architecture the facias are made to incline inwards from the vertical line; as, for instance, in the Parthenon, the temple of Bacchus at Rome, the Baths of Diocletian, and the temple of Vesta at Tivoli. The facias of the architraves of the temple of Mars Ultor, and of the Forum of Nerva, incline outwards; but the optical effect thus produced is so unsatisfactory that it may almost be considered to be indispensable that the more general rule should be observed. FACTOR is a mercantile agent who buys and sells on behalf of others, usually being intrusted with possession of the goods, to deal with them in his own name, and to receive and give receipts for the money, and is remunerated for his services by a percentage on the transaction. A broker acts as a middleman only, having no possession of the goods, and properly negociating the business in the name only of his principal; the price does not pass through his hands, but he too is remunerated for his assistance by a percentage on the transaction. No small share of the business of the mercantile world is carried on through the medium of factors, living at a distance from their principals; whom for their own interest they keep duly informed of the state and prospects of the market in their immediate district; and from whom they accordingly receive consignments, often remitting their acceptances for the same in advance, on the expectation that future sales will put them in sufficient funds to retire their acceptances when due. As these transactions multiply, the relation of principal and agent becomes more complicated in interest, and a clear and complete statement of credits and debits on his principal's account is one of the most essential duties of the factor, which a court of equity will compel him to render, if need be, and for want of which, when refused, an action for damages will lie against him at common law. The law gives him a lien upon the property in his hands for the general balance, composed of advances, expences, and commission, due from his principal; and the produce of sales, as well as the goods before sale, are subject to this lien. He may therefore think it prudent for his own behalf to effect an insurance on the property of the principal in his hands; and unless he is expressly forbidden he may insure in his principal's name, and at his expense; but if the principal requires him to do so, it then becomes his duty, and negligence as to that might leave him answerable for the consequences of accidental fire. He has an interest obviously in keeping the property safe. The law imposes on him the duty of exercising ordinary care and diligence for its protection, but if there is no failure therein upon his part, he is not liable for damage happening to it through violence or accident, as by robbery, or fire, which a prudent, careful man under the circumstances could not have prevented. principal, and with a view to a right of set-off which the other has against him, the disclosure of the real principal is not suffered afterwards to deprive the other of his right of set-off. The principal may recover against his factor by action for the neglect of his duty, or disobedience to his instructions if loss occur thereby, as if he purchases goods at a limited price, and fraudulently sells them again for his own profit. If a factor, without the orders of his principal, exports goods prohibited by the Customs' laws, aud the same are seized, the loss is the factor's; and so, if he pay money without the direction of his employer, or sells his goods at an undervalue, or exports goods of an improper quality, he is answerable for the damage. And if a factor exports goods of a different quality or kind from those he was directed to purchase, or sends them to a place other than that to which he was ordered to send them, the merchant may refuse to accept them, and may recover any damage he has sustained, in consequence of his neglect, from the factor. The rights and liabilities of merchants and factors are governed by the laws of the place in which they are domiciled, and any contract which may be made by either of them must be governed by the law of the place where it is made, and these rules are acted upon by the courts of justice of every civilized nation. Thus, since the passing of the abovementioned statutes, a foreign merchant cannot recover his goods from the pledgee of his factor in England, though he be totally ignorant of the change which has taken place in the law. There is another description of factor, who acts under what is called a del credere commission, where, for an additional percentage, he engages for the solvency of the purchasers of the goods consigned to him. This contract, it is evident, arises on the supposition that the factor being resident among the purchasers, must be better able to judge of their solvency than the principal, residing in a foreign country. For a long time it was considered that under this arrangement those who dealt with the factor were liable to him alone, and that he was liable, in the first instance, to his employer; it has, however, been decided that the factor stands in the relation of a surety for the persons with whom he deals on account of the employer, and that he is liable to his employer only in case of their default. Del credere is an Italian mercantile phrase, of the same signification as the English word guarantee, and the Scotch warrandice. (See Russell on Factors; Story on Agency; Id. on Bailments; Sir Wm. Jones on Baiments; Paley on Principal and Agent; Chitty on Contracts, by J. A. Russell.) FACTOR, a name