Indiana State University - Sycamore Yearbook (Terre Haute, IN)

Page 13 text:

THE NORMALADVANCE 9 water could be most easily obtained. It was very expensive to bring operatives to these places, since they were generally brought from great distances. Therefore in order to reim- burse for this expenditure, the youths were bound by a system of apprenticeship to serve for a certain number of years. Here is where the system reached its maximum degree of wickedness, when children were sent away nominally to learn a trade, but in reality were placed under the dominance of their master, who enjoyed the freedom of dealing with them as he chose. The master provided shelter, clothing and food for his apprentices. Over- seers were appointed to superintend the mills and to extract as much labor as possible from the employes. The wages depended upon the amount of work done. Children were flogged, fettered, and tortured with the direst cruelty, and almost starved to death while at work since their time for meals was very limited. Some of the conditions were really appalling. Also the consequences that followed this shock- ing and horrifying situation were most la- mentable and disastrous. Children hated their slavery, therefore some of them abseonded. Through long years of hard labor and cruel treatment they became stunted, so that when their apprenticeship expired at the age of thir- teen or fifteen years, they were ignorant and admirably prepared for the world of Vice and misery, which evils existed chiefly in the towns. People were so ignorant and unconscious of their misery that whenever some philanthrop- ists proposed a change to alter their condition of living, they were strongly and systematical- ly opposed to it. Such was the condition of the working people in the latter part of the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth century before any laws were enacted. The factory agitation and the controversy between the supporters and opposers of fac- tory legislation continued until finally the first Factory Act was passed in 1802, which prin- cipally applied to apprentices in cotton and woolen mills. It was called the 4The Factory Health and Morals Act? This act provided lirst, that the master or mistress of a factory should observe the law. Secondly, all rooms in a factory were to be properly ventilated and to be lime-washed twice a year. The third section compelled employers to supply their apprentices with clothing; while the fourth limited the number of hours of work to twelve, not to commence before six in the morning nor to extend after nine at night. The fifth sec- tion provided for the instruction of appren- tices during the first four years of bondage in reading, writing, and arithmetic, by some proper person. Sundays they were to be taught the principles of the Christian religion, and were to attend Church at least once a month. The provisions of the act were to be enforced by two Visitors, appointed by ad- jacent justices of the peace, one of whom should be a justice and the other a member of the Church of England or of Scotland. The Vis- itors should have the power to require the em- ployer to call in medical assistance, in case dis- eases prevailed in his establishment. Finally copies of the act were to be affixed in conspicu- ous places. Thus we have some idea of the contents of the first F actory Act. Although it was rather faulty, establishing no limit of age on workers, nor requiring any proof of their fitness for employment, it nevertheless, was very important because it was the first act which attempted to restrain modern factory labor. Another way in which the law was diili- cult was the fact that it did not apply to free labor, but only to apprenticed labor. Abuses were common not only in cotton and woolen factories, but in all the rest of the industries. Also the factory Visitors were not recompensed and they very seldom attended to their duty. Therefore the law proved inoperative in prac- tice, and was gradually superseded by other laws, although it was not formally repealed until 1878. As soon as steam power was introduced, fac- tories were transferred into populous places, where coal could be carried more easily and where an unfailing supply of labor could be obtained. The result of'these changed circum-

Page 12 text:

