Barker made the above statement, commerce had increased
six pounds and seven shillings per capita. In other words, the vol-
ume of trade increased from 1841 more than twice as fast as the pop-
ulation, while from 1801 to 1841 it had hardly kept pace with it. See
also his " History of Prices," p. 34, London, 1885.

* Grant's " History of Factory Legislation," pp. 148, 149,



308 WEALTH AND PROGRESS.

tives which made all their profits, and that if we took
away that last half hour we should ruin the manufac-
turers of England. I listened to that statement, and
trembled for the manufacturers of England [a laugh] ;
but Lord Ashley persevered. Parliament passed the
bill which he brought in. From that time down to
the present the factories of this country have been
under state control, and I appeal to this House
whether the manufacturers of England have suffered
by this legislation. [Great cheers.] But the honor-
able member for Manchester [John Bright] still I find
makes the same objection. He gets up and prophesies
all sorts of evil if we interfere now ; but he has kept
out of view the evils for the prevention of which we
are now about to interfere. [Cheers.] . . . But I will
read some facts from Mr. Tremenheere's report, and
will then appeal to the House of Commons, to the
fathers and the brothers of English women and chil-
dren, if they will not interfere to put down this tre-
mendous evil. .... I, at least, will not be a party to
the perpetration of any such atrocities as I find re-
corded, and I do hope that the gentlemen of Eng-
land will not be parties to them, either. . . . Hav-
ing prevented this misery in the one case, let us
interfere to prevent it in the other." [Great cheer-
ing.] *

Sir James Graham, who, it will be remembered, was
a no less persistent opponent to short-hour legislation
than Mr. Roebuck, on one occasion even threaten-
ing the resignation of the ministry if Lord Ashley's
bill was passed, at once congratulated Mr. Roebuck,

* Hansard's " Parliamentary Debates," i860. See also Grant's
" Historv of Factorv Legislation." nn. tjo. ico.



History of Factory Legislation," pp. 149, 150



SIR JAMES GRAHAM'S RECANT A TION. 309

and said : " I am glad that you have read your recan-
tation, and I will read mine to-morrow." *

On the ninth of May, when the bill came up for a
third reading, Sir James rose in his place, and said :
" I am sorry once more to be involved in a short-time
discussion. I have, however, a confession to make to tlie
House. . . . Experience has shown to my satisfaction
that many of the predictions formerly made against the
Factory Bill have not been verified by the result, as, on
the whole, that great measure of relief for women and
children has contributed to the well-being and comfort
of the working classes, while it lias not injured their
masters. The enactment of the present bill ought to
approach as nearly as possible the Factory Act. . . .
By the vote I shall give to-night, I will endeavor to make
some amends for the course I pursued in earlier life in
opposing the Factory Bill.

Sir Thomas Bazley, a prominent manufacturer in
Manchester, also rose and testified to the great and
unexpected advantages which had resulted from the
Factory Acts.

In a speech in the House of Commons, March 7,
1864, Mr. Gladstone added his testimony to the vir-
tues of this measure, and said : " You have prohibited
by your Factory Acts the employment of children
beyond a certain number of hours, and the employ-
ment of young persons beyond a certain number of
hours. . . . It may be said that the Legislature is now
almost tinanimous with respect to the necessity which ex-
isted for undertaking it, and zaith respect to the ben-



* This statement of Sir James Graham's was publicly repeated by
Mr. Roebuck in a speech in the Mechanics' Institute, Sheffield, May,
1S64, and was reported in the London Times.



310 WEALTH AND PROGRESS.

eficial effect it has produced both in mitigating human
suffering and in attaching important classes of the
community to Parliament and the Government."

The success of this measure was not only sufficient
to disarm the opposition of the average editor, poli-
tician, and manufacturer, and convert the leading
statesmen from antagonists to advocates, but it also
silenced the opposition of the political economists,
and forced from the more candid of them a public en-
dorsement of its economic and social soundness. Al-
though every political economist in England who
wrote before 1850 was uncompromisingly opposed to
short-hour legislation, not one who has written since
1865, even of the most ultra laisscz faire type, has
ventured to announce his opposition to the Factory
Acts. In fact, the ablest and most influential of
them, such as Professor Newmarch, John Stuart Mill,
Professors Rogers, Cairnes, Jevons, Mr. Thornton,
and others, have frankly admitted the economic ex-
pediency of these measures, while those of the more
modern school, especially on the continent and in this
country, who have never been committed to ultra
laissez faire, are quite pronounced in approval of
their economic influence.

The social benefits arising from these measures are
still further shown by their constantly growing popu-
larity with all classes in the community, which is un-
mistakably indicated by the fact that in 1850, 1853,
1861, 1864, and 1867 measures were passed further ex-
tending the principle of the ten-hour law of 1847 to
other industries, and in 1874, while all her commercial
competitors, both on the continent and in this coun-
try, were working from eleven to fourteen hours a
day, England, after thirty years' experience with a



NINE AND A HALF HOURS PER DAY. 311

half-time industrial system for children, and twenty-
seven years with a ten-hour law for adults, further re-
duced the working time of the operatives to nine and
a half hours per day.



Section II. — Social Progress Shown by the Rise of
Wages, the Fall of Prices, and the Diminution of
Illiteracy, Pauperism, and Crime.

