Factory Conditions in the Industrial Revolution

The conditions in the early factories of the Industrial Revolution were often brutal. The working day was long, the discipline was harsh, the machines were dangerous, and the pay was low. Children as young as five or six worked alongside adults in many factories, and they suffered from exhaustion, accidents, and disease at alarming rates.

The New Industrial Discipline

The factory system imposed a new kind of discipline on the workers. In the older domestic system, workers had controlled their own pace of work, and they could take breaks when they needed to. In the factory, however, the pace of work was set by the machines, and the workers were required to keep up with the rhythm of the belts and shafts that drove the looms and spindles.

The discipline of the factory was enforced by overseers, fines, and the threat of dismissal. Workers were required to arrive on time, to remain at their machines throughout the working day, and to follow the rules of the factory. Fines were imposed for a wide range of infractions, including lateness, talking, leaving the workplace without permission, and even singing. The fines were often substantial, and they could easily exceed a worker’s daily wage.

The working day in the early factories was long, typically twelve to sixteen hours, and it began and ended with the ringing of the factory bell. The bell became a new feature of industrial life, and the rhythm of the factory became the rhythm of the working day. Workers often had to walk long distances to and from the factory, and the actual working day, including the walk, could be fourteen or fifteen hours.

The Employment of Children

One of the most disturbing features of the early factory system was the widespread employment of children. Children were used in factories because they were cheap, dexterous, and could fit into small spaces, but they were also particularly vulnerable to accidents, exhaustion, and disease.

In the cotton mills, children worked as piecers, doffers, and scavengers, helping to keep the machines running and cleaning the machinery. In the mines, children worked as trappers, opening and closing the ventilation doors, and as hurriers, pulling coal wagons through the narrow tunnels. The working day for children was as long as for adults, and the conditions were often worse, since children were given the most dangerous and unpleasant tasks.

The Campaign for Factory Reform

The conditions in the early factories led to a long campaign for factory reform. The campaign was driven by a coalition of reformers, including evangelical Christians, utilitarians, trade unionists, and politicians, who argued that the state had a responsibility to regulate the conditions of work in the new factories.

The campaign was particularly associated with the Evangelical Christian movement and with figures like Lord Ashley — the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1801–1885) — who devoted much of his career to the cause of factory reform. The campaign also drew on the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which argued that the goal of public policy should be “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

The Factory Acts

The first major victory of the factory reform movement was the Factory Act of 1833, which established a system of factory inspectors and limited the working hours of children in textile mills. The Mines and Collieries Act of 1842 banned women and girls of any age, and boys under ten, from working underground in mines. The Ten Hours Bill of 1847 limited the working day of women and children in factories to ten hours.

The Effects of the Factory Acts

The Factory Acts had important effects on the working conditions in the British factories and mines. The working day, while still long, was gradually reduced, and the conditions in the factories and mines improved over the second half of the nineteenth century. The system of factory inspectors helped to enforce the new regulations, and the requirement that children receive schooling helped to spread basic education to the children of the working class.

The Factory Acts were also important for the development of the modern welfare state. The idea that the state had a responsibility to regulate the conditions of work, to limit the exploitation of children and women, and to protect the health and safety of workers was a new one in the early nineteenth century, and it was developed and extended over the following century.

The Long-Term Legacy of the Factory Acts

The Factory Acts established the principle that the state had a responsibility to regulate the conditions of work, and they laid the foundation for the modern welfare state. The principle of state intervention in the workplace, established in the early nineteenth century, was developed and extended over the following century, and it remains an important part of the modern British state.

The Continuing Question

The standard-of-living debate is the most enduring controversy in British industrial history, and factory conditions are at its center. The pessimistic school, going back to J. L. and Barbara Hammond’s The Town Labourer (1917) and given its modern form by E. P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class (1963), argued that real wages of adult male workers stagnated or fell between 1790 and 1840, that children were worked to the bone, and that the early factory system was qualitatively worse than the domestic system it replaced. The optimistic school, associated with T. S. Ashton and given a quantitative basis by Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson in American Inequality (1976) and by Robert Allen, argues that real wages of unskilled British workers were roughly stable 1790-1820, then rose sharply 1820-1850, and that the early pessimistic estimates confused regional Lancashire with Britain as a whole. Jane Humphries’ Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England (2010) added a third twist by showing, from pauper-letter and household-budget evidence, that child wages were an essential part of family survival, so that factory legislation had the unintended effect of cutting the household income of the poorest families by 10-20 percent in the 1830s. The question of whether the factory was a horror or a net benefit, in other words, depends on whose welfare you measure and over what period, and the debate is still live in 21st-century economic history.

Selected Sources

E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963).
Robert Owen, A New View of Society (1813-14).
T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 (1948).
Jane Humphries, Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1750-1914 (2010).