INTRODUCTION TO A HISTORY OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM CHAPTER I. THE FACTORY SYSTEM Factory-Statutory Definitions-Mill-Manufacture-Manufacture and Mart -Trade-Handicraft-Art and Manufacture-Agriculture-Laws of Agricultural and Manufacturing Industry-Machinery-Division and Combination of Labour-The Factory System-Extractive IndustriesTransport and Building-Services and Commodities-Immaterial Products-Plan of this Work. THE word "factory" is one that has greatly altered in meaning within recent times. Its earlier signification was that of a trading establishment, usually FACTORY. in a distant country, with which were associated in idea the settlements and surroundings appertaining. It is so defined primarily even yet in most modern dictionaries. Thus, "a house or place where factors reside to transact business" (Wright and Webster), and, "the collective body of such factors;"-" a house or district inhabited by traders in a distant country" (Johnson and Lathom).1 Commercial 1 In Knight's Cyclopædia of the Industry of all Nations (1851) it is given thus: "An establishment of merchants and factors resident in foreign countries who were governed by certain regulations adopted for their mutual support and assistance against the undue encroachment or interference of the government of the countries in which they resided." See also Notcutt's Factory and Workshops Acts, Introduction, note (a). countries discovering, or bringing into subjection, favourable tracts of foreign territory have commonly established factories," i.e. buildings and bodies of traders there, or frequently these have been planted in the dominions of countries well acquainted and at amity, for purposes of mutual convenience. Occasionally this earlier meaning of the word is found adhering to it still. It is not unusual even now to read of factories which civilised countries possess, or desire to possess, in remote places; establishments, that is, not for the production of commodities but for their exchange. A factory in this sense differed from a colony or other territorial settlement in being established, nominally at all events, for purposes exclusively commercial, and with the consent, obtained or implied, of the inhabitants of the district where it was placed. It has sometimes happened that this consent was assumed too hastily, or has been withdrawn, and that the people in whose territory the factory was situated have attacked it, its defence leading to the acquisition of further portions of that territory, or perhaps even of the whole. It has also happened that the interests. of rival factories established perhaps in the same country have come into collision, their disagreements leading to internecine conflicts, or even to wars between parent States. Sometimes neighbouring native communities have voluntarily placed themselves under the rule of the residents at a factory, and so thrust sovereignty upon them. Sometimes they have come gradually under their dominion. An extraordinary instance of great results proceeding from causes such as these is afforded by the spectacle of the foreign possessions of England at the present day, especially in India. The British East India Company, from having been the proprietors of a few "factories" on the coast of Hindostan, came at length, through the operation of certain of them, and by making a bold and dexterous use of the opportunities thus created, to exercise sovereign power over the greater part of that immense peninsula; and to transfer that sovereignty in time to the British crown. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that, but for the folly of an obstinate king, and the fatuity of an incompetent minister, the whole great continent of North America might now, from the operation of like causes, have been equally a portion of this empire. At what period precisely the term "factory factory" lost its primary and acquired its present meaning, is uncertain. Dr. Aikin in a History of Manchester, published in 1793, uses the words "mills" and "factories" indiscriminately; while Mr. Baines, in his History of the Cotton Manufacture (1835), refers to the use of the latter term for designating a place of production as a modern innovation. Ure's Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures has no article on the word "factory." In the last edition (1880) of M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary it is merely described as an abbreviation of "manufactory;" and in Dodd's Dictionary of Manufactures, etc. (1876), no allusion to the modern altered meaning is made. The change began to take place apparently towards the end of the last century,' and the substitution was a gradual one. Nor is it probable, though it might appear so, that that change was then, or at any time, brought about by a process of etymological reasoning. Ample justification for the present use of the word is to be found of course in its derivation (from Latin "facio"), but for ages factor had been rendered agent, and all compound derivatives, as factorise, factorage, factorship, had had to do with agentship. The explanation therefore must be sought elsewhere. The altered meaning was coincident with the first application on a large scale of foreign motive powers in textile industry, and appears to have had a close relationship to that event. 1 See Penny Cyclopædia, Article "Factory." STATUTORY DEFINITIONS. What is certain is that, as early at all events as the year 1802, this word was interpreted in a modern sense by the legislature. In that year the first Factory Act (42° Geo. III. Cap. 73) was passed, being entitled "An Act for the Preservation of the Health and Morals of Apprentices employed in Cotton and other Mills, and in Cotton and other Factories," where the words mill and factory seem to be used as complementary or exchangeable terms, but are nowhere defined, while the older signification at all events is abandoned. In a succeeding statute (3° and 4° Will. IV. Cap. 103)-in which the area of restrictive legislation was considerably enlarged-mills and factories are again found coupled together as terms descriptive of places where certain productive operations are performed, and still as yet with no separate distinctive meanings attached to them. It was not until a much later statute (7° and 8° Vic. Cap. 15) that this deficiency was made good, and the title "factory fixed by law. The seventy-third section of that Act recites, that factory "shall be taken to mean all buildings and premises situate within any part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 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 the term "mill" is not employed, except in connection with "mill-gearing," between which and "machinery" some nice distinctions are drawn, which have a history of their own. At this time, therefore (1844), the expression "factory" meant generally any place devoted to spinning or weaving fabrics by power, and specifically the fabrics formed of the materials named; that is, it nearly fulfilled the still ordinary conception of the term. In 1860 bleach and dye works, and in 1861 laceworks, were added to the other protected places,1 and in 1864 an entirely new departure was made in the inclusion of a number of miscellaneous industries in no way connected with textile manufacture, nor necessarily with machinery moved by power. This necessitated the definition of "factory" being extended accordingly. In 1867 a large number more was added,—the definition thus requiring still further, and some very remarkable extensions; and an Act was now passed for the first time for the regulation of workshops. Under one or other of these Acts all the manufacturing industry of the country was, or was intended to be, included. The term "factory" by this time had come to mean an extraordinary variety of things. It meant not only every place wherein power other than manual was in use in any process connected with the production of textile fabrics (together with bleach, dye, and print works, etc.) and a great variety of other works, specially named under the Act of 1864, as well; but also (30° and 31° Vic. Cap. 103, Sec. 3)" Any premises, whether adjoining or separate, in the same occupation, situate in the same city, town, parish, or place, and constituting one trade establishment, in, on, or within the precincts of which fifty or more persons are employed in any manufacturing process;" thus therefore, amongst other changes, re-introducing the criterion of number (familiar in another form in the very first statute) into the consideration of what did and did not fulfil the definition of a factory within the meaning of the law;—and so the matter remained until the enactment of the Factory and Workshops Act 1878 (41° Vic. Cap. 16), which is still in force. 1 Printworks had been similarly legislated for as early as 1845 (8° and 9° Vic. Cap. 29). In this Act, for the first time, a purely manual process was protected. |