A.D. 1776 
— 1850. 
The con- 
dition of 
parish ap- 
prentices 
in cotton 
factories 
attracted 
attention, 
LAISSEZ FAIRE 
328 
system’, However this may be, the manufacture was or- 
ganised on capitalistic lines from the time of the introduction 
of machinery, and the cotton factories which rose in the neigh- 
bourhood of Manchester and other large towns soon began to 
attract public attention. 
248. From a very early time the state of the factories, 
and the conditions under which the children employed in 
them lived and worked called forth severe criticism by public 
authorities. In 1784, before the great period of expansion 
had set in, the Lancashire magistrates had deputed Dr Percival 
and other medical men to institute enquiries on the subject®; 
bheir report shows how long the evil was allowed to continue 
before any serious attempt was made to check it, and how 
slowly the national conscience was aroused to the necessity of 
taking active and effective measures. Work in the factories 
did not in all probability make greater calls upon the powers 
of the children than work in other occupations’; but the 
cotton factories brought the evil into light in connection 
with a growing industry, in which it was practicable to deal 
with it. The subsequent attempt to enforce regulations in 
old-established trades roused less opposition, since a beginning 
1 Gaskell (Artisans and Machinery, 31) speaks of yeomen who obtained jennies 
and tried to compete with the mules. The opportunity of industrial occupation 
would delay the extinction of the class (see above, p. 558) of small farmers in this 
district. Kennedy's description implies that the cotton weavers owned the 
implements and turned their own cottages into smell factories, before water- 
power was used. Rise and progress of Cotton Trade, in Memoirs of the Literary 
and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 9nd Series, m. 120, 9. 
3 Hutchins and Harrison, Factory Legislation, 7. 
8 Mr Cooke Taylor has recorded the impressions of some of the elderly men 
with whom he spoke in 1842. One of them appealing to his own youth—abont 1770— 
maintained that these had been * really the days of infant slavery. ¢The creatures 
were set to work,” he said, ‘as soon as they could crawl,’ and their parents were 
the hardest of task masters. I may remark that on a previous occasion I had 
received a similar account from an old man in the vale of Todmorden, who 
Jeclared that he would not accept an offer to live his whole life over again, if it 
were to be accompanied with the condition of passing through the same servitude 
and misery which he had endured in infancy. Both these old men expressed 
great indignation at the clamour which had been raised for infant protection; my 
Todmorden friend quite lost his temper when any reference was made to the 
subject, contrasting in very strong terms the severities he had endured, and the 
heavy labours he had to perform, both in his father’s house and afterwards as 
an apprentice, with the light toil and positive comfort of the factory children.” 
Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire, 141. 
4 The Act of 1802 applied to other factories besides cotton mills, but there 
seems to have been very little spinning of wool by children in mills at that date.