Intimacies, Critical Consumption and Diverse Economies

Yvette Taylor, Emma Casey, Yvette Taylor, Emma Casey

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137429087
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi di genere

This collection explores the relationships between the emotional and material, engaging with and developing the debates surrounding the emotional and material labour involved in producing and reproducing domestic and intimate spaces. The contributions examine the geographies and spaces of consumption in international and local-global spheres.

Part I

Expanding the Field: Conceptualising Intimate Consumption

1

Collective Action and Domestic Practices: England in the 1830s and 1840s

Colin Creighton

In recent years our understanding of domestic practices and relations of intimacy have made enormous advances (Giddens, 1992; Jamieson, 1998; Gillies, 2003; Gabb, 2008; Morgan, 2011). However, our grasp of the broader social and economic processes within which intimate relations are constructed, and the interplay between the two, has not kept pace. In this chapter I argue, through an historical case study, that in exploring this interaction we need to pay more attention to social movements because of the important part they play in mediating between macro socio-economic change and the practices of individual families. To date, studies of family practices have paid little attention to the role of social movements (Staggenborg, 1998) while scholarship on social movements has, with a few notable exceptions, paid scant attention to movements directed towards family change (Della Porta and Diani, 2006; Snow et al., 2004).¹

Through this case study I seek to explore two major ways in which collective struggles influence the formation of domestic practices.² The first is by acting to change the structural conditions which shape domestic practices. The second is through the meaning-making processes (Snow and Benford, 1992) of articulating a persuasive alternative to existing practices and convincing relevant audiences that this cannot be realised through individual efforts but only through a modification of situational constraints.

Under examination are the decades of the 1830s and 1840s, when social conflict over the dramatic economic and social changes brought about by the industrial revolution reached a peak of intensity. Population increase, technological advances, the spread of factory production with its associated discipline, large-scale migration into the overcrowded and insanitary manufacturing towns, the decline of many domestic industries and the abandonment of older legislative controls over economic activity had a profound impact upon people’s lives, the nature and extent of which is still debated today (Berg, 1980, part 5; Brown, 1991; Hilton, 2006, chap. 9; Humphries, 2007). Moreover, the industrial revolution involved cultural as well as economic transformation (Gray, 1996, pp. 1–3) and was accompanied by a clash of contrasting philosophies and social ideals, with criticism of the direction and effects of economic change becoming more acute from the late 1820s (Perkin, 1969, pp. 218–339; Hilton, 2006, chaps. 5 and 7).

This provides the context for the emergence of the Ten Hours Movement (THM) for the 1830s and 1840s were the years in which industrial workers in the northern factory towns first started to grapple, collectively, with the issue of what kind of domestic practices they wanted to create, and how they could do so, in their new and harsh environment. The challenge was not only one of adjusting to new conditions; it was more profound than this, for workers were confronting what they saw as threats to the very possibility of meaningful family life. The combination of downward pressure on wages, high rates of unemployment, the insecurity associated with the fluctuations of the trade cycle, long (and in some trades lengthening) hours of work, and excessive reliance upon the labour of young children, together with grossly overcrowded housing conditions, all seemed to threaten the ability of the working-class family to reproduce itself, let alone enjoy emotionally satisfying family relationships. These problems gave rise to sustained collective action and ambitious political demands. In this period, workers in a wide range of trades and industries voiced dissatisfaction with the material and emotional pressures on the family. It was the textile towns of the north of England, however, that generated the most vocal protests and the most sustained campaign to ameliorate conditions.

The Ten Hours Movement, which provides the main focus of this chapter, struggled for reduced hours of work across two and a half decades, from 1830–1855, and compelled generally unwilling governments to make concession after concession until the tenhour day was finally conceded. This campaign marked an important historical turning-point in the formation of domestic practices among the working-class in England, for it constituted the first collective effort of modern times to confront the impact of the factory system and the unregulated market upon family life and to modify the balance between work and home by clawing back time from the rapacious demands of the workplace.

The Ten Hours Movement emerged in 1831 from the alliance between the trade union-backed Short-time Committees in Lancashire, where the cotton spinners had struggled intermittently during the 1820s on behalf of child workers, and the Yorkshire-based campaign, led by the radical Tory land agent and philanthropist, Richard Oastler, for restrictions on child labour.³ Its main objective was to persuade Parliament to ban the employment of children under nine years of age in the cotton and woollen textile industries, and reduce the hours of children under 18 to a maximum of ten a day (not including meal times). Because governing circles were in thrall to the belief that nothing should interfere with free contracts between employers and adult workers, the proposed legislation related, initially, solely to children and young persons, but in the 1840s protection of adult women was also demanded, and first incorporated into the Factory Act of 1844. However, the movement was determined, throughout, to shorten the working day for all adults, and it was assumed, correctly, by supporters and opponents alike, that since the labours of children and adults were inextricably linked, legislation for children would also cut the working hours of adult men.

