Industrial Revolution, Part 3
In considering the Industrial Revolution and the enormous industrial and economic development that occurred in England between the years 1760 and 1830,
one of the most important things for us to do is to examine the various accusations that have been made against the industrialists and businessmen to see whether or not they are valid.
In earlier discussions I have already taken up some of the factors that related to conditions ahead of the Industrial Revolutionary period.
But let me now confine myself to the actual accusations that have been made and to meeting those accusations with the best information that I know of in existence.
Here are the charges that have been levelled at industrialists generally.
1. That they exploited human beings by forcing them to work in factories at pitifully low
wages and at very, very long hours. 2. In addition to treating ordinary human beings
this way not content with that, the industrialists also brought into the factory women and children
3. That the treatment of the factory owners and the managers of these factories was fundamentally
cruel and actually indifferent to the human requirements of the workers, to the degree
that the builders of factories virtually ignored the comfort and decent necessities for human
and Human Beings in a Working Situation and built what are called sweat shops with insufficient
air, insufficient lighting, conditions so poor that they themselves constituted a hazard
to health and even to life. Four, that the machinery was not protected and consequently
many accidents occurred in the factories, most of them unnecessary, and thus there was
5. That in addition to general indifference to the human condition of the workers so employed,
actual cruelty was imposed upon the workers so that sometimes they were beaten. There
is even a report that on one occasion children were chained to the benches and thus compelled
to work terribly long hours at virtually galley slave conditions. This was not only a charge
leveled relating to the conditions of child labor, but we have the accusation that sometimes
men were forced to walk on treadmills in order to provide power. Indeed, the charges leveled
against the industrialists have tended to make them appear as subhuman fiends virtually
The Industrial Revolutionary Period Did Result in Substantial Upgrading of the Human Condition
Education. This has, I think, at least in recent years, been acknowledged by most writers
in the area. However, they still tend to argue that these economic gains, while admitted,
were brought about through the imposition of cruelty and virtually enslavement conditions
which were not necessary and that, fortunately, the government was called in to intervene
and laws regulating the behavior of employers, notably in respect to wages, hours and the
employment of children, began to be enacted.
So I'd like to deal with these accusations in turn. First of all, let me take the question
of the sweatshops. I'm not really certain what a sweatshop is, unless presumably one
could take it literally and assume that it is a shop where sweating ensues. Obviously,
any place where people work hard and perspire could be called a sweatshop. As a matter of
fact, I have heard modern workers refer to even the most delightfully air-conditioned
places where they work as sweatshops when they have to work a long time. So this is
a bit of opprobrium that is not necessarily leveled at the industrialists. Nonetheless,
The charge does adhere to them, so let's take a look at the factories that were constructed
and to see whether or not the businessmen were responsible for this type of thing. Is
it true that the factories were airless, cheerless, windowless, and miserable places? I think
that charge is true. In general, the factories, by our standards of comparison, were pretty
of Money.
We wouldn't have liked to work in them, and I have no doubt that the people who lived
at that time didn't like to work in them either.
As a matter of fact, very few of us really enjoy the kind of labour that is involved
in a textile mill or a steel mill.
It's hard, exacting work, and it goes on for long hours, then and now.
And the people engaged in such activities rarely rejoice in the work they do.
They may rejoice in the wage they receive, if it's a good wage, but they certainly
don't warm up to the long and arduous hours they have to put in.
But now let's take a look at the charge which is essentially this, that the businessmen
deliberately ignored the human wants and human requirements and simply built the cheapest
and most expeditious type of factory that they could in order to save money and to get
Interproduction as quickly as possible. That charge actually is untrue. In point of fact,
the businessmen were doing their level best to make their factories bigger and brighter
and airier from the beginning. Why? Well, there's a very selfish reason involved, but
let's face it. It was important to the businessmen that they enjoy as long a working day as possible.
