9A. Minutes of Committee on Children in Factories, 1816 (III), p. 277.
Examination of Richard Arkwright, June 7, 1816.
Q. What is your opinion of the Act known under the name of Sir Robert Peel's Bill? I could wish to confine myself to facts as much as possible.
What have you known of that Act? That Act has not been followed up, with respect to the visiting of magistrates, for these thirteen years. I think they visited my mills at Cromford twice.
p. 278.
Are you of opinion that Sir Robert Peel's Bill, which passed in the year 1802, has accomplished much benefit for the children, for whose protection it was intended?
I certainly thought that the discussions upon that Bill, and the Bill itself, did a great deal of good, but that can be only matter of opinion.
10. Calico Printers' Petition for Regulation [Commons Journals, Vol. LIX, Feb. 22, 1804], 1804.
A petition of several journeymen calico printers, and others working in that trade, in the counties of Lancaster, Derby, Chester, and Stafford, in England, and in the counties of Lanark, Renfrew, Dumbarton, Stirling, and Perth in Scotland, was presented to the House, and read; setting forth that great numbers of the petitioners and other journeymen calico printers have, for a series of years past, been greatly distressed for want of work in their trade, and that this distress has chiefly arisen from a very general, if not universal, practice of the master calico printers in the counties above enumerated, who systematically carry on the said trade by employing in it, in many instances, a greater number of out-door apprentices than of journeymen, and, upon an average, nearly two of such apprentices to three journeymen, a practice of great injury to the petitioners, their families, and, ultimately, even to the apprentices themselves; and that one of the injurious effects, to the petitioners by this system is, that, in many instances boys are taken as apprentices to the said trade or business on verbal agreement, whereby they are at liberty to absent themselves from the service and control of their masters on any trifling disagreement, and are generally replaced by others, thereby creating an overstock of hands in the said trade: And therefore praying, That leave may be given to bring in a bill to regulate the trade or business of calico printers.
Ordered, that the said petition be referred to the consideration of a committee.