1875 - Commerce

Commerce

A new Factory Act adopted by Parliament regulates employment of women and children in Britain's textile mills. Lancashire-born home secretary Richard (Assheton) Cross, 52, has pushed through the legislation and also obtains passage of a Public Health Act, a comprehensive sanitary code, and two statutes that reinterpret former prime minister Gladstone's 1871 trade union legislation to make them more favorable to unions.

Britain's Trades Union Congress admits its first female delegates.

Clipper ship owner William Henry Aspinwall dies of a heart attack at his New York home January 18 at age 67, having built a fortune in the China trade; financier and merchant John Cleve Green dies at New York April 29 at age 75, having made a vast fortune in the Chinese opium trade and railroad investments. He has given about $500,000 to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) and made other philanthropic donations.

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow receives advice from St. Louis Democrat owner George W. Fishback on how to crack the corrupt and powerful Whiskey Ring that has been evading taxes (see 1874). Using detectives from outside the department who receive instructions in a cipher not used by the department, Bristow accumulates massive evidence of fraud. His agents seize suspected distilleries and rectifying houses May 10 at Chicago and Milwaukee as well as St. Louis. They find incriminating books and papers, and within a year Bristow's lawyers will have instituted action to recover $3,150,000 in taxes, indicted 176 men on civil and criminal charges, and obtained sentences for 110 of them.

Prudential Insurance Company of America is founded at Newark, New Jersey, under the name Prudential Friendly Society by Maine-born insurance agent John Fairfield Dryden, 36, with backing from local investors. It will change its name in 1877, grow by selling sickness and accident insurance, and will sell ordinary life insurance beginning in 1886 (see 1896).