WEBVTT NOTE The Industrial Revolution - Part Three 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Industrial Revolution, Part 3 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:15.000 In considering the Industrial Revolution and the enormous industrial and economic development that occurred in England between the years 1760 and 1830, 3 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:27.000 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. 4 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:37.000 In earlier discussions I have already taken up some of the factors that related to conditions ahead of the Industrial Revolutionary period. 5 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:48.000 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. 6 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:52.000 Here are the charges that have been levelled at industrialists generally. 7 00:00:52.000 --> 00:01:01.600 1. That they exploited human beings by forcing them to work in factories at pitifully low 8 00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:11.240 wages and at very, very long hours. 2. In addition to treating ordinary human beings 9 00:01:11.240 --> 00:01:18.440 this way not content with that, the industrialists also brought into the factory women and children 10 00:01:18.440 --> 00:01:31.720 3. That the treatment of the factory owners and the managers of these factories was fundamentally 11 00:01:31.720 --> 00:01:38.660 cruel and actually indifferent to the human requirements of the workers, to the degree 12 00:01:38.660 --> 00:01:45.400 that the builders of factories virtually ignored the comfort and decent necessities for human 13 00:01:45.400 --> 00:01:53.400 and Human Beings in a Working Situation and built what are called sweat shops with insufficient 14 00:01:53.400 --> 00:01:59.680 air, insufficient lighting, conditions so poor that they themselves constituted a hazard 15 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:07.280 to health and even to life. Four, that the machinery was not protected and consequently 16 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:12.160 many accidents occurred in the factories, most of them unnecessary, and thus there was 17 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:28.240 5. That in addition to general indifference to the human condition of the workers so employed, 18 00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:35.360 actual cruelty was imposed upon the workers so that sometimes they were beaten. There 19 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:41.680 is even a report that on one occasion children were chained to the benches and thus compelled 20 00:02:41.680 --> 00:02:49.320 to work terribly long hours at virtually galley slave conditions. This was not only a charge 21 00:02:49.320 --> 00:02:55.940 leveled relating to the conditions of child labor, but we have the accusation that sometimes 22 00:02:55.940 --> 00:03:03.920 men were forced to walk on treadmills in order to provide power. Indeed, the charges leveled 23 00:03:03.920 --> 00:03:10.680 against the industrialists have tended to make them appear as subhuman fiends virtually 24 00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:38.360 The Industrial Revolutionary Period Did Result in Substantial Upgrading of the Human Condition 25 00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:44.380 Education. This has, I think, at least in recent years, been acknowledged by most writers 26 00:03:44.380 --> 00:03:53.300 in the area. However, they still tend to argue that these economic gains, while admitted, 27 00:03:53.300 --> 00:04:00.520 were brought about through the imposition of cruelty and virtually enslavement conditions 28 00:04:00.520 --> 00:04:06.060 which were not necessary and that, fortunately, the government was called in to intervene 29 00:04:06.060 --> 00:04:12.220 and laws regulating the behavior of employers, notably in respect to wages, hours and the 30 00:04:12.220 --> 00:04:16.660 employment of children, began to be enacted. 31 00:04:16.660 --> 00:04:25.020 So I'd like to deal with these accusations in turn. First of all, let me take the question 32 00:04:25.020 --> 00:04:32.980 of the sweatshops. I'm not really certain what a sweatshop is, unless presumably one 33 00:04:32.980 --> 00:04:39.300 could take it literally and assume that it is a shop where sweating ensues. Obviously, 34 00:04:39.300 --> 00:04:44.740 any place where people work hard and perspire could be called a sweatshop. As a matter of 35 00:04:44.740 --> 00:04:50.300 fact, I have heard modern workers refer to even the most delightfully air-conditioned 36 00:04:50.300 --> 00:04:55.060 places where they work as sweatshops when they have to work a long time. So this is 37 00:04:55.060 --> 00:05:01.300 a bit of opprobrium that is not necessarily leveled at the industrialists. Nonetheless, 38 00:05:01.300 --> 00:05:07.860 The charge does adhere to them, so let's take a look at the factories that were constructed 39 00:05:07.860 --> 00:05:13.380 and to see whether or not the businessmen were responsible for this type of thing. Is 40 00:05:13.380 --> 00:05:21.380 it true that the factories were airless, cheerless, windowless, and miserable places? I think 41 00:05:21.380 --> 00:05:26.920 that charge is true. In general, the factories, by our standards of comparison, were pretty 42 00:05:26.920 --> 00:05:27.920 of Money. 