given to any algebraical expression considered as part of a product. Thus, a and a+ are the factors of the product a (a + x), or a2 + a x. Any quantity may be made an apparent factor of any other. Thus in a a = b x b In his transactions about the goods of his principal in the market he is bound by the usage of trade, when that is not expressly negatived by his instructions. If it is not usual therefore to sell on credit, and if he yet does so, he is answerable for the consequences of this deviation from his authority. In other respects he is bound to exercise a ordinary skill, caution, and diligence, in the discharge of his duties as factor. By the common law of this country the factor has no authority to pledge the goods of his principal. The disadvantage of this rule with regard to a class of agents who are in the daily habit of binding themselves by their acceptances in favour of the principal, in dependence upon the market and their ability to realise the goods in time to meet the bills at maturity, became so obvious, that the British legislature twice interfered by statute, the 6 Geo. IV. c. 94, and the 5 & 6 Vict. c. 39, to place these agents, in this respect, upon a footing suitable to the necessities of trade and the dictates of prudence. The results of this legislation now are, that a factor may pledge goods or documents of title in his possession for advances to himself, with security to the lender, provided the advances, which must not include an antecedent debt, were bonâ fide, and that the lender had no notice of the pledge being contrary to the factor's authority, or made malâ fide in respect of his principal. If the loan is made on a written contract to deposit goods, a pledge in accordance therewith is protected, unless the lender have notice of the factor's want of authority prior to the receipt of the goods; and even an antecedent debt is a good consideration for the pledge to the extent of the factor's lien against the principal, if the pledgee at the time did not know of the factor's agency. Goods or locuments of title already on pledge may be replaced by other goods or documents of title in the hands of the pledgee, subject to the coninuing lien. Documents of title are now said to be intrusted to the actor, so as to entitle him to pledge them whether they come immeliately from the owner or in virtue of his having had possession of the goods or of some other documents of title before. A sale by a factor creates a contract between his principal and the ouyer, and the principal may maintain an action against the purchaser for the price, or by notice may direct him not to pay the money to the factor, which is binding on the purchaser, except in so far as the factor has a lien upon the money against his principal. In the absence of any such notice payment to the factor is a good discharge of the debt. By a purchase through a factor in his own name the seller has the option, as soon as he knows the name of the principal, of taking either the factor or his principal as his debtor in the transaction. But if a bargain is effected with a factor under the opinion that he is a is an apparent factor of a. But b is not properly called a factor of a, unless it happen that when b is made 0, is not thereby made infinite. Thus the two equations But x is a real factor; a sin x 1, and =8. sin c X = 0, FACTORIALS. The subject treated under this word is one which daily becomes of more importance in mathematical analysis, and takes its rise at the commencement of algebra. When we first begin to number, we easily make the transition from integers to fractions, because we are accustomed to consider ourselves as reckoning simple magnitude, of which each unit can be divided into parts homogeneous with itself. [NUMBER.] Be the unit what it may, in the case of simple magnitude, it might as well have been any fraction of what it is, so far as the possibility of conceiving and performing arithmetical operations is concerned. But when we come to count operations, not magnitudes, the case is much altered; we can no longer say at pleasure that we can conceive or introduce fractions. Certainly, as to additions, we think we need not stop to learn what a fractional number of them means. If, after having thought for a moment of six additions of 20 and seven additions of 20, we ask ourselves what ought to be meant by six and a half additions of 20, we imagine that it must necessarily mean six additions of 20, followed by an addition of 10. But this notion, though the most simple, and therefore adopted as a basis, is not necessary. The algebraist knows very well that having proved the equation p(x, m) = x+mb to be true whenever m is an integer, he has not proved it to be true when m is a fraction: in fact, p(x, m) =x+mb cos 2mr would equally satisfy his demonstration, and an infinite number of other solutions might be named. When we come to reckon numbers of multiplications, we begin from unity, and say, let a" signify that unity is multiplied n times following by a. Now this symbol is, from the beginning, distinctly FACTORIALS. a line was measured by the capacity of its square. The object of the A name was to be found for this extension. The notion of calling conceivable, whether a be integer or fractional, under the usual and easy extension to fractions of the idea of multiplication; but it is not, 2, 3, 4, &c. the powers of x, was an extension of the term as used by or ought not to be, so intelligible when n is a fraction. What are four Euclid, which applied to the square on a line only. Not that the and a half multiplications