ABSTRACT
T HE movement towards factory legislation was thefirst symptom of a reaction against the economicliberalism which reigned triumphant throughout Europe in the early nineteenth century. It was not, however, a conscious or deliberate reaction. The men who supported the factory laws had no definite theory to oppose to the prevailing sentiment in favour of individualism. They were not social philosophers. They were practical reformers, eager to apply to pressing evils the remedies which lay nearest to hand. Yet unconsciously they were the agents in a great revolution of thought and opinion. It was in the field of factory legislation that individualism suffered its first and heaviest defeat, and the factory laws may be regarded as the earliest signs of that social tendency, vaguely called collectivism, which has made such remarkable progress since. With justice, the factory reformers indignantly repudiated the titles of communist and socialist which their enemies applied to them. Yet the accusation contained more than the proverbial grain of truth. The theory underlying factory legislation, pushed to its extreme consequences, inevitably issues in something akin to socialism, and the factory reformers, though they did not know it, were blindly fighting the battle of principles to which most of them were in their hearts opposed. They supply one more illustration of the well-known truth that none go so far as those who know not where they are going.