43 00:05:27.920 --> 00:05:31.820 We wouldn't have liked to work in them, and I have no doubt that the people who lived 44 00:05:31.820 --> 00:05:34.800 at that time didn't like to work in them either. 45 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:40.360 As a matter of fact, very few of us really enjoy the kind of labour that is involved 46 00:05:40.360 --> 00:05:42.960 in a textile mill or a steel mill. 47 00:05:42.960 --> 00:05:48.560 It's hard, exacting work, and it goes on for long hours, then and now. 48 00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:53.740 And the people engaged in such activities rarely rejoice in the work they do. 49 00:05:53.740 --> 00:05:58.260 They may rejoice in the wage they receive, if it's a good wage, but they certainly 50 00:05:58.260 --> 00:06:04.260 don't warm up to the long and arduous hours they have to put in. 51 00:06:04.260 --> 00:06:09.980 But now let's take a look at the charge which is essentially this, that the businessmen 52 00:06:09.980 --> 00:06:16.180 deliberately ignored the human wants and human requirements and simply built the cheapest 53 00:06:16.180 --> 00:06:21.680 and most expeditious type of factory that they could in order to save money and to get 54 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:27.680 Interproduction as quickly as possible. That charge actually is untrue. In point of fact, 55 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:33.880 the businessmen were doing their level best to make their factories bigger and brighter 56 00:06:33.880 --> 00:06:40.280 and airier from the beginning. Why? Well, there's a very selfish reason involved, but 57 00:06:40.280 --> 00:06:48.280 let's face it. It was important to the businessmen that they enjoy as long a working day as possible. 58 00:06:48.280 --> 00:06:54.140 At the time we are speaking of, back in the beginning of the latter half of the 18th century, 59 00:06:54.140 --> 00:07:00.480 we did not have anything that could bring us adequate interior lighting except the sunlight 60 00:07:00.480 --> 00:07:06.520 from outside. Thus it behooved the industrialists to put in as many windows to bring in as much 61 00:07:06.520 --> 00:07:13.280 sunlight as possible. However, when businessmen sought to do this and to make their factories 62 00:07:13.280 --> 00:07:18.960 Bigger and brighter and airier and more cheerful places, so that they could work their workers 63 00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:24.480 longer, and that was the main motivation. The fact was that the government itself prohibited it. 64 00:07:25.200 --> 00:07:30.800 There were laws governing construction, building codes that had to be adhered to, 65 00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:34.960 and there was a general belief that every time you added a window to a building, 66 00:07:34.960 --> 00:07:38.560 you weakened the structure. Unless, of course, it happened to be a church. 67 00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:43.920 Churches seem to be immune to weakening, but any public place, that is where people would 68 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:48.320 tend to congregate in groups, had to be limited as to the number of windows that would put 69 00:07:48.320 --> 00:07:53.600 in. So many of the factories were unnecessarily dark, not because the businessmen wanted it 70 00:07:53.600 --> 00:07:57.400 that way. On the contrary, they wanted it the other way, because it would have been 71 00:07:57.400 --> 00:08:02.220 to their advantage the other way. But they were unable to do it because of laws limiting 72 00:08:02.220 --> 00:08:04.320 their behavior in this particular. 73 00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:07.400 Again, another inhibiting factor occurred. 74 00:08:07.400 --> 00:08:13.240 Earlier in France, under the reign of Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, a law had been 75 00:08:13.240 --> 00:08:19.680 passed that derived from the notion that Louis XIV took that since he was divine and the 76 00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:26.120 special emissary of God on earth, he was actually the one to control the sunlight. 