The movement drew support from a variety of groups of workers, including mule-spinners, power-loom weavers and card-room hands in the Lancashire cotton towns, weavers, wool-combers and other skilled workers in the woollen and worsted industries of the West Riding, artisans from both counties and the declining handloom weavers. Additional support came from some sympathetic clergy, medical men and ultra-Tories (Ward, 1970a, pp. 60–61; Gray, 1996, p. 23). The movement was well-organised at the grassroots, creating a framework which proved capable of sustained campaigning over two and a half decades. Short-time committees were established in the larger towns in both Yorkshire and Lancashire, with subcommittees in villages and smaller towns. These were coordinated in each county by a central committee which met, respectively, at Leeds and at Manchester. These committees spread their message and put pressure on employers and politicians in a variety of ways. They presented petitions to Parliament, sent deputations to lobby Ministers and MPs, prepared meticulously for the hearings of Sadler’s Select Committee, discussed the content of bills with their parliamentary representatives, organised meetings and mass demonstrations across the region, produced handbills, placards, tracts, and pamphlets, campaigned for parliamentary candidates who pledged support for the ten-hour bill⁴ and raised subscriptions to support campaigning, although the bulk of the finances came from a sympathetic local employer, John Wood, Oastler himself and a radical Lancashire mill-owner, John Fielden (Ward, 1970a, pp. 66–70).

While the chief spokesmen for the campaign – Oastler and Bull – were not workingmen, they recognised that they were answerable to the short-time committees (some of which were in existence before Oastler became involved) and policies and tactics were developed through joint consultation. There was a surprisingly high level of agreement between people of differing ideological convictions, but differences did emerge from time to time and these demonstrated that working-class radicals were not deterred from independent action. The most notable example was the formation of the Society for Promoting National Regeneration which proposed to bring the eight-hour day into being through direct action, an initiative from which both Oastler and Bull dissociated themselves (Driver, 1946, pp. 264–268; Ward, 1962, pp. 114–115, 117–118).

One of the features of the textile industries in this period was the heavy reliance upon the labour of children, demand for whose services seems to have peaked in Britain in the 1820s and 1830s and to have been associated with younger ages at starting work (Horrell and Humphries, 1999). The demand for child labour presented parents with very difficult choices and historians have differed, as did contemporaries, in their assessment of how willing they were to send their children to work in the mills (Nardinelli, 1990; Tuttle, 1999). More recently, Jane Humphries has suggested that factory workers in the first half of the nineteenth century were caught in a classic child labour trap. In confronting the choice between seeking early employment for their children or deferring entry in the interest of their education, parents will generally choose the former when their incomes fall below the minimum acceptable level of consumption. The effect of this is to perpetuate the low adult wages, which brought such reliance into being in the first place, and to depress human capital formation, so that it becomes more difficult for child workers, as adults, to break out of the cycle and withhold their own children from early work (Humphries, 2010, pp. 24–37).

The economic arguments of the THM suggest that the campaigners saw the situation confronting families in precisely this way. They maintained consistently that the employment of children was increasing at the expense of adult males and that this process was a conscious strategy of employers; that parents were compelled by poverty to consent to factory labour for their children; and that the effect of widespread early child labour was to pull down the wages of all workers (Creighton, 1992a, pp. 307 and 310–311).

Basu and Vann (1998, discussed in Humphries, 2010, p. 28) have argued that the trap can be sprung either by restricting child labour by law or by effective trade union action. However, trade unions in this period were not sufficiently strong to curb child labour by their own efforts,⁵ so workers resorted, as indicated above, to legislative action and through this sought not only to ameliorate the position of children and increase wages and employment prospects throughout the textile industries, but also to raise standards of family life by demanding shorter working hours for all categories of workers (Ward, 1970b, vol. 2, p. 67).

The Ten Hours Movement’s critique of the factory system

The discourse of the THM articulated, clearly and forcefully, both the discontents that workers felt, and a vision of a better family life. It also pointed working-class families towards a different and more preferable strategy than one which involved excessive reliance upon the waged labour of children and acceptance of long hours for all categories of worker.

