There has been no retreat from the positions to which Lord Ashley carried the legislative protection of the working-classes. From time to time the Factory Laws were extended to cover the special demands of other industries, until the state had literally taken under its protection the whole class of children and young persons employed in manufacturing industries. It has done this in the name of the moral and physical health of the community. The general laws governing factories and workshops now cover a very wide scope. It is required that the building must be kept clean and sanitary; that dangerous machinery must be boxed and fenced; the hours of labor and meal-time for women and children are fixed, and children under ten may not be employed; certain holidays and half-holidays must be allowed to all "protected" persons; child-workers must go to school a certain proportion of the week; medical certificates of fitness for employment are required in the case of children; and notice of accidents causing loss of life or bodily injury must be sent to the government inspector. Many co-operated to bring about these results, but the chief advocate of all the beneficent reforms which have reinvigorated the English working-classes, saved the women from slavish toil and given them opportunity to make homes for their families, rescued the children from benumbing toil, and given them time for healthful recreation and mental improvement, is, by the common award of all, this simple-hearted Christian, Antony Ashley Cooper. On the fly-leaf of a book in his library the Earl of Shaftesbury noted in pencil some of the obstacles which beset his progress when seeking the good of the distressed children: "I had to break every political connection, to encounter a most formidable array of capitalists, mill-owners, doctrinaires, and men who by natural impulse hate all 'humanity mongers' (tell it riot in Gath!) among the Radicals, the Irishmen, and a few sincere Whigs and Conservatives.....Peel was hostile.....Fielden and Brotherton were the only 'practical' men who supported me, and to practical prophecies of overthrow of trade, of ruin to the operatives themselves, I could only oppose 'humanity' and general principles. The newspapers were on the whole friendly. Out of Parliament there was in society every form of 'good-natured' and compassionate contempt.....In few instances did any mill-owner appear on a platform with me; in still fewer the ministers of any religious denomination--so cowed were they (or in themselves so indifferent) by the overwhelming influence of the cotton-lords." Among his opponents Shaftesbury reckoned Peel, who continually sought to silence him by giving him government offices; Bright, whose malignant opposition has already been noticed; Cobden, though latterly a convert; O'Connell, Brougham, and even Gladstone, "the only member who voted to delay the bill which delivered women and children from the mines and pits."