II. A SOCIAL ISSUE
1. Working Conditions
a. Evolution of Working Time and Wages.
From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, to the mid-eighteenth century, the working conditions in factories and mines was a major social problem, inherent to the employment of children. If the growing number of child labourers has been continuously contested by historians, the work environment in which children carried out their tasks has been highly condemned. Therefore, here the dangerousness of the tasks will be analyzed through detailed examples of industrial accidents. Moreover, along with the development of child labour during the nineteenth century, it seems important to highlight the evolution of the working conditions. We will also turn our attention to the moral and sexual violence children endured in that grown-old world.
The first aspect of the working conditions analyzed in this part is working time. Until the 1830's, working time constituted a major element of children's childhood. Indeed, the length of the working day organized the child's timetable. Thereby, the child knew when to wake up, when to go to work, or again, whether he or she had time or not for studying and playing. For most of them, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the working day lasted between twelve and nineteen hours, depending on the work they did1 For instance, in coal mines, girls and boys used to work for twelve, sometimes fourteen hours, going to work when it was dark outside, and coming back home at night. While working underground, children could not rely on the day light to know what time it was. The working day appeared then to be an endless night. In textile factories, children followed a strict timing.
Historians report that “fourteen, sixteen or even eighteen hours with a forty-minute dinner break was common for the largely child and female labour force.2” The advent of electricity made it possible for children to work long after the sunset and long before the sunrise as they owned industrial light. In the General History of Work, socio- economist and historian Claude Folhen presents an anonymous testimony of a father, whose two girls worked in a Manchester textile factory. The father explains that generally his daughters went to work at six in the morning and went back home at half past eight in the evening. However, he also confesses that regularly, it happened that the girls had to go to work at three in the morning and went back home at ten in the evening. They slept no more than
1 Folhen, Claude, and Bédarida François. Histoire Générale du Travail, Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France, 1976, p.40. Print.
2 Rule, John. The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England, 1750-1850, London:Routledge, 2014, p.310. Print.
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four hours, and apparently, they regularly fell asleep while having dinner3. Therefore, exhaustion was one of the main consequences of the lengthening of working time.
Long working hours made it possible to increase the industries' productivity. Indeed, children worked longer and contributed better to the development of the manufactures turnovers. However, we could wonder if the children's over-exhaustion, caused by an over-exploitation of their working capacity, would not have dramatic consequences on the children's moral and physical health. From the birth of industrialization, it seems that over- tired children obviously faced the rigour and strictness of the overseers. In the mines and factories was established a new system of terror and discipline. Beating children enabled them to stay awake while they worked, and permitted as well to maintain the regularity of the high-level of productivity. Punishments were regularly imposed to dozing children. The most frequent was the strapping. Other common punishments included “nailing children's ears to the table, and dowsing them in water butts to keep them awake.4” In her book gathering child labourers' testimonies, English historian Jane Humphries observes the application of that new tragic system. She reports:
“Robert North, who worked in a coal mine in Yorkshire, told an inspector: 'I went into the pit at seven-year-old.
When I drew by the girdle and chain, my skin was broken and the blood ran down … If we said anything, they would beat us'.5” Robert North was apparently a young hurryer. Moreover, historian and economist François Bédarida observes that kind of violence in children's working environment too. He also explains that overseers had the right to give fines to disorderly and dozing children. François Bédarida underlines the harshness of these fines.
Indeed, one shilling was asked when the child did something which was not allowed, like opening a window, washing his or her hands, or falling asleep. In Manchester, in some of the textile manufactures, drinking was allowed only during lunch break. Consequently, two shillings were asked for drinking6. Furthermore, a dozing child could be really dangerous. In her book, Jane Humphries also tells the story of a young trapper. She writes:
“Many young trappers were killed when they dozed off and fell into the path of the carts. Ten-year-old Joseph Arkley forgot to shut a trap door, allowing poisonous gas to seep into the tunnel. He died along with ten others in the resulting explosion.7” Thus, the indiscipline and over-exhaustion had terrible consequences on the children and the other workers.