by 36? The beginner will say, four multi-square on a line was originally called its power, but that the power of plications by 36, followed by a multiplication by 18; but this mode of defining breaks down immediately, for the two half operations would make more than the whole: two successive multiplications by 18 are equivalent to more than a multiplication by 36. It is multiplication by 6 which is the half operation to multiplication by 36. It is true that we do not apply the phrase fraction of an operation in our descriptive language; but we apply the symbol in our symbols. For just as every al in a denotes one multiplication by a, every adenotes that multiplication which twice repeated is equivalent to one multiplication by a. In like manner a is the multiplier which being used 7 We are not going to times, gives the same result as a used 3 times. give the theory of simple powers, but only to put it in connection with what follows; and the reader will do well to observe, that in the very first ideas of ratios [ADDITION OF RATIOS] the notion of numerical quantity entering as a multiplier in repeated operations was so much in the minds of those who framed Euclid's language, that they spoke of what were really multiplications as if they had been additions. The same thing may be traced in calling 100 to 1 the duplicate ratio of that of 10 to 1 [RATIO], and 10 to 1 the subduplicate ratio of that of 100 to 1: duplicate means double, and subduplicate means half. The beginner must learn to understand numbers with reference to their force as indices of operation, and even the advanced student may require more study of this part of the subject than he suspects himself wanting. Again, to establish the equation (x, m)=x when m is an integer, is not the same thing as establishing The French, on the other hand, follow Euler and Legendre in connecting the factorials from the outset with definite integrals, and the latter in adopting a specific notation, not derived from that of powers. Legendre signifies 1.2.3....n by r (n+1), and hence the name of gamma-functions has been applied to them: they are best called factorial functions. We shall give a slight account of the subject so far as it is in the way to be speedily reckoned among the elementary parts of mathe matics. A series or a product of n terms is only distinctly conceivable when n is integer, but if it can be represented by a function in which n enters as a usual symbol of magnitude, and not as a number of terms or operations, then the function is intelligible, though not the in algebra is well known [Roor.] to be in its representative of the series, when n is a fraction. To take a very m ཎ/.zem { m cos2k+V-1 sin 2} where k is any integer. xm\α= x(x+α)(x+2a). ..... (x+m—}a) (x+m-1a)=-=μmļa 1 1.2.3.. . . . n = nnl−1, and so on. This notation certainly opens the road to convenient expression of a large number of striking formula: take its binomial theorem for instance, N -1 -xn-2\ay2\a + ... (x + y)nla = xnla + nxch−1|aylla+n~ 2 which is perfectly analogous to the ordinary theorem. Also the following: 2-3 + . . .) m = 2.3 +..... 1+ (ma)1ax+(ma)2!a ~~ + (ms)° which is true for all values of m, and gives the binomial theorem if A=1, a=-1, and the exponential theorem if Ax=1, a=0. The analogous theorem to Taylor's is A3px h2-1x Ax2 1.2 (x+h)=4x+ which is well known. +.... We think it is to be regretted that this notation has not been more adopted in England: we do not remember at this moment any writer who has made much use of it, except Mr. Peter Nicholson, in his works on Involution and on Increments. phrase 'less than nothing' was invented, it would have been said is absurd except when n is a positive integer. In the times when the -6) or 21. All that we should now say is boldly that 23 terms of this series are × 2 × 34, or 35-8, and that that the function which, when n is integer, is equal to 1+. becomes 358, and 21, when n is 24 and-7. Whether we are likely to be the gainers by refusing extensions of language which naturally present themselves, remains to be seen: it seems to us that ' -7 terms But there is an infinite number of ways of representing, for example, a function which is 1+2+....+n when n is an integer. If on be a function which is unity whenever n is an integer, such as cos2πn, 1+sin2n, &c., then in (n+1) x on answers the condition as well as n (n+1). It is usual however to start with a radical function which is free from periodic multipliers, and there is generally no difficulty in deciding upon the selection. In all the cases which are most useful, the radical function is the one which is clear of all sines and cosines. But it is to be remembered that in this branch of the subject we have not advanced so far as to make it coextensive with the theory of powers: it is in fact precisely in the condition of the theory of powers before the discovery of the multiplicity of values in " when n is fractional. We are thus limited to an arithmetical view of the subject. Some writers have censured Legendre for employing a new symbol r (n+1), when 1 was already in use: if, which may be doubtful, he had heard of the latter before he invented the former, he would, in our opinion, still have acted judiciously in inventing the additional symbol. He might have argued that it would not be wise to associate the second symbol with notions which are only true of the arithmetical case of it. As soon as the complete theory of the expression shall be given, 1all is ready for it: in the mean while r (n+1) expresses the arithmetical case of it, just as x expresses that of x". * We