Working Conditions

What were factories like?• Factories were uncomfortable places, they were

– Dirty– Noisy– Poorly ventilated– Hot in the summer, cold in the winter– Poor sanitation – Dangerous, many machines did not have safety devices.

Injuries Occurred Often… • This is a

photo of children who were missing limbs

What would happen if you got hurt?

• Was there health insurance?

• Would workers get paid if they got hurt on the job?

• What would the factory do if someone got hurt?

Child Labor• 5 year old children were

often employed in the mills.

• Conditions in coal mines were particularly bad, women and children pulled carts through tunnels that were too low to allow a donkey or a grown man to pass through.

In the Coal Mines

• Jane Peacock Watson. "I have wrought in the bowels of the earth 33 years. I have been married 23 years and had nine children, six are alive and three died of typhus a few years since. Have had two dead born. Horse-work ruins the women; it crushes their haunches, bends their ankles and makes them old women at 40. "

Parliament Steps In

• By 1832 conditions had gotten so bad that members of Parliament need to step in, so to get a better idea of what was going on, they interviewed people who had worked in the mills. After that they interviewed some doctors to see how factory work stunted the growth of children.

• Below are some excerpts from the interviews

• From John Allett- had started working in the textile factory at 14, he was 53 in 1832 when he spoke to Parliament.

• Question: Do more accidents take place in the later end of the day?

• Answer: I have known more accidents at the beginning of the day rather than at the later part. 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. We found one limb in one place, one in another, one in another, and he was cut to bits. – Why do you think more accidents happen in the

morning?

• Dr. Samuel Smith, a doctor who saw firsthand how children were permanently damaged from working in factories.

• “Up to twelve or thirteen years of age, the bones are so soft that they will bend in any direction… Long continued standing also has a very injurious effect upon the ankles. But the principle effect which I have seen produced is this way have been on the knees. By long continued standing the knees become so weak that they turn inwards, producing deformity”

• 23 Year Old Elizabeth Bently- a factory worker

Question: “What time did you begin work at the factory?”---- “When I was six years old”

Question: “What were your hours of labor in that mill?”---- “From five in the morning till nine at night”

Question: “Were children beaten?”-- Yes

Question: “What was the reason for that?”-- “The overseer was angry”

Question: “Had the children committed any fault?”-- they were too slow.

The Factory Act, 1833

• The Factory Act, 1833 was an attempt to establish a normal working day in the textile industry. The way in which it proposed to do this was the following: The working day was to start at 5.30 a.m. and cease at 8.30 p.m. A young person (aged thirteen to eighteen) might not be employed beyond any period of twelve hours, less one and a half for meals; and a child (aged nine to thirteen) beyond any period of nine hours. From 8.30 p.m. to 5.30 a.m.; that is during the night; the employment of such persons was altogether prohibited.

The Factory Act of 1844

• The Factory Act of 1844 is an extremely important one in the history of family legislation. The Act reduced the hours of work for children between eight and thirteen to six and a half a day, either in the morning or afternoon, no child being allowed to work in both on the same day, except on alternate days, and then only for ten hours. Young persons and women (now included for the first time) were to have the same hours, i.e. not more than twelve for the first five days of the week (with one and a half out for meals), and nine on Saturday.

Efforts at Change• Efforts at Change: The Workers

– Robert Owen (1771-1858),

Utopian Socialism

– Trade unionism

– Luddites

– The People’s Charter

• Efforts at Change: Reformers and Government– Factory acts, 1802-1819

– Factory Act of 1833

– Coal Mines Act, 1842

Robert Owen

Luddites attacking machinery

Labor vs. Management

What Can the Workers Do To Improve Their Situations in the Factories?

• Workers could go on strike and the factory owners could – A. give in to the demands of the strikers. – B. fire all strikers and hire new ones. – C. wait until the workers gave up and returned to work.

Why would workers go on strike?1. Increased wages2. Gain more control over working conditions

Management vs. LaborManagement vs. Labor““Tools” of Tools” of

LaborLabor““Tools” of Tools” of ManagementManagement

““scabs”scabs”

P. R. campaignP. R. campaign

lockoutlockout

blacklistingblacklisting

open shopopen shop

boycottsboycotts

sympathy sympathy demonstrationsdemonstrations

informational informational picketingpicketing

closed shopsclosed shops

organized organized strikesstrikes

A Striker Confronts a SCAB!

A Striker Confronts a SCAB!

Strength in Numbers

• Workers want to organize permanently and they felt being part of an association would help them. These associations became unions.