Age is another important element to take on board in the study of working time. Children started labouring generally from five, sometimes from four-year-old. The workers' precocity could have been part of their
3 Folhen, Claude. Histoire Générale du Travail, Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France, 1976, p.41. Print.
4 Abrams, Fran. What's Wrong with child Labour. BBC website. Sept. 2010. Web. 26 June. 2015.
5 Humphries, Jane. Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution, New-York:Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 184. Print.
6 Bédarida François. Histoire Générale du Travail, Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France, 1976, p.41. Print.
7 Humphries, Jane. Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution, New-York:Cambridge University Press, 2010, p 221. Print.
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substantial exhaustion. According to modern observers, the children's age seems to have an incidence on their tiredness. Although they performed tasks adapted to their morphology, they were expected to work as much as an adult male or a woman. Children had been considered as miniature adults. “They could be hanged for theft at the age of seven.8” As Jane Humphries says, “the physical demands of the majority of jobs in the patchily mechanized industrial economy ensured that lads were seldom able to compete directly with adults for work.” To that she adds:
“Beaten, exploited and abused, they never knew what it was to have a full belly or a good night's sleep. Their childhood was over before it had begun.9” Thereby, she denounces what she called “the mechanized industrial economy”, to deliberately and cruelly use children as small adults. However, historian Edward Palmer Thomson thinks differently. Indeed, he denies the idea that children spent most of their time in the working space. He explains that children played and were loved at work. He asserts:
“ In normal circumstances, work would be intermittent: it would follow a cycle of tasks, and even regular jobs like winding bobbins would not be required all day. No infant had to tread cotton in a tube for eight hours a day and for six a week. In short, we may suppose a graduated introduction to work, with some relation to the child's capacity and age, interspersed with play. Above all, the work was within the family economy and under parental care. It is true that parental attitudes to children were exceptionally severe in the eighteenth century. But no case has been made out for a general sadism or lack of love. 10”
That quote stands far from Jane Humphries' vision of the exploited child. Nevertheless, if the harshness of the factory environment is not really highlighted here, the organization of working time appears to be as important as the child's introduction to a work environment. The lengthening of the work hours impacted morally and physically the children who endured violence and nasty treatment. Therefore, whether historians emphasize or not the cruelty of the children's exhaustive day work, working time is an indispensable element to include in the study of the working conditions.
Fortunately, in the 1830's, child labour in England started to be regarded as a social issue by politicians.
As we said earlier, thanks to Lord Ashley, in 1833, the first effective law was voted to reduce the children's day work. Indeed, night work was forbidden for children under eighteen-year-old. The children aged from nine to thirteen had the right to work for eight hours with an hour lunch break. Children aged from nine to thirteen were supposed to work no more than twelve hours with an hour lunch break. Inspectors made sure the law was really enforced. Child labourers in the textile industry started to be effectively protected from the too long working days
8 Hopkins, Eric. Childhood Transformed:Working-class Children in the Nineteenth Century England, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994, prologue. Print.
9 Humphries, Jane. Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution, New-York:Cambridge University Press, 2010, p 213. Print.
10 Thompson, Edward Palmer. The Making of the English Working Class, London:Penguin Book, 2002, Introduction. Print.
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and exhaustion was no longer provoked by the lengthening of work time, but only by the work in itself. No timing regulation had been made for children in the mines before the end of the century. It was the Tory Prime minister Robert Peel who voted the Mine Act , in 1842. It regulated children's age, forbidding boys and girls under ten to work underground. That act opened the way to numerous investigations on the children's working conditions in mines. In 1878, another act was passed, the Factory and Workshops Act, applied to the totality of the workers, including chimney sweeps, but excluding child miners. That law fixed the legal working age to ten, and brought several safety and health obligations.
