The Industrial Revolution: The Human Side

Advanced Placement European History. Book 1 Lesson 27 Handout 45 (page 1)

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The Industrial Revolution: The Human Side Directions: Read the selections for the identity assigned to your group: factory workers. factory owners. or economists. Prepare a point of view on the Industrial Revolution for your group to present to an objective historian. In your presentation. include the main thrust of the argument you would like to have presented in a history of the Industrial Revolution and provide three points of evidence to support this position. Then write two questions. one for each of the opposing opinions. that would force them to admit the validity of your position. Factory Workers Testimony of Peter Gaskell. Coal Miner When asked. Do you prefer women to boys as drawers. Peter Gaskell. a collier at Mr. Lancaster's, near Worsley. Lancs. replied: Yes. they are better to manage. and keep the time better; they will fight and shriek and do every thing but let anybody pass them. and they never get to be coalgetters. that is another good thing. -Parliamentary Papers. 1842

Drinking Establishments Capitalize on the Worker , They [saloons] are open at the· earliest hour. when the shivering artisan is proceeding to his work. holding out to him a temptation utterly irresistible-and remain open during a considerable portion of the night ministering their poisons to thousands of debilitated creatures .... - The Manufacturing Population of England. 1833

Testimony of Betty Harris, Coal Miner I have a belt round my waist. and a chain passing between my legs. and I go on my hands and feet. The road is very steep. and we have to hold by a rope; and when there is no rope, by anything we can catch hold of. There are six women and about six boys and girls in the pit I work in; it is very hard work for a woman. The pit is very wet where I work. and the water comes over our clog-tops always, and r have seen it up to my thighs; it rains in at the roof terribly. My clothes are wet through almost all day long. I never was ill in my life. but when r was lying in. -Parliamentary Papers. 1842

Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population The accidents which occur to the manufacturing population of Birmingham are very severe and numerous. as shown by the registers of the General Hospital. Many are the consequences of the want of proper attention to the fencing of machinery, which appears to be seldom thought of in the manufactories; and many are caused by loose portions of dress being caught by the machinery. so as to drag the unfortunate sufferers under its power. The shawls of the females. or their long hair. and the aprons and loose sleeves of the boys and men. are in this way frequent causes of dreadful mutilation. -Parliamentary

Papers, 1842

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Advanced Placement European History. Book 1 Lesson 27 Handout 45 (page 2)

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Report on Infant Lace-Workers The children of this family, and the mother, who reside in Walker Street. New Sneinton, give the following evidence: Mary Houghton, four years old. wHas drawn lace two years; her mother gives her a penny a week.w Anne Houghton, six years old: WHasbeen a drawer three years.w Mrs. Houghton, the mother of these children: wls a lace-drawer and has four children: Harriet 8 years. Anne 6, Mary 4, and Eliza 2 years old; of these the three elder are employed as lace drawers. Harriet was not quite three when she began to work. Anne was about the same. and Mary was not quite two years old." wEliza has drawn a few threads out.w All this (says the Sub-Commissioner) was interrupted with, wMind your work," "Take care," "Make haste," "Now, Anne, get on," "Mind your work." Begins generally at 6 A.M. in the summer and 7 A.M. in the winter; in the former goes on till dark, in the latter till 10 P.M •.•. -Parliamentary Papers, 1842 The Value of Sons Families of boys are, amongst pit-people, valuable property, on account of their earnings in the pits. A widow with a family of boys is considered a catc/L I was told that such a widow was accosted by a suitor even at her husband's grave. Her reply was, "You are too late: I am engaged. I accepted B- before starting for the funeral!" -Our

Coal Fields and Our Coal Pits, n.d.

