Talk:Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution

Steam

...is mentioned but I think it needs a lot more emphasis, and maybe a section on power. Steam power was pivotal, since it was the only constant source of a great enough amount of power to run large factories. Mass industrialisation could not have happened without it.

Timeline:

• hand power
• animal power - not enough power available
• waterwheel - an inconsistent unreliable power source
• steam engine

Tabby (talk) 12:07, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Andreas Malm in his book Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (Verso Press, London and Brooklyn, 2016) disagrees with this widely held view. When factories switched entirely to the path of steam in the 1830s there was plenty of water power available and it was significantly cheaper to obtain. Thus on the face of it, the switch seemed economically irrational. There were other constraints, however, which included ability to locate factories where labor was available rather than having to entice it from urban areas to dispersed factories, to keep it there and to discipline it; the Factory Acts which placed restrictions on child labor and other working conditions which had assisted the factories using water power to recruit, retain exploit and discipline such labor; the dependence of harnessing water power on coordinating with other actors (government, landowners, other capitalists, etc.) and the lack of control this imposed on capitalists; the natural variability of water power, particularly without social investment in infrastructure for its diversion, containment and management; the costs of investing in that infrastructure and the differential participation in and benefit derived by different capitalists from that investment, and so on. The ability to easily subdivide, commodify and transport fossil energy advantaged it, even if the mining and transport added additional variable cost. Coal itself was encumbered with its own disadvantages such as pollution, release of carbon dioxide gas and affect on climate (recognized even in the 19th century), and the concentration of workers in cities making an easily available labor source also a more easily organized one, albeit this also bled into the water powered factories as well, something which contributed to their demise given inability to control it or to protect the dispersed water-powered establishments. Malm, by going through letters, journals, publications and records of the time, demonstrates even the actors themselves acknowledged all these points. The adoption of coal and steam was not a simple natural progression or one affected by a simple mechanical and thermodynamic rationality. At the end there was a positive withdrawal of support for water and shift to steam by state and financial actors as well as the operatives. Even the displacement of manual power had been highly contested and required intervention of the state's legislative, legal and police powers. Stephen Mikesell 18:01, 10 December 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Singing Coyote (talk • contribs) Darn it, but I am Singing Coyote. I forget I have to add a signature with each revision as well, darn it.Stephen Mikesell 18:55, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Life for women and children during the Industrial Revolution (18th-19th century) was quite different to the way they live today. In the Industrial Revolution there were no laws controlling working conditions in mills, factories, mines or any other industries. They simply didn’t have the heart to care for these poor children. As factories spread rapidly the owners of mills, mines and other forms of industry needed large numbers of workers and they didn't want to have to pay them a high wage. Children were the ideal employees because they would work for low pay, they weren't big enough or educated enough to argue or complain and were small and supple to fit between tight and narrow machinery which adults couldn't get between. Children soon ended up working in all types of industry in the most appalling, cruel conditions imaginable. Mills

In the Industrial Revolution thousands of children worked in the mills. To work in the mills was defiantly one of the worst places to work back then, along with working in the mines and some other exceptionally awful, low paid jobs. The things the children and many woman suffered through whilst working in the mills were: being forced to work in agonising pain and bad health (e.g. starving) due to the (to say the least) poor working conditions; the woman and children were regularly whipped and caned for not working to the Overlookers expectations; they were also required to work long hours with very little pay. Some extremely unfortunate children (called apprentices) even had to live at the mills in the most awful surroundings. Conditions and health The conditions and health problems that the children and women went though in the Industrial Revolution were devastating. The machines used in the factories weren’t as advanced as our modern machines. This meant that the workplace was very hot, steam engines contributed to the heat also. Machinery was not always fenced off and workers would be exposed to the moving parts of the machines whilst they worked. Children were often employed to move between these dangerous machines, as they were small enough to fit between tightly packed machinery. This was very dangerous and many times led to broken limbs e.g. fingers, arms, and even legs being accidently chopped off and as the children were not cared for the injury often got infected and led to death. One on the major complaints made by factory reformers concerned the state of the buildings that the children were forced to work in. They were known to be dirty; low-roofed; ill-ventilated; ill-drained; no conveniences for washing or dressing; no contrivance for carrying off dust and children often were sick due to the smell of the children’s sweet and blood combined with the pollution in the air and the burning machinery. Most young workers suffered allergies and illnesses such as tuberculosis, bronchitis, asthma and byssinosis just within there first few weeks.

