Factory System, a name applied to modern methods of manufacturing. The essence of the system is the bringing together of wage-earners to labor under supervision. A building or group of buildings used to shelter raw materials, machinery, wage-earners, and products is known as a factory. The wage-earnersmen, women, or children-are called operatives or hands. Factories of a certain sort existed among the ancients. In Greece, Rome, and the older civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, India, and China, slaves worked under taskmasters, but these were not modern factories. The guild system of the medieval ages was based on workshops in which the master and a limited number of journeymen and apprentices worked together. The guild system was followed by the domestic system. The features of this system may be understood from an often quoted passage from James' History of the Worsted Manufacture: The work was entirely domestic, and its different branches widely scattered over the country. First, the manufacturer had to travel on horseback to purchase his raw material among the farmers, or at the great fairs held in those old towns that had formerly been the exclusive markets, or, as they were called, "staples" of wool. The wool, safely received, was handed over to the sorters, who rigorously applied their gage of required length of staple and mercilessly chopped off by shears or hatchet what did not reach the standard as wool fit for the clothing trade. The long wool thus passed into the hands of the combers, and, having been brought back by them into the combed state, was again carefully packed and strapped on the back of the sturdy horse, to be taken into the country to be spun. . . . Here, in each village, he had his agents, who received the wool, distributed it among the peasantry, and received it back as yarn. The machine employed was still the old one-thread wheel, and in summer weather on many a village green might be seen the housewives plying their busy trade, and furnishing to the poet the vision of contentment spinning at the cottage-door. Returning in safety with his yarn, the manufacturer had now to seek out his weavers, who ultimately delivered to him his camblets or russels, or serges, or tammies, or calimancoes (such were the leading names of the fibers) ready for sale to the merchant or delivery to the dyer. The domestic system is followed yet in the weaving villages of Scotland. Materials are weighed out to the weavers, who operate looms in their own cottages. The system holds on in the silk district of Lyons, France. It is more or less prevalent in Russia. The small village landholders of Switzerland eke out a winter income by taking home woodcarving, the making of parts of a watch, etc. Handmade lace is made customarily in the homes of Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland. In general it may be said that handmade goods are produced largely by domestic manufacture. The factory system has been built up under the influence of machinery. Capital is required to install machinery, and capital is required to provide shelter for machinery. Machinery and buildings mean a factory. The first modern factory is said to have been a silk factory. It was built in Derbyshire, England, in 1719. The invention of labor-saving machinery enabled factories to produce at a reduced cost. Handmade goods were driven out of the market by less expensive machine-made goods. The earlier factory buildings were rude affairs, and the machinery was of a crude type; but one labor-saving device followed another. By the time the year 1800 had arrived we may say the factory system was intrenched. Factories became profitable. Marked social changes ensued. As large factories arose work in the cottages fell off. With the growth of factories and the assemblage of operatives large cities grew up and villages disappeared from the map. A vast population left the quiet, economy, and good air of cottage homes for vile, expensive city tenements. Vice and drunkenness, which assume the most repulsive forms in crowded cities, gathered their victims into slums. The invention of machinery, requiring only attention such as the knotting of a broken thread rather than muscular strength, led to the employment of women because women could be hired cheaper than men. A child can tie a thread as deftly as a woman and can be hired to do it for less money; so children were employed. Adults were forced to go idle or work for children's wages. Home life was broken up. Home became a place for sleep and hurried meals. The change from handmade to machine-made wares, from domestic manufactures to the factory system, from conditions of rural comfort to city life, is known in history as the industrial revolution. It is difficult to realize the wretchedness that existed during the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century. There were no unions to defend the rights of labor. Thoughtless, not to say inhuman, employers were free to employ for the lowest wage they could induce anybody to work for. They were free to keep their machinery going for as many hours as they saw fit. The manager of an enterprise requiring the ownership of many horses was obliged to feed, shelter, and rest his animals or his profits vanished in dead horses; but the factory owner was troubled by no such prospect. He paid his wages, and, if the operative did not return, the manager employed another. Orphans and pauper children were shipped from the rural parishes, where it cost something to feed and educate them, to the factory towns where they could join the vast army of enslaved children. Not many years were required to demonstrate that an unregulated factory system tended to the production of stunted children, crass ignorance, not to say imbecility, and to moral degeneracy. The British public became alarmed. Sir Robert Peel, himself a wealthy manufacturer, familiar with the evils of the factory system, introduced a bill in the British Parliament as early as 1802, the title of which was "An Act for the preservation of the health and morals of apprentices and others employed in the cotton and other mills and in cotton and other factories." The bill as passed was shorn of its most useful features, but Peel came at Parliament again and again. Measures for the inspection and regulation of factories are not the least of the services rendered the world by this illustrious statesman. Parliamentary commissions' appointed to investigate reported conditions that were a disgrace to Christendom. Charles Dickens wrote tales of the shop and factory that brought indignant tears to the eye. Thomas Carlyle fumed and denounced capital for buying human life for a crust of bread. Wilberforce pleaded with Parliament to shorten hours of labor and exclude children from the workshop. The Cry of the Children by Elizabeth Barrett Browning stung the public conscience into legislative activity. Owing to more primitive conditions,--the absorption of the American people in roadmaking and in homemaking and in transportation,--and owing to the repressive measures of Parliament,--for Great Britain made it a penal offense to ship textile machinery out of the country,--the rise of the factory system was delayed a full century in the United States. The first successful American textile factory was erected at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1787. Samuel Slater, "the father of American manufactures," erected a well equipped cotton mill at Pawtucket in 1790. Lowell and other New England towns became factory centers. The earlier factory operatives were noted for intelligence and character. Lucy Larcom, as well as many a girl of the best New England families, was one of them; but the evils that arose in England soon made their appearance here. Factories grew larger, and towns grew. Typical factory conditions led to official investigation and remedial legislation. The field of factory inspection and regulation is an extensive one. Under the threefold stimulus of labor unions, considerations of national prosperity, and sentiments of common humanity, modern legislators have been active. Salutary and far-reaching factory laws have been enacted, not only by all English-speaking states, but by the countries of Continental Europe, and by India and Japan as well. England has the honor of having led the way in 1802; Germany stepped off in 1839; France followed in 1841. An International Congress in relation to labor legislation was held in Berlin in 1890, with excellent results. The factory laws of a nation may now be regarded as an index of its degree of enlightenment. The world has copied the factory legislation of the United Kingdom to a large extent. An outline of the factory laws now in force would occupy several pages. Sanitary conditions are insisted upon; ventilation, heating, and lighting have been reduced to rules; overcrowding is forbidden; dust, vapors, and gases must be removed by exhaust fans or otherwise; walls must be purified with limewater or paint; and proper toilet facilities must be provided. Strict regulations have been adopted to prevent accidents; children are not permitted to clean machinery while in motion; inspectors are authorized to require the installation of guards for vats, pans, saws, planes, cogs, gearing, belting, and shafting; elevators and hoistways are safeguarded; danger in the manufacture of explosives is reduced; doors must be unlocked during working hours and must swing outward; stairways must be ample and not too steep; fire escapes are required; and the operation of particularly dangerous machinery is reserved for experts. In no other respect have factory laws made greater advancement than in shortening and restricting the hours of labor. Laws very generally forbid the employment of females underground, bar them from certain unsuitable occupations, forbid night work, and limit the number of hours women may be permitted to work.