The Factory Question and Industrial England: 1830-1860.

By Robert Gray (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xiv plus 253pp. $59.95).

Robert Gray's The Factory Question and Industrial England, 1830-1860 provides a much needed examination of the debates surrounding factory legislation in Victorian Britain. While numerous historians have used these debates as case studies in the examination of particular issues such as child labor and bureaucratic regulation, Gray considers the debates on their own terms - emphasizing the "variable and contested meanings of the factory question, and the construction of these meanings in specific contexts, in both time and space." (p. 9) He thus incorporates studies of gender, class development, the dynamics of industrialization, state formation, and religious morality into a careful exposition on the debates' language and consequent difficulties in shaping and enforcing legislation. He weaves these themes together by focusing on the matrix of contest and negotiation that shaped an uncomfortable Victorian consensus at mid-century without eliminating ongoing disputes, and by emphasizing the importance of defining the factory in debate and reality.

Gray divides this comprehensive study into two, unequal parts: a long one focusing on the language and structure of the debates and shorter one concentrating on factory regulation and enforcement. In the first, he claims that proponents of factory legislation championed male independence by limiting direct protection to women and children and by likening factory work to slave labor. (p. 27) Gray also ties this argument to conflicting understandings of paternalism as individual freedom to control the family and an employer's responsibility to protect and care for those less fortunate (employees, women, children etc.). Against these various demands for legislation, Gray places contests over public inquiry, the need for free trade, and an argument that views the factory as a means of improvement. Here, he contrasts "common sense," a term he rightly argues we have lost the full political implications of, with professional opinion. (pp. 68-9) He also traces the various strands of religious thought that complicated employers' efforts to stop or limit legislation by emphasizing their moral responsibility over economic gain. In both cases, he demonstrates that the factory became a bounded space - a location which observers treated as separate from the rest of life.

The second part differs from the first in methodology and in content but continues the focus on issues of politics and religion and on definitions and development of the "factory." It rests on a lengthy Chapter 6 that examines incidences of prosecution under legislation. Gray does an admirable job of quantifying data from Lancashire and the West Riding to demonstrate that inspectors must be considered as part of a negotiated settlement and that their success or failure depended on local variations in type of industry, political persuasion, and religious commitment. This chapter, however, lacks sufficient qualitative evidence from inspectors and employers to enliven the quantitative analysis. By using inspectors' comments or employers' complaints, Gray might have demonstrated more concretely the specific biases and concerns that shaped protest and prosecution.

The last two chapters lay out responses to these struggles by examining the negotiated middle ground between employer and worker found after the 1847 Factory Act. Instead of all employees working only ten hours a day as agitators predicted, longer hours for male employees compensated for shortened days among females and children; such adjustments ultimately helped reinforce male authority within the working class by assuring male domination of the best paying jobs. (pp. 214-5) In exchange for shorter hours and such bolstering of male authority, employers received greater control over the workplace and intensified labor while workers negotiated and struggled for freedom within a context emphasizing worker-employer unity rather than conflict. The bounded nature of the factory and the rituals surrounding paternalism within the 1850s illustrate this compromise but also remind historians of the ongoing conflict and negotiation underpinning it.

Gray's work thus speaks to the most contentious debates in British historiography by reiterating the complex nature of the Victorian consensus and the problematic relationship between class and gender. What sets it apart, however, is its ability to give such diverse themes their due while examining the factory question so comprehensively. This ambitious endeavor results in a work difficult for readers not familiar with the general contours of the factory question or the social and political history surrounding it, but invaluable to historians concentrating on Victorian England regardless of their particular interests or historiographical biases.

Jodie M. Minor Carnegie Mellon University