Cotton Mills and Factories Act 1819
The Cotton Mills and Factories Act 1819 (59 Geo. III c66) was the first United Kingdom Act of Parliament to attempt to regulate the hours and conditions of work of children in the cotton industry. It was introduced by Sir Robert Peel, who had first introduced a bill on the matter in 1815. The 1815 bill had been instigated by Robert Owen, but the Act as passed was much weaker than the 1815 bill; the Act forbade the employment of children under 9; children aged 9–16 years were limited to 12 hours' work per  day and could not work at night. There was no effective means of its enforcement, but it established the precedent for Parliamentary intervention on conditions of employment which was followed by subsequent Factory Acts. Background. The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 (42 Geo III c.73) had been introduced by Sir Robert Peel to improve conditions for apprentices working in cotton mills. Peel was one of the richest millowners in England, and had become concerned at the poor health of child apprentices working in his mills (which he blamed on 'gross mismanagement' by his subordinates) and in cotton mills  in general. Early mills had been water-powered, and hence sited where there was a useful fall of water, rather than where there was an available workforce. Child apprentices had been widely used as a cheap and captive workforce. The Act required that cotton mills and factories be properly ventilated and basic requirements on cleanliness be met. Apprentices in these premises were to be given a basic education and to attend a religious service at least once a month. They were to be provided with clothing and their working hours were limited to no more than twelve hours a day  (excluding meal breaks); they were not to work at night. The Act was not effectively enforced, and did not address the working conditions of 'free children' (children working in mills who were not apprentices). Improvements in the generation of rotary motion by steam engines made steam-powered cotton mills a practical proposition; they were already operating in Manchester in 1795, using free children drawn from the local population. The great advantage parish apprentices had had was that they were tied to the mill, no matter how remote the mill had to be to avail itself of water power. If the  mill no longer had to be remote, it became a problem that the mill was tied to the apprentices. Apprentices had to be housed clothed and fed whether or not the mill could sell what they produced; they were in competition with free children whose wages would fall if the mill went on short time ( and might not reflect the full cost of housing clothing and feeding them, since that was incurred whether they were working or not) and who could be discharged if sick, injured or otherwise incapable of work. Consequently, the use of free children came to predominate : the Act became largely a dead letter within its limited scope, and inapplicable to most factory children. In 1819, a Lords Committee heard evidence from a Bolton magistrate who had investigated 29 local cotton mills; 20 had no apprentices but employed a total of 550 children under 14; the other nine mills employed a total of 98 apprentices, and a total of 350 children under 14. Apprentices were mostly found in the larger mills, which had somewhat better conditions; some even worked a 12-hour day or less (the Grant brothers' mill at Tottington worked an 11.5-hour day: "This  establishment has perfect ventilation; all the apprentices, and in fact all the children, are healthy, happy, clean, and well clothed ; proper and daily attention is paid to their instruction ; and they regularly attend divine worship on Sundays."): in other mills children worked up to 15 hours a day in bad conditions (e.g. Gortons and Roberts' Elton mill: "Most filthy; no ventilation; the apprentices and other children ragged, puny, not half clothed, and seemingly not half fed; no instruction of any sort; no human beings can be more wretched"). In 1815, Robert Owen, owner of a prosperous mill at New Lanark  approached Peel with a draft Bill to regulate the use of children in the textile industry. Peel agreed to steer the Bill through Parliament. Owen's draft was given a First Reading late in the 1815 session (so that copies could be printed and sent out for consultation before the 1816 session; other bills were given similar 'advance notice' First Readings at the end of the 1815 session). In the 1816 session Peel chaired a Commons Committee collecting evidence intended to show the necessity for legislation. Peel did not bring forward a Bill in the 1817 session (because - he explained  later - he was ill; he certainly withdrew from business in January 1817). In 1818 he did: the Bill got as far as the House of Lords, but lapsed when a General Election was called. In 1819, he again presented a Bill; the Lords felt it necessary to set up a Committee of their own to hear evidence on the issue; nonetheless in 1819 an Act was finally passed to regulate the working conditions of children working in cotton mills and factories. Provisions. The Act passed in 1819 was only a pale shadow of Owen's draft of 1815. The Act  therefore did little more than establish the principle of government intervention and set forth a relatively unambitious and virtually unenforceable standard. An amending Act ("60 Geo. III., c. 5") was passed in December 1819. It was introduced by Sir Robert Peel, who explained that "the object of the amendment was, when any accident by fire or otherwise took place in a factory, to allow the people thrown out of employment by such accident, to work by night, in such part of the works as were not destroyed, till the accident was made good. If this was not allowed, the worst  consequences must arise, from letting loose on society a number of people without employment." (Contemporary newspaper reports indicate that this followed a fire at one of the mills at New Lanark, and that Peel indicated that unless the Act was passed by the start of January, many of the workers there would become unemployed.) Objections. Robert Owen blamed the failure to get an Act closely matching his bill passed on Peel's failure to move swiftly before opposition had a chance to get organised. However, the 1815 bill was extremely ambitious and the dates at which subsequent factory legislation matched  its provisions (paid inspectors 1833 Act; ten-hour day 1847 Act, minimum age ten 1874 Act) do not suggest that if passed it would have been regarded as a definitive settlement. Objections to the much weaker 1819 bill were still strong and varied; a contemporary pro-bill pamphlet listed (and to its own satisfaction rebutted) eight different arguments against the bill, most of which were to continue to be urged against subsequent factory legislation for many years: References. Footnotes Bibliography