Published Saturday, January 27, 2007 by William H. Hutt
The early British factory system may be said to have been the most obvious feature of the Industrial Revolution. W.H. Hutt writes that there has been a general tendency to exaggerate the "evils" which characterized the factory system before the abandonment of laissez faire. Also, factory legislation was not essential to the ultimate disappearance of those "evils." Conditions which modern standards would condemn were then common to the community as a whole, and legislation not only brought with it other disadvantages, not readily apparent in the complex changes of the time, but also served to obscure and hamper more natural and desirable remedies.
(Original Text)
The Factory System of the Early Nineteenth Century (8.77 MB)