CONDITIONS OF CHILDREN'S WORK 77
disappointed Robert Owen's hopes. It did not insist on a A-D.1776
ten hours limit, and its provisions remained inoperative;
there was not sufficient inducement offered to stimulate the
efforts of the common informer to enforce its provisions’, and
comparatively little improvement resulted from the measure.
No considerable share of public attention was directed to a og
the subject till 1830, when Mr Richard Oastler began a against the
crusade on the subject in Yorkshire®, and Michael Sadler took working of
the matter up and obtained a Committee of the House of “de
Commons; he arranged to bring a number of witnesses
from the factory districts in order to establish his point that
legislative interference was necessary. The session had closed,
however, before the evidence which the employers?® desired to
put in could be heard; and the sense of this onesidedness
rankled in their minds, while the assertions were ih many re-
spects untrustworthy< Still, the allegations were so frightful
shat many people believed that immediate action was necessary
at any cost; and the proposal, in the following year, to have a
Commission was treated as a mere excuse for delay’, Public
feeling was greatly excited, and a Bill was introduced by
Mr Sadler, and in the following session by Lord Ashley®, but
it was obviously impossible to attempt a remedy until the
charges were thoroughly sifted, and an opinion could be
formed as to the extent and character of the evils. A Com- and a Com.
mission of enquiry was appointed, which was excellently ear
organised, and obtained an extraordinary amount of accurate pointed to
information in a short space of time.
The Commission of 1833 specially addressed their en-
juiries to the alleged degradation of the population as a
age and fixed a limit of 12 hours, but even this might be exceeded to make up for
stoppages due to want of water-power.
+ A reward was offered for the common informer; but as no one but the
workmen employed in the mill were in a position to give information, and they
would have lost their employment if they had come forward to initiate pro-
ceedings, the whole was inoperative. Hutchins and Harrison, op. cit. 36.
2 Alfred (Samuel Kydd], History of the Factory Movement, 1. 96. His interest
in the position of the slaves abroad led him to consider the condition of operatives
at home. The movement for factory reform was thus directly associated with the
Anti-Slavery agitation. & 3 Hansard, xv. p. 391.
t See the opinion of Mr Drinkwater and Mr Power, Reports, 1833, xx. 491, 602.
$ 3 Hansard, xvI. 640.
3 Mr Sadler failed to obtain re-election in the first reformed Parliament.