8 THE NORMALADVANCE inventions have been mentioned that changed the method of'manufacturing textile indus- tries, and that transformed the domestic sys- tem into the factory system. Perhaps the greatest question in connection with the Factory Acts is the meaning of the word! factory. This word has gone through many processes of alteration, and is still un- dergoing similar processes. Its Erst meaning was that of a trading establishment, generally in the country, with which were associated in idea the settlements and the surroundings be- longing to it, but later it meant a place of proa duction and not sale. Therefore it was an es- tablishment where things were made on a large scale for profit. Just the precise time when this transformation took place is not known. What is certain is the fact that as early as 1802 the English legislature interpreted the word in the modern sense. Briefly stated the word fac- tory at this time meant. any place devoted to spinning and weaving certain fabrics by power. It had scarcely attained this signilica- tion when it underwent another alteration. This time the modern conception of a factory was formed, which explains it in this way: ttthat it is a place of production, where labor is congregated and divided within an estab- lishment of definite bounds, sometimes with and sometimes without the aid of exterior motive power? Now the question may be asked why the meaning of the word factory is of such Vital importance. The true answer is this, that the various meanings of the word factory led the people to expound the laws in different ways, and have caused great varia- tions in factory legislation. A few words regarding the establishment of the first modern factories are necessary in or- der to fully comprehend the subject under dis- cussion. Factories have not been recent con- trivanees, but they existed as far back as the time of the Egyptians and the Romans; al- though they were not called factories and were not regulated like factories, nevertheless they were real factories. Turning back to our mod- ern factories, let us see how they originated and developed as the result of the industrial revo- lution. After the great inventions were made which brought an enormous change to indus- try, capital became concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy men, who were able to buy or construct the newly invented machinery to be operated by employers. The poor hand-work- ers; therefore, could not compete with the ma- chines, because their method of working was too slow. So they were compelled to leave their own little workshops and labor in the fac- tories. Not only were men employed, but even women and children, because they worked for lower wages than men. Here is the place where the great evils and abuses in the fac- tories originated, which necessitated factory laws. It would require many pages to relate the evils which not only have existed, but in some cases still exist in the English factories. The , first complaints were made in the cotton fae- tories of Lancashire. As the result of these complaints a committee was appointed in 1795 at Manchester to investigate the matter. The report of this committee revealed to the public the horrible and shocking condition of the fac- tories. Disease, especially the contagion of fever, which was rapidly propagated when once infected, appeared not only in the cotton factories, but even in the families whose mem- bers worked in these places. Factories were not properly ventilated. Want of fresh air and active exercise, essential for the youth to in Vigorate the system, injured the constitutions 0f the employees. The long hours of pro- tracted labor debilitated the workers, particw larly the children. Child labor also served to make parents lazy, because they depended for subsistence upon their offspring. Another evil of the employment of Children was that they were debarred from educational, moral, and religious instructions. These were not the worst abuses of the factory system. The method for obtaining juvenile workers for the mills was perhaps the gravest and saddest one. Most of the early factories were water mills, situated in remote places, where running

Page 14 text:

10 stances of industry was that children who worked in the factories were not apprenticed, and were therefore not protected by the Fac- tory Act, since it applied only to apprentices. In 1815 Sir Robert Peel proposed an amended measure, which applied to both apprenticed and non-apprenticed children. In this n'iease ure he recommended that no child under the age of ten should be employed, and that the number of hours of labor should not exceed twelve and a half per day including time for education and meals. The proposal received a first reading, but nothing came of it. Not dis- couraged with the enormous Opposition'he en- countered, Peel proposed the appointment of a Committee of Enquiry, whose reports showed such exceedingly divergent opinions that it really accomplished nothing to advance factory legislation. The importance of the appoint- ment of this committee lies in the fact that it was the first parliamentary inquiry into the conditions of the factories. Although this inquiry was practically un- fruitful, nevertheless it afforded material to make further investigations. About this time Lord Stanley presented a petition from Elan- Chester asking Parliament to appoint a special commission of its own members to examine the conditions in the factories. On the following day Peel presented another propOsal in which he advocated that children working in the fac- tories should from nine to sixteen be under the protection of Parliament. After two readings the bill passed the House of Commons, but. the House of Lords agreed to postpone further consideration of the bill for that session. In the next session a new committee was ap- pointed, which resembled the one in 1816, but it proved that some action must be taken re- garding the cotton mills. Eventually in 1819 a new law was passed which required that no child under nine years of age could be em- ployed in cotton spinning, and that no persons under sixteen years of age could work more than twelve hours a day, one and one-half be- ing allowed for meals. One hour of extra work per day was allowed, if time had been THE NORMAL ADVANCE lost by the scarcity or excess of water. Here is an illustration of a defect in the law, in al- lowing overtime, which privilege was later so abused that employers strictly violated the law, extending the hours of overtime. The interior walls and the ceilings of the cotton factories were to be: lime-washed twice a year. This act was also to be placed where it might be con- spicuous, so that the public could read it. The outcome of the enactment of this law was that it retrograded factory legislation, because as it has already been stated the permission to re- cover lost time gave great facilities for evad- ing the law and then no provision was made for proper inspection. Still the law contained some important principles, and showed along .what lines legislation was to be carried on. After the passage of this law a few great and inliuential men as Sir J. C. Hobhouse, who introduced a bill reducing the hours of labor to eleven and a half per day, but was defeated; Lord Ashley, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, and lVI. T. Sadler. All of these men were deep- ly interested in the condition of the paupers, who toiled wearily for many hours day after day, and still did not seem to make any pro- gress in this world. It was inevitable that some change had to come to relieve these poor people. The first act which was actually put in operation to some extent was the act of 1831 which prohibited night work to all persons be- tween nine and twenty-one year; of age, mak- ing the hours of labor for persons under eigh- teen twelve hours per day and nine on Satur- days. On the other hand, in order to recover lost time night work was permitted to persons above sixteen. Here again the law proved in- eflicient, since the inspectors could not deter- mine whether the factories were trying to make up lost time or were simply attempting to increase their output of manufactured prod- ucts. Competition greatly stimulated them to this action. Therefore since the condition of the people was not so, greatly improved, the agitation continued until something better was done. Finally an unexpected impulse came which