interfere with them and those who worked for them, and that the civil law could do only harm and no good by its best-intentioned interference. The whole controversy has now been long settled, and it is a distinctly understood condition of our social system that the State has a right to interfere between employer and employed when the condition of things is such that the employed is not always able to protect himself. At the time when Lord Ashley started on his long and beneficent career there was practically no law which regulated the hours and the conditions of labor in the great factories. The whole factory system, the modern factory system as we understand it, was then quite a new part of our social organization. The factory, with its little army of workers, {202} men, women, and children, was managed according to the will and judgment of the owner, unless in the rare cases where the demand for labor far exceeded the supply. In most places the supply exceeded the demand, and the master was therefore free to make any conditions he pleased with his workers. If the master were a humane man, a just man, or even a far-seeing man, he took care that those who worked for him should be fairly treated, and should not be compelled to work under conditions dangerous to their health and destructive of their comfort. But if he were a selfish man, or a careless man, the workers were used merely as instruments of profit by him, or by those immediately under him; and it did not matter how soon they were used up, for there could always be found numbers enough who were eager to take their places, and were willing to undertake any task on any terms, for the sake of securing a bare living. Lord Ashley raised the whole question in the House of Commons, and brought forward a motion which ended in the appointment of a commission to inquire into the condition of the men, women, and children who worked in the factories. The commission was not long in collecting a vast amount of information as to the evils, moral and physical, brought about by the overworking of women and children in the factories. The general concurrence of public opinion, even among those who supported Lord Ashley's movement, did not seem to go beyond the protection of women and children. The adult male, it was considered, might perhaps safely be left to make the best terms he could for himself; but the inquiries of the commission left little doubt among unprejudiced minds that something must be done to secure women and children from the evils of overwork. Lord Ashley succeeded in forcing the whole question on the attention of Parliament, and an Act was passed in 1833 which did not indeed go nearly as far as Lord Ashley would have carried his principle, but which at least established the right of legislative interference for the protection of children and young persons of both sexes. The Act limited the work of children