"Robert Gray has written an important book. It is so in its own right and as a contribution to the historiography of the factory system, a subject at the core of the exciting new work being done on nineteenth-century soical and political history....Gray's engrossing book is not one for specialists alone. It should be read by any scholar with a serios interest in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, involving as it does its culture, economy, society, and polity." John G. Rule, Albion

• Part I. Voices in a Debate, c.1830–1860: 1. Factory slavery; 2. Humanitarian opinion and rhetorics of reform; 3. Popular common sense, official enquiry and the state; 4. The responsibilities of employers; 5. The factory imagined; Part II. Factory Regulation, c.1840–1860: 6. Enforcement, resistance and compliance; 7. The ten-hour day; 8. A reformed factory system?; Conclusion.

"Robert Gray has written an important book. It is so in its own right and as a contribution to the historiography of the factory system, a subject at the core of the exciting new work being done on nineteenth-century soical and political history....Gray's engrossing book is not one for specialists alone. It should be read by any scholar with a serios interest in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, involving as it does its culture, economy, society, and polity." John G. Rule, Albion

• Part I. Voices in a Debate, c.1830–1860: 1. Factory slavery; 2. Humanitarian opinion and rhetorics of reform; 3. Popular common sense, official enquiry and the state; 4. The responsibilities of employers; 5. The factory imagined; Part II. Factory Regulation, c.1840–1860: 6. Enforcement, resistance and compliance; 7. The ten-hour day; 8. A reformed factory system?; Conclusion.