Factory law

“ The League early saw the evils prevailing in many factories, and therefore decided [Pg 124] to carry the white-list idea under a slightly different form into this field. After a thorough investigation by its own representatives and consultation with the State factory inspectors, the League, where the situation is satisfactory, allows the use of its label guaranteeing that the goods are made under clean and healthful surroundings. The conditions under which the label is issued are:
1. The State factory law is obeyed.
2. No children under the age of sixteen are employed. ”

“ If men and women are to be absolved from the care of their own lives and limbs, and the responsibility cast on anybody else by the law of the land, the law of the land is lapsing into barbarism. If the charge is thrown upon the employers of industry, they will retire from occupations so intolerably burdened. That will be one consequence; and it seems to be agreed by the common sense of all concerned who have any common sense that our manufactures must cease, or the Factory Laws, as expounded by Mr. Horner, must give way. ”

“ It appears to us that the public are under great obligations to the National Association of Factory Occupiers, for undertaking the important but difficult task of ascertaining,—first, what the law is, as between factory employers and their workers ”

“ What, also, of the machinery in the factory, and of the factory buildings themselves, and, back of them, again, the tool makers and the providers of raw materials? It is obvious that no human intellect could ever unravel the tangled skein of human labor, and that in actual exchange there can be no calculation of the respective labor content of commodities. If the law of value holds good, it must operate mechanically, automatically. And this it does, through the incidence of bargaining and the law of supply and demand. ”

“ The necessity for a generalization of the Factory Acts, for transforming them from an exceptional law relating to mechanical spinning and weaving—those first creations of machinery—into a law affecting social production as a whole, arose, as we have seen, from the mode in which Modern Industry was historically developed. In the rear of that industry, the traditional form of manufacture, of handicraft, and of domestic industry, is entirely revolutionised; manufactures are constantly passing into the factory system, and handicrafts into manufactures ”

“ It is, however, the right of the employer and employe to a free labor market that is the particular thing under consideration in this case.
A man establishes a large factory where working people reside, taking the risk of his being able to conduct his industry and offer these working people employment which they will be willing to accept. He takes the risk of destructive competition and a large number of other risks, out of which, at any time, may come his financial ruin and the suspension of his manufacturing works. ”

“ The operative has a right to withhold his labour when he is not satisfied with its reward; the master has no right to leave his machinery unfenced, when the law orders him to fence it; and, in spite of the phrase 'cases that can be legitimately dealt with,' it is evident that he associates with other masters that he may successfully oppose the law by the payment of a slight annual subscription. Application is made for it by the Association to all factory owners, at the rate of one shilling per nominal horse-power. ”

“ The factory system was the child of the "industrial revolution," and until capital had accumulated in masses capable of giving solidity to large bodies of labour, manufactures were necessarily carried on by scattered individuals, who combined a handicraft with agriculture. ”

“ It has ever been found that in regard to ordinary factory legislation, organized employés were the best inspectors to see that the law was enforced. This principle holds good in even a more marked degree, where the representatives of the workers have themselves a say in the decision, as is the case during the long sessions of a wages board, where all who take part in the discussions and in the final agreement are experts in the trade, and intimately acquainted with the practical details of the industry. ”

“ Furthermore, all parts of the Factory in which preparatory work is carried on are subject to the Factory Act, as well as all kinds of printing establishments in which more than five workmen are employed. The Swiss Factory Act requires that a Factory shall possess all those characteristics assigned to it by German protective law, with the exception, however, of power machinery, and hence it doubtless covers all manufacturing business in which a number of workmen are employed. ”

“ Victoria has one of the most severe Factories Acts which have ever been enacted. Boards are appointed to fix rates of remuneration in various trades, such as furniture, boot and shoe-making, clothing, and white work. No one is permitted to work outside a factory without receiving a permit from the chief inspector. The competition of the alien races is most severely restrained. One Chinaman working at the furniture trade is by law a factory, and is treated, and inspected, as such. ”

“ In the "factory" or "Boston " system the subdivision is still more minute, and as many as one hundred persons may be concerned in the production of one coat. The amount of tailoring skill required in a worker is even further reduced, but the premises come under the regulation of the factory laws. The factory system has also cheapened production in a legitimate way, because it has enabled mechanical power for driving sewing-machines, and also expensive labour-saving machinery, to be introduced to an extent not economically possible in small shops. ”

“ Factory legislation has been inevitably necessitated by the action of economic and social forces, and may, in fact, be regarded as a natural phenomenon accompanying the growth of the factory system of manufacture. It has developed against the opposition of extreme doctrines of free contract, and having demonstrated itself in the facts of actual life has also created a new theory of the relation of the state to labor and industry. ”

“ Matters of employment and discharge, vacations, wage scales, refusal of work, degree of productivity and skill, reasons for abrogating agreements, disputes with the administration, and similar problems of the internal life of the factory, must be settled exclusively according to the findings of the Factory-Shop Committee, which has the right to exclude from participation in the discussion any members of the factory administration. ”

