Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/29

 long home were the school—children of Drenewydd. "It is to Robert Owen," says the latest writer on Co-operation, "that we owe the idea of a Factory Act. In 1816, he pressed on the consideration of a Committee of the Commons a Bill limiting the hours of all factory labour to 10 hours a day, forbidding the employment of children under 10, and instituting a half-time system for those under 12. It is needless to say the Committee rejected this drastic measure. But largely owing to his ardent advocacy, a Factory Act was passed in 1818, which, though practically ineffectual, served as a lever for future agitation and as a useful precedent for more stringent regulation. It was Robert Owen who proposed a national system of free and compulsory education and the establishment of free libraries; it was he who suggested to provincial authorities that they should undertake the housing of the poor; it was he who advocated municipal or county organisation of labour, In truth, Robert Owen was the father of British Socialism, the Socialism that discovers itself in works and not in words, the Socialism