Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution In Britain

E. Royston pike

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136612824
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

First Published in 2005. So many books have been written on the Industrial Revolution in Britain that it may be thought that there is hardly room for another. The present volume is an attempt to go some way towards filling what must surely appear to be a somewhat surprising gap in the literature. Its aim and purpose is to enable the men and women—and, let it be said, the children and young people—who lived in and through the Industrial Revolution in this country and who had their part, large or small, in its development and helped to give it direction and impetus, to describe their experiences in their own words. All the documents quoted are original documents, prepared and written and set down in print when the Revolution was actually going on.

THE RISE OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM

‘Previously to 1760,’ said Arnold Toynbee in one of those lectures delivered to an Oxford audience in 1881 that inaugurated the specialized literature of the Industrial Revolution, ‘the old industrial system obtained in England.’

What was the ‘old industrial system’? It has often been described, and almost as often in the most sympathetic terms. One of the best accounts, if by ‘best’ we mean ‘readable’, is that of Peter Gaskell, given in the opening chapter of his book, The Manufacturing Population of England, first published in 1833. Its peculiar quality will be appreciated from what is reprinted here (No. 1). Gaskell disclaimed any intention of painting an Arcadia, but there is none the less about his description a glow of nostalgic warmth.

How far Gaskell wrote out of personal knowledge and experience is hard to ascertain, since very little is known about him. He qualified as an apothecary in London in 1827 and in the next year was admitted to the membership of the Royal College of Surgeons. He seems to have lived in the neighbourhood of Stockport, in Cheshire, and it is reasonable to assume that it was then that he obtained his obviously considerable acquaintance with the poor and their problems. The most important thing about him is his book, which, as stated above, was published in 1833; a second edition, revised and slightly enlarged, appeared three years later, under the title of Artisans and Machinery. Gaskell died in 1841, at the age of 35, when he was living in Camberwell, then one of the more rural of the London inner suburbs.

Very possibly the book would have remained as obscure as the young surgeon who was its author if it had not attracted the attention of Frederick Engels, the friend and supporter, in more ways than one, of Karl Marx. When he was writing his book on The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, first issued in Germany in 1845 and not in an English translation until 1892, Engels drew very heavily on Gaskell for his opening chapters on the recent history of the English working classes. He acknowledged his debt in a footnote, adding that in his opinion Gaskell was an unprejudiced witness to the evils of the factory system. How far the tribute was merited may be left to the reader to judge.

Richard Guest, one of the earliest historians of the Cotton industry, took a rather different view (No. 2). He thought that the factory population were far more actively patriotic than the domestic weavers, even though they were not such good sportsmen: they didn’t give the hare a fair run. . .. In No. 3 we return to Gaskell’s lively pages for an account of the up-and-coming race of manufacturers. It is an unpleasant picture on the whole, but not all the ‘new masters’ were dissolute brutes, who varied their spurts of tremendous energy with bouts of heavy drinking and lustful pursuit of their mill-girls. The Bolton Barber, Sir Richard Arkwright (No. 4), was allowed, even by Sir Edward Baines, another historian of the Cotton industry, who was inclined to discount Arkwright’s claims in the field of invention, to have been ‘ardent, enterprising, and stubbornly persevering’, and he well deserves to be called the Father of the Factory System. Nor was he exceptional in his pioneering activities. The success story of the Peels is another instance—one among many—of the rise to wealth and influence of men from lowly beginnings, who yet managed to achieve outstanding success without suffering a debasement of their moral character in the process. And when we read of the vulgar bedizened woman who, according to Gaskell, was the manufacturer’s wife, we should do well to keep in mind the picture of the first Lady Peel, who became her husband’s ‘high-souled and faithful counsellor’, as Samuel Smiles put it (No. 5).

Next we come to Robert Owen (1771–1858), whose account of the founding of the great cotton-spinning establishment at New Lanark shows the difficulties that confronted the new manufacturers and how they were faced and overcome. Many books have been written about this extraordinary little Welshman, and he deserves to be remembered, not only for his business successes and his humanizing of the relations of employer and employed but for his outstanding achievement in enlightened capitalism and practical socialism, the foundation of infant schools and other educational ventures, and the beginnings of the co-operative movement and trade unionism. If there was one thing that Robert Owen most firmly believed it was that circumstances make human character, and he devoted his long life to the improvement of the conditions in which the work-people lived, since only then might they be expected to become healthy and happy and wise.

1

Domestic Manufacturers

Prior to the year 1760, manufactures were in a great measure confined to the demands of the home market. At this period, and down to 1800 . . . the majority of the artizans engaged in them had laboured in their own houses, and in the bosoms of their families. It may be termed the period of domestic manufacture; and the various mechanical contrivances were expressly framed for this purpose. The distaff, the spinning wheel, producing a single thread, and, subsequently the mule and jenny, were to be found forming part of the complement of household furniture, in almost every house of the districts in which they were carried on, whilst the cottage everywhere resounded with the clack of the hand-loom.