Despite the vote of these numerous working regulations, no law was created to protect children's wage. From the beginning of industrialization, to the end of the nineteenth century, young workers had remained cheap work- force. Their wage stayed unchanged whether the country faced economic crisis or flourishing periods. Indeed, free- labour children, overtired, worked for an average of only three shillings a week in cotton factories, between two and four shillings a week in mines, depending obviously on the mine's location and productivity. That was three times less than an adult male who earned generally between fourteen and sixteen shillings a week. Children selling newspapers and other goods in the streets were poorer than children working in factories and mines. Their wage were unstable and did not depend on the number of hours they worked. Indeed, they only earned a part of what they managed to sell, as their parents or guardians collected more than the half of the amount. Concerning Parish children, we have already explained that they did not earn money as they learned a trade and were housed and fed instead. Yet, they worked as long and as hard as free-labour children.
b. Working Conditions in Textile Mills.
Since Parish apprentices were the first children to be massively exploited, because not paid for their work, in the early industrial textile mills, they were the first real victims of the mechanization of work. At the turn of the century, the majority of new textile mills equipped themselves with steam machines, establishing a relentless rhythm of work. Historian John Belchem underlines: “in the new textile mills, power-driven machinery dictated a new and merciless rhythm, the first victims of which were the infant pauper apprentices, the white-slaves, sent from urban workhouses to remote mills.11” That new rhythm implied appalling working-conditions. However, in the 1800's, to these “white-slaves” exploitation was added the employment of free-labour children's who contributed to the work and were now concerned by these working conditions as well.
In weaving factories, children's tasks were directly connected to the dangerousness of machines. For instance, a scavenger was supposed to pick up the waste cotton flue fallen under the loom. However, to save time, he did that while the machine was still working, taking the risk of being mangled by it. The previously mentioned journalist, John Brown, explaines in his article about Robert Blincoe's experience in a weaving mill, that::
11 Belchem, John. Industrialization and the Working Class : The English Experience, 1750- 1900, Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1990, p.45. Print.
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“the task first allocated to Robert Blincoe was to pick up the loose cotton that fell upon the floor. Apparently, nothing could be easier, although he was much terrified by the whirling motion and noise of the machinery. He also disliked the dust and the flue with which he was half suffocated. He soon felt sick, and by constantly stooping, his back ached.12”
Thus, scavengers could be the victims of machines, but also of bad health conditions in mills. Indeed, numerous illnesses were caused by the bad ventilation of the rooms, and the perpetual cotton dust floating in the air. Children were then disposed to contract byssinosis or brown lung, resulting in respiratory failure, and tuberculosis13., In the linen industry where children worked bare foot in the water, dampness was the cause of fatal fevers. John Brown's quote makes it clear that children were physically impacted by work, but also morally, as the machine and the work environment turned to be noisy and frightening.
Another category of young workers suffered from the same problems, tied to the working conditions. They were the piercers, who pieced the broken threads, again, while machines were working. Benjamin Brierley, weaver and writer from the Lancashire described the piercers' dangerous job in his novel Cast Upon the World. He explains: “ Piercers had to lean over the spinning-machine to repair the broken threads whilst the spinning mule was working at full speed.14” Piercers were thus affected both morally and physically by the work environment.
Because of unguarded machinery, numerous accidents occurred each year in the textile industry.
Children's limbs were regularly cut off while they operated in machines with no barriers. German historian Herbert Sussman asserts that “such barriers cost the mill owner money to install.15” In January 1833, the Tory, member of Parliament, Michael Sadler, collected factory workers' testimonies in the Report of the Select Committee on Factory Children's Labour, also known as the Sadler Report. Although highly contested by the Parliament, which accused it of being too involved in the business of industrialists, the Sadler Committee investigated on children's working conditions and highlighted the necessity to reform it. In that report were listed a large range of working accidents. For instance, the report included the testimony of Allett John, fifty-three-year- old, a blanket manufacturer from Lancashire. He witnessed: “a child was working wool, that is, to prepare the wool for the machine; but the strap caught him, as he was hardly awake, and it carried him into the machinery; and we found one limb in one place, and one in another, and he was cut to bits almost; his whole body went in, and
12 Brown, John. A Memoir of Robert Blinnie. The Lion's Newspaper. 15th July 1828. Pittsburgh:Caliban Book, republication 1997. p 28. Print.
