Page:Eleven Blind Leaders (1910?).pdf/21

Rh more wildly raged the mob of manufacturers. They managed, in fact, to intimidate the government to such an extent that in 1835 it proposed to lower the limit of the age of childhood from 13 to 12. In the meantime the pressure from without grew more threatening. Courage failed the House of Commons. It refused to throw children of 13 under the Juggernaut Car of Capital for more than 8 hours a day, and the Act of 1833 came into full operation, It remained unaltered until June, 1844. In the ten years during which it regulated factory work, first in part, and then entirely, the official reports of the factory inspectors teem with complaints as to the impossibility of putting the Act into force."

Marx goes on to show that the manufacturers invented a "relay system" in accordance with the provisions of the new law, by which they could put children to work whenever they needed them at different times during the day, with the understanding that the children should not be worked more than eight hours altogether. He continues: "In a great many of the factories the old brutalities soon blossomed out again unpunished. In an interview with the Home Secretary (1844) the factory inspectors demonstrated the impossibility of any control under the newly invented relay system."

Meanwhile the unions began a vigorous agitation for a ten hour work day, and the "free traders," who were then working for the repeal of the "Corn Laws," promised in return for the workers' support, to pass a ten hour bill as soon as free trade should be established.

In 1844 the 12 hour day was legalized in England, and finally, after desperate struggles, the Ten Hours' Act came into force May 1, 1848. But jnstjust [sic] about that time occurred the revolution in Paris; the English workers' political and industrial movement that had sustained the agitation for a shorter work day went on the rocks of reaction; and so the employers utterly disregarded the law. After reducing wages 25 per cent, the manufacturers for two years until 1850 had a free hand and