32 years,) the amount of talent employed in framing it, and the enormous sums of money expended in fostering it in its embryo state, till it became a thing of life. It may be useful and profitable to some, if we take a hasty retrospective glance at this bill in its various stages, from its first framing up to the present time.
In the year 1802, the late Sir Robert Peel, member of the House of Commons, and cotton manufacturer, procured an act (42 Geo. 3, c. 73) to regulate the labor of apprentice children worked in factories. At this time, the children in factories were mostly apprentices, obtained from parishes in London and other large towns.
The Apprentice Act, naturally, but gradually wore out the custom of taking apprentices, for as the masters would work the long hours, they now had recourse to the children of parents on the spot. This movement was hastened by the application of Watt's steam engine, which enabled the manufacturer to erect his factories in large towns, instead of, as formerly, on the banks of streams.
The evils sought to be remedied by the above act still continuing, Sir Robert again came before Parliament on the 13th of June, 1815, and proposed a ten hour bill, for regulating the hours of labor in cotton factories; and a committee of the House of Commons agreed to ten and a half. This was the first movement on record that I am acquainted with, for a ten hour bill.
In the following year, 1816, the same, or a similar bill was referred to a select committee of the House of Commons. The evidence taken before this committee established many important facts concerning the hardships and cruelties endured by the children employed in factories, both apprentices and those who were not apprentices.
The evidence of John Moss, overseer of Backbarrow