If we turn from personal testimony to the uncon-
scious economic and social data, we shall find that the
answer is no less emphatic and conclusive. An ex-
amination of the economic and social condition of the
laboring classes from 1850 to the present time will
show that in proportion as the increased leisure and
social opportunity consequent upon fewer hours of
labor and half-time schools became general and per-
manent in their influence, the social well-being of the
masses increased. This is shown (1) By the general
and steady rise of wages. (2) By the increased pro-
duction of wealth per capita of the population. (3)
By the fall in prices. (4) By the increased general
intelligence of the masses. (5) By the decrease in
pauperism. (6) By the diminution of crime.

First, then, as to wages. There has never been
anything like an approximately complete statistical
statement of the rates of wages in the different coun-
tries from year to year, or decade to decade. Indeed,
we are only just beginning, even in the most civilized
countries, to recognize the importance of industrial
statistics. Hence, industrial data have hitherto been
meagre and fragmentary. Instead of the rates of
wages being uniformly taken for all industries at the



312 WEALTH AND PROGRESS.

same time, as we now take the census, the work has
been undertaken in one industry or locality for some
special purpose by a public-spirited person ; at another
time or place by a board of trade or chamber of com-
merce ; at another by a labor organization or scientific
or statistical society, or at another by a parliament-
ary committee. For this reason, while statistics
have been taken in all industries, and are, for the
most part, quite reliable, it is difficult to obtain them
for all industries at any one date, especially up to
twenty years ago.

As wages are governed by social influences, it is safe
to assume, except in case of some special local dis-
turbance, which, in relation to the general rate, would
never be more than a perturbation, that their tendency
in those industries not recorded was the same or sim-
ilar to that of those which were.

I must beg the indulgence of the reader for a mo-
ment's digression here to correct what I regard, to say
the least, as a misleading method of using statistics,
especially in relation to wages. It is literally true that
" figures do not lie," yet they may be, and often are,
so used as to warrant the statement, so often made,
44 that nothing lies like figures. " The percentage of
a rise or fall in the rate of wages will infallibly indicate
the extent of the movement in either direction from a
given point. But the same percentage of rise or fall
in wages at different times and places will not neces-
sarily indicate the same actual variation in each case,
unless the point from which they moved was identical.
For this reason, at one time and place a small actual
rise may show a large percentage of increase, while at
another a much larger actual rise may show a very much
smaller percentage of increase. Whether a given ac-



THE TRUE BASIS FOR COMPARISON. 313

tual increase or diminution in wages will show a large
or small percentage of rise or fall will entirely depend
upon whether the amount at the point from which the
variation took place is large or small. Thus, while it
is true that a rise in real wages always indicates an im-
provement in the social condition of the masses, the
extent of that improvement is not always adequately
expressed by the percentage of the rise, but it is al-
ways infallibly indicated by the absolute amount of the
increase. This is especially important in comparing
the relative progress (social well-being) of the masses
in different periods, countries, or industries. For in-
stance, a rise of one hundred per cent in the wages in
England in 1350 (three pence a day) would have in-
creased the laborer's wealth less than would a rise
of ten per cent in 1887. And for the same reason, to-
day an increase of five per cent would give the Ameri-
can laborer as much additional wealth as in China a
rise of one hundred per cent would give to the Mon-
golian. A pound of flour or a pound of beef, whether
it represents one or fifty per cent of the laborer's
wages, only represents the same amount of wealth or
well-being. Social progress, therefore, actual or rela-
tive, is more correctly expressed in the actual amount
of increase in acquisition of wealth than in any pres-
entation of percentages. This is an important fact
that should never be lost sight of in wages compari-
sons, and we shall rely upon the reader to keep it in
mind throughout this discussion.

To resume, then. Robert Giffen, President of the
British Statistical Society, estimates that during the
fifty years previous to 1883 the operatives' wages in
woollen manufacture rose, on an average, including
women and children, one dollar and ninety-eight cents
*5



314 WEALTH AND PROGRESS.

per week, and those of artisans, two dollars and thirty-
eight cents * per week, showing an average rise for the
whole of two dollars and eighteen cents per week. By
the returns of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce for
1883, we find that the wages of the cotton operatives
(medium quality), all departments taken together,
from 1850 to 1883, rose two dollars and forty-eight
cents per week. Those in fine quality of goods rose one
dollar and fifty-two cents per week ; in bleaching, two
dollars and twenty cents per week ; in the building
trades, two dollars and two cents per week, and in coal-
mining, one dollar and ninety-two cents a week. Tak-
ing all the above industries together (and they embrace
nearly one hundred different occupations outside of
agriculture and the London trades), we find that from
1850 to 1883 the wages of men, women, and children
have, on the average, increased two dollars and ten
cents a week.f

The foregoing results are fully confirmed by Mul-
hall, who shows % that during the forty years prior to
1875 wages in England, exclusive of agriculture, rose
on the average two dollars and sixteen cents a week.



* This difference is partly due to the fact that there is a much larger
number of children in the former than in the latter occupations.

f It is not pretended that these figures are literally correct, but when
we remember that they are drawn from nearly one hundred different
occupations and by expert statisticians of the highest reputation, who
have such exceptional opportunities for obtaining the necessary facts
as are open to the President of the British Statistical Society and the
President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, who had free
access to the pay-rolls of the leading concerns throughout the country,
they may be safely accepted as approximately correct and quite reli-