13 Facts About Factory Acts

Factory Acts were a series of acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate the conditions of industrial employment.

The Factory Acts sought to ameliorate the conditions under which mill-children worked with requirements on ventilation, sanitation, and guarding of machinery.

At best, it only partially paved the way; its restriction to apprentices meant that it was left to later Factory Acts to establish the principle of intervention by Parliament on humanitarian grounds on worker welfare issues against the "laissez-faire" political and economic orthodoxy of the age which held that to be ill-advised.

Factory Acts doubted whether shortening the hours of work would be injurious even to the interests of the manufacturers; as the children would be able, while they were employed, to pursue their occupation with greater vigour and activity.

Dissatisfied with the outcome of Hobhouse's efforts, in 1832 Michael Thomas Sadler introduced a Bill extending the protection existing Factory Acts gave to children working in the cotton industry to those in other textile industries, and reducing to ten per day the working hours of children in the industries legislated for.

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In 1835, the first report of the Factory Acts Inspectors noted that the education clauses were totally impracticable, and relay working was difficult if not impracticable, there not being enough children.

Factory Acts complained of the evasive conduct of ministers and government apathy and complacency on factory reform.

The Factory Bill provided that children were now not to work more than seven hours a day; if working before noon they couldn't work after one p m The education clauses of the 1839 Bill were retained.

Factory Acts were passed making similar provisions for other textile trades: bleaching and dyeworks, lace work, calendering, finishing .

Factory Acts are enforced by an elaborate machinery of inspection.

The chief provisions of the last Factory Acts Act are hung up, legibly printed on white cardboard, "plain for all men to see", in every room of every factory.

The range of Factory Acts Legislation has, in fact, in one country or another, become co-extensive with the conditions of industrial employment.

Factory Acts commented on the gradual way this transformation had been achieved.