Samenvatting

Apart from that this approximation does not alter the fact that at Sphinx, certainly after the departure of Petrus Regout and the transfer of the management to his sons in 1870, the social abuses of the industrial revolution continued in all vehemence. These abuses were especially put forward in the parliamentary hearings of 1887 in which the sons of the founder did not manifest a paternalistic style of management but on the contrary created the image of heartless, unfeeling, liberal capitalists with hardly any interest in the social question: in ’’t groet febrik’ long working-hours, unsafe conditions, many occupational diseases (like silicosis and phthisis), frequent child labour and in the quarter many one-room-dwellings, high infant mortality, incomplete households, large excessive drinking and enormous pauperization. There seemed to be a relationship of love and hatred between the people and the factory