Key Arguments

• It allowed factories to run for 15+ hours while individual children worked shorter shifts
• It was explicitly designed to avoid limiting the working day of adults
• It made effective inspection and enforcement of legal limits impossible due to complex bookkeeping

Source Quotes

The employment of children under 9, with exceptions mentioned later, was forbidden; the work of children between 9 and 13 was limited to 8 hours a day; night-work, i.e., according to this Act, work between 8.30 p.m. and 5.30 a.m., was forbidden for all persons between 9 and 18. The law-makers were so far from wishing to interfere with the freedom of capital to exploit adult labour-power, or, as they called it, ‘the freedom of labour’, that they created a special system in order to prevent the Factory Acts from having such a frightful consequence. ‘The great evil of the factory system as at present conducted,’ says the first report of the Central Board of the Commission, on 28 June 1833, ‘has appeared to us to be that it entails the necessity of continuing the labour of children to the utmost length of that of the adults.

‘The great evil of the factory system as at present conducted,’ says the first report of the Central Board of the Commission, on 28 June 1833, ‘has appeared to us to be that it entails the necessity of continuing the labour of children to the utmost length of that of the adults. The only remedy for this evil, short of the limitation of the labour of adults, which would, in our opinion, create an evil greater than that which is sought to be remedied, appears to be the plan of working double sets of children.’ Under the name of the ‘system of relays’ (‘relay’ means, in English as also in French, the changing of the post-horses at each different halting-place), this ‘plan’ was therefore carried out, so that, for example, one set of children of between 9 and 13 years were put into harness from 5.30 a.m. until 1.30 p.m., another set from 1.30 p.m. until 8.30 p.m., and so on.

We shall not pause here to reflect on the beauty of this system, as we shall have to return to it later. But this much is clear at first glance: it annulled the whole Factory Act, not only in the spirit, but in the letter. How could the factory inspectors, with this complex bookkeeping in respect of each individual child or young person, enforce the legally determined hours of work, and compel the employers to grant the legal meal-times?

Under the name of the ‘system of relays’ (‘relay’ means, in English as also in French, the changing of the post-horses at each different halting-place), this ‘plan’ was therefore carried out, so that, for example, one set of children of between 9 and 13 years were put into harness from 5.30 a.m. until 1.30 p.m., another set from 1.30 p.m. until 8.30 p.m., and so on. In order to reward the manufacturers for having, in the most impudent way, ignored all the Acts relating to child labour passed during the previous twenty-two years, the pill was yet further gilded for them. Parliament decreed that after 1 March 1834 no child under 11, after 1 March 1835 no child under 12, and after 1 March 1836 no child under 13 was to work more than 8 hours in a factory.

Key Concepts

• law-makers were so far from wishing to interfere with the freedom of capital to exploit adult labour-power
• plan of working double sets of children
• annulled the whole Factory Act, not only in the spirit, but in the letter
• reward the manufacturers for having, in the most impudent way, ignored all the Acts

Context

Marx analyzing the loopholes in the Factory Act of 1833.