translate quite literally, to show that Laertius was not geometer enough to know that the subtending and containing was said of the right angle, not of the triangle. His words are rey duvara which Kraus, who in his turn was not geometer enough to venture the rendering of player into Latin, translates tantundem valere. We take Laertius as meaning that the hypothenuse was as powerful as the two sides together: whether he understood his own uses of the same phrase, see IRRATIONAL, phrase, or only caught it from the geometers, is another question. For other n = 4, and so on. 2. The equation г(n+1)=nrn, so obviously true when n is an integer, is always true; giving also г(n+1)=n (n−1)............... (n—m) г (n—m) for every integer value of m. Hence a table of values which extends through one unit is sufficient: and the most convenient interval is that from n=1 to n=2. If, for instance, we wanted to calculate from such a table the value of r (54) we should reduce it to 44 x 34 x 24 × 1 × г (14), and take r(1) from the table. Similarly rn, when n is less than unity, would be found from г (1+n)÷n. When n is very small, In is 1÷n nearly. 3. The labour of calculating the table is much lessened by the following equation: гn x г(1―n) = The student who desires to know more of the theory may consult Kramp's Analyse des Réfractions Astronomiques,' Strasburg, 1799, 4to., and the article Factorielles,' in the Supplemental (or third) volume of Montferrier's 'Dictionnaire des Sciences Mathématiques,' Paris, 1840, 4to. Also the article Facultat' in Grunert's Supplement to Klügel's Worterbuch der Reinen Mathematik,' Leipzig, 1836, 2 vols. 8vo. On the form Tx see Legendre's well known works, the 'Exercices du Calcul Integral,' and that on Elliptic Functions. Some of the substance of these is in the treatise on the 'Differential Calculus', in the 'Library of Useful Knowledge.' FACTORIES; FACTORY-SYSTEM. The word factory has had two different meanings. It formerly meant an establishment of merchants and factors resident in foreign countries, who were governed by certain regulations adopted for their mutual support and assistance against the undue encroachments or interference of the government of the countries in which they resided. In modern times these factories have, in a great measure, ceased to exist; because of the greater degree of security which merchants feel as regards both the justice of those governments and the protection, when needed, of their own country. The Venetians, Genoese, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English have all had establishments in the nature of factories. In China the Portuguese established a factory at Macao, and the English at Canton. In and afterwards procured for the precinct assigned to them some most instances factories have at first obtained the privilege of trading, exemption from the jurisdiction of the native courts. In this state of things the supreme government of the country whose subjects have established the factory prepare laws for its control and administration, and treat it in fact as if it were its dependency, though the sovereignty of the native government is undisputed. But in its usual acceptation, the word factory has now a different meaning. Modern legislation has declared that a factory means any building wherein steam, water, or other mechanical power is used to work any machinery employed in the manufacture of cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute, or tow. What is called the Factory System owes its origin to the inventions and skill of Arkwright; and it is probable that but for the invention of spinning machinery, and the consequent necessary aggregation of large numbers of workmen in cotton-mills, the name would never has been brought to its highest state of perfection. The power of have been thus applied. It is in these mills that the factory system subdivision of employment according to strength and skill, and that of bringing to bear upon every distinct process exactly as much force as is necessary, without waste, are the two great and valuable advantages of the factory system. The cotton-mills, and some of the circum which is true when n lies between 0 and 1. One very useful result of stances connected with them, are noticed under COTTON MANUit is r = √π. It is FACTURE. 4. There is a constant to be introduced, which we shall call Y, the The legislature has interfered to prevent children in factories from importance of which may in time compete with that of T and €. being tasked beyond their strength, to the permanent injury of their the limit of the expression 1+21+31+ +x-1-log x, as x is constitutions. This abuse was the more to be apprehended, because a increased without limit: it is also the value of 6. A table of the values of comm. log. г(1+x) is given by Legendre for every thousandth of a unit from x=000 to x=999: an abridg ment of this table, with means of completing it, is in the 'Diff. Calc., Library of Useful Knowledge,' p. 587. This function T is a fundamental mode of expression for the results of large classes of definite integrals. [INTEGRALS, DEFINITE.] 