THE FACTORY QUESTION.
IN commenting last week upon the Report of the Factory Com- missioners, we intimated that it had been hastily got up, and was an imperfect performance, not quite answerable to the repu- tation of its authors, the members of the London Central Board. At that time we had only seen the Report as published in the Newspapers ; and on a question of such moment, we thought it unfair to du-ell as much as some of our contemporaries had thought fit to do upon mere faults of style, and the bad ar- rangement of a great mass of evidence. We took it for granted that the Report embodied the opinions of the twelve gentlemen who were commissioned to inquire into the state of the manu- factories on the spot, and therefore considered it a valuable do- cument, which might be depended upon. We have since, how- ever—and with no small difficulty, for even many members of the House have not been supplied with their copies—procured the bulky volume itself. We do not pretend to have read the whole of the fifteen or sixteen hundred pages wh:c'e it contains; but we have perused enough of the Evidence, and more espe- cially of the Reports of the ambulatory Commissioners, to arrive at the conclusion, that the Report of the Central Board is by no means justified by the statements of the persons who were most competent to give them correct data on which to ground it, and who were expressly employed for that purpose. The Report, in fact, con- tains the speculative suggestions of Messrs. TOOKE, CHADWICK, and SOUTHWOOD SMITH, not the result of the experience of the master manufacturers and their workmen, or of the inquiries of Messrs. - STUART, DRINKWATER, and the other Commissioners. This is demonstrable from the Evidence and the Reports as published by the Central Board itself. But is this Evidence "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," such as it was transmitted to the London Board? We suspect not : at any rate there are strange stories in circulation, of the mutilation, per- version, and suppression of very important parts of what, upon the face of it, pretends to be an entire document. The evidence of the Medical Commissioners is entirely suppressed; but why ? because it confirmed, or because it militated against, the predetermined plan of the London gentle= u?
These are serious accusations against the persons who have had the management of this inquiry. They amount to a charge of misleading the public, and the members of the House of Com- mons, who are called on to legislate as if the Report in their hands were founded upon the statements of the Commissioners; when in point of fact, it has been prepared with too little regard to those statements, and, in some extremely important particulars, in direct contravention of them.
Considerable mismanagement seems to have prevailed from the very outset of this business. The address of the House of Corn-' mons for a Commission to report upon the state of Factories was voted on the 5th of April; but such delay took place in the ap- pointment and instructing of Commissioners, that they did not leave London, to proceed to the discharge of the duty committed to them, till the end-of April. Then, it seems, the Central Board, in a prodigious hurry, called upon them to report the result of their inquiries, so that they might be in Londoe as speedily after the 10th of June as the mail could carry them. This we learn' from Mr. STUART'S letter, dated Greenock, 10th June; in which it is stated, that his Report, in obedience to the commands of Lord MELBOURNE, must be despatched that very night, although he had only received those commands the same morning. Alter- nately to delay and hurry matters in this manner, Was unjustifi- able conduct towards all the parties concerned.
Upon the return of the Commissioners to London, it would have
been reasonable to suppose that they would meet together to com- • pare notes, and to ascertain the result of each other's experience. A material modification of opinion might have been. the result of such a consultation. But we cannot find that any thing of the sort took place : there is no evidence of it in the Report at all events. We have already alluded to the two important lets, of the sup. pression of the Medical Evidences and the discordancy of the Re- ports of the twelve travelling. Commissioners with the general Report published by the Board. We have also mentioned the rumours which are current respecting the mutilation of the Re- ports of the Country Commissioners. But there is another most material and suspicious deficiency in the published Evidence. We find nowhere the answers to the Queries circulated among the Manufacturers by the Central Board. Those answers would have shown whether the measure of working by-relays was or was not practicable ; for one of the questions put to each manufacturer was this—" What is the objection, if any, where extra hours are required, to have relays or fresh sets of children, or persons under , twenty-one years of age, by whom those sets which have worked within the ordinary hours may be relieved ?" The answers to this query have been withheld ; and it might almost be surmised, in the absence of proof, that they could only have been withheld be- cause they showed the impracticability of the plan of the Central Board. But it so happens that we have the means of esta- blishing the soundness of this presumption, as far at least as the evidence of one most material witness goes. Mr. Attentaaen BUCHANAN, a manager and partner in the Catrine Cotton-works, in the county of Ayr,—one of those admirably conducted establishments in which Mr. KIRKMAN FINLAY is a principal partner,—appears to have published his answers to the queries of the Board, and a printed copy of them, transmitted from Scotland, is now lying before us. Now, Mr. BUCHANAN is well known as the most experienced cotton-spinner in Scot- land, and his evidence cannot be too highly prized : and what is it? He says that " A double set of hands could not be col- lected, and sufficiently trained, for a series of years ; that sup- posing a relay of hands under twenty-one years of age could be got, the adults could not be supposed to work above fourteen hours in the day, allowing the least possible time for meals and refreshments, which would only give seven hours to those under twenty-one; and the produce in that time could not afford more than half the present wages to the younger hands, which would be found totally inadequate to afford the means of support and comforts which that class now enjoys; and that, since all his work- people are paid by the piece, he does not see the possibility of dis- tinguishing the produce belonging to each so as to pay for their individual exertions." Here we have the evidence of Mr. BUCHANAN against the dicta of three London gentlemen, who, for any thing that appears to the contrary, never were inside a cotton-mill in their lives. The result is, we should think, that the relay system won't work, and that to try it would be a very hazardous experiment. In the evidence taken before the Central Board in London, we find that Mr. STRUTT, Mr. GROUT, and Mr. WCONNEL, who own large establishments in Derbyshire, Norfolk, and Lancashire, speak decidedly against the relay system ; and that Mr. MARSHALL of Leeds very much disapproves of the plan of extending it to Children more than eleven years of age.. This, be it observed, is the evidence selected for publication by the Commissioners. We have seen a specimen, in that of Mr. BUCHANAN, of what they have-deemed it prudent to suppress. It appears that by far the chief part of the work performed by band is done by female children ; for the boys usually go to trades at thirteen or fourteen. Now if the relay system is introduced, it is clear that girls who have just turned thirteen, or whose parents will swear that such is the case, will be employed full hours. We should like to see the Medical Evidence as to their capability of working fourteen or sixteen hours a day at that critical age. But, as we before mentioned, the Medical Evidence is suppressed.
We observe in Mr. STUART'S Report, dated 10th June, that he recommends a prohibition of the employment of children in wet flax-spinning and in web-dressing rooms. These two particular branches of employment are evidently unhealthy, and must shorten life. Let adults, if they like, work at them for advanced wages, but children ought to be protected against them. In the Report of the.Central Board, no notice whatever is taken of this highly im- portant suggestion ; and why not? Simply because the evidence of the travelling Commissioners was to go for nothing ; the Re- port was determined upon without reference to it, and long before it was transmitted to London.
Another point in the management of this business wants explana- tion. The copious exti acts from the Report were published in the Globe several days before it got into the hands of the Members of Parliament. Then came the motion cf Lord ALTHORP, on the 5th of July, to legislate on this Report, without time being allowed to compare it with the Evidence, on which, we find, it does not rest. We are now arrived at the 10th, and still the printed copies are withheld from the Members. Why—why are they withheld ?* The sweeping assertions made by the Central Board, that the con- sequences of a factory life to children are the permanent "deteriora- tion of the physical constitution," and the "production of disease often irremediable," are not borne out by the reports of the travel- ling Commissioners. The evidence of Mr. DRINKWATER, Mr. WooL- RICHE, Mr. STUART, and Mr. POWER, conveys a different impres- sion. The result we gather from their evidence is, that employ- ment in badly-managed manufactories is deleterious, but that in vie117conducted establishments the reverse is the fact; and that they may. without dilficuity be well-conducted. It is clear,
• We presireetbat the Meniharelave since received their copies, as we received our Owwwith the.Parlionsentary Papers•orThursday:
therefore, that measures very gentle in extent and operation should be first tried. Let us first see the effect of them, and then proceed by short steps in legislating on this most delicate question. The present law is, that persons under eighteen years of age should not work more than twelve hours. Lord ASHLEY proposes ten hours. Now mark the effect of this. More than million of persons are employed in our manufacturing establish- ments, and the annual value of manufactured goods is above forty millions. Multitudes of families depend for their absolute sub- sistence upon the labour of children, generally female children.. Now by adopting even the Ten Hours Bill, you deprive these, childt en of one sixth of their weekly earnings. But the probable effect of either of the plans proposed would be almost immediately to throw vast numbers of adults out of employ, as well as children.. We learn, that immense orders for machinery are now in the course of execution, for the purpose of superseding hand labour as much as possible. This seems to denote that an effort is about to be made to crush the minor manufacturers, by the giants in the trade; who will make their own profits for a few years and then retire, leaving us an exasperated pauper population on hand, the victims of their own indiscretion and our more culpable ignorance and rashness.
We are far from entertaining any party feelings on this mo- mentous question. But a perusal of such parts of the voluminous evidence as we have had time to examine, more and more cons firms us in the opinion which we expressed last week, that " our one-sided legislators and cheap-humanity-men are on the point of committing a notable folly in their headlong zeal."
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