Testimony of Abraham Whitehead. Clothier How early do you think that they leave their homes?-I can tell you what a neighbour told me six weeks ago; she is the wife of Jonas Barrowcliffe, near Scholes; her child works at a mill nearly two miles from home, and I have seen that child coming from its work this winter between 10 and 11 in the evening; and the mother told me that one morning this winter the child had been up by 2 o'clock in the morning .... -Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32 Flogging of Children Mark Best. flax-mills overlooker, was asked to describe "the sort of straps that are made use of' to keep the children at work: They are about a foot and a half long, and there is a stick at the end; and that end they beat them with is cut in the direction of my fingers, thus. having five or six thongs, some of them. Some of them are set in a handle, some are not. -Parliamentary

Papers, 1831-32

Source: "Hard Times": Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution, E. Royston Pike (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 51-259 passim. © COPYRIGHT,The Center for Learning ..Used with permission. Not for resale.

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Advanced Placement European History, Book 1 Lesson 27 Handout 45 (page 3)

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The Industrial Revolution: The Human Side Directions: Read the selections for the identity assigned to your group: factory workers, factory owners, or economists. Prepare a point of view on the Industrial Revolution for your group to present to an objective historian. In your presentation, include the main thrust of the argument you would like to have presented in a history of the Industrial Revolution and provide three points of evidence to support this position. Then write two questions, one for each of the opposing opinions, that would force them to admit the validity of your position. Factory Owners Testimony of Archibald Buchanan, Manager of Cotton Mills What number of persons are employed in the different works?-I can only speak to the works under my own particular management. At the Catrine works there are 875 persons employed, of whom 22 males and 37 females are under ten years of age. I suppose the youngest may be 8 or 9; we have no wish to employ them under ten years of age. What are your hours of work?-Our working hours are twelve hours in the day. They begin at 6 o'clock in the morning. they stop at half-past seven at night, and they are allowed half an hour to breakfast, and an hour to dinner. You have not observed that the twelve hours work has interfered with the health of the children?-I have not. . . . I have seen many instances of children that were taken in the works as young as six, whose health did not appear at all to suffer; on the contrary, when they got to greater maturity, they appeared as healthy stout people as any in the country. They go to all trades, masons and joiners, and weavers, and so on. Are they as tall?-Yes, I do not see any difference. Do you conceive that the habits of regularity they are taught in the works, are advantageous to them in their pursuits afterwards?-I should think it was; that is the chief advantage tradesmen think they have in employing children from the factories. That is, from their habits of industry?-Yes, and the ingenuity they acquire in the works. Are the parents generally very desirous to send their children to you, or not?-Very desirous. What are the weekly wages a child of nine years old, will acquire in your works?-The children of 9 years are generally learners, and receive Is [shilling) 6d [pence) to 2s [shillings) per week, according to their ability. In what manner are the children educated in your works?-We have three schools at present, I think, in the village: one of the schoolmasters we give a house to, with fire and candle, and £30 a year as a salary; he teaches one hour after the works stop on week days, and on Sundays he attends the Sunday schools; but I do not recollect the time the children attend. You make the children's confinement fourteen hours, then?-They are not compelled to go to school in the evening. -ParLiamentary Papers, 1816

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Testimony of Josiah Wedgwood. Pottery Manufacturer The children work the same time, because generally the young children are employed in attending on the men, and assisting them in carrying their moulds and other little services that they can perform for them, the men working by the piece, and paying the children themselves. The wages of the children are paid, I believe in all cases, to the parents. Much too often these additional wages are employed by the parents not in giving the children improved clothing and food but in prGcuring a spirituous liquor for themselves. . . . -Parliamentary

Papers, 1816

Testimony of Theodore Price Then you admit that the employment of children in cotton manufactories is productive of benefit to their morals, in preventing the commission of crime?-Certainly: they have not the opportunity of committing overt acts as those have who are about the streets; in such a cotton mill as I saw [at Emscot, near Warwick) they could not commit any crime whatever that was of the nature of stealing, unless they took something from the mill into the house with them, for they could not go off the premises with it; they appeared as complete prisoners as they would be in gaol. You were understood to say, that the occupation of so many hours had a favourable influence on morals, in preventing the commission of crimes?-Most assuredly; a person constantly under the eye of his master for twelve hours together, and not suffered to go out at night, cannot commit a crime of that nature; they may be bad in heart, but they cannot commit those acts. -Parliamentary

