Child Labor and Education During the Industrial Revolution

1. Child Labor and Education During the Industrial Revolution What jobs are being depicted here?

2. Compare your daily routine with that of a factory girl working in Lancashire 1820. How are they different? • What is your schedule like in comparison? • Do this on the Left Side.

6. How Child Labor Was Obtained? • Many parents initially were unwilling to allow their children to work in these new textile factories. • To overcome this labor shortage factory owners had to find other ways of obtaining workers. • One solution to the problem was to obtain children from orphanages and workhouses. • These children became known as pauper apprentices.---WHITE SLAVERY • This involved them signing contracts that virtually made them the property of the factory owner.

7. How Child Labor Was Obtained • By 1790 Greg became convinced that the best solution to his labor problem was to build an Apprentice House and to purchase children from workhouses. • The building for the apprentice houses cost £300 and provided living accommodation for over 90 children. • At first the children came from local parishes such as Wilmslow and Macclesfield, but later he went as far as Liverpool and London to find these young workers.

8. How Child Labor Was Obtained? • To encourage factory owners to take workhouse children, people like Greg only paid between £2 and £4 for each child they employed. • Greg also demanded that the children were sent to him with "two shifts, two pairs of stockings and two aprons.” • Eventually families needed all the children to work to get by. • Employers often chose children for their speed, manual dexterity, suppleness, and willingness to work long hours for little pay.

9. Welcome to the new form of slavery: White Slavery!

10. PROFIT GREED LUXURY INDIFFERENCE POVERTY IGNORANCE

11. What point is the cartoonists making with this political cartoon? How can you tell?

12. What would be a good sarcastic caption for this historical political cartoon?

13. Types of Child Labor • The 90 children (60 girls and 30 boys) at Styalmade up 50% of the total workforce. • Overall in textile factories, children made up 50% of workforce, while women made up 25%. • The children received their board and lodging, and two pence a week. • The younger children worked as scavengers and piecers, but after a couple of years at Styal they were allowed to become involved in spinning and carding. • The older boys became skilled mechanics.

14. Add to the Left Side.

15. Add to the Left Side.

19. Faces of Child Labor

20. Add to your Left Side.

21. Types of Work • Scavengers had to pick up the loose cotton from under the machinery • Piecers had to lean over the spinning-machine to repair the broken threads • After a couple of years they were allowed to become involved in spinning and carding • Textiles was the biggest industry, after agriculture • It was part of the “domestic system”, which also included nail-making, glove-making, and stocking-making • Lace-making, straw-plaiting, and button-making were some domestic industries using children

22. Work of the Scavengers John Brown wrote about Robert Blincoe's experiences in a textile mill in an article for The Lion newspaper (15th January 1828) • 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. Blincoe, therefore, took the liberty to sit down; but this, he soon found, was strictly forbidden in cotton mills. His overlooker, Mr. Smith, told him he must keep on his legs.

23. Work of the Scavengers Frances Trollope, Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy(1840) • A little girl about seven years old, who job as scavenger, was to collect incessantly from the factory floor, the flying fragments of cotton that might impede the work... while the hissing machinery passed over her, and when this is skillfully done, and the head, body, and the outstretched limbs carefully glued to the floor, the steady moving, but threatening mass, may pass and repass over the dizzy head and trembling body without touching it. But accidents frequently occur; and many are the flaxen locks, rudely torn from infant heads, in the process.

25. Piecers • Piecers had to lean over the spinning-machine to repair the broken threads. James Turner was interviewed by Michael Sadler's Parliamentary Committee on 17th April 1832. • The work of the children, in many instances, is reaching over to piece the threads that break; they have so many that they have to mind and they have only so much time to piece these threads because they have to reach while the wheel is coming out.

30. Work of the Piecers John Fielden, speech in the House of Commons (9th May 1836) • “At a meeting in Manchester a man claimed that a child in one mill walked twenty-four miles a day. I was surprised by this statement, therefore, when I went home, I went into my own factory, and with a clock before me, I watched a child at work, and having watched her for some time, I then calculated the distance she had to go in a day, and to my surprise, I found it nothing short of twenty miles.”

32. Supporters of Child Labor---It Is Not So Bad---Work of the Piecers Edward Baines, The History of the Cotton Manufacture (1835) • “It is not true to represent the work of piecers and scavengers as continually straining. None of the work in which children and young persons are engaged in mills require constant attention. It is scarcely possible for any employment to be lighter. The position of the body is not injurious: the children walk about, and have the opportunity of frequently sitting if they are so disposed.”

34. Supporters of Child Labor----It Is Not So Bad---Work of the Piecers E. C. Tufnell, one of the Factory Commissioners, wrote about the work of piecers in 1834. • “Three-fourths of the children employed are engaging in piecing at the mules, which, when they have receded a foot and a half or two feet from the frame, leave nothing to be done. If a child remains during twelve hours a day, for nine hours he performs no actual labour.”

37. Work in the Mines • Many children had jobs as hurriers, pulling carts of coal as they crawled along through mine tunnels. • The carts weighed from 200 to 500 pounds and rolled on cast-iron wheels. • The hurriers wore a leather harness to pull the carts. • They could not stand up because the roof of the tunnel was often very low, as little 20, 18, or even 16 inches. • The hours of work were not regular, but work started at 6:00 AM and could last until 7:00 to 9:00 at night with no rest break. • Adult workers took days off, but the boys were expected to work every day. • If they took off a day, they were expected to work extra the next day.

39. How old do you think this child is? What do you base your answer on?

40. What do you think they are thinking? Why do you think that?

41. What do you think these boys are thinking? Why do you think that?

46. Work in the Mines

47. Work as Chimney Sweeps • Made use of small boys • Were likely to be burned, stifled, or stuck half way up the chimney if care was not taken. • Half starved so they could remain thin • Many contracted cancer as a result of poor working conditions. • Children were sometimes stolen from parents to sell as chimney sweeps. • Soot covered the children who were barely washed. • The small boys (or sometimes girls) slept in cellars on stacks of soot. • Had to climb through shafts where they could suffocate.

49. Life as a Chimney Sweep • It was understood even in the Georgian period of our history that chimneys had to be brush cleaned. • Way back to the 17th century the Master Sweep of the day would employ small boys to climb and scramble up chimneys. • The task for these climbing boys was to brush clean the inside of the flue with small hand-held brushes. • They also used metal scrapers to remove the harder tar deposits left by wood or log fire smoke. • The boys were apprentices and were bound to the trade as young as seven years old. • A Master was paid a fee to clothe, keep and teach the child his trade. • Sweeps' Boys were usually parish children or orphans, though others were sold into the trade by their families. • Some grew up to be Journeymen (assistants to the Master), the remainder were put out to various trades to try to learn a new occupation • In London, there was a London Society of Master Sweeps with its own set of rules, one of which included that boys were not required to work on Sundays but had to attend Sunday School to study, learn and read the Bible.

50. Dangers of Being a Chimney Sweep • However, conditions for the boys were harsh and often cruel. They slept in cellars on bags of soot and were seldom washed. • Years of accumulated soot and grime often produced cancer of the testicles. • It was a dangerous and filthy job for the boys to undertake, especially without the protection of safety clothing and respirators. • Sadly there are recorded instances where these Climbing Boys choked and suffocated to death by dust inhalation whilst attempting to clean chimneys. • Casualties were also frequent as boys became stuck in narrow flues or fell from climbing rotten chimney stacks.