The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-02 00:00:00

THE FACTORIES BILL.

The factory question is now in the hands of the land-
owners. So it has ever been in fact; but just now their
intimate relation to it happens to be more evident than
ever. Its opponents cannot be called a party, either
Whig, or Liberal, or manufacturing; for it has its sup-
porters from all classes. " The' Opposition" is divided
upon it. The agriculturists, then, can; if they please,
pass Lord Ashley's amendment—not quite scot-free,
perhaps, for they are threatened with the perils and ex-
penses of a dissolution, or even a ehaage of Ministry.
Still, if they choose to run these risks, they can pass a
Ten Hours Bill without the smallest difficulty in the
world. They have only to say aye, and the thing is done.
Now this is a very important fact, and deserves to
be remembered hereafter, whatever the present result
may happen to be. ',Ong hours are generally considered
the sin of the master manufacturers. These unnatural
monsters, it seems to be commonly supposed, in order
that they may accumulate enormous fortunes, get thirty
per cent. interest on their capital,—as the Agricultural
Protection Society informs' us,—buy up the estates of
the impoverished landowners, ruin all the other manu-
facturers in the world, and perpetrate other like atroci-
ties, forcibly and illegally impress and detain from their
natural guardians myriads of helpless women and chil-
dren, regularly drain their life's blood out of them, com-
pelling them to work till they drop. By alternate
seduction and violence they get the miserable creatures
into their clutches, and only resign them as a spider—
the
original of all cotton-spinners—resig,ns his prey, viz.,
when he has sucked it thoroughly dead and dry. The
agriculturist, on the other hand, is represented as a dis-
tracted mother deprived of her children' roaming over
.the face of the earth, and finding them at last in the den
of the millowner, from whom she in vain demands her
own. The philanthropist, like another Theseus, is to
attack the Iliinotaur in his labyrinth, and by the extinc-
tion of the monster is to put an end to the cruel tribute
which lie has hitherto been suffered to exact. Such is
the ordinary picture. But, like many a scene of ro-
mance, the course of human affairs has now made it a
practical question. It comes home to the landowners.
Here is the monster; here are his victims. It is in the
power of the landowners to set the victims at liberty, at
least to alle7late their misery. What they have wished
and talked about so many 3 ears they now can do. Do
it. Why hold back? What's the the matter now? " If
we do," they reply, " we shall turn out a Minister
or two, get into a Bess perhapeith our own labourers,

and, horrendum dictu, have cheap corn." 0 rare philan-
thropists! 0 easy compassion! 0 flummery of talk! It is
an atrocious cruelty in the millowners to overwork women
and young people, because otherwise they cannot sell
their calicoes ; what is it then in you to acquiesce
willingly in this cruelty, because otherwise you cannot
keep your friends in power, or get a good price
for your corn ? Whatever you have said of
the manufacturers, posterity will surely say of you.
Wise men have always been chary of benevolent
talk, from a sort of presentiment that they might
some day find a sort of necessity to eat their own
words. The wisest man could not have foreseen such an
emergency as this. There is no doubt that the agricul-
turists can pass the measure, but then it may possibly
touch their pockets. Yet how little mercy had they on
the pockets, and even the bare solvency and subsistence,
of the manufacturer! So long as somebody else was to
pay, their generous indignation knew no bounds. The
merest shadow of a possibility of the price coming out
of the landowner's purse, puts to flight the whole army
of philanthropists.
We will confess that we never have thought the land-
owner and the millowner to be different orders of hu-
manity. They are both of them capitalists ; and, as
capitalists, are generally found to possess a decided
leaning towards the fnterests of capital. They like other
things, but perhaps nothing so decidedly and constantly
as a good per centage. Amongst the things which they
do not like, unprofitable burdens, useless and superfluous
mouths, human waste and refuse, all that itepedisnent
and friction that clogs and cripples speculation, are the
most odious. The treatment of the agricultural la-
bourer at the hands of the landowner is a sufficient indi-
cation of what every other industrial class must expect
from him. They who acquiesced so easily in the New
Poor-law will never pass an effectual Factory Bill, if
they can help it. Both of them are ultimately questions
of rent. The old Poor-law charged the land, or, what
comes to the same thing, the process of production, with
certain expensive social duties. A good Factory Bill
might 'possibly involve greater freedom of trade. That
is all the landowner wishes to know about the matter.
Everybody can point to the localities, and the councils,
where the fate of the factory question has been decided,
for decided we believe it is, for this turn at least.
The cause does not fare much better with the manu-
facturer. Just now, perhaps, rather better; but there is
still the old story. "Do not limit labour, but remove
our burdens." For thirty years or more, two questions
have always presented themselves to a Lancashire mind
as a sort of disjunctive duality, viz., the factory cause,
and the duty on raw cotton. Innumerable meetings
have been held to consider petitions on these two sub-
jects ; and have universally ended in rejecting the peti-
tion for restricting factory labour, and unanimously re-
solving on that against that obnoxious import duty.
Last Tuesday a meeting was held at Manchester osten-
sibly for the latter purpose only ; and most pathetic was
the tone in which this grievance, real enough we think
it, was suesessively deplored by the speakers. But we
must confess to a slight abatement of our pity, from the
fact that almost every speaker, in the midst of some
most piteous whine about the duty he annually paid on
his raw cotton, interjected some angry flings about the
factory question. Has it ever occurred to any of these
lugubrious gentlemen, that if they had done their part,
the State might have done its part ? It is but natural
that a Government which knows more of definite
treaties than of uncertain speculations should refuse to
sacrifice revenue without securing that the benefit shall
light on the heads of those who most need it. The
Manchester meeting presents rather too close a resem-
blance to that committee of ironmasters the other day
which agreed to raise the price of iron 20s. a ton, and
before they separated signed a petition against a Ten
Hours' Bill.

