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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

THE FIRST FACTORY ACT 629 had been made with the cotton trade; after the principle of A-D. 1776 state intervention had once been accepted, it became possible to apply it, step by step, not only to factories, but to work- shops as well. The main evil, as recognised at this time, lay, not in the a J excessive hours of work!, but in the conditions under which of over the children who had been apprenticed in cotton factories were work: housed and fed. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were fully alive to the peril of idleness, as the source of rime of every kind; the squatters on commons and the weavers, who worked or not as they chose, were regarded as dangers to the prosperity of the country, but the ordinary zitizen failed to contemplate the possibility of any evil arising from overwork. Still the public did appreciate the unwhole- some conditions in which the children were housed and fed, and the fact that they were deprived of all opportunity of instruction. Most of them were parish apprentices, who were brought in batches from their parishes, and the parish authorities were very negligent® about seeing that the terms L Dr Percival may be regarded as exceptionally far-seeing. In the report which he and other medical men presented to the Lancaster county magistrates in 1784 the following passage occurs. ‘‘ We earnestly recommend a longer recess irom labour at noon and a more early dismission from it in the evening, to all those who work in cotton mills; but we deem this indulgence essential to the present health and future capacity for labour, for those who are under the age of fourteen ; for the active recreations of childhood and youth are necessary to the growth, the vigour and the right conformation of the human body. And we sannot excuse ourselves on the present occasion from suggesting to you, who are the guardians of the public weal, this further very important consideration, that the rising generation should not be debarred from all opportunities of instruction at the only season of life in which they can be properly improved.” Apparently in consequence of this report the magistrates resolved that in future they would not allow ‘‘indentures of Parish Apprentices whereby they shall be bound to owners of cotton mills and other works in which children are obliged to work in the night, or more than ten hours in the day.” Hutchins and Harrison, History of Factory Legislation, 8. 2 This point is well brought out by Miss Hutchins and Miss Harrison in their excellent work on Factory Legislation, 8. 8 The system of farming the poor (see above, p. 575) doubtless contributed to the neglect on the part of parish authorities. The officials had, at all events, no interest in interfering on behalf of the children. * It is within the compass of srobability, that there have been, and are yet, instances, wherein the overseers of the poor and more especially the assistant overseers, who are mere mercenaries and serve for pay, have been, and are, some of them at least, bribed by the owners of mills for spinning silk, cotton or woollen yarn, to visit the habitation of the

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: The Industrial Revolution

Monograph

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation