THE FIRST FACTORY ACT 629 
had been made with the cotton trade; after the principle of A-D. 1776 
state intervention had once been accepted, it became possible 
to apply it, step by step, not only to factories, but to work- 
shops as well. 
The main evil, as recognised at this time, lay, not in the a J 
excessive hours of work!, but in the conditions under which of over 
the children who had been apprenticed in cotton factories were work: 
housed and fed. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
were fully alive to the peril of idleness, as the source of 
rime of every kind; the squatters on commons and the 
weavers, who worked or not as they chose, were regarded as 
dangers to the prosperity of the country, but the ordinary 
zitizen failed to contemplate the possibility of any evil arising 
from overwork. Still the public did appreciate the unwhole- 
some conditions in which the children were housed and fed, 
and the fact that they were deprived of all opportunity of 
instruction. Most of them were parish apprentices, who were 
brought in batches from their parishes, and the parish 
authorities were very negligent® about seeing that the terms 
L Dr Percival may be regarded as exceptionally far-seeing. In the report 
which he and other medical men presented to the Lancaster county magistrates in 
1784 the following passage occurs. ‘‘ We earnestly recommend a longer recess 
irom labour at noon and a more early dismission from it in the evening, to all 
those who work in cotton mills; but we deem this indulgence essential to the 
present health and future capacity for labour, for those who are under the age of 
fourteen ; for the active recreations of childhood and youth are necessary to the 
growth, the vigour and the right conformation of the human body. And we 
sannot excuse ourselves on the present occasion from suggesting to you, who are 
the guardians of the public weal, this further very important consideration, that 
the rising generation should not be debarred from all opportunities of instruction 
at the only season of life in which they can be properly improved.” Apparently 
in consequence of this report the magistrates resolved that in future they would 
not allow ‘‘indentures of Parish Apprentices whereby they shall be bound to 
owners of cotton mills and other works in which children are obliged to work 
in the night, or more than ten hours in the day.” Hutchins and Harrison, 
History of Factory Legislation, 8. 
2 This point is well brought out by Miss Hutchins and Miss Harrison in their 
excellent work on Factory Legislation, 8. 
8 The system of farming the poor (see above, p. 575) doubtless contributed to 
the neglect on the part of parish authorities. The officials had, at all events, no 
interest in interfering on behalf of the children. * It is within the compass of 
srobability, that there have been, and are yet, instances, wherein the overseers of 
the poor and more especially the assistant overseers, who are mere mercenaries 
and serve for pay, have been, and are, some of them at least, bribed by the owners 
of mills for spinning silk, cotton or woollen yarn, to visit the habitation of the