Problem with Unions1. They were against the law. Combination Acts of 1799 stated that persons who united with others to demand higher wages, shorter hours, or better working conditions could beimprisoned.

Government in England Helps Out Workers

• 1825 Parliament passed a law allowing workers to meet in order to agree on wages and hours

• 1870’s passed law legalizing strikes.

A Trade Union Membership Card

Part II Unions and Strikes Through Poetry- Songs- and

Posters

The Hand That Will Rule the World One

Big Union

The Hand That Will Rule the World One

Big Union

Talking Union• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-8uoQxWa

EQ&feature=related

The Haves and the Have Nots

Lives of the Middle Class vs. Working Class

• In his excellent biography, Dickens, Peter

Ackroyd notes that – "If a late twentieth-century person were

suddenly to find himself in a tavern or house of the period, he would be literally sick - sick with the smells, sick with the food, sick with the atmosphere around him".

– Why do you think?

The Middle Class

• The middle class grew during this time.

• It consisted of bankers, manufacturers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, engineers, factory owners and teachers.

• Middle class believed in education

• Involved in reform movements in education, health care, prison improvements, and sanitation.

Lifestyle of Middle Class • Where did they live?

– Middle class people lived in large houses in spacious neighborhoods.

• What did they wear? – Men wore nice suits and Women wore lace and frill

dresses.

• Members of the middle class were able to hire servants, they ate well and they were property owners.

19th Century Middle Class:

19th Century Middle Class:

“Upstairs”/“Downstairs” Life

“Upstairs”/“Downstairs” Life

Working Class Conditions • As we have seen life in

the factory was very hard for workers, life at home did not get any easier.

• Homes were cramped, poorly maintained, and unsanitary.

• To save money many workers crammed into a room. (At times that number could be over 12)

• Workers worked long hours.

• Working class children usually did not go to school, they were usually working.

• The Victorian answer to dealing with the poor and indigent was the New Poor Law, enacted in 1834.

• Previously it had been the burden of the parishes to take care of the poor. The new law required parishes to band together and create regional workhouses where aid could be applied for. The workhouse was little more than a prison for the poor.

Workhouses

• Why did people end up in workhouses?– too poor– old or ill to support themselves

Who ended up in the Workhouses?1. Unmarried Pregnant Women2. Mentally Ill3. Mentally handicapped 4. Orphans

The Life of the New Urban Poor: A Dickensian Nightmare!

The Life of the New Urban Poor: A Dickensian Nightmare!

Problems of Pollution

Problems of Pollution

““Fifty years ago nearly all Fifty years ago nearly all London had every house London had every house cleansed into a large cleansed into a large cesspool.. Now sewers cesspool.. Now sewers having been very much having been very much improved, scarcely any improved, scarcely any person thinks of making person thinks of making a cesspool, but it is a cesspool, but it is carried off at once into carried off at once into the river. The Thames is the river. The Thames is now made a great now made a great cesspool instead of each cesspool instead of each person having his own”person having his own”

Thomas Cubitt Thomas Cubitt 18401840

The Silent HighwaymanThe Silent Highwayman - 1858 - 1858

• Until the second half of the 19th century London residents were still drinking water from the very same portions of the Thames that the open sewers were discharging into. Several outbreaks of Cholera broke out in the mid 19th century.

THE WATER THAT JOHN DRINKS

• This is the Thames with its cento of stink, That supplies the water that JOHN drinks.

These are the fish that float in the ink- y stream of the Thames with its cento of stink, That supplies the water that JOHN drinks

• This is the sewer from cesspool and sink, That feeds the fish that float in the ink- y stream of the Thames with its cento of stink, That supplies the water that JOHN drinks.

These are vested int'rests, that fill to the brink, The network of sewer from cesspool and sink, That feed the fish that float in the ink- y stream of the Thames with its cento of stink, That supplies the water that JOHN drinks.

• This is the price that we pay to wink, At the vested int'rests, that fill to the brink, The network of sewer from cesspool and sink, That feed the fish that float in the ink- y stream of the Thames with its cento of stink, That supplies the water that JOHN drinks.

• In Little Dorrit Dickens describes a London rain storm:

• In the country, the rain would have developed a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would have had its bright association with some beautiful form of growth or life. In the city, it developed only foul stale smells, and was a sickly, lukewarm, dirt- stained, wretched addition to the gutters.

Early-19c Londonby Gustave Dore

Early-19c Londonby Gustave Dore

• Cities are the abyss of the human species…

Rousseau

The New Industrial City

The New Industrial City

Worker Housing in Manchester

Worker Housing in Manchester

Workers Housing in Newcastle TodayWorkers Housing in Newcastle Today

Life In The City