FACTOR.

FACTOR is a mercantile agent, who buys and sells the goods of others, and transacts their ordinary business on commission. He is intrusted with the possession, management, and disposal of the goods, and buys and sells in his own name, in which particulars consists the main difference between factors and brokers. [BROKER.]

The chief part of the foreign trade of every country is carried on through factors, who generally reside in a foreign | country, or in a mercantile town at a distance from the merchants or manufac turers who employ them; and they differ from mere agents in being intrusted with a general authority to transact the affairs of their employers. The common duty of a factor is to receive consignments of goods, and make sales and remittances, either in money, bills, or purchased goods in return; and he is paid by means of a per-centage or commission upon the money passing through his hands. It is usual for a factor to make advances upon the goods consigned to him, for which, and also for his commission, he has a general lien upon all the property of his employer which may at any time be in his hands.

Previously to the stat. 6 George IV. c. 94, a factor had only authority to sell the goods of his principal, and if he pledged them, the principal might recover them from the pledgee. But by this statute the pledgee of a factor, when he lends his money without notice that the factor is not the actual owner of the goods, is enabled to retain them for his security; and even when he has such notice, the lender has a lien upon the goods to the same amount as the factor was entitled to. The rights and liabilities of merchants

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and factors are governed by the laws of the place in which they are domiciled : and any contract which may be made by either of them must be governed by the law of the place where it is made; and these rules are acted upon by the courts of justice of every civilized nation. Thus, since the passing of the above-mentioned statute, a foreign merchant cannot recover his goods from the pledgee of the factor in England, though he may be totally ignorant of the change which has taken place in the law. Again, if a bill be accepted in Leghorn by an Englishman, and the drawer fails, and the acceptor has not sufficient effects of the drawer in his hands at the time of acceptance, the acceptance becomes void by the law of Leghorn, and the acceptor is discharged from all liability, though by the law of England he would be bound. (See 2 Strange's Reports, 733; Beawe's Lex Merc.; Bell's Commentaries; Paley, Principal and Agent.)

FACTORY. The name of factory was formerly given only to establishments of merchants and factors resident in foreign countries, who were governed by certain regulations adopted for their mutual support and assistance against the undue encroachments or interference of the governments of the countries in which they resided. In modern times these factories have, in a great measure, ceased to exist, because of the greater degree of security which merchants feel as regards both the justice of those governments and the protection, when needed, of their country.

The Venetians, Genoese, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English, have all had establishments of the nature of factories. In China the Portuguese established a

B

factory at Macao, and the English at Canton. In most instances, factories have at first obtained the privilege of trading, and afterwards procured for the precinct assigned to them some exemption from the jurisdiction of the native courts. In this state of things the supreme government of the country whose subjects have established the factory prepare laws for its control and administration, and treat it in fact as if it were its dependency, though the sovereignty of the native government is undisputed, and to it belongs the right of legislation for the precinct of the factory, though it may not always have the power of resuming it. (Government of Dependencies. By George Cornewall Lewis, pp. 93 and 169.)

In its usual acceptation, the word factory is now employed to denote an establishment in which a considerable number of workmen or artisans are employed together for the production of some article of manufacture, most commonly with the assistance of machinery.

FACTORY. The word Factory,' according to the Factory Act (7 Vict. c. 15), means all buildings and premises wherein or within the close or curtilage of which steam, water, or any other mechanical power shall be used to move or work any machinery employed in preparing, manufacturing, or finishing, or in any process incident to the manufacture of cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute, or tow, either separately or mixed together, or mixed with any other material or any fabric made thereof; and any room situated within the outward gate or boundary of any factory wherein children or young persons are employed in any process incident to the manufacture carried on in the factory, shall be taken to be a part of the factory, although it may not contain any machinery; and any part of such factory may be taken to be a factory within the meaning of the Act, 7 Vict. c. 15; but this enactment shall not extend to any part of such factory used solely for the purposes of a dwellinghouse, nor to any part used solely for the manufacture of goods, made entirely of any other material than those herein enumerated, nor to any factory or part of a factory used solely for the manufacture of lace,

of hats, or of paper, or solely for bleaching, dyeing, printing, or calendering.