At the time we are speaking of, back in the beginning of the latter half of the 18th century,
we did not have anything that could bring us adequate interior lighting except the sunlight
from outside. Thus it behooved the industrialists to put in as many windows to bring in as much
sunlight as possible. However, when businessmen sought to do this and to make their factories
Bigger and brighter and airier and more cheerful places, so that they could work their workers
longer, and that was the main motivation. The fact was that the government itself prohibited it.
There were laws governing construction, building codes that had to be adhered to,
and there was a general belief that every time you added a window to a building,
you weakened the structure. Unless, of course, it happened to be a church.
Churches seem to be immune to weakening, but any public place, that is where people would
tend to congregate in groups, had to be limited as to the number of windows that would put
in. So many of the factories were unnecessarily dark, not because the businessmen wanted it
that way. On the contrary, they wanted it the other way, because it would have been
to their advantage the other way. But they were unable to do it because of laws limiting
their behavior in this particular.
Again, another inhibiting factor occurred.
Earlier in France, under the reign of Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, a law had been
passed that derived from the notion that Louis XIV took that since he was divine and the
special emissary of God on earth, he was actually the one to control the sunlight.
And therefore everyone had to pay a tax on the amount of sunlight that came through the
The Businessman found himself in a position where he could add great expanses of glass.
He found himself unable to pay the tax.
This also inhibited the free use of glass as much as it could have been done.
The tax on windows was later dropped in England, but it still continues in force today in France,
I am informed.
is called a window tax, but in essence it is a derivative of the earlier tax on sunlight
put in by Louis XIV when the tax was computed on the number of square inches of sunlight
that could come in through the window pane. So there you have one of the inhibiting factors.
What about the accusation of the long hours? Is that true? Yes, indeed it is true. Workers
Businessmen worked very long hours. This was to the advantage of the businessmen, and they
wanted long hours, during at least part of the time.
Take for a moment a look at the geographic location of England. You'll note that it is
actually on a parallel, virtually opposite Labrador. It is very far to the north. Most
of us tend to think of London as being opposite New York, geographically speaking. Well, New
New York is really opposite Rome, Italy, and London is much further north. In fact, it
is very nearly in the Arctic Circle. Now, if you've ever enjoyed a trip to England,
as I have, you will become aware at once of the fact that in the summertime the days are
very long indeed. The sun begins to come up as early as maybe three o'clock in the morning.
I have myself stood outside on an unlit London street and read a newspaper at 3.30 in the
morning, without any help from any artificial lighting, because by that time it was bright
enough so that you could read newsprint, and that is the condition that pertains in England
during the summertime. So in the summertime, workers went to work at a very early hour,
and because the sunlight continued through the day and on into the evening, in fact it
It doesn't even begin to get dark until around 9 o'clock and you can see pretty well up
till 9.30 or 10. In the summertime the days were very, very long and people worked very
long hours when they had the light to work by. What about the winter? Well in the winter
the reverse is true. In the winter it doesn't begin to be daylight in England until possibly
Businessmen ask their workers to work very long hours during the summer and very short
hours during the winter because interior lighting, which had to depend either on candles or on
oil lamps or things of this sort, which are very costly and very inefficient, just wasn't
adequate for the kind of work that required a good bright light inside to do any work
at all. Thus the consequence is that during the summertime the workers worked very long
hours. During the wintertime they worked very short hours. Now when did the workers complain?
Well, they complained both summer and winter. Workers always complain. In the summertime
they complained because the hours were too long. The days sometimes running 10, 11, 12,
and even 14 and 16 hour days are not unknown. And that is a very long time, that's true.
