A pressure campaign was spearheaded outside Parliament by Richard Oastler. Oastler wanted to acquire a ten hour day for workers. He started with children because they were easier to get support for and he hoped that then other workers hours would have to be shortened to match. Children were the biggest employers in the textile mills. If there was change in the cotton industry it would mean change in other industries.
Inside Parliament the campaign was led by mill owner Michael Sadler and then by Lord Ashley, later the Earl of Shaftesbury. They were all worried about the excessive hours and the lack of protection given to them by the law. They perceived this to be the lack of morality among the child workers. They thought it was their religious duty to do improve all this.
1832 The House of Commons set up a committee to enquire into the case for a shorter working week.
1833 The dreadful conditions in factories were highlighted in a published report but some M.P.s said it was biased in favour of workers because no mill owners had been called to give evidence.
A new Royal Commission was set up so both points of view could be heard. It was reported that two months later enough evidence had been gathered about the damage done to children and young people by the long working hours and harsh conditions. Parliament accepted something had to be done.
In the 1833 Factory Act, factories laid down hours of work for young people. Children under nine years of ages could not work. Children aged between nine or twelve could work only eight hours a day. Thirteen to eighteen year olds could work for no more than twelve hours a day. Working children had to have two hours of schooling a day. This was one of the many reasons why civil registration of births and deaths began in 1837. Mill owners could keep their factories open for the same number of hours, and women still had to work for as long as before and sometimes even longer.
The 1844 Factory Act applied to textile mills. It started that women were not to work for more than 12 hours a day. To do this, factory owners had to be made a concession, the age at which children could be employed was lowered from nine to eight. But, these children were only allowed to work for six and a half hours a day instead on nine. Three hours of schooling a day was still compulsory. Mill owners could still organise shifts of child workers but because women were not allowed to work for more than twelve hours a day, it was hard to keep the mills open for as long as before.
The 1847 Factory Act stated that women and young people could not work for longer than ten hours a day. In some mills this meant a ten-hour day. Many mill owners claimed that they could not make a profit if their mills only worked for ten hours. By working out a shift system for the women and children and by making the men work a fifteen or sixteen hour day, they got around the act. The 1850 Factory Acts was a something of a compromise. Parliament had agreed to an act which increased the amount of time women and children had to work but reduced the hours which men worked, a ten and a half hour day was to be worked in all mills by men, women and young people.
Robert Hyde Greg was a good employer for his time. He wanted an efficient workforce who would work well for him. He took care of his workers. There was access to a doctor, had a sick club for workers and deaths due to illness were on third of the average in Lancashire. Samuel Greg had fenced off dangerous machinery and he had provided his apprentices with schooling from the beginning, long before it was required to by law. A few apprentices did run away but returned because they knew they were comparatively well treated at Styal. Greg never beat his employees because he did not believe in corporal punishment.
Greg was a very good employer for his time and he felt that he was already taking good care of his workforce so he did not see the need for the Factory Acts. A few others agreed with him. A campaigner, John Doherty tried to find something to discredit Greg with and he claimed that Greg could not claim o treat his apprentices well because of the ways in which he punished them. One was “to cut off their hair close to the head” But it turned out that John Doherty had been jailed in 1819 for organising an illegal picket line and Doherty just wanted revenge.
Samuel Greg agreed with the 1803 Factory Act because his apprentices already worked only a twelve hour day and they were properly accommodated and looked after well. But he believed that it was not Parliament’s place to interfere any more. He said that it was up to the parents to decide how mane hours their child should work. Greg also claimed that a cut in hours would mean a cut in their wages and then this would result in being worse off than before. He claimed that mill owners had done their financial sums bases on a twelve hour and if it was less than that it would threaten the profits made, making it harder for Britain to compete with the rest of the world.
Greg was opposed to cutting hours was because it would hit his profits. He approved of the children being kept in healthy conditions and of improving their morals through church attendance and education. He disapproved of violence or cruelty to children but he did not think that it would be wrong or harmful in letting children work for twelve hours a day. Before 1833 Greg has 100 apprentices working got him. “The largest mill, at Quarry Bank, is worked in a great measure by apprentices.” It would have made it difficult for him to run the mill if the hours were cut. Styal was in the countryside which meant there was no ready supply of workers which is why Greg had to use children from work houses as apprentices. After the 1833 Factory Act Robert Greg wrote to The Poor Law Commission in the 1834 to ask for poor people to be sent to Styal to work because there were not enough local people. He quoted “At this moment machinery in one mill has been standing for twelve months because we do not have enough hand.”
By 1847 Greg decided that he would have to pay more to keep the apprentices at Quarry Mill that he would make a profit from their work, so he closed his Apprentice house and the used of apprentices from the Workhouse ended at Styal. He still employed children but in order of the Factory Acts. Parents in the village were now responsible for their own children when they were not working in the mills. The children worked for six and a half hours and have three hours of schooling a day. Robert Hyde Greg was a good employer for his time but he was also a business man and once the apprentices became a liability he got rid of them.