Unguarded machinery was a major problem for children working in factories. One hospital reported that every year it treated nearly a thousand children that worked in the cotton factories/mills for wounds and casualties caused by machines in factories.

Punishments

Both boys and girls who worked in factories were allowed to be treated with the most disrespect by Overlookes aggressively they would physically and mentally abuse them and inflicting other harsh forms of pain. One common punishment for being late or not working up to the Overlookers standards or expectations would be to be "weighted." An Overlooker would tie a heavy weight to worker's neck, and have them walk up and down the factory aisles so the other children could see them and then work harder when doing their work and make sure that they were never late. This could last up to an hour. “Weighting” could lead to serious injuries in the back and neck. Another punishment (but this time just for the boys) is the Overlookers would force the boy who is late or not doing there job properly to work all day naked this was also to make sure the boys would not be late, even by a few minutes. The child could also simply just get sacked Another punishment could be to forfeit a percentage of their wages is they misbehaved or did something wrong.

Hours & wages

Added to the dangers of the workplace were of the hours the woman and children worked. As the work hours were so long and they had such little food the children often fainted whilst working which was extremely dangerous especially if they were working as a peicer.

In 1832 a man Named Michael Sadler thought that children were working far too many hours for their age range. They would usually work from 8-16 hours a day. Therefore he proposed the idea to limiting hours in all mills to 10 hours per day for every one under 18. After much debate, Parliament was unwilling to pass this law. However, later on that year Parliament changed their minds so by 1833 there was a new law “No child under 18 years old can work more then 10 hours a day”.

The children hardly even got a break after working so many hours. The children usually got a 30 minutes- 1 hour break but they were obliged to spend most of there break cleaning the machines and they only got around 15 minutes to their selves.

Although the children worked so hard for so long they only got paid 2-3 pence a week which is hardily enough to buy just one piece of bread each week.

Apprentices

Most parents were unwilling to let their children work in these new textile factories. To overcome this labour shortage, factory owners had to find other ways of hiring or finding cheap insignificant workers. An answer to their problem was to find children who no one cared about such as deprived orphans and children who worked in workhouses. The factory owners went around to the orphanages and workhouses enticing the children to come and live and work with them and lied that they would lead much happier and healthier lives if they came with them. Plenty of orphans gave in; this involved them signing contracts that practically made them the property of the factory owner. These children became known as pauper apprentices.

Jobs at the factories

The children in the textile factories were employed as scavengers or piecers. The Scavengers had to pick up the loose cotton from under the machinery. They would also have to take a brush and sweep under the wheels. The children were terrified of the whirling machines and the loud noises. This was extremely dangerous as the children were expected to carry out the task while the machine was still working this meant that if the children got a foot wrong the machinery could either seriously injure or even kill them. The peicers, (boys and girls), walked along the machine as it moves back and forth, catching up the broken threads and skillfully putting them back together. They also would have to clean oil and dust from under the machines. These machines and the children were constantly in motion. The quickness of the machines gave them no time to stop and rest even for a few seconds. It’s suggested that a piecer walked about twenty miles a day.

Coalmines

The coal mines were dangerous places only the poorest of people worked in the coal mines but as with the factories hardly earned enough to live. Again most of the people down the mines were children who ranged from the age of 5 up to 18. On a day to day basis poor young children had to work in an claustrophobic, dark, damp and cold environment where roofs sometimes caved in, explosions often happened and workers got all sorts of injuries. There were very few safety rules and it wasn’t unusual for a child to get lost or stuck and then die when down the mines

Conditions and health

Coal mining was an extremely dangerous job where your life was at risk every second you were down there. It was terrifying to work in a mine especially if you were only a small, feeble child. Just a few of the hazards were suffocation due to gas poisoning, the roof collapse leaving the poor children too tired, week and hungry to fight for their lives to get up so they were left stuck under the rubble and gas explosions. The children sometimes got distortions of the legs, knees bent inwards and feet bent outwards, deformities of the spinal column and other misshaped bones because of the posture they were doing their work in e.g. bending their body’s over or behind themselves when they were pushing or pulling the heavy wagon full of coal; crawling on their hands and knees down the horse path and squatting down to collect the coal off the floor. The children frequently suffered a disease to the digestive system, as they were so hungry. The children were extremely thirsty but the only water they were given was the dirty, warm water of the mine. The atmosphere that the children were working in was so dangerously filled with dust, carbonic acid and poisonous gases caused lots of children to catch lung infections and asthma therefore the miners usually were unfit to work at around the age of just 30. Hours and wages Before the law was passed in 1833 that “no child under 18 years old can work more then 10 hours a day”. The children worked between 8-16 hours a day. The trappers and coal bearers would repetitively have to do their job all their working day, with no or a very little break ranging between 10 minutes to 1 hour long.

