In the six decades before the late eighteenth/nineteenth century, economic growth in Great Britain was either slow or non-existent. This was marked by a non-existent change in income levels and productivity. A main reason why economic growth was so slow during this time period was that "Britain tried to do two things at once - industrialize and fight expensive wars, and she simply did not have the resources to do both." However, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Great Britain started stepping towards becoming a modern industrial nation. As W. Rostow would say, England moved from a traditional society towards reaching an age of mass consumption. "The industrial revolution transformed Great Britain from a nation of agricultural villages into a nation of factory towns." There were many key reasons why the industrial revolution took off. One of them was the decline of the manorial system, where communal farming was abandoned for the more productive family farms. Another was the improvement of technology across all industries. With the help of enhanced transportation technology such as railroads and canals, trade within and beyond England expanded and flourished. Following these changes was the introduction of the factories. The first industry to develop factories was the textile industry, and soon other industries such as the mining and agriculture ones soon followed. The socioeconomic and cultural implications the revolution had on England during the 18th and 19th centuries was grand. With an increase of productivity and output, many institutions were created in order to regulate the industries, purchasing power for Great Britain increased, and with the opening of factories there was mass migration from rural areas to urban city centers. There were unfortunate effects of the revolution as well, for example, the living standards in some cases decreased drastically and working conditions, especially for children were horrifying.
在第十八年底前的六个十年/第十九个世纪，大不列颠岛的经济增长要么是缓慢的或不存在的。这是一个不存在的收入水平和生产力的变化。一个主要的原因，经济增长是如此之慢，在这段时间内，“英国试图在一次工业化打昂贵的战争做了两件事，她根本没有这样做的资源。然而，在第十八世纪开始，大不列颠岛开始走向成为一个现代化的工业国家。W. Rostow说，英格兰从传统社会到大众消费时代。”工业革命把大不列颠岛从一个农业村的一个国家变成了一个工业城镇的国家，“工业革命的主要原因有很多。他们一个是庄园制度衰落，其中公共农场被遗弃了的生产力更高的家庭农场。另一个是在所有行业的技术改进。在铁路和运河等增强运输技术的帮助下，英格兰和之间的贸易扩大和繁荣。以下这些变化是工厂的介绍。第一个发展工厂的工业是纺织工业，很快其他的工业，如采矿业和农业产业，很快就被紧随其后了。在第十八和第十九个世纪的革命对英格兰的社会经济和文化的影响是伟大的。随着生产力的提高和产量的增加，许多机构被创造，以规范产业，大不列颠岛的购买力增加，并随着工厂的开放，从农村到城市中心的大规模迁移。有革命的不幸的影响，例如，在某些情况下，生活水平的急剧下降和工作条件，尤其是对孩子们是很可怕的事。澳洲论文代写
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"
According to the traditional view, after the establishment of the Factory Act of 1933, the child labour situation changed radically for the good. The Factory Act first started being enforced in 1935 and continued to be enforced until 1938. During this time period, the amount of children in the workforce fell from 56,000 to 33,000. Percentage wise, the number of children working in textile mills fell from 15.9% to 7.9%. It was felt by many that the reason the Act was so successful was due to the attentiveness of the factory inspectors that were charged with the task of enforcing the law. Early reports from the factory inspectors indicated that the law was followed in various factories most of the time. Statistics also show that without the Factory Act, many children would still be trapped within the confines of poor working conditions. For example, "children did not leave the silk industry as rapidly between 1835 and 1838 as they did the other textile industries." The new Factory Act also affected factory owners as they now had to create schools if there was no educational institute nearby and had to get age examinations from surgeons. Factory owners often had to hire additional staff just to fill out the paper work that was required by the new legislation.