7. The function (n+1) is the value, or one of the values, of 11, and we have large proportion of the children engaged in cotton-spinning are not directly employed by the masters, but are under the control of the spinners-a highly paid class of workmen, whose earnings greatly depend upon the length of time during which they can keep their young assistants at work. A parliamentary committee sat for the investigation of this subject in 1832, and subsequently a commission was issued by the crown for ascertaining, by examinations at the factories themselves, the kind and degree of abuses that prevailed, and for suggesting the proper remedies. In consequence of these inquiries, an act was passed in 1833 for regulating factories. Attempts had been made in 1802, 1816, and 1831, to legislate for the protection of factory workers; but only on a small scale. The Act of 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 103) contains numerous details; but the chief matters that relate to the subject are the following:1. After January 1, 1834, no person under 18 years of age shall be allowed to work in the night, that is, between a quarter past eight P.M. and half-past five A.M., in any cotton or other factory in which steam or water, or any other mechanical power, is used to propel the machinery, except in lace factories. 2. No person under 18 shall be employed more than 12 hours in one day, nor more than 69 in one week. 3. There shall be allowed in the course of every day not less than 1 hours for meals to every person restricted to the performance of 12 hours' work. 4. After January 1, 1834, no child shall be employed under 9 years of age, except in silk-mills. 5. After March 1, 1834, than 48 hours in any one week, nor more than 9 hours in any day, who no child, except in silk-mills, shall be employed in any factory more shall not be 11 years old; nor after March 1, 1835, who shall not be 12 years old; nor after March 1, 1836, who shall not be 13 years old; worked during the day in more factories than one. and these hours of work shall not be exceeded, even if the child has 6. Children and young persons, whose hours of work are regulated, shall be entitled to two holidays and eight half-holidays in the year. 7. Children, whose hours of work are restricted to 9 hours a day, are not to be employed without obtaining a certificate from a physician or surgeon, certifying that they are of the ordinary strength and appearance of children of the ages before mentioned, which certificate is to be countersigned by some inspector or justice. 8. The crown is to appoint, during pleasure, four persons to be inspectors of factories, with extensive powers as magistrates, to examine the children employed in the factories, and to inquire respecting their condition, employment, and education; and one of the secretaries of state shall have power, on the application of an inspector, to appoint superintendents to assist in carrying out the provisions of the act. 9. The inspectors are to make all rules necessary for the execution of the act, and to enforce the attendance at school, for at least two hours daily out of six days in the week, of children employed in factories; from whose weekly wages a deduction, not exceeding a penny in every shilling, is to be made for the expense of schooling. 10. No child shall be employed who shall not, on Monday of every week, give to the factory master a certificate of his or her attendance at school for the previous week. 11. The interior walls of every factory shall be whitewashed every year. 12. A copy or abstract of the act shall be hung up in a conspicuous part of every factory. 13. The inspectors shall regularly, once a year, report their proceedings to one of the secretaries of state. There are other clauses regulating the hours of working in mills where the use of water-power instead of steam-power disturbs the uniformity of the working; the steps to be taken in order to obtain regular certificates of age for the children requiring them; the erection of schools, where necessary; and the mode of enforcing the provisions of the act. In the following year a short explanatory act was passed, to render more clear the meaning of the legislature on certain points; but with this exception, no further change was made till 1844. Committees of the House of Commons sat in 1840 and in 1841, and bilis were from time to time introduced by individual members; but the Act of 1833 remained the groundwork of all the proceedings in respect to factories. The Act itself was, as we have already stated, in great part the result of a commission which had been appointed in the early part of 1833, and which had collected information by means of district commissioners in all the factory districts. This local machinery formed a groundwork for the inspectorship afterwards established by the government when the act was obtained. Four inspectors were appointed, and the British Islands were mapped out into four great divisions; the cotton and woollen district of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the immediate neighbourhood, forming the 1st; the eastern and southern counties of England the 2nd; some parts of the West of England, nearly the whole of Wales, and the southern half of Ireland, constituting the 3rd; the northern half of Ireland, the whole of Scotland, and the four northern counties of England, the 4th. Each district was placed under one inspector, who made arrangements for becoming personally acquainted with every factory in his district employed for textile manufactures. Surgeons were appointed to grant the certificates required for the children; a system of occasional supervision was established; the inspectors communicated with the chief mill-owners on any points of difficulty which occurred; and the schooling of the children was gradually entered upon. One great difficulty however was this, that many manufacturers, as a means of escaping from the provisions of the Act, gradually discharged the children who were within the specified ages, and employed others of an