Advanced Placement European History. Book 1
Lesson 27
Handout 45 (page 1)
Name
_
Date
_
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
I
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189
Advanced Placement European History. Book 1
Lesson 27
Handout 45 (page 2)
Name
Date
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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.
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190
I
Advanced Placement European History, Book 1
Lesson 27
Handout 45 (page 3)
Name
Date
_
_
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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191
Name
Advanced Placement European History, Book 1
Lesson 27
Handout 45 (page 4)
Date
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
\
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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192
Advanced Placement European History, Book 1
Lesson 27
Handout 45 (page 5)
Name
Date
_
_
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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Name
Advanced Placement European History, Book 1
Lesson 27
Handout 45 (page 6)
Date
-----------
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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.
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194