The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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A.D. 1776 — 1850. The con- dition of parish ap- prentices in cotton factories attracted attention, LAISSEZ FAIRE 328 system’, However this may be, the manufacture was or- ganised on capitalistic lines from the time of the introduction of machinery, and the cotton factories which rose in the neigh- bourhood of Manchester and other large towns soon began to attract public attention. 248. From a very early time the state of the factories, and the conditions under which the children employed in them lived and worked called forth severe criticism by public authorities. In 1784, before the great period of expansion had set in, the Lancashire magistrates had deputed Dr Percival and other medical men to institute enquiries on the subject®; bheir report shows how long the evil was allowed to continue before any serious attempt was made to check it, and how slowly the national conscience was aroused to the necessity of taking active and effective measures. Work in the factories did not in all probability make greater calls upon the powers of the children than work in other occupations’; but the cotton factories brought the evil into light in connection with a growing industry, in which it was practicable to deal with it. The subsequent attempt to enforce regulations in old-established trades roused less opposition, since a beginning 1 Gaskell (Artisans and Machinery, 31) speaks of yeomen who obtained jennies and tried to compete with the mules. The opportunity of industrial occupation would delay the extinction of the class (see above, p. 558) of small farmers in this district. Kennedy's description implies that the cotton weavers owned the implements and turned their own cottages into smell factories, before water- power was used. Rise and progress of Cotton Trade, in Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 9nd Series, m. 120, 9. 3 Hutchins and Harrison, Factory Legislation, 7. 8 Mr Cooke Taylor has recorded the impressions of some of the elderly men with whom he spoke in 1842. One of them appealing to his own youth—abont 1770— maintained that these had been * really the days of infant slavery. ¢The creatures were set to work,” he said, ‘as soon as they could crawl,’ and their parents were the hardest of task masters. I may remark that on a previous occasion I had received a similar account from an old man in the vale of Todmorden, who Jeclared that he would not accept an offer to live his whole life over again, if it were to be accompanied with the condition of passing through the same servitude and misery which he had endured in infancy. Both these old men expressed great indignation at the clamour which had been raised for infant protection; my Todmorden friend quite lost his temper when any reference was made to the subject, contrasting in very strong terms the severities he had endured, and the heavy labours he had to perform, both in his father’s house and afterwards as an apprentice, with the light toil and positive comfort of the factory children.” Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire, 141. 4 The Act of 1802 applied to other factories besides cotton mills, but there seems to have been very little spinning of wool by children in mills at that date.

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