Primary Sources and Social Change in the industrial revolution

KAREN BROADBENT 10/05/2007

ASSIGNMENT 2

Primary Sources and Social Change

The impact of the Industrial Revolution on the standard of living of working class people is, and has been frequently debated. There is a mass of primary and secondary sources of evidence from the time of the Industrial Revolution available to support differing views of the debate, and there are also many novels available that were written at the time which criticise industrial society, but the difficulty of assessing the total impact of industrialisation upon a population, is how to measure the changes in standard of living. We can look at changes in wages, the changing cost of food, rent and clothing, the impact of the factory systems, or the demographic changes to the society, but it is extremely difficult to weigh up one change against another. If we look at wage data to assess the standard of living, the problem is that payment in kind is not recorded. Agricultural workers for example, would be compensated for their low wages with farm produce, free fuel or subsidised rents, and wages only reflect the living standards of the employed. A wider variety of sources need to be employed in looking at the standard of living debate, for example whilst working class in urban districts seem to have enjoyed higher wages, they also suffered higher rates of disease and mortality.

The roles of women and children drastically changed from working in cottage industries and agriculture to being employed in the factory system. This problem was also added to by the age structure of the population with high birth rates, Peter Mathias, a secondary source writes, “The conclusion (when looking at Gregory King’s population tables) is that a very high proportion of dependants existed at the same time as production and productivity was low. A large family could only stave off want by child labour or poor relief.” (Peter Mathias (1969,p200) The First Industrial Nation). It appears therefore that the family was dependant on the wages of the women and children for their survival.

A new work culture emerged, The Tyranny of the Clock: under the domestic system, workers could set their own pace and hours of work and but in the factory system workers were ruled by the dictates of the machinery and the factory owners. We can look at a primary source which shows the working hours and conditions for a child in a factory in the late 1700’s. Charles Aberdeen first started work in a cotton factory when he was twelve years old, he was sent to one in Hollywell by the Westminster Workhouse. In 1832 he was sacked from a cotton Factory in Salford at age fifty three for signing a petition in favour of factory reform. He was interviewed by and his Committee on 7th July 1832 when he told about life as a scavenger in the mill, and how he had to work under the machine whilst it was running. In regard to the increase in machine technology Aberdeen states, “I have done twice the quantity of work that I used to do, for less wages. Machines have been speeded. The exertion of the body is required to follow up the speed of the machine.” When asked about the effect of the factory labour on the children he says that: “It has a remarkable effect. It causes a paleness. A factory child may be known easily from another child that does not work in a factory. I have seen men and women that have worked in a factory all their lives, like myself, and that they get married; and I have seen the race become diminutive and small; I have myself had seven children, not one of which survived six weeks; my wife is an emaciated person, like myself, a little woman, and she worked during her childhood, younger than myself, in a factory.” Aberdeen had spent 41 years working in the mill and had recently been sacked, therefore as a primary source it is biased as it is very personal but it is also dated and shows how one boy’s existence was never uncontrolled, by the workhouse and then the factory. It also illustrates the death rates in children and the poor health of the factory children, although this could also be due to other factors such as the decrease in nutrition as the family structure changed and women were no longer available in the home to prepare time consuming food.

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When conditions in the factory are looked at from another primary source we see another very different viewpoint. Andrew Ure in 1835 notes from his visit to a factory that “every member of the loom is so adjusted, that the driving force leaves the attendant nearly nothing at all to do, certainly no muscular fatigue to sustain, while it procures for him, good unfailing wages, besides a healthy workshop gratis.” (Andrew Ure (1835, The Blessings of the Factory System) The Philosophy of Manufacturers) In his writing Andrew Ure is writing from a very narrow viewpoint. He fails to state the hours the worker was at the machine for and that the worker had become unskilled, they had to keep pace with the machine also that the worker had no choice any more in when his or her hours were worked, they were away from the family and the home for very long periods every day. Andrew Ure saw the factory system as being a provider of a steady income and a clean dry work place to the worker, with very little effort required on his or her part. It is though, another important dated primary source from a different bias.

Along with the emergence of factories came the emergence of a new middle class as Peter Mathias a secondary source writes, “Living in industrial towns, the context of life rather than work, did create new and terrifying problems. But having stated that, it remains true that industrialisation vastly increased the power of a few men over the lives of a multitude of families, but no more than that of a great landowner.” (Peter Mathias (1969,p205). Peter Mathias is noting that it was not the work but the changes in how the working class lived, and the new industrial towns that created the problems of industrialisation. According to Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) when writing about Wage Labour and Capital held the belief that industrialisation produces two classes, the , those who own the , i.e. the factory owners and the proletariat, the working class who actually perform the necessary required to extract something valuable from the means of production. Marx states that the relationship between the two classes is fundamentally parasitic, the proletariat are always undercompensated for the true value of their labour by the bourgeoisie (according to the ), which allows the bourgeoisie to grow absurdly wealthy through nothing more than the exploitation of the proletarians' labour.