What is called the factory system' owes its origin to the invention and skill of Arkwright; and it is probable that but for the invention of spinning machinery, and the consequent necessary aggregation of large numbers of workmen in cotton-mills, the name would never have been thus applied. It is in the cottonmills that the factory system has been brought to its highest state of perfection.

The first cotton-factory was established in 1771 by Arkwright in connection with Messrs. Need and Strutt, of Derby, and was situated at Cromford, on the river Derwent; and the first of these establishments erected in Manchester was built in 1780, and had its machinery impelled by an hydraulic wheel, the water for which was furnished by a single-stroke atmospheric pumping steam-engine. The progress of cotton-factories was so rapid that in 1787 there were 145 in England and Wales, containing nearly two millions of spindles, and estimated to produce as much yarn as could have been spun by a million of persons using the old domestic wheel. The number of cotton, wool, silk, and flaxspinning factories worked by steam or water-power in the United Kingdom, with the number of persons employed therein in the year 1835, was as follows:

tioned number of persons were as

under :

Total 555,191 245,055 800,246 The sex and age of persons employed in the cotton manufacture are given at COTTON MANUFACTURE AND TRADE, p. 696.

The

"In the woollen manufacture the number of adult males employed is three times as great as that of the adult females, while the number of either sex under twenty years of age is comparatively small: the same may be said of the hose, but in the flax and linen manufactures the preponderance is not quite so great. In silk the number of both sexes employed are nearly equal, the excess among adults being with the males, and under twenty with the females. manufacture of lace is the only one in which the number of females is very much greater than that of males." (Census Commissioners' Report.) In the Yorkshire district, which is under the superintendence of Mr. Saunders, the number of persons employed in factories in 1838 was 95,000, and in 1843 there were 106,500; but there was a positive decrease in the number of children, amounting to 2000. Mr. Howell, in spector of factories for Cheshire and the Midland Counties, states (Jan. 1844), that the few factories in which children under thirteen years of age are employed in his circuit are chiefly in isolated rural districts or in non-manufacturing towns.

The legislature has interfered to prevent children in factories being tasked beyond their strength, to the permanent injury of their constitutions. This abuse was the more to be apprehended, because a large proportion of the children engaged in cotton-spinning are not directly employed by the masters, but are under the control of the spinners, a highly-paid class of workmen, whose earnings depend greatly upon the length of time during which they can keep their young assistants at work. A parliamentary commithe sat for the investigation of this sub

sion was issued by the crown for ascertaining, by examinations at the factories themselves, the kind and degree of abuses that prevailed, and for suggesting the proper remedies. In consequence of these inquiries, an act was passed in 1833 (3 & 4 Wm. IV., c. 103) for regulating factories. This act has been amended by 7 Vict. c. 15; but in order to show the course of recent legislation on this subject, we shall first give some of the main enactments of the first act.

The act 3 & 4 Wm. IV. provided, that after the 1st of January, 1834, no person under the age of eighteen years should work in any cotton, woollen, flax, or silk factory worked by the aid of steam or water-power, between the hours of halfpast eight in the evening and half-past five in the morning; that no person under eighteen years of age should work more than twelve hours in any one day nor more than sixty-nine hours in the week. Except in silk-mills, no children under nine years of age were to be employed. Children under eleven years old were not to be worked more than nine hours in any one day, nor more than forty-eight hours in one week. This clause came into operation six months after the passing of the act. At the expiration of another twelve months its restriction was applied to children under twelve years old; and when thirty months from the passing of the act had elapsed, the restriction was applied to all children under thirteen years old. This clause came into operation on the 1st of March, 1836. In silk-mills, children under thirteen years of age were allowed to work ten hours per day. It was made illegal for any other mill-owner to have in his employ any child who had not completed eleven years of age without a certificate by a surgeon or physician "that such child is of the ordinary strength and appearance of children of or exceeding the age of nine years." In eighteen months from the passing of the act this provision was made to apply to all children under twelve years of age; and upon the 1st of March, 1836, the provision was made to include all children under the age of thirteen. Four persons were appointed