The attitude of the employers toward the agitation can be best judged from the following extracts:
“Every man acquainted with the political history of the last century must know, that the labour of children was actually pointed out to the manufacturers by Mr. William Pitt, as a new resource by which they might be enabled to bear the additional load of taxation which the necessities of the State compelled him to impose. The necessity for labour created by this taxation has not yet abated; because the immense capital taken away by the enormous expenditure of the great wars arising out of the French Revolution, an expenditure which was mainly supported out of the industrial resources of the country, has not been replaced. But even independent of these considerations, and irrespective of a past which can never be recalled, we mean to assert, as we have done elsewhere, in broad terms and the plainest language, that the infant labour, as it is erroneously called—or the juvenile labour, as it should be called—in factories, is in fact a national blessing, and absolutely necessary for the support of the manifold fiscal burthens which have been placed upon the industry of this country. It is quite sufficient to say that the children of the operatives have mouths, and must be fed; they have limbs, and must be clothed; they have minds, which ought to be instructed; and they have passions, which must be controlled. Now, if the parents are unable to provide these requisites, and their inability to do so is just as notorious as their existence, it becomes absolutely necessary that the children should aid in obtaining them for themselves. To abolish juvenile labour, is plainly nothing else than to abolish juvenile means of support; and to confine it within very narrow limits, is just to subtract a dinner or a supper from the unhappy objects of mistaken benevolence.”[455]
The result of all this agitation and debate was the famous Act of 1833 introduced by Lord Shaftesbury which prohibited night work to persons under eighteen in cotton, woollen, and other factories, and provided that children from nine to thirteen years of age were not to work more than forty-eight hours a week and those from thirteen to eighteen not to work more than sixty-eight hours. Children under nine were not to be employed at all.
Even this much was not obtained until Oastler had succeeded in driving home to the British mind conditions such as are described in a speech delivered at Huddersfield, December 26, 1831, of which the following is an extract:
“I will not picture fiction to you,” said Oastler, in the early days of the factory movement, “but I will tell you what I have seen. Take a little female captive, six or seven years old; she shall rise from her bed at four in the morning of a cold winter day, but before she rises she wakes perhaps half a dozen times, and says, ‘Father, is it time? Father, is it time?’ And at last, when she gets up and puts her little bits of rags upon her weary limbs—weary yet with the last day’s work—she leaves her parents in their bed, for their labour (if they have any) is not required so early. She trudges alone through rain and snow, and mire and darkness, to the mill, and there for thirteen, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, or even eighteen hours is she obliged to work with only thirty minutes’ interval for meals and play. Homeward again at night she would go, when she was able, but many a time she hid herself in the wool in the mill, as she had not strength to go. And if she were one moment behind the appointed time; if the bell had ceased to ring when she arrived with trembling, shivering, weary limbs at the factory door, there stood a monster in human form, and as she passed he lashed her. This,” he continued, holding up an overlooker’s strap, “is no fiction. It was hard at work in this town last week. The girl I am speaking of died; but she dragged on that dreadful existence for several years.”[456]
While Oastler was delivering this speech and these conditions were rife, Malthus was revising the first edition of his Essay on Population.