These were, undoubtedly, the golden times of manufactures, considered in reference to the character of the labourers. By all the processes being carried on under a man’s own roof, he retained his individual respectability; he was kept apart from associations that might injure his moral worth, whilst he generally earned wages which were sufficient not only to live comfortably upon, but which enabled him to rent a few acres of land; thus joining in his own person two classes, that are now daily becoming more and more distinct. It cannot, indeed, be denied, that his farming was too often slovenly, and was conducted at times but as a subordinate occupation; and that the land yielded but a small proportion of what, under a better system of culture, it was capable of producing. It nevertheless answered an excellent purpose. Its necessary tendence filled up the vacant hours, when he found it unnecessary to apply himself to his loom or spinning machine. It gave him employment of a healthy nature, and raised him a step in the scale of society above the mere labourer. A garden was likewise an invariable adjunct to the cottage of the hand-loom weaver; and in no part of the kingdom were the floral tribes, fruits, and edible roots more zealously or more successfully cultivated.

The domestic manufacturers generally resided in the outskirts of the large towns, or at still more remote distances. Themselves cultivators, and of simple habits and few wants, the uses of tea, coffee, and groceries in general but little known, they rarely left their own homestead. The yarn which they spun, and which was wanted by the weaver, was received or delivered, as the case might be, by agents, who travelled for the wholesale houses; or depots were established in particular neighbourhoods, to which he could apply at weekly periods. Grey-haired men—fathers of large families—have thus lived through a long life, which has been devoted to spmning or weaving, and have never entered the precincts of a town, till driven, of late years, by the depression in their means of support, they have gone there, for the first time, when forced to migrate with their households, in search of occupation at steam-looms.

Thus, removed from many of those causes which universally operate to the deterioration of the moral character of the labouring man, when brought into large towns . . . the small farmer, spinner, or hand-loom weaver, presents as orderly and respectable an appearance as could be wished. It is true that the amount of labour gone through, was but small; that the quantity of cloth or yarn produced was but hmited—for he worked by the rule of his strength and convenience. They were, however, sufficient to clothe and feed himself and family decently, and according to their station; to lay by a penny for an evil day, and to enjoy those amusements and bodily recreations then in being. He was a respectable member of society; a good father, a good husband, and a good son.

It is not intended to paint an Arcadia—to state that the domestic manufacturer was free from the vices or failings of other men. By no means; but he had the opportunities brought to him for being comfortable and virtuous—with a physical constitution, uninjured by protracted toil in a heated and impure atmosphere, the fumes of the gin shop, the low debauchery of the beer-house, and the miseries incident to ruined health. On the contrary, he commonly lived to a good round age, worked when necessity demanded, ceased his labour when his wants were supplied, according to his character, and if disposed to spend time or money in drinking, could do so in a house as well conducted and as orderly as his own . . .

The domestic manufacturer possessed a very limited degree of information ; his amusements were exclusively sought in bodily exercise, the dance, quoits, cricket, the chace, the numerous seasonal celebrations, etc. ; an utter ignorance of printed books, beyond the thumbed Bible and a few theological tracts ; seeking his stimulus in home-brewed ale; having for his support animal food occasionally, but living generally upon farm produce, meal or rye bread, eggs, cheese, milk, butter, etc.; the use of tea quite unknown, or only just beginning to make its appearance; a sluggish mind in an active body; labour carried on under his own roof, or, if exchanged at intervals for farming occupation, this was going on under the eye of, and with the assistance of his family; his children growing up under his immediate inspection and control; no lengthened separation taking place until they married, and became themselves heads of families ; engaged in pursuits similar to his own, and in a subordinate capacity; and lastly, the same generation living age after age on the same spot, and under the same thatched roof, which thus became a sort of heir-loom, endeared to its occupier by a long series of happy memories and home delights . . .

The very fact of these small communities (for they were generally found in petty irregular villages, containing from ten to forty cottages), being as it were, one great family, prevented, except in a few extraordinary instances, any systematic course of sinning. This moral check was indeed all-powerful in hindering the commission of crime, aided by a sense of religion very commonly existing amongst them. In one respect this failed, however—and it was in preventing the indulgence of sexual appetite, in a way and at a time which are still blots upon the rural population of many districts . . . The mischief produced by this means was, however, of small amount. This premature intercourse occurred generally between parties, when a tacit though binding understanding existed. Its promiscuousness seldom went further. So binding was this engagement, that the examples of desertion were exceedingly rare—though marriage was generally deferred till pregnancy fully declared itself.

