<P> He also commented on the gradual (accidentally almost Fabian) way this transformation had been achieved </P> <P> The merely empirical suggestions of Dr. Thomas Percival and the Manchester Justices of 1784 and 1795, and the experimental legislation of the elder Sir Robert Peel in 1802, were expanded by Robert Owen in 1815 into a general principle of industrial government, which came to be applied in tentative instalments by successive generations of Home Office administrators...This century of experiment in Factory Legislation affords a typical example of English practical empiricism . We began with no abstract theory of social justice or the rights of man . We seem always to have been incapable even of taking a general view of the subject we were legislating upon . Each successive statute aimed at remedying a single ascertained evil . It was in vain that objectors urged that other evils, no more defensible existed in other trades, or among other classes, or with persons of ages other than those to which the particular Bill applied . Neither logic nor consistency, neither the over-nice consideration of even - handed justice nor the Quixotic appeal of a general humanitarianism, was permitted to stand in the way of a practical remedy for a proved wrong . That this purely empirical method of dealing with industrial evils made progress slow is scarcely an objection to it . With the nineteenth century House of Commons no other method would have secured any progress at all . </P> <P> The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 (42 Geo III c. 73) was introduced by Sir Robert Peel; it addressed concerns felt by the medical men of Manchester about the health and welfare of children employed in cotton mills, and first expressed by them in 1784 in a report on an outbreak of' putrid fever' at a mill at Radcliffe owned by Peel . Although the Act included some hygiene requirements for all textile mills, it was largely concerned with the employment of apprentices; it left the employment of' free' (non-indentured) children unregulated . It allowed (but did not require) local magistrates to enforce compliance with its requirements, and therefore went largely unenforced . As the first attempt to improve the lot of factory children, it is often seen as paving the way for future Factory Acts . At best, it only partially paved the way; its restriction to apprentices (where there was a long tradition of legislation) meant that it was left to later Factory Acts to establish the principle of intervention by Parliament on humanitarian grounds on worker welfare issues against the "laissez - faire" political and economic orthodoxy of the age which held that to be ill - advised . </P> <P> Under the Act, regulations and rules came into force on 2 December 1802 and applied to all textile mills and factories employing three or more apprentices or twenty employees . The buildings must have sufficient windows and openings for ventilation, and should be cleaned at least twice yearly with quicklime and water; this included ceilings and walls . </P>

What was the factory act and why was it made law in 1833