77 00:08:26.120 --> 00:08:31.200 And therefore everyone had to pay a tax on the amount of sunlight that came through the 78 00:08:31.200 --> 00:08:43.240 The Businessman found himself in a position where he could add great expanses of glass. 79 00:08:43.240 --> 00:08:46.480 He found himself unable to pay the tax. 80 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:52.080 This also inhibited the free use of glass as much as it could have been done. 81 00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:59.360 The tax on windows was later dropped in England, but it still continues in force today in France, 82 00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:00.520 I am informed. 83 00:09:00.520 --> 00:09:07.040 is called a window tax, but in essence it is a derivative of the earlier tax on sunlight 84 00:09:07.040 --> 00:09:15.440 put in by Louis XIV when the tax was computed on the number of square inches of sunlight 85 00:09:15.440 --> 00:09:23.240 that could come in through the window pane. So there you have one of the inhibiting factors. 86 00:09:23.240 --> 00:09:30.480 What about the accusation of the long hours? Is that true? Yes, indeed it is true. Workers 87 00:09:30.480 --> 00:09:36.120 Businessmen worked very long hours. This was to the advantage of the businessmen, and they 88 00:09:36.120 --> 00:09:41.760 wanted long hours, during at least part of the time. 89 00:09:41.760 --> 00:09:46.840 Take for a moment a look at the geographic location of England. You'll note that it is 90 00:09:46.840 --> 00:09:53.280 actually on a parallel, virtually opposite Labrador. It is very far to the north. Most 91 00:09:53.280 --> 00:09:58.920 of us tend to think of London as being opposite New York, geographically speaking. Well, New 92 00:09:58.920 --> 00:10:04.520 New York is really opposite Rome, Italy, and London is much further north. In fact, it 93 00:10:04.520 --> 00:10:10.220 is very nearly in the Arctic Circle. Now, if you've ever enjoyed a trip to England, 94 00:10:10.220 --> 00:10:16.400 as I have, you will become aware at once of the fact that in the summertime the days are 95 00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:22.080 very long indeed. The sun begins to come up as early as maybe three o'clock in the morning. 96 00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:29.320 I have myself stood outside on an unlit London street and read a newspaper at 3.30 in the 97 00:10:29.320 --> 00:10:33.760 morning, without any help from any artificial lighting, because by that time it was bright 98 00:10:33.760 --> 00:10:39.040 enough so that you could read newsprint, and that is the condition that pertains in England 99 00:10:39.040 --> 00:10:44.480 during the summertime. So in the summertime, workers went to work at a very early hour, 100 00:10:44.480 --> 00:10:48.740 and because the sunlight continued through the day and on into the evening, in fact it 101 00:10:48.740 --> 00:10:52.780 It doesn't even begin to get dark until around 9 o'clock and you can see pretty well up 102 00:10:52.780 --> 00:10:59.100 till 9.30 or 10. In the summertime the days were very, very long and people worked very 103 00:10:59.100 --> 00:11:06.040 long hours when they had the light to work by. What about the winter? Well in the winter 104 00:11:06.040 --> 00:11:11.900 the reverse is true. In the winter it doesn't begin to be daylight in England until possibly 105 00:11:11.900 --> 00:11:30.420 Businessmen ask their workers to work very long hours during the summer and very short 106 00:11:30.420 --> 00:11:36.620 hours during the winter because interior lighting, which had to depend either on candles or on 107 00:11:36.620 --> 00:11:43.780 oil lamps or things of this sort, which are very costly and very inefficient, just wasn't 108 00:11:43.780 --> 00:11:49.340 adequate for the kind of work that required a good bright light inside to do any work 109 00:11:49.340 --> 00:11:55.860 at all. Thus the consequence is that during the summertime the workers worked very long 110 00:11:55.860 --> 00:12:02.540 hours. During the wintertime they worked very short hours. Now when did the workers complain? 