There can be no question, but the more widely inquiries are extended, the more obvious becomes the fact, that the domestic manufacturer, as a moral and social being, was infinitely superior to the manufacturer of a later date . . .

P. GASKELL, The Manufacturing Population of England: Its Moral, Social, and Physical Conditions, and the Changes which have arisen from the Use of the Steam Machinery (1833) ch. 1.

2

Change Comes to Lancashire

The population of Lancashire, before the introduction of the Cotton Manufacture, was chiefly agricultural. In those days, the Squire was the feudal Lord of the neighbourhood, and his residence, or the Hall, as it was called, was looked upon in the light of a palace. He was the dictator of opinion, the regulator of parish affairs, and the exclusive settler of all disputes. On holidays the rustics were invited to the Hall, where they wrestled, ran races, played at quoits and drank ale. An invitation to the Hall was a certificate of good character; not to be invited along with his neighbours was a reproach to a man, because no one was uninvited unless he had been guilty of some impropriety. The Clergyman had scarcely less influence than the Squire, his sacred character and his superior attainments gave him great authority . . . He never met the elders of his flock without the kindest enquiries after the welfare of their families, and, as his reproof was dreaded, so his commendation was sought, by young and old.

Incontinence in man or woman was esteemed a heinous offence, and neglecting or refusing to pay a just debt was scarcely ever heard of. Twice at Church on Sundays, a strict observance of fast days, and a regular reading of the Scripture every Sunday evening, at which the youngsters, after putting off their best clothes, were always present, were uniform and established customs. The events of the neighbourhood flowed in a regular, unbroken train; politics were a field little entered into, and the histories of each other’s families, including cousins five times removed, with marriages, births, deaths, etc., formed the almost only subjects of their conversations.

The Farmer was content to take on trust the old modes of husbandry and management practised by his forefathers for generations; and new improvements were received, or rather viewed, with dislike and contempt. There was little fluctuation in prices, little competition between individuals, and the mind became contracted from the general stagnation and its being so seldom roused to exertion. Men being mostly employed alone, and having few but their own families to converse with, had not their understandings rubbed bright by contact and an interchange of ideas; they witnessed a monotonous scene of life which communicated a corresponding dullness and mechanical action to their minds. The greatest varieties of scene which they witnessed were the market day of the village, and the attendance at Church on the Sabbath; and the summum bonum of their lives was to sit vacant and inactive in each other’s houses, to sun themselves in the marketplace, or to talk over news at that great mart of village gossip, the blacksmith’s shop . . .

The progress of the Cotton Manufacture introduced great changes into the manners and habits of the people. The operative workmen being thrown together in great numbers, had their faculties sharpened and improved by constant communication. Conversation wandered over a variety of topics not before essayed; the questions of Peace and War, which interested them importantly, inasmuch as they might produce a rise or fall of wages, became highly interesting, and this brought them into the vast field of politics and discussions on the character of their Government, and the men who composed it. They took a greater interest in the defeats and victories of their country’s arms, and from being only a few degrees above their cattle in the scale of intellect, they became Political Citizens . . .

The facility with which the Weavers changed their masters, the constant effort to find out and obtain the largest remuneration for their labour, the excitement to ingenuity which the higher wages for fine manufactures and skilful workmanship produced, and a conviction that they depended mainly on their own exertions, produced in them that invaluable feeling, a spirit of freedom and independence, and that guarantee for good conduct and improvement of manners, a consciousness of the value of character and of their own weight and importance.

The practical truth of these remarks must be obvious to every one who had served on the Jury at Lancaster, and compared the bright, penetrating shrewd and intelligent Jurors from the south of the county, with the stupidity and utter ignorance of those from its northern parts; and to every one who witnessed the fervour and enthusiasm with which the people in the manufacturing districts flew to arms, in 1803, to defend their firesides against a foreign invader. What crowding to the drills ; what ardour and alacrity to learn the use of arms there then was, and how much stronger and more rapid the feeling of independence, both national and individual, is found among the highly-civilized dense manufacturing population, than among a scattered, half-informed Peasantry!

The amusements of the people have changed with their character. Athletic exercises of Quoits, Wrestling, Foot-ball, Prison-bars and Shooting with the Long-bow, are become obsolete and almost forgotten; and it is to be regretted that the present pursuits and pleasures of the labouring class are of a more effeminate cast. They are now Pigeon-fanciers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Original Copyright Page
• INTRODUCTION
• Contents
• Illustrations
• THE RISE OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM
• FACTORY LIFE AND PEOPLE
• CHILD LABOUR
• WOMAN’S PLACE
• SEXUAL RELATIONS
• THE STATE OF THE TOWNS
• INDEX