age to which the education and the working-hours clauses did not apply; and many young children were thrown out of employ in consequence. The Act rendered imperative some sort of schooling for the factory children; but it did not lay down rules for its government. The arrangements accordingly became of a very crude and heterogeneous character. The factory children received their education from five different sorts of schools, Sunday Schools, Dame and Private Schools, Factory Schools, Church of England Schools, and Dissenters' Schools. The disposal of the children on Sundays was a matter which did not come under the control of the inspectors; but the four classes of week-day schools were those which affected the daily regulations of the factories. The dame-schools or private schools, kept by mistresses or masters for their own profit, and not under the control or management of any other person, were of a very mean and inefficient kind, utterly wanting, in respect to instruction, books, and discipline, in the means of working out the required object. The factory-schools were such as were held in or near the factory where the children were employed, and were under the control and management of the owner of the factory. The Church Schools and the Dissenters' Schools, supported in many cases by powerful religious denominations, partook of the general character of such classes of schools, in respect to education and discipline. Many of the factory-schools, where the owner cared very little about the matter, were as bad as the dame-schools; whereas, in some cases the mill-owners took great interest and expended considerable sums in giving efficiency to the schools. At Messrs. Marshall's, at Leeds, for instance, a neat building was erected purposely as a schoolroom for the factory children, admirably fitted with every requisite for a large school. In 1844 an Act was passed (7 & 8 Vict. c. 15) which came into operation in October of the same year, and effected certain changes in the law as to factories. An Office of Factory Inspectors was established in London. Persons beginning to occupy a factory were required to send notice of it to this office. The powers of inspectors to enter factories and schools are increased. The certifying surgeons are to be appointed by the inspectors; and the certificates are to have a definite form and expression. The whitewashing or painting of a factory is placed under strict regulations. Provision is made for the protection of children from the effects of the water in wet-flax spinning, and from accidents by the machinery while in motion. Children may be admitted and employed at eight years of age (the former minimum having been nine years). The maximum amount of daily work for each child is seven hours, subject to diminution in certain cases. All females are regarded in the same light as " young persons" (that is, persons from thirteen to eighteen years of age), as to the limitation of the hours of work. The recovery of lost time by the stoppage of machinery, the regulation of the meal-times in the factories, the holidays given to the children, the control of their attendance at school, the inspection of dangerous machinery, and many other points, are modified or extended in this Act; which however preserves the general character of the Act of 1833. Before touching on the legislation of later years, we will present a few statistics of factories. The number of power-looms employed is to a certain degree, an index to the extent of factory operations; since the substitution of a power-loom for a hand-loom involves the substitution of a large and well-organised factory for, perhaps, the humble cottage of the hand-loom weaver. In a return made to government in 1836, the number of power-looms then employed is stated to have been about 92,000. There was another return concerning the number of factories, and of the persons working therein, in the same year; this gave about 304,000 persons in about 2860 mills, or 106 to each. By the commencement of 1839 the numbers had thus risen:-420,000 persons in about 4200 mills, or 100 to each. A return for 1843 gives a series of numbers under three different points of view; the first being according to the kind of textile material; the second, according to the location in different parts of the empire; and the third, according to the ages and sexes of the workpeople. England and Wales Scotland Ireland 3,689 22,850,010 272,588 109,824 34,155 91 550 2,256,403 23,811 19,861 532,303 2,517 4,532 495,707 929 75,688 38 24,687 Total 4,330 25,638,716 298,916 134,217 35,122 596,082 In this table, the horse-power includes both steam-engines and waterwheels employed in working the machinery in the factories; they are nearly in the ratio of four-fifths steam-power to one-fifth water-power. The term children is applied to those at and under 13 years of age; from 13 to 18 the term applied is young persons. Taking the whole of the United Kingdom in one entry, and regarding only the ages and sexes of the persons employed, we find the following numbers : persons, and women are liable to be injured by, either in passing or in their ordinary occupations in the factory. Very violent accusations and recriminations had arisen on this subject, and the statute was intended to settle the question. It will be seen, on reference to the articles BLEACHING and CALICOPRINTING, that strenuous efforts have been made to bring bleachworks and dye-works under the same regulations as spinning and weaving factories and print-works. Much inquiry by commissioners, and much debating in parliament, were