All along the line our social legislation has been characterised by timidity and procrastination. Dr. Thomas Percival's statement of the case for State interference in factories (1796) was left for six years without notice from the Central Government, and the first Factory Act, 1802, was applied to apprentices only at a time when the apprenticeship system was falling into disuse. Later on, in response to the high-souled agitation of Sadler, Oastler, and Lord Ashley (afterwards Shaftesbury), after years of hesitation and vacillation, various inadequate measures were taken, but never quite the right thing at the right moment, never designed as part of a far-sighted policy that would recreate English industrial life and make it worth living--as it might be made--for the toilers of field and factory, workshop and mine. This weakness and backwardness in the policy of the Home Department is no doubt largely due to the covetousness of the capitalist and the control he is able to exercise on politics. It should be remembered, however, that the capitalist, or rather the capitalist employer, does not present an unbroken front. In point of fact the best manufacturers do not oppose social legislation. They understand the need of a common rule, and the regulations of the Factory Acts have usually been modelled on the existing practice of the better kind of employer. Labour legislation is weakened and kept back by several causes other than the greed of employers. Among these may be mentioned the cumbersome and out-of-date procedure of the House of Commons, and the interminable delays that dog the progress of non-Governmental measures, even when these have the approval of all parties. Other causes are to be found in the class selfishness of the upper strata of society, their indifference to the needs of the people, their ignorance of the whole conditions of the industrial population's life. With bright exceptions, such as the late Lord Shaftesbury and some now living whose names will occur to the reader, not only the aristocracy and the very rich, but the conservative middle-class, the dwellers in suburbs and watering-places, cling to the idea of a servile class. They object to industrial regulations which give the workers statutory rights amongst their employers; they object to increasing the amenity of factory life and diminishing the supply of domestic servants. Labour legislation remains backward and undeveloped for want of the support of an enlightened public opinion.