picture of the incredibly filthy conditions under which the English labouring classes lived. The times were ripe for this Report. It attracted public attention, and exerted an important influence. Its appearance marks the first stage of social reform, which was mainly a sanitary effort to clear away the gross filth from our cities, to look after the cleansing, lighting, and policing of the streets, to create a drainage system, to improve dwellings, and in these ways to combat disease and to lower the very high death-rate.
At an early stage, however, it began to be seen that this process of sanitation, necessary as it had become, was far too crude and elementary to achieve the ends sought.
It was not enough to improve the streets, or even to regulate the building of dwellings. It was
clearly necessary to regulate also the conditions of work of the people who lived in those streets and dwellings.
Thus it was that the scheme of factory legislation was initiated. Rules were made as to the hours of labour, more especially as regards women and children, for whom, moreover, certain specially dangerous or unhealthy occupations were forbidden, and an increasingly large number of avocations were brought under Government inspection.
This second stage of social reform encountered a much more strenuous opposition than the first stage. The regulation of the order and cleanliness of the streets was obviously necessary, and it had indeed been more or less enforced even in medieval times; 2 but the regulation of the conditions of work in the interests of the worker was a more novel proceeding, and it appeared to clash both with the interests of the employers and the ancient principles of English freedom and independence, behind which the employers consequently