13 Sussman, Herbert Lewis. Victorian Tehnology: Invention, Innovation, and the Rise of the Machines, Santa Barbara, California:ABC Clio editions, 2009, p.102. Print.
14 Brierley, Benjamin. Cast Upon the World:The Story of a Waif, Manchester: Malc Cowle for Northern Grove Publishing Project, 2013, p.50. Print.
15 Sussman, Herbert. Victorian Tehnology : Invention, Innovation, and the Rise of the Machines,Santa Barbara, California : ABC Clio editions, 2009, p.102. Print.
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was mangled.16” Therefore, this testimony is relevant of what the Sadler committee reported. But another interesting example, relevant of the children's working conditions in the nineteenth century, is given in Frances Trollope's novel, Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy:
“A little girl of about seven-year-old, whose office as scavenger was to collect incessantly the flying fragments of cotton that might impede the work. In the performance of this duty, the child was obliged from time to time to stretch itself with sudden quickness on the ground, while the hissing machinery passed over her; and when this was skillfully done, and the head, body, and outstretched limbs carefully glued to the floor, the steady-moving, but threatening mass, may pass and re-pass over the dizzy head and trembling body without touching it. But accidents frequently occurred; and many are the flaxen locks rudely torn from infant heads in the process.17”
This excerpt highlights a struggle between the child and the machine. The girl was frightened by the “threatening mass” of the loom, but struggled to come under to perform her task. This image is violent, but above all, relevant of the scavenger's situation in weaving mills. Obviously, involving children in such perilous work led to accidents.
However, what was less obvious is the fact that employers did not offer compensation for the harm. English professor of history Georges Davey Smith argues that “cases frequently occurred in which the work people were abandoned from the moment that an accident occurs; their wages were stopped, no medical attendance was provided, and whatever, the extent of the injury no compensation was afforded.18” Therefore, in order to contribute to the family income, a child had better not be mangled in machines, or ill.
Despite illnesses and mutilations, a more impressive difficulty arose in textile factories after the introduction of the steam machine. The children had to deal with unbearable heat. English historian Katrina Honeyman reveals in her book dedicated to child and women labour, that “the new environment was unpleasant and unhealthy. Extremely hot conditions were more likely in the mule spinning factories powered by steam, than in the water-frame mills.19” The heat was the hardest to put up with in the textile mills, but above all in coal and iron mines. Underground, it usually reach 85° Fahrenheit, and people worked half naked. No measure was taken to reduce the temperature due to the use of the steam machine. Indeed, the more quickly the steam machine worked,the more productive the mine was. That was particularly the case in iron mines, were the steam machine was used to heat blast furnaces.
Therefore, the temperature impacted physically children, but it also brought moral consequences. Nakedness provoked unpleasant promiscuity between adult men, women and children. That promiscuity was at the origin of
16 Wing, Charles. Evils of the Factory System:Demonstrated by Parliamentary Evidence, Malbech :Psychology Press, 1967, John Allet's testimony, p.8. Print.
17 Sussman, Herbert. Victorian Tehnology : Invention, Innovation, and the Rise of the Machines, Santa Barbara, California:ABC Clio editions, 2009, p.102. Print.
18 Davey, Smith, Georges. Poverty, Inequality and Health in Britain:1800-2000, Bristol: Policy Press, 2001, p.31. Print.
19 Honeyman, Katrina. Child Workers in England, 1780, 1820: Apprentices and the Making of the Early Industrial Labour Force, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007, p.144. Print.
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