111 00:12:02.540 --> 00:12:06.940 Well, they complained both summer and winter. Workers always complain. In the summertime 112 00:12:06.940 --> 00:12:12.140 they complained because the hours were too long. The days sometimes running 10, 11, 12, 113 00:12:12.140 --> 00:12:18.440 and even 14 and 16 hour days are not unknown. And that is a very long time, that's true. 114 00:12:18.440 --> 00:12:22.880 But in the winter they would work maybe four to six hours. And they would complain in the 115 00:12:22.880 --> 00:12:27.300 winter because they didn't get enough in the way of earnings, because as they worked 116 00:12:27.300 --> 00:12:52.120 In the accounts that are written up about the Industrial Revolution, it is taken for 117 00:12:52.120 --> 00:13:13.840 Now, let's take the question of women and children working. Is it true that women and 118 00:13:13.840 --> 00:13:17.840 children were admitted into the factories? Yes, of course it is true. As a matter of 119 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:47.840 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 120 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:53.800 Businessmen found real difficulty in hiring people to work in the factories. Here you 121 00:13:53.800 --> 00:13:59.380 have better than half of the people of England substantially unemployed, suffering starvation 122 00:13:59.380 --> 00:14:04.200 and deprivation of every description, and yet they wouldn't take a job in the factories. 123 00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:09.640 That's an interesting thing. And so the businessmen were very anxious to hire anyone 124 00:14:09.640 --> 00:14:15.400 who would work, and if he could find a woman or a child who was willing to work, the chances 125 00:14:15.400 --> 00:14:20.480 The reasons were rather good that the woman or the child would find employment. The reason 126 00:14:20.480 --> 00:14:26.420 for this, and there probably are many reasons, but one of the reasons that we have detected 127 00:14:26.420 --> 00:14:35.080 is that a regular campaign of abuse and vilification of the factories was launched through the 128 00:14:35.080 --> 00:14:42.580 various pulpits in England. The church itself took a stand against factory labor. They didn't 129 00:14:42.580 --> 00:14:47.260 want it. One of the reasons for this, of course, was that some of the businessmen, when they 130 00:14:47.260 --> 00:14:53.160 had a large contract or a rush order, would ask their workers to work on Sunday. And this 131 00:14:53.160 --> 00:14:59.060 cut into church attendance. And naturally the ministers and pastors did not approve 132 00:14:59.060 --> 00:15:04.860 of this because Sunday is a holy day and is supposed to be free from labor. And the consequence 133 00:15:04.860 --> 00:15:11.340 is that they branded the industrialization in England as the devil's work and they 134 00:15:11.340 --> 00:15:17.980 They indicated that the satanic forces were behind industrialization and that the workers 135 00:15:17.980 --> 00:15:23.700 taking work in a factory were demonstrating a lack of faith. After all, it says in the 136 00:15:23.700 --> 00:15:29.700 scriptures that you should not consider things of this sort. Consider the lilies and how 137 00:15:29.700 --> 00:15:34.980 they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet Solomon in all his glory was 138 00:15:34.980 --> 00:15:40.660 not arrayed like one of these. And of course there was the idea that faith itself, if you 139 00:15:40.660 --> 00:15:48.660 If you have the necessary faith, it can move mountains, and therefore, if you have enough faith, your daily bread will be provided. 140 00:15:48.660 --> 00:15:53.660 There was nothing in scriptures that suggested to these people that you had to work for it. 141 00:15:53.660 --> 00:16:06.660 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. 142 00:16:06.660 --> 00:16:17.900 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. 143 00:16:17.900 --> 00:16:26.060 Indeed, he was called a wage slave, having sold himself to the devil just in exchange for daily bread, 144 00:16:26.060 --> 00:16:32.060 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. 145 00:16:32.060 --> 00:16:38.660 And this was the kind of thinking that made it imperative that businessmen take almost 146 00:16:38.660 --> 00:16:40.580 anybody that would show up. 147 00:16:40.580 --> 00:16:46.060 As a matter of fact, we find some businessmen hiring cripples, a practice I might point 148 00:16:46.060 --> 00:16:50.880 out that is going on today, and usually a very rewarding one, because the handicapped 149 00:16:50.880 --> 00:16:56.020 often make excellent workers, they are very eager to work and to use what skills they 150 00:16:56.020 --> 00:17:01.820 have and to demonstrate that they are as good as anyone else, they make excellent employees, 151 00:17:01.820 --> 00:17:31.820 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. 152 00:17:31.820 --> 00:17:38.420 Of course, we cannot give the factories a clean bill of help, then or now. 153 00:17:38.420 --> 00:17:39.420 Accidents happen. 