Although they worked though such awful conditions for such a long time they only got paid around just 2-3 pence per week, which often had to pay for the child’s whole family.

Punishments The children who worked down the mines got the unfair punishments for doing the smallest things. They would most commonly get punished for talking, being late for work, not working fast enough, falling over or being drowsy or tired. The punishments that they regularly suffered were simply being sacked from the job; being allocated another job and if they didn’t finished that as well as there usual job they would get sacked; a member of staff would hold a child by the ankles, and then dip them head first into either cold, old rain water or warm, dirty water from the mines and whip and cane them.

Jobs in the factories

The younger children would work as "trappers". This meant that they would work the trap doors. They sat in a hole hollowed out for them and held a string which was fastened to the door. When they heard the coal wagons coming they had to open the door by pulling a string. This job was one of the easiest down the mine but it was very lonely and the place were they sat was usually damp and cold. 
 The slightly older children aged around 9-13 would work as “coal bearers” and have to tiresomely collect the coal loosened by the adult miners on to the floor. After collecting the coal off the floor they would have to put it all into a wagon and then deliver it to the trappers to poor in down the trap door. The children would work in pairs or threes to speed up the process of collecting the coal and then once they had done that one or two of the children would push the heavy wagon of coal down a long “horse-path” and the other child in the pair or three would go on the other side of the wagon to help pull it. The horse path would often have steps in it and also the children may sometimes have to crawl on their hands and knees to carry out their job because along the horse path the roofs may of caved in or there were many small tunnels, this made their job even harder.

There were many similarities and differences between working in the factories and working in the mines. The similarities being they got paid the same, had the same working hours, they were both utterly dangerous in there own ways, they both caused the children to suffer dreadful illnesses, they also both worked in a awful environment and atmosphere and finally both industries gave the children an unfair variety of punishments of which the children didn’t deserve. They were also quite different, miners had to carelessly throw coal in to a heavy wagon then push or pull down the most inconvenient path, twisting and bending their bodies around all day. By comparison, the children in the factories delicately and precisely had to collect broken threads from underneath whirling dangerous machinery. Then have to mend the broken thread very carefully and finely. From my research, I have formed the opinion that both industries were awful but I think that the coal mines were the worst working conditions as they had the scariest most threatening environment. This is because although both work places were harsh and unpleasant, the coal mines were additionally dark, poisonous to health and no matter how careful you were when doing you duties, your life was constantly in danger. There was a high risk of natural death opportunities waiting to happen as well as those imposed by the pit owners.

rosie murfin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.233.117.53 (talk) 15:16, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Rosie- what do you want to do with your post? It seems to me to be more useful as a stand alone article than a critique of child labour in the mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire- and could easily be worked up into one. The problem we have is that it seems to be a piece of Original Research WP:OR and is devoid of essential references where each of these sentences can be checked. I have a talk page where you are most welcome to discuss this further. There are areas where I think you are wrong. Mills had to be humid in order to work the cotton- and there were considerable advantages for a child working with others in a mill over being out alone on the fell barefoot tending the sheep or handplanting crops in heavy peaty earth. Scavanging maybe took ten mins in an every hour and the rest of the time was free to play. Being in a mill town in the mid 19th Century also gave some opportunity to learn to read and write in a Satuurday school or Sunday School- it was incredibly lonely being the only child in a fell side hovel. --ClemRutter (talk) 16:26, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Slavery

The article mentions cotton from the colonies-- but it seems odd not to mention it was the product of slave labour? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.149.116.52 (talk) 04:36, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

A linkage to slavery twixt 1761 and 1850 would be a good. Where do you propose it is placed. Bear in mind that the focus of the article is of 'manufacturing' not 'cultivation' and it deliberately omits list of plantations- or indeed which mills strove to use free cotton and which didn't, that is a another article which is yet to be written. Ideally I see a hatnote on each paragraph that directs the reader to a relevant and specific article such as Slavery in the Carolinas 1760- 1810 if we have enough references to prove that Carolinas Cotton was being used by the mills was are discussing. Slavery would have a relevance in the switch to Surat, but the Cotton Famine is outside our time period. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 10:13, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Out of time

