FACTORY.-The word Factory is one that has altered much in meaning, and is still in process of alteration. Its early signification was that of a trading establishment; usually in a distant country; with which were associated in idea the settlements and surroundings appertaining, and it is primarily defined in this sense even yet in most dictionaries and works on industrial technology. But a quite different signification came to be attached to it later. In this new one it implied a place of production not sale; an establishment where something was made, or manufactured, and—more specially—made or manufactured for profit, and (commonly) on a large scale; which is also its legal meaning and that with which we have here to deal.

At what time precisely this transformation occurred is uncertain. Dr. Aikin, in a History of Manchester, published in 1793, uses the words "mill" and "factory" indiscriminately; Mr. Baines, in his well-known History of the Cotton Manufacture, refers-as late as 1835-to the use of the latter term in its present sense as still a modern innovation; Ure's Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures does not possess

B

any article on the word; in Dod's Dictionary of Manufactures, etc. (1876) no allusion to an altered meaning is made, and in the last edition (1880) of McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary it is merely described as an abbreviation of Manufactory. The nearest approach to a definite date that the present writer has been able to find is in French's Life and Times of Samuel Crompton (Manchester, 1862), where it is stated that in the year 1792, "the word 'factory' occurs almost for the first time in the rate-books of the township" (Bolton)—a sufficiently unsatisfactory one it must be allowed.1

What is at all events certain is, that at the commencement of the present century, namely as early as 1802, this term was interpreted in a modern sense by the English legislature. In that year the first Factory Act (42 Geo. III., c. 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 are used as complementary or exchangeable terms, but are nowhere defined, while the older signification of the latter is obviously abandoned. In a succeeding statute (3 & 4 Will. IV., c. 103); in which the area of restrictive legislation was considerably enlarged; they are again found coupled together, descriptive of places where certain productive operations are performed, and still with no separate meanings attached to them; and it was not in fine until a much later one (7 & 8 Vic., c. 15) that this deficiency was at length made good and the title "factory "

1 For an extended analysis of the terms Factory, Factory System, Mill, Manufacture, etc., see my Introduction to a History of The Factory System; Chap. I. (R. Bentley and Son, 1886).

for the first time fixed by law. The seventy-third section of the last named Act recites as follows:-"the word 'factory' shall be taken to mean all buildings and premises situated 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 incidental to the manufacture of cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute or tow, either separately or mixed together, or mixed with any other material;" the expression "mill" not being used herein at all, except in connection with "mill gearing," between which and machinery some nice distinctions are drawn, which do not concern us now. At this time, then, a factory meant simply any place devoted to spinning or weaving certain fabrics by power, that is it pretty nearly fulfilled what was until quite recently the popular conception of the term.

Scarcely was it settled in that signification however when another new development occurred. The circumstances that led to that new development, and the changes which resulted from it, are of cardinal importance in the history of English factory legislation. They will form the substance of some future chapters. It will suffice to say of them at present, that the general result was greatly to expand the notion of what constituted a factory beyond the characteristics here indicated, to a point that has not even yet been very clearly defined or ascertained.

ANCIENT FACTORIES.-The modern conception of a factory, then, is of a place of production, where labour is congregated and divided within an establishment of definite

bounds, sometimes with and sometimes without the aid of exterior motive power. Congregated labour is in this view the very body, as divided labour is the spirit of any factory system not of the wholly automatic kind,1 and in this connection it will be of interest to enquire to what extent factories and the Factory System were known, and were availed of, in ancient times: from which we have so much more to learn on social and industrial matters than we are often willing to allow. Unfortunately, the information that is accessible on these points is extremely scanty. The writers of antiquity -those especially of the Classical age, with whose works we are the most familiar,—had an inveterate scorn of trade and industry, things which they considered as in their nature mean and sordid, and beneath the dignity of history. Aristotle would allow the title citizen only to those who needed not to earn a livelihood by labour (Politics, iii. 3), and held the highest industrial duty of a freeman to consist in making proper use of his slaves; Cicero regarded commerce as tolerable only when carried on upon a large scale and for the benefit of the State; while the Emperor Augustus actually pronounced the sentence of death against the senator Ovinius for having stooped to direct a manufactory.2 Such writers have left, accordingly, scarcely any trustworthy accounts of these matters, and we have to seek information upon them among the chance allusions of poets and travellers, in the sacred books of a few old nations, and, more hopefully of late, from the great results of modern antiquarian and anthropological research. With these aids we are able to throw a little light at length 1 See page 28.

2

Blanqui's History of Political Economy in Europe; p. 49 (Bell and Sons, 1880).

on this neglected branch of enquiry. We know now for certain that a system of production by means of organised labour not only did exist among very ancient races, but was a device familiar to times so remote as to long precede the dawn of history, to be, in fact, a recognised feature of the early Stone age, in the very infancy of mankind. Sir Charles Lyell (Antiquity of Man) was the first writer to direct attention to a "manufactory" of stone implements near Bern in Switzerland; and since then many have been discovered elsewhere, in France, in the United States, and largely of late years in Ireland. In a little book, "Who are the Irish?" (Bogue and Co., 1880) we read, for example, not alone of “primeval diggings," whence flint was procured for industrial purposes in remote ages, but it is added, "vast manufactories were there established." Their existence has become in fact a scientific commonplace. That great factories were a feature of the labour system of ancient Egypt seems likewise certain. How else, to begin with, could all the linen, linen yarn, and other commodities so largely exported have been produced there? Domestic industry might suffice, indeed, for the supply of native needs, but not for such a foreign trade. Moreover, most writers who have expressed themselves on the subject at all have come to that conclusion. Treating of "recent discoveries in Egyptian antiquities" fifty years ago, Dr. Cooke Taylor bears the following testimony; "we find from them,” he says, "that the Pharaohs had very large spinning establishments, such as we should in the present day call factories, so that there was not only enough of yarn left for home consumption in the valley of the Nile, but also for exportation " (Silk, Cotton, and Woollen Manu facture). Mr. James (History of The Worsted Manufacture, p. 5), is no less explicit. "The Egyptians," he says,