3. c. 66) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which was its first attempt to regulate the hours and conditions of work of children in the cotton industry.

[1] There was no effective means of its enforcement, but it established the precedent for Parliamentary intervention on conditions of employment which was followed by subsequent Factory Acts.

Improvements in the generation of rotary motion by steam engines made steam-powered cotton mills a practical proposition; they were already operating in Manchester in 1795, using free children drawn from the local population.

Apprentices had to be housed clothed and fed whether or not the mill could sell what they produced; they were in competition with free children whose wages would fall if the mill went on short time ( and might not reflect the full cost of housing clothing and feeding them, since that was incurred whether they were working or not)[3] and who could be discharged if sick, injured or otherwise incapable of work.

Apprentices were mostly found in the larger mills, which had somewhat better conditions; some even worked a 12-hour day or less (the Grant brothers' mill at Tottington worked an 11.5-hour day: "This establishment has perfect ventilation; all the apprentices, and in fact all the children, are healthy, happy, clean, and well clothed; proper and daily attention is paid to their instruction; and they regularly attend divine worship on Sundays.

"): in other mills children worked up to 15 hours a day in bad conditions (e.g. Gortons and Roberts' Elton mill: "Most filthy; no ventilation; the apprentices and other children ragged, puny, not half clothed, and seemingly not half fed; no instruction of any sort; no human beings can be more wretched").

[6] In 1815, Robert Owen, owner of a prosperous mill at New Lanark approached Peel with a draft Bill to regulate the use of children in the textile industry.

"[10] (Contemporary newspaper reports indicate that this followed a fire at one of the mills at New Lanark, and that Peel indicated that unless the Act was passed by the start of January, many of the workers there would become unemployed.

Objections to the much weaker 1819 bill were still strong and varied; a contemporary pro-bill pamphlet[4] listed (and to its own satisfaction rebutted) eight different arguments against the bill, most of which were to continue to be urged against subsequent factory legislation for many years: "The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.