would be a dead letter, given experiences with the Factory Acts: The Factory Acts are enforced by an elaborate machinery of inspection. Anyone who has taken the trouble to inquire into the matter knows perfectly well that without this stringent inspection they would be absolutely worthless. Even as it is they are contravened openly every day, because the best inspection must, from the nature of the case, be somewhat spasmodic and uncertain. When an Inspector discovers that the law has been broken he summons the offending party; but, as a rule, if he does not make the discovery himself, no one informs him of it. The chief provisions of the last Factory Act are hung up, legibly printed on white cardboard, "plain for all men to see", in every room of every factory. No one can be ignorant of them; yet when they are disregarded, as they are constantly, it is the rarest thing for any of the women affected by the illegality to give information. Factory Act 1891 Under the heading Conditions of Employment were two considerable additions to previous legislation: the first is the prohibition on employers to employ women within four weeks after confinement (childbirth); the second the raising the minimum age at which a child can be set to work from ten to eleven. Factory and Workshop Act 1895 The main article gives an overview of the state of Factory Act legislation in Edwardian Britain under the Factory and Workshop Acts 1878 to 1895 (the collective title of the Factory and Workshop Act 1878, the Factory and Workshop Act 1883, the Cotton Cloth Factories Act 1889, the Factory and Workshop Act 1891 and the Factory and Workshop Act 1895.) Factory and Workshop Act 1901 Minimum working age is raised to 12. The act also introduced legislation regarding the education of children, meal times, and fire escapes. Children could also take up a full-time job at the age of 13 years old. Review in 1910 By 1910, Sidney Webb reviewing the cumulative effect of century of factory legislation felt able to write: He also commented on the gradual (accidentally almost Fabian) way this transformation had been achieved Factories Act 1937 The 1937 Act (1 Edw. 8 & 1 Geo. 6 c.67) consolidated and amended the Factory and Workshop Acts from 1901 to 1929. It was introduced to the House of Commons by the Home Secretary, Sir John