Excerpt from Introduction to a History of the Factory System I had aspired to write the History of the Factory System. In collecting materials for doing so two difficulties continually confronted me. The first was the great mass of detail that would need to be presented to the reader should the work attempt in even a moderate degree to justify its title. The second was the lack of material of prime importance on which such a history could be based. The factory system of the far past has left no records behind; that remains still a subject of inquiry and speculation. The history of the modern factory system is almost equally difficult of access. It is to be found only in the few, and generally vague, allusions of very various writers; and in official documents and departmental reports of this and other countries. There is absolutely no independent source of information in English literature, that I know of, dealing with the whole of this subject. I have preferred instead then, greatly to limit the scope of my original design, and to confine it to an Introduction only, and that in outline, to such a history, arranged in what I consider would be something like the proper form for a work of the kind to assume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.