Ten Hour Bill

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The Ten Hours Bill ( English Factory Act of 1847 , also Ten Hours Act ) was a law passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1847, which limited the working hours of women and young people between the ages of thirteen and eighteen to 10 hours per working day and 8 hours on Saturdays. Sunday became a day off for the people concerned. The passage of the law was the culmination of fifteen years of controversy. Richard Oastler, who belonged to the conservative Tories, was an early proponent of the idea. The best-known member of parliament who worked tirelessly for the passage of the Ten Hours Bill was Lord Ashley , although he was not a member of parliament at the time of legislation. Ultimate success was due not least to people like John Doherty and benevolent factory owners like John Fielden . The latter brought the law through the British House of Commons. The Ten Hours Bill was passed shortly after Robert Peel's Conservative government was ousted . The biggest opponents of the law were the free trade liberals around John Bright . The same economic ideas that led them to reject tariff barriers led them to believe that the government should not limit the conditions under which a man sells his work.

The law

The Factory Act of 1847 stipulated that women and young people between the ages of thirteen and eighteen were allowed to work only 63 hours per week from July 1, 1847, and only 58 hours per week from May 1, 1848, which corresponds to a daily workload of 10 hours per day (10 hours per working day, 8 hours on Saturday).

Previous laws

Whig Bills - The Whig Laws

The Factory Act of 1833 limited the daily working hours of children between the ages of nine and thirteen to eight hours, and twelve hours for teenagers between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. However, the law was rarely implemented. The original goal of giving factory children more and better access to education was also considered to have failed. During the Whig government of Lord Melbourne , Fox Maule had worked out several legislative changes, which, however, were never passed due to the lack of will of the Whigs and bureaucratic obstacles such as sufficient parliamentary time.

The conservatives come to power

During the parliamentary elections in 1841, the Whigs lost their majority, after which Robert Peel was able to form a conservative government. Lord Ashley turned down an offer from Peel to take on a position in his newly formed government, as Peel had not yet taken a clear position on the “factory question” and Ashley did not want to become politically dependent. Instead, he wanted to secure free room for maneuver in order to be able to push ahead with the Ten Hours Bill. In February 1842, Peel finally announced that he would not support the Ten Hours Bill. In addition, Peel's Home Secretary, James Graham announced that he would support a Fox Maule bill, albeit in a modified version. In response to the findings of a royal commission, Lord Ashley was able to get the Mines and Collieres Act through parliament, which banned women and children from working underground; this was welcomed on all sides. In July of that year, the government announced that it had no intention of changing the factory laws during its term in office.

The educational problem

In 1843, Lord Ashley initiated a discussion on how to provide the working class with better access to education, particularly in relation to moral and religious upbringing. The royal commission examined not only the working hours and conditions of the children, but also their morality. The results raised concerns about their customs and language. The greatest concern, however, was that “the means of secular and religious upbringing… are so appallingly poor that, in all districts, large numbers of children and young people are growing up without any religious, moral or intellectual education at all: nothing is being done to support it To bring up order, sobriety, honesty and foresight, yet keep them away from crime and vice. "

At the time, the state had no responsibility to ensure adequate access to education, at the same time the working classes did not have the means to build schools, let alone maintain them. By the Privy Council , however, it was possible subsidies for the construction of a "efficient school" ( efficient school to obtain), which supported the establishment of schools with up to one third of the set-up costs in regions where there previously was no effective schools. Since the repeal of the Test Act , some of the demands of dissenters in England have been indulged, causing resentment among Anglicans as they feared the decline of the Church of England as a national religious institution (which, in fact, prompted Graham to leave the Whig government and to convert to the Conservatives). So there were two institutions that were trying to establish “efficient schools”; the non-denominational British and Foreign School Society for the Education of the Laboring and Manufacturing Classes of Society of Every Religious Persuasion ( British and Foreign School Society , BFSS) and the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church in England and Wales ( National Society for short ). The goal of the National Society was defined in its first annual report from its founding year 1811 as follows:

"The National Religion should be made the foundation of National education, and should be the first and chief thing taught to the poor, according to the excellent Liturgy and Catechism provided by our Church."

"The national religion should be made the foundation of national education, it should be the first and most important thing that is taught to the poor, according to the excellent liturgy and catechism of our church."

Since schooling was now compulsory for factory children under the Factory Act, the Labor Inspectorate examined the quality of the education the children received. The British Schools of the BFSS and the National Schools of the National Society received acceptable ratings, and a few factory owners set up schools of the same quality for their employees. However, there were still populous counties (Oldham and Ashton-under-Lyne were given as examples) where there were few or no efficient schools. Among these schools there were also schools for dissenters, which were connected with places of worship for their respective religions. These schools were also often called British Schools , although formally they had nothing to do with the British and Foreign School Society.

literature

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ CW Cooke-Taylor: The Factory System and the Factory Acts , p. 88
  2. ^ "Lord Ashley and the Ten Hours Factory Bill". London Evening Standard. September 8, 1841. p. 2
  3. ^ "Factory Bill". London Evening Standard. February 3, 1842. p. 2
  4. ^ "House of Commons, July 11". London Evening Standard. July 12, 1842. p. 2
  5. ↑ CONDITION AND EDUCATION OF THE POOR . In: Hansard House of Commons Debates . 67, February 28, 1843, pp. Cc47-114. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
  6. ↑ 2nd Report of the Commission on the Employment of Children (Trades and Manufactures), (1843) Parliamentary Papers volume XIII, pp 195-204 as quoted in E. Royston Pike (ed.): Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution . George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London 1966, pp. 204-208.
  7. ^ Howard Worsley: Anglican Church School Education: Moving Beyond the First Two Hundred Years , p. 23