The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-03 00:00:00

THE FACTORIES BILL.

To the Right Honourable and Honourable the Mem-
b=.3rs of the House of Commons, the following
statement of facts is respectfully submitted by a
deputation of manufacturers and mill-owners, re-
presenting more than two hundred firms exten-
sively engaged in the cotton, woollen, and similar
trades.

They beg leave to say that the branches of manu-
facture which must be affected by any changes in the
factory law supply, thirty-five out of the forty-four
millions of the exports of the United Kingdom, and,
both indirectly and immediately, give employment to
a large proportion of the British population. It is
obviously of the highest importance that the mea-
sures designed to establish an interference with so
large an amount of national production, and with the
condition of so vast a number of individual pro-
ducers, should be based on sound and accurate in-
formation ; but they regret to find much misappre-
hension prevailing in various quarters, and dangerous
misstatements given to the world under the sanction
of influential names. Sincerely anxious to promote
and preserve the comforts of the operative, and to ad-
vance their condition in the social scale, they beg
leave to state, that benevolence, when misdirected by
erroneous representations, is almost certain to injure
the objects of its favour, and they, therefore, earnestly
request you to examine the evidence for the alleged
facts, by which an interference with the hours of
labour is attempted to be justified.
The erroneous statements of which they complain,
and a refutation of which they propose to lay before
you, are chiefly contained in the Morning Post of
March 16, and form what purports to be the substance
of a speech delivered by Lord Ashley, on moving that
the duration of fac tory-labour for females and non-
adults should be limited to ten hours. Before enter-
ing upon the separate examination of these statements
the members of the deputation have to complain that
the data of many of the calculations and statistical in-
ferences brought forward in the speech attributed to
the Noble Lord are nowhere given, and they respect-
fully submit that it is unreasonable to dethand assent
to conclusions when the premises are ri ithheld. How-
ever correct calculations may be, their results must
be worthless if the measurements on which they are
founded be erroneous ' • and however true a statistical
return may be, it can furnish no ground for inference
if it be made up from partial survey and selected
cases.
Lord Ashley is represented by the Morning Post
as stating that, besidieenss:t outihlieeirnsplitanhbneoirnmigoiushllavocwehictucophattrsiaopvnuesnl,
Ntt
oee persons
wthine
gel
endagisastgt
distances
e distance
possible to be travelled was
seventeen miles, the greatest twenty-seven miles;
No. 15, the least nineteen miles, the greatest twenty-
nine miles ; No. 3D, the least twenty-four miles, the
greatest thirty-seven miles ; No. 38, the least fifteen
miles, the greatest twenty-three miles ; and No. 40,
the least distance was seventeen miles, and the greatest
twenty-one miles." This calculation is given on
anonymous authority, but is said to have been made
"by an eminent mathematician?' We are not told
whether this mathematician based his calculation on
actual survey or mere guess, or on the statements of
some other unnamed party ; and yet, on such feeble
evidence, we find an attempt made to impeach the
veracity or accuracy of Mr. R. H. Greg, whose
knowledge of the processes of the cotton-manufacture
is not surpassed in this or any other country, and
whose character for honour and integrity is as high
and unimpeachable as that of the Noble Lord to
whom this speech is attributed. But, in truth, the
decision of the question of distances requires no
further knowledge of matheniatics than is comprised
in the use of a measuring tape, and a tolerable
acquaN, it i
infhnces
obviousthewith
thatfou thrfie ty of
rsituraunletisofariyn tahrmetic.
Novspun
by the mules in a given time will be the exact mea-
sure of the distance to be traversed by the spinner,
who goes backwards and forwards nearly in a straight
line. Taking the No. 30 yarn as that which: is given
by the author of the speech as the kind imposing the
necessity of traversing the greatest distance,-we have
to state, as the result of our experience that the
average produce of such yarn, by a pair of mules, is
from 20 to 24 hanks, of 840 yards each, per spir:dle
per week ; we have, however, heard of one instance in
which the produce amounted to 28 hanks. Taking
the extreme of 28 hanks, this will give a length of
26 miles and two-thirds per week, or about. 4i miles
per day ; and doubling this for the two frames, we
.find that the extreme distance travelled by, the spinner
is just nine miles per day.
The distance to be traversed by the piecer cannot