certainly acting against the sense of the Act of 1844, but that this Act itself contained certain words rendered it meaningless. "By this decision, the Ten Hours' Act was abolished."[1] A crowd of masters, who until then had been afraid of using the relay-system for young persons and women, now took it up heart and soul.[2]
But on this apparently decisive victory of capital, followed at once a revulsion. The workpeople had hitherto offered a passive, although inflexible and unremitting resistance. They now protested in Lancashire and Yorkshire in threatening meetings. The pretended Ten Hours' Act, was thus simple humbug, parliamentary cheating, had never existed! The Factory Inspectors urgently warned the Government that the antagonism of classes had arrived at an incredible tension. Some of the masters themselves murmured: "On account of the contradictory decisions of the magistrates, a condition of things altogether abnormal and anarchial obtains. One law holds in Yorkshire, another in Lancashire; one law in one parish of Lancashire, another in its immediate neighborhood. The manufacturer in large towns could evade the law, the manufacturer in country districts could not find the people necessary for the relay-system, still less for the shifting of hands from one factory to another," &c. And the first birthright of capital is equal exploitation of labour-power by all capitalists.
Under these circumstances a compromise between masters and men was effected that received the seal of Parliament in the additional Factory Act of August 5th, 1850. The working day for "young persons and women," was raised from 10 to 1012 hours for the first five days of the week, and was shortened to 712 on the Saturday. The work was to go on between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.,[3] with pauses of not less than 112 hours for meal-times, these meal-times to be allowed at one and the