until this process was revolutionized with the invention of the Northrop automatic weft replenishing loom in 1894. Englishman, James Henry Northrop invented an automatic weft replenishing loom which eliminated the need for the weaver to stop the loom and place a new pirn in the shuttle. The Northrop Loom had a pirn battery holding 18 full pirn's, the automatic weft replenishment function ejected the empty pirn and inserted a recharged / full pirn without the loom stopping. This automation allowed the weaver to supervise more than twenty looms, thus reducing overhead and increasing production. The Northrop Loom was manufactured in Hopedale, Massachusetts for George Draper and Sons, and eventually was licensed and manufactured in Blackburn, England by Henry Livsey and Company / The British Northrop Loom Company; and licensed in other countries worldwide. The Northrop loom was the automatic loom of choice worldwide for over seventy years. More than 700,000 Northrop Automatic Looms were manufactured and used worldwide from 1894 - 1970. (Parking the text rm from article)--ClemRutter (talk) 10:36, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Comments

There already is a For further information on powerlooms hat tag on the paragraph

This is a development outside the time frame of the article

Northrops didn't revolutionise - it was an incremental improvement.

Northrops were a good loom, but were only used on simple weaves-

Yes you could have 1 weaver supervising 16 looms, but unless you were weaving with good Sea Island or American cotton and not Surat- then 12 were stopped waiting the warp to be fixed. The lower end of the industry was still working with Lancashire looms with a few Northrops until the sheds closed in the early 1970s.

overlinked

POVs

To the author: do have a look at the related articles and see if you can add anything to them: particularly on the pirn changing mechanism - and get yoursel a user name! --ClemRutter (talk) 11:12, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

European centred ?

Dear all,

I think this page is quite European centred, some authors are making explicit that calling the industrial revolution the Industrial Revolution is a way to think about Western societies as an endogenous Western change that has nothing to do with the Global Economy of the time.

I think, then, that the article should be rewritten in line with those arguments, at least make sure that the debate is mentioned. The first industrial revolution according to those authors is a fake one, it was just about taking and slightly improving some machines that already existed. Therefore the first sentence of the article "The industrial revolution changed the nature of work and society." is particularly subject to debates. Following the authors cited below, it is not the industrial revolution that changed the nature of work and society but a new economic system called capitalism. This era (17th, 18th century) is marked by the use of those inventions along with institutional changes such as the creation of capital and labour markets, the support of Western states for merchants (which brought lots of income to Western societies), colonisations of the Americas (cheap cotton), the slave trade.

I know that it may sounds as a strong criticism, though I think it is accurate. I hope it is useful.

Norel, Philippe. L’histoire Économique Globale. Seuil. 27, rue Jacob, Paris VIème: Editions du Seuil, 2009. Durand, Cédric. Le Capitalisme Est-il Indépassable ? Textuel, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China Temple, Robert K. G. The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention. Prion, 1998. Hobson, John M. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Revised. Princeton University Press, 2001.

Jean-Baptiste Combes (talk) 10:52, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Very euro centric and I think rightly so in this case. When I started the article way back when- the motivation was to document solely the technology used from 10 July 1761 to 1850. Previously every section was swamped by folk history and pretty pictures of sheep. So split the article in three Textile manufacture Textile manufacture during the Industrial RevolutionTextile manufacturing by pre-industrial methods but have failed to leave sufficient links. I see that an article Textile manufacturing by pre-industrial China could be written to add Needhams work- I have bought the Pacey 0-262-66072-5 so I can help with cross references. In the main the article stands as a authorative documentation of the years 1761- 1850 which is all it is intended to be. I am now trying to improve the links- it is not surprising that you failed to find the first article. --ClemRutter (talk) 12:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

"a new economic system called capitalism" - Of which enclosures, which began in the late 15th century but particularly the parliamentary enclosures of the late 18th and 19th centuries, which the British then extended to their colonies, were an essential element. See for example, Eric Ross's book The Malthus Factor (1998) and his Corner House Briefing on the same topic http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/malthus-factor He describes enclosure as a characteristic element of capitalism even into the present, e.g., the Rockefeller and Ford foundations' so-called "Green Revolution," and I'd add the prescription of "privatization" currently being administered by Neoclassical economics all over the world. Stephen Mikesell 18:48, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Years

As early as 1691, Thomas Savery had made a vacuum steam engine. His design, which was unsafe, was improved by Thomas Newcomen in 1698.

I'm pretty sure Thomas Savery at least presented his engine in 1698, rather than 1691. According to all sources I can find it was improved by Newcomen around 1712, rather than 1698. Are there any sources to the years stated in the article? Araoro (talk) 20:38, 17 December 2019 (UTC)