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 783 the large capitalists who worked by steam. The Report of 4-D.1776 the Commission of 1833 enables us to form an opinion as to the reasons which rendered it necessary to legislate in regard to these deplorable evils. Very many of them were mot Tals by any means new, though the introduction of the factory Tonge system had served to bring them into light. The sanitary (faied to conditions, under which cottage industry were carried on, nam were perpetuated in the earlier factories, and parents may occasionally have been harsh masters to the children who helped them? Still, the evil, in its obvious forms, was of recent development, and there was much mutual recrimination at the time in regard to its cause. Colonel Williams probably expressed the commonest opinion, both in the House and out-of-doors, when he said that “ this practice of overworking children was attributable to the avarice of the masters?” Mr Hume, on the other hand, defended the capitalists, and as he had presided over the Select Committee, which reported against the Combination Laws, his opinion on industrial con- ditions was entitled to respect. He held that the distress of the country was wholly due to the corn laws, and laid the blame on the owners of lands. Mr Cobbett, who was member for Oldham and had abundant opportunity of forming a judgment in his own constituency, exonerated the employers. He held that the immediate blame lay with the parents, but that they should not be too harshly judged, as they were driven to it by the pressure of taxation, which as he believed was the ultimate reason of their distress+. 1 The Commission of 1833 called for no evidence as to the overworking of children who assisted their parents at home, but there is no reason to believe that they fared better than their companions in the mills. In only one point, and that a ost important one, was it alleged that the condition of the domestic workers was preferable. Parents could look after their own children and the elder girls if they worked at home, whilst the factories had an evil repute. Careful parents bad to choose between bringing up their children to an overcrowded and under paid trade, and the risk of placing them in demoralising surroundings (Reports, stc., 1883, xx. 532, 538). The bad repute of factories was not improbably due to their being the resort of apprenticed children and a shifting population, when they were first organised. At the same time it is probable that these evils diminished, as the smaller mills were broken up; and Mr Bolling, the member for Bolton, appears fo have regarded the charges against the factories as illusory, so far as ais constituency was concerned (3 Hansard, xrx. 910). t 3 Hansard, xv. 1160. 8 Ib. 1161. 4 Ib. 1294,

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