“ Money or some equivalent must be had to keep the machinery of the department going. Arrearages especially should be provided for. For instance, over $5,000,000 is now due to the factory interest alone for goods long since delivered and expended, and that, too, after a liberal use of call certificates, non-taxable bonds, and even the raw material, cotton. All the factories are under contract to deliver at fair prices two-thirds of their production. They all work under a uniform system, one built up with care and labor, and with a result perfectly satisfactory. ”

“ Some tell us that we want capital, and that we should send abroad and get men to come here with money to build factories. This is not what we need. If the cotton lord and the millionaire come here and hire you to build factories and pay you their money for their work, when the factory is erected they own it, and they set their price upon your labor and your wool or cotton—they have dominion over you. But if, by your own efforts and exertions, you cooperate together and build a factory it is your own. ”

“ Therefore, laws and regulations should be established which would permit the workmen to receive from the factory owner their wages and a share in the fourth or the fifth part of the profits, according to the capacity of the factory; or in some other way the body of workmen and the manufacturers should share equitably the profits and advantages. ”

“ There is no ground on which reasonably to hold that refusal by a manufacturer, whose raw materials come from states other than that of his factory and whose products are regularly carried to other states, to bargain collectively with employees in his manufacturing plant, directly affects interstate commerce. In such business, there is not one but who distinct movements or streams in interstate transportation. The first brings in raw material and there ends. Then follows manufacture, a separate and local activity. ”

“ Factories containing machinery operated by steam power could produce cloth, shoes, implements, and almost every other sort of manufactured commodity more cheaply than they could be made by hand-industry in the homes or in small shops. So the factory system spread over the length and breadth of the land, drawing large investments of capital into its vortex, giving rise to great industrial corporations, creating a new labor class, fostering the growth of great cities, and compelling the government to take a hand in the regulation of industry. ”

“ Under a scheme of subdivided toil the factory hand succeeded to the journeyman who, with a few mates, had split nails or drawn wire in a shop no bigger than some day he might own for himself. With the need to occupy large premises, to install engines and elaborate machinery, the capital of an employer has to be vastly more than of old, creating a new dependence on the part of the workman, and rendering it all but impossible that he should ever have a factory of his own. While the factory system of production is general in America, it is far from universal. ”

“ The products of a mine pass daily into interstate commerce; many things are brought to it from other states. Are the owners and the miners within the power of Congress in respect of the latter's tenure and discharge? May a mill owner be prohibited from closing his factory or discontinuing his business because so to do would stop the flow of products to and from his plant in interstate commerce? May employees in a factory be restrained from quitting work in a body because this will close the factory and thereby stop the flow of commerce? ”

“ Hardly had the Act been passed when our friends the manufacturers found out: “The inconveniences we expected to arise from the introduction of the Factory Acts into our branch of manufacture, I am happy to say, have not arisen. We do not find the production at all interfered with; in short, we produce more in the same time.” ”

“ It would make no difference whether one company or one individual owned all the factories fabricating the component parts of a single product, or whether such part were made in our independently owned factory, if only all adopted the same service methods. If we can buy as good a part as we can make ourselves and the supply is ample and the price right, we do not attempt to make it ourselves—or, at any rate, to make more than an emergency supply. ”

“ If factories are dispersed throughout the inland district, it will not alter these effects, because excises must either extend to a great number of household manufactures, or these factories could not furnish objects for an excise to act upon. If farmers consume the factory manufactures, they must pay the excises laid upon them, which would be equivalent to the payment of the same taxes upon household manufactures. ”

“ If a system of this kind would retain the economic advantages of the factory system, and eliminate its many evils, it is obvious that a factory, owned and controlled by the weavers themselves, and worked only for their advantage, is a very different thing to a factory controlled by capitalists only for the purpose of exploiting the labour of their employees. ”

“ The establishment of the factory altered completely the relation between employer and employee. Indeed in the modern sense these relations were then first established. Labor became a commodity which the master manufacturer, who was also the capitalist, bought and which the workingman sold. When in the year 1785 Arkwright’s patents were set aside and the use of his perfected spinning machinery became free to all manufacturers, a great extension of the cotton industry followed. ”

“ It is not our object here to contend against what is called the factory system—we accept it with its evil and its good; we are not calling for measures directly hostile to it; but we certainly should exclaim against the sacrifice of a branch of household, stable, permanent industry, to be compensated by an increase in this already enormous system of factory labour, which, together with much good, brings with it so dreadfully precarious a condition of thousands and tens of thousands of men. ”

“ Now, if the Factory Acts, owing to their compulsory provisions, indirectly hasten on the conversion of small workshops into factories, thus indirectly attacking the proprietary rights of the smaller capitalists, and assuring a monopoly to the great ones, so, if it were made obligatory to provide the proper space for each workman in every workshop, thousands of small employers would, at one full swoop, be expropriated directly! ”

“ The work of a Factory is carried on in workplaces provided by the employer, not in the rooms of the workers or of a middleman.
i. The work of a Factory results in the immediate sale of the commodities produced, and does not consign them to the wholesale dealer to be prepared and dressed, or distributed by wholesale or retail, i.e. the Factory has absolute control of the sale of the commodities produced, in contradistinction to household industry. ”