CHAPTER X.
"Socialistic Legislation." Sec.1.Legislation in restraint of "Free" Contract .-- The direct pressure of certain tangible and painful forms of industrial grievance and of poverty has forced upon us a large mass of legislation which is sometimes called by the name of Socialistic Legislation.

It is necessary to enter on a brief examination of the character of the various enactments included under this vague term, in order to ascertain the real nature of the remedy they seek to apply.
Perhaps the most typical form of this socialistic legislation is contained in the Factory Acts, embodying as they do a series of direct interferences in the interests of the labouring classes with freedom of contract between capital and labour.
The first of these Factory Acts, the Health and Morals Act, was passed in 1802, and was designed for the protection of children apprenticed in the rising manufacturing towns of the north, engaged in the cotton and woollen trades.

Large numbers of children apprenticed by poor-law overseers in the southern counties were sent as "slaves" to the northern manufacturer, to be kept in overcrowded buildings adjoining the factory, and to be worked day and night, with an utter disregard to all considerations of physical or moral health.

There is no page in the history of our nation so infamous as that which tells the details of the unbridled greed of these pioneers of modern commercialism, feeding on the misery and degradation of English children.

This Act of 1802, enforcing some small sanitary reforms, prohibited night work, and limited the working-day of apprenticed children to twelve hours.