t in the
condition of the mass of workers as shall render the new machinery
effective; unless the change in human nature comes first, a change in
external conditions will be useless. On the other hand, it is evident
that no moral or intellectual education can be brought effectively to
bear upon the mass of human beings, whose whole energies are necessarily
absorbed by the effort to secure the means of bare physical support.
Thus it is made to appear as if industrial and moral progress must each
precede the other, a thing which is impossible. Those who urge that the
two forms of improvement must proceed _pari passu, _do not precisely
understand what they propose.

The falsehood of the above dilemma consists in the assumption that
industrial reformers wish to proceed by a sudden leap from an old
industrial order to a new one. Such sudden movements are not in
accordance with the gradual growth which nature insists upon as the
condition of wise change. But it is equally in accordance with nature
that the material growth precedes the moral. Not that the work of moral
reconstruction can lag far behind. Each step in this industrial
advancement of the poor should, and must, if the gain is to be
permanent, be followed closely and secured by a corresponding advance in
moral and intellectual character and habits. But the moral and religious
reformer should never forget that in order of time material reform comes
first, and that unless proper precedence be yielded to it, the higher
ends of humanity are unattainable.

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