The Ten Hours Movement voiced three main concerns. The first, shared by many groups of workers both within and beyond the textile regions, was the impact of increasing poverty and insecurity upon family life; this was seen as catastrophic, affecting both material and emotional well-being. One of the foremost of the early tracts of the THM protested that,

while one part of the community is rolling in the most excessive luxury ... see what starvation, yea, destitution in all forms and in almost every degree, are the lot of the Poor; sunk in debt, the landlord, and the shop-keeper quarrelling for the remnants of their furniture, – while straw beds and fireless huts, are their shelter – water-gruel and potatoes their diet – cursing their fate, and almost thrust out of society into the regions of famine; nay, not infrequently dying of hunger! (Hanson, 1831, p. 4).

Material deprivation and the anxieties that this engendered also took their toll on emotional relationships within the household. The Pioneer (1833, pp. 81–82) asserted that poverty eroded domestic happiness, making both the overworked artisan, and ‘the mother half worn out, her temper chafed’, too careworn to give their children the patient attention that they needed. Similarly, William Thompson (1834, p. 8) claimed that because of poverty ‘their home is embittered by domestic cares and embarrassments; the fond glow of mutual love is chilled by the frozen breath of adversity; and the parent’s love is appalled [sic] by the contemplation of the future’.

The second concern was that long hours, a debilitating and dangerous working environment and the intensity of the effort required to keep up with the unremitting pace of the machinery undermined the health and well-being of mill workers, and most particularly of the young. These conditions stunted growth, produced deformities of the spine and legs, weakened constitutions, induced respiratory and skin diseases, wore people out so that they aged prematurely, and contributed to the high rates of mortality of the factory districts. Accidents were common; deaths from unguarded machinery were not unknown. As a result, the overall reproduction of individuals and families was threatened. John Doherty feared the destruction of the rising generation (Poor Man’s Advocate, p. 70). Oastler (1832, p. 8), similarly, considered that such hours ‘WILL FORESTALL THE STRENGTH AND ENERGIES OF UNBORN GENERATIONS’ (caps in original).

The third concern, which lies at the heart of this chapter, was that these hours and conditions had a destructive impact on family life. Working days for both children and adults were at least 12 hours long, excluding meal breaks, for six days a week. In busy times yet longer hours were enforced. Presenting his ten-hour bill to Parliament, Michael Sadler averred that, ‘[n]ot infrequently this labour is extended till eight or nine at night – fifteen hours – having but the same intervals for meals, rest, or recreation’ (Hansard, 1832, vol. 11, col. 357).

Witnesses to Sadler’s Committee of Inquiry gave numerous examples of even more inhumane hours than these. Many reported working, for long periods of time, from five in the morning till eight or nine at night. Hours could be longer in summer than in winter. According to Robert Colton, ‘we increased as the days increased, and left off when we could not see; so that in summer we started at half-past three in the morning, and were at it till half-past nine at night’ (Parliamentary Papers, 1831–1832, XV, para. 325). Such hours left no time for the various activities of family life: no time for housework, no time to create domestic comfort, no time for family conviviality, no time to cultivate ties of parental and filial affection.

One oft-repeated complaint was that opportunities for parents and children to spend time together were minimal. The Reverend George Stringer Bull calculated that a factory child and its parents could only have any interaction for four and a quarter hours per week, and that most of this time was occupied with preparing for, or cleaning after, factory work, or in Sunday school business (Bull, 1832, pp. 9–10). One of the early pamphlets of the THM asked that children be able to come home early enough ‘to admit of a little domestic intercourse before retiring to their rest’ (The Factory Bill, 1833, p. 8). Adults, too, were deprived of family relaxation. As the cloth lappers complained, long hours meant that they were ‘debarred from ... the heart-cheering pleasure of spending a few hours around their own fireside, amidst their rising families’ (Herald to the Trades’ Advocate, 1830–1831, p. 56).

Oastler denounced the consequences of this situation. Testifying to Sadler’s Parliamentary Committee, he bemoaned ‘the hopeless absence of domestic joys – the total separation from its parents’ smiles, save just at night when exhausted nature seeks repose’ and condemned what he said was,

almost the general system for the little children in these manufacturing villages to know nothing of their parents at all, except that in a morning very early, at five o’clock, very often before four, they are awakened by a human being, that they are told is their father, and are pulled out of bed .....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I  Expanding the Field: Conceptualising Intimate Consumption
• Part II  Sticky and Shifting Sites of Intimate Consumption
• Part III  The Intimate Social Life of Commodities
• Index