Papers, 1816

Testimony of Sir Gilbert Blane, MD Is not these children being kept in a state of motion, by walking backwards and forwards, likely to be less prejudicial to health than if they were in a sedentary state?-Most assuredly; that exercise called loco-motive exercise is peculiarly salutary to young people. Is the Committee to understand, that you consider the employment of children, under the age of ten years, to be wholly improper and inconvenient?-By no means wholly improper; I should think if it was limited to five or six hours, that would not only not be pernicious, but salutary. -Parliamentary

Papers, 1816

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Source: •Hard Times": Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution, E. Royston Pike (New York: Frederick A. Praeger,

1966), 104, 106. 107. (l:)

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The Industrial Revolution: The Human Side Directions: Read the selections for the identity assigned to your group: factory workers, factory owners, or economists. Prepare a point of view on the Industrial Revolution for your group to present to an objective historian. In your presentation, include the main thrust of the argument you would like to have presented in a history of the Industrial Revolution and provide three points of evidence to support this position. Then write two questions, one for each of the opposing opinions, that would force them to admit the validity of your position. Economists David Ricardo: On Wages Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution. The power of the labourer to support himself, and the family which may be necessary to keep up the number of labourers, does not depend on the quantity of money which he may receive for wages, but on the quality of food, necessaries, and conveniences [that.] become essent.ial to him from habit, which that money will purchase. The natural price of labour, therefore, depends on the price of the food, necessaries, and conveniences required for the support of the labourer and his family. With a rise in the price of food and necessaries, t.he natural price of labour will rise; with the fall in their price, the natural price of labour will fall. With the progress of society the natural price of labour has always a t.endency to rise, because one of the principal commodities by which its natural price is regulated, has a tendency to become dearer, from t.he greater difficulty of producing it. As, however, the improvements in agriculture, the discovery of new markets, whence provisions may be imported, may for a time counteract the tendency to a rise in the price of necessaries, and may even occasion their nat.ural price to fall, so will the same causes produce the correspondent effects on the natural price of labour. . . . The market price of labour is the price which is really paid for it, from the natural operation of the proportion of the supply to the demand; labour is dear when it is scarce, and cheap when it is plentiful. However much of the market price of labour may deviate from its natural plice, it has, like commodities, a tendency to conform to it. It is when the market price of labour exceeds its natural price, that the condition of the labourer is nourishing and happy, that he has it in his power to command a greater proportion of the necessaries and _enjoyments of life, and therefore to rear a healthy and numerous family. When, however, by the encouragement which high wages give to the increase of population, the number of labourers is increased, wages again fall to their natural price, and indeed from a reaction sometimes fall below it. When the market price of labour is below its natural price, the condition of the labourers is most wretched; then poverty deprive~ them of those comforts which custom renders absolute necessaries. It is only after their privations have reduced their number, or the demand for labour has increased, that the market price of labour will rise to its natural price, and that the labourer will have the moderate comforts which the natural rate of wages will afford.' 'David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in Economic Doctrines, Frank Amandus Neff (Wichita. Kans.: McGuin Publishers, 1946), 147-48. ©

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Thomans Malthus: The Principle of Population [Thomas]

Malthus

proceeded

to lay down

his

famous

principle: . that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison to the second. Elaborating the proposition further, Malthus buttressed his case in this way: Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has been comparatively sparing in the room, and the nourishment necessary to rear them. . . . The race of plants, and race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice. These hard but realistic facts, in Malthus' estimation, placed insurmountable difficulties in the way of the perfectibility of society. No possible reform could remove the pressure of natural laws, obstacles which prevent the "existence of a society, all the members of which, should live in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure; and feel no anxiety about providing the means of subsistence for themselves and families." . . . Certain inevitable practical conclusions followed, in Malthus' view. If human beings were to enjoy the greatest possible happiness, they should not assume family obligations unless they could afford them. Those without adequate means to support a family should remain celibate. Furthermore, public policy, such as the poor laws, should avoid encouraging the laboring class and others to bring into the world children whom they could not support. A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is.2 .)

'Robert B. Downs, Books That Changed the World (New York: Mentor, 1983), 246-47. © COPYRlGHT,The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.

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