The Industrial Revolution changed the way people lived, the new middle class strengthened and the family structure between the two classes was very different. In the new middle class the concerns of the children and family life were of principal importance, the family was supported entirely by the , the undisputed head of the family, as for women, middle class wives were expected to manage the household. Children of middle class families were educated, but only boys were educated in schools, whereas the girls were educated in the home and only on matters around running a house. Contrasting with life in a working class family, whose very survival was dependent upon each member's wage including the women and children. Since women were no longer working at home as in the domestic system, and the older children were also employed in the factories, the problem of childcare becomes acute. Engels writing in 1844 notes that “babies and infants were neglected, they were farmed out to baby minders who fed them badly and unhygineically or not at all.” The family life of a working class family had changed with industrialisation and there were many writers commenting on it at the time. In 1839 Thomas Carlyle noted that “A feeling generally exists that the condition and disposition of the working classes is a rather ominous matter at present: that something ought to be said, something ought to be dome in regard to it.”

Home life suffered as women were faced with the double burden of factory work followed by domestic chores and childcare. The plight of Mrs. Smith, a woman working in a mill in Nottingham creates a vivid picture of her life, this primary source is taken from ‘Evidence of Textile Workers in Wilson's Mill, Nottingham’ by the Factory Inquiry Commission. "I have three children working in Wilson's mill; one 11, one 13, and the other 14. They work regular hours there. We don't complain. If they go to drop the hours, I don't know what poor people will do. We have hard work to live as it is. ...My husband is of the same mind about it...last summer my husband was 6 weeks ill; we pledged almost all our things to live; the things are not all out of pawn yet. ...We complain of nothing but short wages...My children have been in the mill three years. I have no complaint to make of their being beaten...I would rather they were beaten than fined." (Factory Inquiry Commission, Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1833). Mrs Smith is dependant on being give long hours in the factory for the survival of her family, she needs the income of the children. If we look at another primary source from the same report another woman Hannah Goode, in the Nottinghamshire mill reports that "I work at Mr. Wilson's mill. I think the youngest child is about 7. I daresay there are 20 under 9 years. It is about half past five by our clock at home when we go in....We come out at seven by the mill. We never stop to take our meals, except at dinner.” The women could no longer as in the domestic system, provide childcare and feed the family around the work they carried out in cotton production, they were employed in the mill for long hours.

Charles Dickens comments on working class life in Hard Times, a secondary source, a theme found throughout Hard Times is that managers, such as Bounderby, live in the lap of luxury at the expense of the workers. The picture presented is of hard-working labourers, who work long hours for little pay, resenting the boss, who appears to do little work and yet acquires the full reward of their efforts. Another function of Bounderby is to show demanding and unappreciative bosses having no compassion for their employees. The "hands" are viewed as part of the production, not much different than the machines they operate. Bounderby himself views anyone that asks for more than they already have as wanting to dine "on turtle soup and venison with golden spoons" at his expense. Dickens is illustrating the injustice as he sees it of the factory system.

A primary source from a totally different perspective is that of Josiah Wedgewood who saved twenty pounds in eight years to open his pottery in 1760. He made a speech to his factory workers in 1783 when at the time there was growing unrest and resentment within the workforce. He also had his speech printed and distributed amongst them, which gives a dated primary source to look at from a factory owner’s bias. Dated 27th March 1783 Wedgwood addresses "My Young Friends";

“I would request you to ask your parents for a description of the country we inhabit when they first knew it... Their houses were miserable huts; the lands poorly cultivated... roads almost impassable... Compare this picture...with the present state of the country. The workmen earning near double their former wages -their houses mostly new and comfortable, and the lands, roads and every other circumstance bearing evident marks of the most pleasing and rapid improvements. From whence, and from what cause has this happy change taken place? Industry is the parent of this happy change."

Wedgwood advises the factory workers to consider their lives considerably better off than their parents and to look at the benefits to the country of in terms of housing and roads that industrialisation has brought. He perceives the workers to have a much higher standard of living than their parents, and compares their wages and houses to those of preindustrialisation. This source helps to illustrate the huge divide in opinion on the standard of living debate and the extensive resources that are available when looking at such a complex debate.