it, and the first comprehensive scheme of legislation devised to modify some of its social results was on the point of being promulgated. The subject of this book is accordingly the process of those two developments: of the new form of industry, and the novel legislation in respect to it and the period comprised is from about the middle of the last century to some fifty years ago, and in a less degree to the present day.

THE MODERN FACTORY

SYSTEM.

The new form of industry was only new in certain of its parts. It resembled many earlier forms in several essential particulars, and differed from all of them in a few only. Factory systems of a kind had existed from an immensely remote past; generally indeed (though not universally) wherever production on a very large scale had been at any time carried on; and existed in England, as has been said, previous to the introduction of this one. Many of the great peoples of antiquity; the Egyptians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and their descendants the Carthaginians; for example; were well acquainted with this method, and employed it with memorable results. Others do not appear to have done so, and do not now.2 The Greeks and Romans availed themselves very largely of it, and introduced it in countries that they subdued. It was existent in an archaic form through the Dark Ages, both in Asia and Europe,3 and preceded and accompanied the renaissance in the

1 For a more extended analysis of the terms Factory, Factory System, Manufacture, etc., see (by the present author) “Introduction to a History of the Factory System;" chap. i. (Bentley, 1886).

2 India was the typical country in this case, but the factory system is now being rapidly introduced there under British auspices. Compare chap. viii; p. 418.

3

Principally in south-eastern Europe; but also in the west, where it was introduced by Charlemagne.

latter. It was in operation in Europe, Asia, and Africa1 alike during the Middle Ages; and in America—in Mexico and Peru2-when the imposing civilisations of those portions of the New World were first revealed to the astonished inhabitants of the old. It had strongly engaged the attention of thoughtful persons in this country before the close of the sixteenth century,3 and already some of its more characteristic evils, commonly supposed to belong to recent developments, were exciting comment and alarm, ere they came to be further aggravated, and forced into a still more painful prominence, by the startling novelties of the eighteenth. Competition amongst employers, and between employers and employed, was known and keenly felt here long before the factory system had assumed its now familiar guise; machinery had aroused the growing susceptibilities of workmen; even the "exploiting" 5 of the wage-earning operative had been carried to considerable lengths anterior to that time. These then were not new things; and in particular each one considered separately was not. What were actually new were unprecedented combinations of them under new conditions; the improved appliances with which the workers worked; and the more general use of forces other than manual for setting those improved appliances in motion. The employment of the motive power of steam was alto

1 In the Moorish states, where captives were often employed in the factories.

2 For details see Prescott's histories of these countries; Letourneau's "Sociology," pp. 409-13 (Chapman & Hall, 1811);. "Factory System," pp. 26-7; etc.

Froude's "History of England," Vol. I., pp. 58-9 (Longmans, 1870). Compare chapter ii.

4 For a particular instance see chap. ii., p. 55.

5 A favourite term of modern Socialism, meaning to make profit out of another's labour. Compare chapter ii; pp. 53-6.

gether new, and from it a long train of consequences
ensued which will come up for examination in due course.
The provision of automatic machinery in manufacture
was also new of machinery that is given action from
a prime motor, and thenceforth performing its work
almost unaided and its connection with the develop-
ment of the modern factory system was at first extremely
close. But further, the workers under that system were
individually free, which was not the case before; they
were bound neither by law nor custom to any particular
factory or kind of manufacture, but at liberty to transfer
their labour wheresoever, to whomsoever, and as often
as they would; in every one of which, as well as in some
other respects, the modern did differ from preceding
factory systems, and all other systems of organised pro-
ductive labour.

