Our final task is to examine the impact of factory legislation on the evolution of child labour practices during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. With the 1874 law at last providing for a reasonably effective inspection service, the stage was set for a serious confrontation between the State and employers who resisted or ignored the reform movement. A number of important questions arise for the historian: How did the laws making primary education free and compulsory affect child labour? Which sections of the 1874 law provoked the most hostility? Were large-scale enterprises more amenable to pressure from Factory Inspectors than small ones? And what was the overall position when the 1874 law was superseded by new factory legislation in 1892? Fortunately, the documentation available to help provide some answers is abundant. All of the quarterly and annual reports drawn up by the Divisional Inspectors for the Minister of Commerce have survived in the national archives. Although unlikely to provide a full account of events, being vulnerable to the widespread fraud committed in the workshops, this source does leave us with a mass of detail on the implementation of the law. It can be complemented by the findings of various Enquiries into the condition of the proletariat during the 1870s and 1880s, and by the occasional working-class autobiography.