Yet there is some hope from this quarter. Some of
the arguments used in the House on Friday, including
those of Mr. Cobden, are encouraging. He considers
shortening the hours of labour not only desirable but
possible—compatible with social prosperity, and that in
England. We have sometimes heard what seemed a
contrary doctrine. " More work, more produce, more
wage:, mare comforts," &c. Not so, Mr. Cobden.
Holding. that the desired result will be obtained by com-
mercial freedom, but retarded by legislative restrictions
on labour, he yet considers that shortened hours are
a result to be desired

" Instead of the supporters of free trade advocating
the system of long hours, they maintained that the
surest way, and the only sound and practical mode,
of shortening the hours of labour was by abolish-
ing restrictions upon trade. He would in two words
tell the House why he thought carrying into effect
the principles of free trade would diminish the hours
of labour. He did not say, with the Noble Lord the
Member for the City of London, that by reducing the
price of bread, it would compensate the labourer for
the reduction of the hours of labour. lio repeated
what he (Mr. Cobden) had often stated to the House,
that he did not think reduction in the price of wheat,
coffee, or sugar, would afford a sufficient compensa-
tion to the operatives fur a reduction of the
hours of labour. But if they enlarged their markets,
and allowed a free exchange to take place with the
commodities of other countries, the effect would be,
that the value of labour would increase in this country,
and the capitalist would also derive great advan-
tages from the interchange. Under such a system
the labourer would derive as much benefit from
working ten hours as he did now by working twelve.
It was only last night that he had a conversation with ,a
large capitalist. That capitalist instructed him
(Mr. Cobden) to go into the House of Com-
mons and make a bargain for him. The capi-
talist said, if the House would consent to remove all
the restrictions upon trade, ho would at once pro-
mise to give his workmen the same wages for 10 hours'
as he now gave them for 12 hours' work. Dr. Deacon
Hume said that the only effectual way of giving the ope-
ratives a Ten Hours' Bill was by removing the restric-
tions upon the commerce and trade of this country."
This may be all true. We hope there is this road to
a Ten Hours' Bill. But it cevainly does considerably
damp one's sympathy for the free traders to see the
order in which they always place these two questions.
Trade first, the factory women and young persons next,
is not the order of humanity—perhaps not the order of
success.— Times.

STATE OF TRADE.
(From the Manchester Guardian of yesterday.)
There has been, upon the whole, a fair and steady
business in the yarn market this week, especially for
mule yarn, which is in rather better demand than for
two or three weeks past. For goods, too, the market is
rather firmer, especially for light fabrics above thirty
inches wide, which are in general demand at full prices.
Printing cloths and domestics, however, continue dull ;
and the prices are still rather tending downwards.
ROCHDALE FLANNEL MARKET, MONDAY, APRIL 29.
—There have been rather more inquiries after prices
to-day, and some merchants have purchased more freely,
but, upon the whole, there has not been much more
business transacted than on the preceding Moaday. A
spirit of speculation has been excited among the buyers,
as many are inclined to think that ere long there will be
will o
afu further b
r advance
inthe market. In
in n etw sotl prices
n d
iienegs- theremna
in firm,ewcli
and the demand steady.