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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CONDITIONS OF CHILDREN'S WORK 775 being frightened away to new investments’. The phil- A-D. 2776 anthropists were inclined to assume that English textile manu- facturers had such a commanding position that, even if the hours were reduced and the cost of production increased, we could still hold our own. Many of the operatives hoped that, when the product was limited, prices would rise and their own wages would improve’. But this optimist view had little to support it. The cotton manufacture was springing 1p, both in the United States and in France; the annual output of these two countries alone was two-thirds of that of Britain? and there was a real danger of driving away trade, and therefore employment, altogether. As Lord Althorp said, when criticising the original form of the Factory measure in 1833, “Should its effect be (and he feared it was but too reasonable to apprehend it might be) to increase the power of foreigners to compete in the British market, and so to cause the decline of the manufacturing interest of the country ¢ * * 50 far from a measure of humanity it would be and add to one of the greatest acts of cruelty that could be inflicted” he Under these circumstances it is impossible to regard the artisans opponents of the Factory Acts as necessarily callous to human suffering. At the same time the economic experts concentrated their but they attention so much on the production of increased quantities ian bo of material goods, as the only means by which amelioration nce could be effected, that they seemed to attach very little pen wonere importance to measures for the direct protection of human competizion life, even in cases when there was no reason to fear foreign possible. competition. The chimney-sweep boys were a class who were subjected to brutal ill-treatment; an attempt had been made to regulate the trade in 1788% but this measure was very ineffective, to judge by the shocking revelations which were made before the Parliamentary Committee of 1816° The laissez faire economists were not easily impressed how- ever. and their quarterly organ, after reciting some of the { Reports, etc., 1833, xx. 54, 371. 2 Tb. xx. 40. } 3 Hansard, xxx. 911. 4 Tb. 221. 5 98 Geo. III. c. 48. > Report from the Committee on Employment of Boys in Sweeping of Chimnies. Reports, 1817, vi 171.

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