Before proceeding to trace the substitution of this
mode of industry for those others it will

THE REVOLUTION.

be desirable to take a survey of the position that labour itself occupied in England at the time of the change, and of some of its characteristics and surroundings there. The materials for such a one exist in fair abundance, but only a meagre use of them can be attempted here. We shall consider shortly the population of the country before and during the period of change; the manner in which that population was industrially employed and organised; the condition of agriculture, manufacture, and commerce at certain epochs of it; the labour position in some internal relations, and in regard especially to its animating motive

1

1 They are to be found, for instance, very admirably summarised in Mr. Lecky's recent "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," Vol. VI., chap. xiii.; particularly pp. 188-245 (Longmans, 1887).

!

spirit, and one or two other social and economical phenomena of preponderating importance. This survey will fully occupy the present chapter. Its object will be to provide a sort of background to those more pertinent details which it will be the part of succeeding chapters to supply.

TIME.

From the expiry of Lombe's patent then (in 1732) POPULATION AT THE to the present day the revolution of which we propose to speak has been in progress, and it has not yet come to an end. Previous to that date the older types of labour organisation were prevalent; at the present time they have been, or are commonly being, superseded. Within the same period an extraordinary change has occurred too in the number and distribution of the people of this country; the population has grown in an astonishing degree while it has shifted in a scarcely less remarkable one. Unfortunately, up to 1801 there are no exact figures to rely on in examining these facts. A census had been proposed as early as 1753, but the Bill for it, after passing the Commons, was thrown out in the House of Lords, and the collection of all such information relegated to individual enterprise.1 In this absence of trustworthy data all sorts of wild estimates were formed. 66 During the American War," says Mr. Toynbee, "a great controversy raged on this subject. Dr. Price, an advocate of the Sinking Fund, maintained that population had in the interval between

1 Even in the House of Commons the opposition was in some quarters very strong. Mr. Thornton, member for the City of York, declared that he "did not believe that there was any set of men, or, indeed, any individual of the human species, so presumptuous and so abandoned as to make the proposal we have just heard." "I hold this project," he continued, Alas for

"to be totally subversive of the last remains of English liberty! English liberty if it depended on such champions as this!

1690 and 1777 declined from 6,596,075 to 4,763,670. On the other hand, Mr. Howlett, vicar of Dunmow, in Essex, estimated the population in 1780 at 8,691,000; and Arthur Young, in 1770, at 8,500,000 on the lowest estimate." These, however, are the extremes in either direction. The computations most generally accepted now are those of Mr. Finlaison (Actuary to the National Debt Office) which were published in the preface to the Census Returns of 1831. "Now, according to Mr. Finlaison, the population of England and Wales was in 1700, 5,134,516, and in 1750, 6,039,684; an increase of not quite a million, or between 17 and 18 per cent. in the first half of the century. In 1801 the population of England and Wales was 9,187,176, showing an increase of three millions, or more than 52 per cent. in the second half." This is Mr. Toynbee's way of stating the result, 2 and it is borne out in every respect by Mr. G. R. Porter. "The increase of population in the first half of the last century "says that writer-" appears to have been 905,368, or 17 2-3rds per cent.; while in the second half it amounted to 3,147,492, or 52 1-10th per cent."; 3 that is, it was

1

Macaulay estimated the population in the closing decade of the seventeenth century at between 5,000,000 and 5,500,000 persons ("History of England," chap. iii.).

2" Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England," by Arnold Toynbee (Rivingtons, 1884), p. 33. Among the authorities cited by Mr. Toynbee for the above calculation are An Essay on the Population of England from the Revolution to the Present Time," by Richard Price, D.D., F.R.S. (1780); 'An Examination of Dr Price's Essay on the Population of England and Wales," by Rev. John Howlett (1781); McCulloch's "Literature of Political Economy," p. 258; Young's "Northern Tour" (2nd edition, 1771); and Porter's Progress of the Nation." Other authorities, and notably Mr. Rickman (Introductory Remarks to Census Returns of 1841), give rather different results. The precise figures are, of course, comparatively unimportant in this argument.

66

3" The Progress of the Nation," by G. R. Porter (Murray, 2nd edition, 1847), p. 13.