The Government is however bound to assert its right to intervene, in order to prevent the existence of, and, where they have arisen, to remove, industrial conditions which are injurious to the health and welfare of the workers as a whole or any particular section of them. This is action in respect of which every Government would always have behind it the full approval of the social conscience. But for the intervention of the Government in days gone by, the dehumanizing conditions attending child-labour and the employment of women in workshops would never have been removed, and English factories would not be to-day as they are, the first in the world for health, sanitation and good amenities. In the early days of last century, when factory legislation was first proposed, the employers of one large Yorkshire woollen town came in formal deputation to London to protest that, if there were any interference by Act of Parliament with their liberty to employ as they pleased, in their woollen manufactories, young children for such hours as they thought fit, a death-blow would be struck to the trade of England. Those days have gone, and with them that class of employer. Under the Factory Acts and the skilled and far-sighted supervision of the Home Office Factory Inspectors, an immense amount has been done to promote the health of the workers, the safety of their occupations, and freedom from preventible dangers. None but the most hardened of individualistic employers—and few of them now remain—object to sound and reasonable State regulation in matters such as these. He welcomes it for his own protection. Conciliation and not Intervention