The beginnings of the modern welfare state are often traced to the late 19th-century labour movement and to policymakers' efforts to appeal to working-class voters. But in this book, Elisabeth Anderson shows that the regulatory welfare state began a half century earlier, in the 1830s, with the passage of the first child labour laws. 'Agents of Reform' tells the story of how middle-class and elite reformers in Europe and the United States defined child labour as a threat to social order, and took the lead in bringing regulatory welfare into being. They built alliances to maneuver around powerful political blocks and instituted pathbreaking new employment protections. Later in the century, now with the help of organised labour, they created factory inspectorates to strengthen and routinise the state's capacity to intervene in industrial working conditions.