CONDITIONS OF CHILDREN'S WORK 775 
being frightened away to new investments’. The phil- A-D. 2776 
anthropists were inclined to assume that English textile manu- 
facturers had such a commanding position that, even if the 
hours were reduced and the cost of production increased, we 
could still hold our own. Many of the operatives hoped that, 
when the product was limited, prices would rise and their 
own wages would improve’. But this optimist view had 
little to support it. The cotton manufacture was springing 
1p, both in the United States and in France; the annual 
output of these two countries alone was two-thirds of that of 
Britain? and there was a real danger of driving away trade, 
and therefore employment, altogether. As Lord Althorp said, 
when criticising the original form of the Factory measure in 
1833, “Should its effect be (and he feared it was but too 
reasonable to apprehend it might be) to increase the power 
of foreigners to compete in the British market, and so to 
cause the decline of the manufacturing interest of the country 
¢ * * 50 far from a measure of humanity it would be and add to 
one of the greatest acts of cruelty that could be inflicted” he 
Under these circumstances it is impossible to regard the artisans 
opponents of the Factory Acts as necessarily callous to 
human suffering. 
At the same time the economic experts concentrated their but they 
attention so much on the production of increased quantities ian bo 
of material goods, as the only means by which amelioration nce 
could be effected, that they seemed to attach very little pen wonere 
importance to measures for the direct protection of human competizion 
life, even in cases when there was no reason to fear foreign possible. 
competition. The chimney-sweep boys were a class who 
were subjected to brutal ill-treatment; an attempt had been 
made to regulate the trade in 1788% but this measure was 
very ineffective, to judge by the shocking revelations which 
were made before the Parliamentary Committee of 1816° 
The laissez faire economists were not easily impressed how- 
ever. and their quarterly organ, after reciting some of the 
{ Reports, etc., 1833, xx. 54, 371. 2 Tb. xx. 40. 
} 3 Hansard, xxx. 911. 4 Tb. 221. 5 98 Geo. III. c. 48. 
> Report from the Committee on Employment of Boys in Sweeping of Chimnies. 
Reports, 1817, vi 171.