But in the winter they would work maybe four to six hours. And they would complain in the
winter because they didn't get enough in the way of earnings, because as they worked
In the accounts that are written up about the Industrial Revolution, it is taken for
Now, let's take the question of women and children working. Is it true that women and
children were admitted into the factories? Yes, of course it is true. As a matter of
In fact, a very curious thing developed in England. We know, in fact, that about ninety percent of the population of England, exclusive of the servant class and of the class of clerics, which are often considered in this same grouping, and who did have employment, with those exceptions, about ninety percent of the population was unemployed. There was certainly an available workforce. And yet the great curiosity is that
Businessmen found real difficulty in hiring people to work in the factories. Here you
have better than half of the people of England substantially unemployed, suffering starvation
and deprivation of every description, and yet they wouldn't take a job in the factories.
That's an interesting thing. And so the businessmen were very anxious to hire anyone
who would work, and if he could find a woman or a child who was willing to work, the chances
The reasons were rather good that the woman or the child would find employment. The reason
for this, and there probably are many reasons, but one of the reasons that we have detected
is that a regular campaign of abuse and vilification of the factories was launched through the
various pulpits in England. The church itself took a stand against factory labor. They didn't
want it. One of the reasons for this, of course, was that some of the businessmen, when they
had a large contract or a rush order, would ask their workers to work on Sunday. And this
cut into church attendance. And naturally the ministers and pastors did not approve
of this because Sunday is a holy day and is supposed to be free from labor. And the consequence
is that they branded the industrialization in England as the devil's work and they
They indicated that the satanic forces were behind industrialization and that the workers
taking work in a factory were demonstrating a lack of faith. After all, it says in the
scriptures that you should not consider things of this sort. Consider the lilies and how
they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed like one of these. And of course there was the idea that faith itself, if you
If you have the necessary faith, it can move mountains, and therefore, if you have enough faith, your daily bread will be provided.
There was nothing in scriptures that suggested to these people that you had to work for it.
And the consequence was, as they interpreted the scriptures at that time, that it seemed to them that the church militant was against the idea of the factories.
And consequently, it became a matter of public disfavor for a person to take work in a factory or a mill where he would have a regular wage.
Indeed, he was called a wage slave, having sold himself to the devil just in exchange for daily bread,
whereas, in fact, if he had had the proper faith, he should have been able to get his daily bread some other way, you see.
And this was the kind of thinking that made it imperative that businessmen take almost
anybody that would show up.
As a matter of fact, we find some businessmen hiring cripples, a practice I might point
out that is going on today, and usually a very rewarding one, because the handicapped
often make excellent workers, they are very eager to work and to use what skills they
have and to demonstrate that they are as good as anyone else, they make excellent employees,
and the consequence was that at this time many people who had been crippled, possibly from birth or perhaps from an accident of some sort, found employment in the mills and factories and there is no doubt that many of the people who took a jaundiced view of the factories attributed the crippling to the factories because they saw people going in and out of factories who were crippled and therefore they leap to the conclusion that it was in the factory that the crippling occurred.
Of course, we cannot give the factories a clean bill of help, then or now.
Accidents happen.
A factory is a dangerous place, and there certainly are abundant records indicating
that here and there an accident occurred, here and there possibly even a death would
ensue as a result of the danger from high-speed machinery, from cutting edges, from furnaces
or things of this sort.
They did not understand how to box in the machinery at first. They didn't know whether
they could do it and still make the machinery function. And so there was a lot of experimentation
going on, but to begin with, the machinery in the mills was unprotected and this meant
that a careless worker could damage himself, sometimes irreparably, and the accident rate
by our standards was relatively high. So again you see how circumstances tended to make the
Businessman looked like a villain, whereas in point of fact, if you'll consider it,
the businessman was trying to make the situation as good as he could.
For additional evidence in this score, let me take the matter of children.
One of the sources of child labor, of course, was the wandering child who had been sent
from his family at an early age.
This seems incredible to us.
But it was standard policy in those early days for a man to call his son to him when
the son had reached the ripe old age of eight. And he would say to his son, young man, you
are now grown up enough to take care of yourself, and you must now leave the family home and
go out and seek your fortune. And so we find hundreds of waifs dispossessed from their
Another source of child labor was this. When a man would finally decide that he would take
work at a factory or mill and would call there seeking employment, and would get the job
because quite frankly they were hiring almost anybody that was warm, his first question
And the question was, well, could you take in the Misses too? Is there work for her?
