=Factory Legislation Incomplete.=--There is an idea abroad, which is quite unwarranted, that our body of factory legislation is more or less final in its character, and that it has, in fact, accomplished the purpose for which it was intended by its authors. The provisions of the Factory Acts range themselves for the most part under three heads. They deal either with educational matters, with the regulation of the hours of labour, or with sanitary conditions. It needs no argument to show that great progress in public opinion has been taking place in respect of these three points. The Public Health Act is sufficient evidence of the progressing standard of health in surroundings and conditions; the Education Act is certainly not of a final kind, and on no question has public feeling developed more rapidly of recent years than on that of the adaptation of the hours of labour to human capacity and health. If, on the one hand, the standard by which we are to test the effectiveness of such legislative provisions as come under these heads is much higher than it was a few years luck; on the other hand, it must be remembered that industrial conditions are not a hard and fixed quantity, that they vary with the progress of invention, the incidence of competition, the creation or alteration of tariff frontiers, and many other causes. The knowledge of chemical methods alone has introduced revolutionary changes into many industries, so that regulations which were drawn up ten years ago to meet a given state of things may be out of place or inoperative now. The Factory Acts, for instance, were designed in large part to protect women and children from the exhausting effects of prolonged toil, the idea at the root of the measures being the same great principle which underlies our whole system of public health. But when the agitation for the ten hours’ day culminated in the Factory Act the question, after all, was not settled. It was within the bounds of possibility that such mechanical contrivances could be devised as to make the period of legalised toil quite as harmful to the operatives, or, indeed, more so, than the longer day. The question whether intense toil concentrated into a relatively short period, is more or less trying to the human frame than if the same toil were dispersed over a relatively longer period, cannot be settled off-hand. But the fact undoubtedly remains, as I have shewn in the chapter on textile industries, that machinery has been speeded up to a point which is immensely in excess of that which prevailed when the hours were longer. At the present time, therefore, the strain upon the attention and the wear and tear of the nervous system are greatly in excess of former times, and the worker must be “on the stretch” the whole time to attend properly to the work. The illustration will serve to show how the factors governing the industrial situation shift from time to time,