Mises’s historical study reconstructs Austrian factory legislation, especially the protection of working children, from eighteenth-century industrial promotion through the Gewerbeordnung of 1859 and the reforms of 1883–85. Its central distinction is between protective enactments and effective administration: early initiatives repeatedly lost their force through inadequate supervision, official retrenchment, and manufacturers’ resistance. The archival foundation carries an explicit limitation:
Die Akten sind leider unvollständig; ein großer Teil ist skartiert worden.
English translation: The files are unfortunately incomplete; a large part of them has been weeded out and destroyed.
The history begins with a state that actively encouraged child labour. Cheap labour served industrial development, while employment promised discipline and reduced dependence on relief. Orphans and soldiers’ children supplied factories, and schools taught productive skills. Mises distinguishes this developmental policy from simple fiscal economy: industrial employment could receive support even without saving the state money.
Factory institutions for housing children reveal the tension between philanthropy and exploitation. Maintenance and instruction were represented as charity, although children’s work financed their support. Food and accommodation alone therefore provide an inadequate measure of welfare; dependence and coercion must also enter the assessment. An employer’s account makes the disciplinary regime concrete:
„Die Strafen seyen bei ihm sehr geringe, doch aber zu Zeiten höchst nothwendig; die meiste Strafe sei, daß er einem 12 Streiche mit einer Gattung Disciplin geben ließe. Der Thorwärter seiner Fabrik, welcher einst Soldat war, theile diese Strafe aus.
English translation: "The punishments in his establishment are said to be very slight, yet at times in the highest degree necessary; the severest punishment is that he has a man given 12 strokes with a kind of scourge (Disciplin). The gatekeeper of his factory, who was once a soldier, administers this punishment.
The disappearance of residential institutions had ambiguous consequences. Children could escape confinement while losing material provision; employers could transfer maintenance costs to families and avoid the special oversight attached to institutional employment. Organizational change did not necessarily remove exploitation.
Schooling supplies another central contradiction. Institutions initially enlisted to encourage productive labour became a source of resistance to its demands:
Die Schulpflicht kommt bald in Konflikt mit der Kinderarbeit. Da aber hält die Regierung strenge an dem Grundsatze fest, daß kein Kind die Wohltat des Schulunterrichtes entbehren dürfe.
English translation: Compulsory schooling soon comes into conflict with child labour. Here, however, the government holds strictly to the principle that no child may be deprived of the benefit of school instruction.
Compulsory attendance brought educational authorities into conflict with employers. Evening and Sunday classes offered compromises, but exhausted children could gain little from them. School requirements nevertheless restricted recruitment in some districts and made clergy witnesses to factory conditions. Their protective effect was stronger in determining access to employment than in limiting hours.
Joseph II’s decree of 20 November 1786, prompted by conditions at Traiskirchen, prescribed cleanliness, separate sleeping arrangements, individual beds, and medical inspections. Mises emphasizes its chronological priority to British legislation of 1802, but its larger significance lies in recognizing that protection required continuing oversight. The withdrawal of regular medical inspections in 1791 illustrates how modest administrative economies could undermine a legislative achievement.
Provincial initiatives expose the unevenness of protection. Officials in Vorarlberg investigated long hours, inadequate nourishment, and ineffective evening instruction, proposing working-time restrictions and inspection alongside school enforcement. Relief for poor schoolchildren mattered because attendance requirements could not disregard household subsistence. Elsewhere, central deliberation delayed local measures, while objections based on competition between provinces weakened restrictions.
The proposed central legislation of 1842 and manufacturers’ responses reveal a struggle over evidence as well as law. Mises distinguishes the draft from an enacted measure. He examines attempts to suppress Ludwig Mauthner’s medical account of factory children and to place investigations under industrial influence. His criticism of Josef Johann Knolz’s reassuring findings includes their treatment of working hours. Inquiry could expose injury, but interested control of inquiry could also obstruct reform. Consultations and administrative delays left the project unfinished when revolution intervened in 1848.
The Gewerbeordnung of 1859 established age restrictions, working-hour limits, and penalties without supplying adequate inspection as older supervisory arrangements disappeared. Mises concludes with the inspectorate of 1883 and the 1885 prohibition of regular factory employment below fourteen. His assessment honours the early recognition of industrial harms while explaining why recognition alone was insufficient: durable protection required reliable evidence, administrative capacity, and supervision capable of withstanding the interests it regulated.
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