There are two distinct views and theories regarding standard of living and child labour during the industrial revolution, the optimists and the pessimists. The optimist is defined as "someone who claims a significant rise in living standards in the period before 1850." In contrast, pessimists believe that the standard of living for British residents only started to improve around the 1840s and 1850s. According to the optimist view, the working conditions that children experienced during the Industrial Revolution were no different from the conditions presented to them in the pre-industrial era. In fact they felt that the children worked just as hard and for just as long on their family farms and cottages. On the other hand there are many pessimist theories regarding child labour. Many felt that the children were being robbed of their childhood and were forced to work unfairly in "dark satanic mills." Eventually the pessimists won over the public with their pleas for factory reform and a Royal Commission of Inquiry was organized to look into the living conditions of the factory children.
In fact, as British journalist J.L Hammond said "during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution the employment of children on a vast scale became the most important social feature of English life" and that "the prosperity of the English manufactures was based upon [children's] helpless misery." However it should be mentioned that although child labour was very prevalent during the industrial revolution, it was not widespread across the many industries but in fact concentrated within textile mills. This meant that child labour could not have been one of the main reasons for the success of the industrial revolution. The working conditions in the mills were very poor, and children as young as five often worked for more than 48 hours a week in dim light and poor ventilation. "Even worse, the fact that, under the factory system, children and parents were working in different places removed the disciplines of parental control and led to the breaking of family ties." Furthermore, the various tactics that firms took in order to discipline the factory children were always more negative and detrimental than positive.
Earlier built textile mills relied heavily on water power and as a result were built in smaller rural areas. This caused problems for the mills because with the recent urbanization of England, it became harder to attract a viable labour force. It was also hard to hire workers because of 'the Poor Law'. The 'Poor Law' discouraged the migration of workers coming to textile mill towns (even though they would get higher wages) because by remaining in agricultural villages, they benefited from 'poor relief'. This problem was "partially resolved by resorting to child labour, much of it by pauper apprentices" The children hired were often piecers, meaning they had to mend any broken threads, especially cotton. Additionally, the laissez-faire economic system which was created by the Industrial Revolution "held no hope for the improvement of the children's condition." At least until factory reformers called for the regulation of child labour. The essay will now examine the Child Labour Laws that were put into place during the Nineteenth Century, and the effect that they had on the treatment and participation of children in the workforce.
In 1832, the Report of the Select Committee on the Bill for the Regulation of Factories was printed. The report was half of a two part series that was meant to be a "balanced report on the factory system." However, only the first part was published which presented factories as institutions that crippled childhoods. The report was the first of its kind to condemn child labour in modern industrial Britain. Although the report felt that "child labour was responsible for most of the work in factory districts", many factory reformers felt that child labour should not be abolished but rather just regulated. The reason behind this was that many children supported their parents, and many families could not afford to give up the wages that their children (over the age of nine) were bringing in. "The factory, through its employment of children, thus provided a supplementary form of income for hard-pressed parents, and an alternative form of activity for children of eight and nine themselves." Furthermore, the textile factories simply could not stay in business without the support of child labour. Traditionalists such as Sidney Webb felt that "in the absence of regulation, the evil tends to increase." As a result, the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the first effective Factory Act in 1933. The act had many provisions, including that children under nine were prohibited from working at the factories. The maximum a child could work in one day was 12 hours and 48 hours in one week. Additionally, children working in factories were subject to mandatory schooling. "The educational clauses of the Factory Acts were inserted to assist enforcement of the hours clauses. The necessity of an educational certificate put an extra obstacle in the way of potential evaders of the law." In 1844, the Factory Act was edited to establish the 'half-time system', where children worked for half a day, and attended school for the other half. The minimum age for employment was also lowered to eight. "The intervention into the market system was to be policed with an innovative administrative technique: a system of factory inspectors reporting to and controlled by the home office." It should be noted however that the Silk Mills were not submitted to the same harsh regulations and did not have to follow the minimum age requirements. Silk mills however were extremely dependant on child labour and children started working in the silk industry at much younger ages than other textile factories such as cotton. An implicit tax was also given to the textile factories upon the employment of children. Lastly, with the creation of the Factory Act, age certificates for each child as well as registers had to be filled out. Many factory operates were opposed to putting restrictions on child labour as many of the tasks that the children were assigned were not meant to replace adults but rather were complimentary to the work of adults. They instead proposed that "restrictions be placed on the hours of all employees, preferably by limitations on the hours machinery could be in use"