154 00:17:39.420 --> 00:17:45.700 A factory is a dangerous place, and there certainly are abundant records indicating 155 00:17:45.700 --> 00:17:51.680 that here and there an accident occurred, here and there possibly even a death would 156 00:17:51.680 --> 00:17:58.080 ensue as a result of the danger from high-speed machinery, from cutting edges, from furnaces 157 00:17:58.080 --> 00:18:00.800 or things of this sort. 158 00:18:00.800 --> 00:18:05.640 They did not understand how to box in the machinery at first. They didn't know whether 159 00:18:05.640 --> 00:18:10.500 they could do it and still make the machinery function. And so there was a lot of experimentation 160 00:18:10.500 --> 00:18:15.940 going on, but to begin with, the machinery in the mills was unprotected and this meant 161 00:18:15.940 --> 00:18:22.140 that a careless worker could damage himself, sometimes irreparably, and the accident rate 162 00:18:22.140 --> 00:18:30.760 by our standards was relatively high. So again you see how circumstances tended to make the 163 00:18:30.760 --> 00:18:35.800 Businessman looked like a villain, whereas in point of fact, if you'll consider it, 164 00:18:35.800 --> 00:18:39.960 the businessman was trying to make the situation as good as he could. 165 00:18:39.960 --> 00:18:45.920 For additional evidence in this score, let me take the matter of children. 166 00:18:45.920 --> 00:18:54.200 One of the sources of child labor, of course, was the wandering child who had been sent 167 00:18:54.200 --> 00:18:56.560 from his family at an early age. 168 00:18:56.560 --> 00:18:58.480 This seems incredible to us. 169 00:18:58.480 --> 00:19:05.240 But it was standard policy in those early days for a man to call his son to him when 170 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:10.920 the son had reached the ripe old age of eight. And he would say to his son, young man, you 171 00:19:10.920 --> 00:19:15.940 are now grown up enough to take care of yourself, and you must now leave the family home and 172 00:19:15.940 --> 00:19:22.600 go out and seek your fortune. And so we find hundreds of waifs dispossessed from their 173 00:19:52.600 --> 00:20:09.840 Another source of child labor was this. When a man would finally decide that he would take 174 00:20:09.840 --> 00:20:15.560 work at a factory or mill and would call there seeking employment, and would get the job 175 00:20:15.560 --> 00:20:20.760 because quite frankly they were hiring almost anybody that was warm, his first question 176 00:20:20.760 --> 00:20:25.400 And the question was, well, could you take in the Misses too? Is there work for her? 177 00:20:25.400 --> 00:20:30.040 After all, that would double the family income. And usually there was. Well, if you're going 178 00:20:30.040 --> 00:20:35.620 to have the Misses of the house employed too, then what of the children? Mother won't be 179 00:20:35.620 --> 00:20:40.880 at home to look after them. Is there something the wee-wins can do in the factory? And in 180 00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:46.800 order to obtain able-bodied men and able-bodied women, many employers also open the doors 181 00:20:46.800 --> 00:20:51.940 to the children, and we find instance after instance of whole family groups coming to 182 00:20:51.940 --> 00:20:58.200 work in the factory where actually the discipline leveled against the child was exercised primarily 183 00:20:58.200 --> 00:21:05.440 by his parents and not by the foreman at all. These are not rare instances. They occur in 184 00:21:05.440 --> 00:21:11.280 plentitude. However, they are not necessarily the only source of child labor or of female 185 00:21:11.280 --> 00:21:15.880 labor that was available to the factories at this early time. 186 00:21:15.880 --> 00:21:21.440 A third source of child labor relates to the orphanages, and here we have a very interesting 187 00:21:21.440 --> 00:21:30.080 situation. If perhaps you have seen Dickens' Oliver, the current production, or possibly 188 00:21:30.080 --> 00:21:36.840 you have read some of Dickens' stories such as Oliver Twist and the other stories of which 189 00:21:36.840 --> 00:21:42.960 he was such a master, you are aware of the condition in the British orphanages. They 190 00:21:42.960 --> 00:21:48.040 They were dreadful. Dickens paints a very graphic and quite accurate picture of the 191 00:21:48.040 --> 00:21:54.540 conditions that children faced in these orphanages. So far as I have been able to learn, virtually 192 00:21:54.540 --> 00:22:01.020 all of the orphanages, if not all, were government institutions. And when the orphan was put 193 00:22:01.020 --> 00:22:07.780 into the orphanage, it was a usual practice for Parliament to appropriate a small stipend 194 00:22:07.780 --> 00:22:12.860 to send over to look after the child during the time that he stayed in the orphanage. 