bestowed upon this subject in the periods between 1854 and 1857. For a brief statement of the results we refer to the articles above named. There was also, about the year 1857, a strenuous effort made by some of the factory operatives and their advocates in parliament to obtain a "ten hours' bill," but without success. Having in former paragraphs given a few statistics of factories at various dates since the commencement of factory legislation, we here give a few more relating to 1856, the last year concerning which any very exact enumeration has been made; for, it may be remarked, the half-yearly reports of the inspectors usually advert to current events, and not to total results. The five kinds of factories for textile goods (cotton, woollen, worsted, flax, and silk) were all examined, throughout every part of the United Kingdom, and certain particulars were noted down concerning all. These particulars, and the figures relating to them, we will present in a more condensed form, sufficient for the present purpose :— Cotton factories Woollen factories Worsted factories Flax factories Silk factories Persons. 1,932 330,924 The number of factories here given (4600) is in excess of that given in the first table (4330); this probably arose from some of the factories being entered twice, in cases where they worked mixed fabrics of cotton and woollen, or cotton and silk, or woollen and silk. It is proper also to bear in mind that there are a few other discrepancies in the figures for different years, not explained in the returns from which they are taken. The cotton factories were rather less than half the whole number, but employed more than half the entire number of operatives. The average number of operatives in cotton factories was 120; the average in all factories was 75. Out of the 1932 cotton factories, no less than 1235 were in Lancashire; out of the 1998 woollen and worsted factories, no less than 1298 were in Yorkshire. It will be seen that a remarkable parallelism exists in these numbers; 64 per cent. of all the cotton factories were in Lancashire, and 65 per cent. of all the woollen and worsted factories were in Yorkshire. The factory legislation since 1844 has comprised five statutes. In 1846 a new Act came into operation, which brought calico-printing works within the range of the inspectors. By the terms of another Act, passed in 1847, the children and young persons are to work not more than eleven hours a day from July 1, 1847, and not more than ten hours after the 1st of May, 1848. The same provisions were made in relation to women of whatever age; and it thus arose that all women, boys, and girls employed in factories were limited in their hours of working, adult males being alone excepted. Another Act, passed in 1850, introduced a few minor changes, chiefly with a view to prevent night-work in factories. In 1853 an Act was passed making further regulations touching the employment of young children in the evening or night. It was enacted that, after the 1st of September in that year, children should not begin work before six in the morning, or remain at work after six in the evening; in the winter months the hours might be from seven till seven, on due notice being given to the sub-inspectors; work to end on Saturdays at two o'clock. These regulations, subject to exceptions under special circumstances, were to be incorporated with such of the provisions of previous statutes as were not repealed or modified by them. In 1856 an Act was passed to remove doubts concerning the statute of 1844 in reference to mill-gearing; the mill-owners had interpreted this statute in one sense, the inspectors in another; and thereupon the new Act declared that the mill-fencing should only apply to such parts of the machinery as children, young The largest items of course relate to the cotton manufacture in England and Wales. The figures are truly astonishing; 2,050 factories, moving machinery, 14,000 males employed under 13, 134,000 over 26,000,000 spindles, 280,000 power looms, 86,000 horse-power for 13, 10,000 females under 13, and 180,000 over 13. In the interval between 1850 and 1856, the several items, as will be seen on comdifferent years, and three classes of factory operatives, it has been Taking four parison, varied very unequally among themselves. found that the latter have changed somewhat in the relative per This seems to show that women have increased in number in factories more rapidly than men, boys, or girls. In the article EMBROIDERY AND SEWING MACHINES, it is mentioned that shirts, collars, and other kinds of ready-made linen sold in London, are in a large degree sewn and stitched by machinery. We may here add a few words on this subject in relation to the north of Ireland, where the factory-system has been brought into connection with it. The manufacturers of Manchester and Glasgow, and the wholesale dealers of those towns and of the metropolis, have found out that the Irish peasant girls work very neatly with the needle, and are eager to obtain employment on linen, cotton, or muslin work, whether by the ordinary plying of the needle, or by tambouring and sewing machines. Some of the firms now own large establishments in Ireland, where the factory system is in part carried out. In and near Londonderry alone there are more than a dozen factories in which sewing-machines are employed; these machines are at present about 700 in number; and the working of them, with subsidiary operations, employ 1800 women and girls. Taking one with another, these persons Employed. Females Employed. Total Employed. |