After all, that would double the family income. And usually there was. Well, if you're going
to have the Misses of the house employed too, then what of the children? Mother won't be
at home to look after them. Is there something the wee-wins can do in the factory? And in
order to obtain able-bodied men and able-bodied women, many employers also open the doors
to the children, and we find instance after instance of whole family groups coming to
work in the factory where actually the discipline leveled against the child was exercised primarily
by his parents and not by the foreman at all. These are not rare instances. They occur in
plentitude. However, they are not necessarily the only source of child labor or of female
labor that was available to the factories at this early time.
A third source of child labor relates to the orphanages, and here we have a very interesting
situation. If perhaps you have seen Dickens' Oliver, the current production, or possibly
you have read some of Dickens' stories such as Oliver Twist and the other stories of which
he was such a master, you are aware of the condition in the British orphanages. They
They were dreadful. Dickens paints a very graphic and quite accurate picture of the
conditions that children faced in these orphanages. So far as I have been able to learn, virtually
all of the orphanages, if not all, were government institutions. And when the orphan was put
into the orphanage, it was a usual practice for Parliament to appropriate a small stipend
to send over to look after the child during the time that he stayed in the orphanage.
These stipends were very small, and a good manager of an orphan would have to take care
of that money very carefully and spend it very parsimoniously for it to last the number
of years that the orphan might be with him.
There is no doubt in my mind that some of the orphanage managers, acquainted with the
facts of reality that faced them, might very well have figured that the quicker the child
died the better it would be for them financially and for the financial strength of their institution.
Certainly the lot of the children in orphanages was cruel, and the hardships that they experienced
there was very, very bad. On the contrary, it was probably better than would have happened
to these orphans had they been free to wander about, because there no one was taking care
of them at all. In the orphanages at least they did get some food and some shelter, although
of course they were often asked to work very hard in exchange.
We find instances of businessmen approaching the orphanages and sometimes buying orphans
to come and work for them in their factories. Or we have instances, at least one instance,
where an orphanage manager turned over, apparently without payment, all of his charges, and they
all went to work in a neighborhood textile mill. There were instances of this sort.
But the interesting thing, and it is deserving of study, is the comparative death rate of
Children in Orphanages and Children in Factories
Out of every 100 children, only 15 survived. What is the death rate of children working
in factories? Almost zero. The children who got into the factories and mills obviously
had a much better chance at survival and a much better chance to enjoy good health and
a livelihood than they would have had if they stayed in the orphanages. And yet the orphanages
and the mills were managed by private persons who were seeking fundamentally to enjoy profit.
So here you see a very interesting turn of events that has been held up in such a way
as to make us believe that the businessmen were unconscionable villains and yet in point
of fact when you examine it you find that they really weren't that bad.
Let me take one other case, it's a very interesting one.
It relates to the accusation that children were sometimes chained to their benches, and
I found one case where this had happened, where the children in a factory were actually
chained to their benches, but not, as you suppose, a bench where they worked.
On the contrary, it was a bench where they sat when they weren't working.
The story is like this.
In this particular mill, it was a textile mill, these young men were employed as doffers.
Now that's a particular type of job that requires the young fellows to go to a spinning
machine where the threads come out and are wound on spindles.
When the run of the mill finishes and the spools are full, then the doffers go up to
The Theory of Money and Credit
For children, this foreman actually chained them to the bench to keep them out of mischief.
Now that particular report has come down making it appear that the foreman was sort of chaining
them to their jobs and extracting the last ounce of human energy from them in order to
increase production. In point of fact, he was trying to save their lives. I'm not recommending
chaining as a good way of dealing with employees, but when you understand the context in which
By the time the event occurred, you can understand that it was to the advantage of businessmen
to keep their employees healthy and to keep them working well.