195 00:22:12.860 --> 00:22:18.580 These stipends were very small, and a good manager of an orphan would have to take care 196 00:22:18.580 --> 00:22:23.900 of that money very carefully and spend it very parsimoniously for it to last the number 197 00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:26.900 of years that the orphan might be with him. 198 00:22:26.900 --> 00:22:31.780 There is no doubt in my mind that some of the orphanage managers, acquainted with the 199 00:22:31.780 --> 00:22:36.820 facts of reality that faced them, might very well have figured that the quicker the child 200 00:22:36.820 --> 00:22:42.620 died the better it would be for them financially and for the financial strength of their institution. 201 00:22:42.620 --> 00:22:48.620 Certainly the lot of the children in orphanages was cruel, and the hardships that they experienced 202 00:22:48.620 --> 00:22:53.140 there was very, very bad. On the contrary, it was probably better than would have happened 203 00:22:53.140 --> 00:22:57.580 to these orphans had they been free to wander about, because there no one was taking care 204 00:22:57.580 --> 00:23:03.060 of them at all. In the orphanages at least they did get some food and some shelter, although 205 00:23:03.060 --> 00:23:08.240 of course they were often asked to work very hard in exchange. 206 00:23:08.240 --> 00:23:13.940 We find instances of businessmen approaching the orphanages and sometimes buying orphans 207 00:23:13.940 --> 00:23:19.160 to come and work for them in their factories. Or we have instances, at least one instance, 208 00:23:19.160 --> 00:23:25.060 where an orphanage manager turned over, apparently without payment, all of his charges, and they 209 00:23:25.060 --> 00:23:30.640 all went to work in a neighborhood textile mill. There were instances of this sort. 210 00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:37.240 But the interesting thing, and it is deserving of study, is the comparative death rate of 211 00:23:37.240 --> 00:23:41.240 Children in Orphanages and Children in Factories 212 00:24:07.240 --> 00:24:15.660 Out of every 100 children, only 15 survived. What is the death rate of children working 213 00:24:15.660 --> 00:24:22.660 in factories? Almost zero. The children who got into the factories and mills obviously 214 00:24:22.660 --> 00:24:29.820 had a much better chance at survival and a much better chance to enjoy good health and 215 00:24:29.820 --> 00:24:34.840 a livelihood than they would have had if they stayed in the orphanages. And yet the orphanages 216 00:24:34.840 --> 00:24:43.480 and the mills were managed by private persons who were seeking fundamentally to enjoy profit. 217 00:24:43.480 --> 00:24:49.880 So here you see a very interesting turn of events that has been held up in such a way 218 00:24:49.880 --> 00:24:55.380 as to make us believe that the businessmen were unconscionable villains and yet in point 219 00:24:55.380 --> 00:24:59.800 of fact when you examine it you find that they really weren't that bad. 220 00:24:59.800 --> 00:25:03.880 Let me take one other case, it's a very interesting one. 221 00:25:03.880 --> 00:25:09.560 It relates to the accusation that children were sometimes chained to their benches, and 222 00:25:09.560 --> 00:25:14.080 I found one case where this had happened, where the children in a factory were actually 223 00:25:14.080 --> 00:25:20.980 chained to their benches, but not, as you suppose, a bench where they worked. 224 00:25:20.980 --> 00:25:25.340 On the contrary, it was a bench where they sat when they weren't working. 225 00:25:25.340 --> 00:25:28.400 The story is like this. 226 00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:34.560 In this particular mill, it was a textile mill, these young men were employed as doffers. 227 00:25:34.560 --> 00:25:42.820 Now that's a particular type of job that requires the young fellows to go to a spinning 228 00:25:42.820 --> 00:25:48.680 machine where the threads come out and are wound on spindles. 229 00:25:48.680 --> 00:25:54.720 When the run of the mill finishes and the spools are full, then the doffers go up to 230 00:25:54.720 --> 00:25:56.720 The Theory of Money and Credit 231 00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:30.400 For children, this foreman actually chained them to the bench to keep them out of mischief. 232 00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:35.940 Now that particular report has come down making it appear that the foreman was sort of chaining 233 00:27:35.940 --> 00:27:41.140 them to their jobs and extracting the last ounce of human energy from them in order to 234 00:27:41.140 --> 00:27:45.780 increase production. In point of fact, he was trying to save their lives. I'm not recommending 235 00:27:45.780 --> 00:27:51.820 chaining as a good way of dealing with employees, but when you understand the context in which 236 00:27:51.820 --> 00:27:56.700 By the time the event occurred, you can understand that it was to the advantage of businessmen 237 00:27:56.700 --> 00:28:01.820 to keep their employees healthy and to keep them working well.