As industrial development transformed the landscape in Great Britain, it generated great enthusiasm and equally great controversy. In his early history of the cotton industry (Excerpt 1), Richard Guest emphasizes the virtues of the new steam technology and the speed with which it is transforming textile production in Great Britain. The Manchester physician James Phillips Kay (Excerpt 2) wrote about the effects of industrial labor on the workers. While sympathetic to the plight of the workers, he also worried about their moral degradation. The British Parliament acted to regulate child labor in the factories in 1833 (Excerpt 3), but efforts to enforce its limits continued for years afterward.
1. The Virtues of the New Technology (1823)
Richard Guest wrote his history of the cotton industry for a specific reason: to contest the claim that Richard Arkwright had provided some of the crucial inventions in cotton manufacturing. To develop his case, he gathered as much information as he could about the use of power looms in the new cotton factories in the region around Manchester, and that information that remains invaluable.
The best hand Weavers seldom produce a piece of uniform evenness; indeed, it is next to impossible for them to do so, because a weaker or stronger blow with the lathe immediately alters the thickness of the cloth, and after an interruption of some hours, the most experienced weaver finds it difficult to recommence with a blow of precisely the same force as the one with which he left off. In Steam Looms, the lathe gives a steady, certain blow, and when once regulated by the engineer, moves with the greatest precision from the beginning to the end of the piece. Cloth made by these Looms, when seen by those manufacturers who employ hand Weavers, at once excites admiration and a consciousness that their own workmen cannot equal it. The increasing number of Steam Looms is a certain proof of their superiority over the Hand Looms. In 1818, there were in Manchester, Stockport, Middleton, Hyde, Stayley Bridge, and their vicinities, fourteen factories, containing about two thousand Looms. In 1821, there were in the same neighbourhoods thirty-two factories, containing five thousand seven hundred and thirty-two Looms.
Source: Richard Guest, A Compendious History of the Cotton-Manufacture: With a Disproval of the Claim of Sir Richard Arkwright to the Invention of Its Ingenious Machinery (Manchester: Printed by J. Pratt, 1823), 46–47.
2. The Life of the Workers (1832)
James Phillips Kay studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and set up as a physician in Manchester in 1827 where he developed a lifelong interest in the problems of the poor. He became an assistant poor law commissioner soon after the passage of the new poor law in 1834. His account reflects the ambivalent attitudes of many middle-class people who felt sorry for the poor but also worried about their supposed propensity for alcohol and sexual promiscuity.
The operatives [those who work the looms] are congregated in rooms and workshops during twelve hours in the day, in an enervating, heated atmosphere, which is frequently loaded with dust or filaments of cotton, or impure from constant respiration, or from other causes. They are engaged in an employment which absorbs their attention, and unremittingly employ their physical energies. They are drudges who watch the movements, and assist the operation, of a mighty material force, which toils with an energy ever unconscious of fatigue. The persevering labour of the operative must rival the mathematical precision, the incessant motion, and the exhaustless power of the machine. . . .
His wife and children, too frequently subjected to the same process, are unable to cheer his remaining moments of leisure. Domestic economy is neglected, domestic comforts are unknown. A meal of the coarsest food is prepared with heedless haste, and devoured with equal precipitation. Home has no other relation to him than that of shelter—few pleasures are there—it chiefly presents to him a scene of physical exhaustion, from which he is glad to escape. Himself impotent of all the distinguishing aims of his species, he sinks into sensual sloth, or revels in more degrading licentiousness.
Source: James Phillips Kay, The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester (London: J. Ridgway, 1832), 10–11.
3. The Factory Act of 1833
“An Act to regulate the Labour of Children and young Persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom (29 August 1833)” included several provisions to limit working hours and improve conditions for child laborers. An excerpt of them helps fill in the picture of life in the new factories.
- Persons under 18 Years of Age not allowed to work at Night in the Mills or Factories herein described
- Persons under 18 not to work more than 12 hours a day
- Employment of Children under 9 Years Prohibited
- The Employment of Children under 11, 12, and 13 Years of Age for more than Eight Hours a Day prohibited
- That all Children and young Persons whose Hours of Work are regulated and limited by this Act shall be entitled to the following Holydays; . . . Christmas Day and Good Friday the entire Day, and not fewer than Eight Half Days besides in every Year
Source: Great Britain, A Collection of the Public General Statutes Passed in the Third and Fourth Year of the Reign of His Majesty King William the Fourth (London: G. W. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen, 1833), 1063–65.
Questions to Consider