welve per day and the prohibition
of night work extended.

The next statute to be passed was an extension of this regulation,
though it contained the provision which had long been the most
bitterly contested of any during the whole factory law agitation. This
was the "Ten-hour Act" of 1847. From an early period in the century
there had been a strong agitation in favor of restricting by law the
hours of young persons, and from somewhat later, of women, to ten
hours per day, and this proposition had been repeatedly introduced and
defeated in Parliament. It was now carried. By this time the more
usual length of the working day even when unrestricted had been
reduced to twelve hours, and in some trades to eleven. It was now made
by law half-time for children, and ten hours for young persons and
women, or as rearranged by another law passed three years afterward,
ten and a half hours for five days of the week and a half-day on
Saturday. The number of persons to whom the Ten-hour Act applied was
estimated at something over 360,000. That is, including the children,
at least three-fourths of all persons employed in textile industries
had their hours and some other conditions of labor directly regulated
by law. Moreover, the work of men employed in the same factories was
so dependent on that of the women and the children, that many of these
restrictions applied practically to them also.

Further minor changes in hours and other details were made from time
to time, but there was no later contest on the principle of factory
legislation. The evil results which had been feared had not shown
themselves, and many of its strongest opponents had either already, or
did eventually, acknowledge the beneficial results of the laws.

*70. The Extension of Factory Legislation.*--By the successive acts of
1819, 1833, 1844, and 1847, a normal length of working day and
regulated conditions generally had been established by government for
the factories employing women and children. The next development was
an extension of the regulation of hours and conditions of labor from
factories proper to other allied fields. Already in 1842 a law had
been passed regulating labor in mines. This act was passed in response
to the needs shown by the report of a commission which had been
appointed in 1840. They made a thorough investigation of the obscure
conditions of labor underground, and reported a condition of affairs
which was heart-sickening. Children