The manufacturers sought to side-track the Ten-Hours Bill by proposing that nothing should be done until a committee of Parliament should make thorough inquiry into the alleged conditions in the mills. But the very commission which they asked for could not go against the evidence of their own eyes in the factory towns, swarming with ignorant, ragged child-operatives, prematurely old. The commission reported: (1) that the work hours of children and adults were the same; (2) that such labor was resulting in the permanent physical and intellectual deterioration of the young; (3) that these maltreated children were not free agents, but hired out by parents or guardians; and finally, "that a case was made out for the interference of the legislature on behalf of the children employed in factories." In place of the radical measure of Lord Ashley the government carried a substitute, the Factory Law of 1833. "Night work was prohibited to persons under eight even in cotton, wool, worsted, hemp, flax, tow, and linen spinneries and weaving mills; children from nine to thirteen were not allowed to work more than forty- eight hours a week, and young persons thirteen to eighteen were restricted to sixty-eight hours a week. In silk factories children might be admitted under nine, and children under thirteen were to be allowed ten hours a day. Provision was made for a certain amount of school attendance, and factory inspectors were provided to inquire into violations of the statute." At the time Ashley and his friends bewailed the passage of the Factory Act as a defeat, though the former eventually admitted that "it contained some humane and highly useful provisions, and established for the first time the great principle that labor and education should be combined." Defeat, if that be a defeat, which forces your foe to adopt your own principles in order to win, only proved Lord Ashley's superior fitness for the leadership of the cause. Instead of abandoning the contest he began to prepare for a fresh assault by collecting information touching every part of the question. He visited the workrooms and lodgings of the operatives in every part of the land, examining at first hand their condition, and studying the problem in all its bearings with the same persistency and intellectual force which had won him his "first- class" at the university. Nothing which could subserve his cause escaped his searching inquiry, and when he arose to address Parliament his mastery of his subject was so complete as to baffle the skill of the few who durst ask him questions.