On the other hand, there was an alternative view that opposed the traditional view regarding child labour and its new regulation. It stated that the Factory Acts did not reduce the welfare of children significantly. First of all, the education that the children now received was sub-par and it was "clear that the most important effect of the Factory Acts was not to educate the factory children." In fact, there was no significant increase in literacy rates amongst the textile districts after the implementation of the Act in 1833. Furthermore, if there was a school near by the factory and the mill owner did not provide his own school, the children still had to pay tuition. Although the law was mostly obeyed, the early inspector reports also mentioned that many factories were suspected of widespread cheating when it came to following the new legislature. Thus, the large decline of child labour that was implied might not be a true statistic. Age certificates also eventually became easier to purchase and process and also became transferrable and children could take their certificates with them when switching jobs which reduced the cost of age certificates per child. In fact, in some cases the mill owner would reach economies of scale and overcome the implicit tax (bookkeeping costs, school costs, supervision costs, age certificates...etc) by hiring even more young children to work half time and reaching economies of scale. Additionally, when the factory children left the textile industry, they did not leave to go to school. In fact those who were interested in school remained working and became half-timers (half work, half school). The majority of the factory children went to work in different areas whether it was at home or in another market. This theory isn't properly evidenced because there were no records of child labour in other industries at that point in time. However, it has been documented that many factory owners often complained that their child workers left the textile markets to work for calico-print factories (which were unregulated). Thus, it is quite possible that when the factory children found another place of work, their situation there was much direr. Moreover, the silk industry is a unique niche and cannot be used to generalize the outcome of the factory children's future if it wasn't for the Factory Acts. It was actually shown that many children left from working at the silk mills during the 1840's and 1850's even though there was no Parliamentary bill that affected the silk industry at that time. This leads us to the theory that the Factory Act did not cause the decline of child labour, but merely just helped it along.
It can be argued that the Factory Act did not in fact instigate the reduction of Child Labour but rather complimented the other factors that were already in play. When comparing the percentage of children employed by cotton and flax mills in 1835 with the percentage employed in 1816 it is seen that child labour in both industries was increasing for two decades before the Factory Act was passed.
One of these factors that helped reduce child labour was the improvement of technology during the Industrial Revolution. Around 1835, many water powered textile mills switched to being steam-powered. This marked a major turning point in the history of textile markets. Various textile factories could now be built in towns with a thriving populace. Consequently, the labour market for the industry was transformed. Textile mill owners no longer had to scramble to look for a willing adult workforce, which meant that the demand for child labour decreased. There were technological improvements in other areas as well. For example, "In 1930, Richard Roberts perfected his self-actor, which completely mechanized cotton spinning, and it was adopted rapidly in the 1830's." The new automated spinning mule meant that fewer threads were broken and as a result piecers (who were mostly children) were no longer needed and demand for child labour decreased even more. The spinning mule breakthrough was accompanied with the act of Ring-spinning which also reduced the need for piecers. Since the new technology required more adult power than child labour, it was also seen that "child labour was already declining relative to adult labour, and the Factory Act only speeded up the change." Furthermore, even as time progressed and the textile machinery became easier to manage and operate, children did not take over the jobs of adults but rather started to become their assistants and preformed simple and not hard labour inducing tasks such as running errands. Thus, it is quite possible that "child labour in Britain would vanish anyway as British prosperity rose."
However, it wasn't just the lack of demand that drove down child labour during the nineteenth century. Lack of supply also played a big part. There was "an important force shifting the supply of child labour: growing real income and its effect on parents' attitude towards their children." After a period of stagnation, real wages (wages adjusted to account for inflation) during the industrial revolution started along a steady climb. From 1819 to 1850, real wages almost doubled. In fact, the standard of living in Great Britain also increased drastically around the 1840/1850's. Productivity increased with the introduction of international trade and mercantilism. Health care and sanitation also improved which increased the average life expectancy (which meant more money earned in a life time). These developments along with the introduction of a secure banking system helped transition Britain from a mainly agricultural economy to a money economy. Previously, children only had to work in the factories because their parents were poor and needed the extra money to stay above living in poverty. Now, their parent's incomes were rising and as a result they were less willing to send their children to work, especially in such destitute conditions. The rise in income also provoked the parents to start investing in their children's health and education. Younger siblings of factory children also started working at a later age than what was required during harder times. "The well-known Victorian concern with children was in large part a reflection of rising income." Therefore, it can be seen that there were forces other than the Factory Acts of 1833 that were driving down the amount of child labour in the factory industries.
乐观主义者和保守主义思想家的状态，伴随着工厂的行为的规制有助于孩子们在意识到厂孩子们现在给出一个更好的生活，因为他们现在收到午休只有工作一定的小时。工作的孩子们也提供了教育选择，增加了他们的教育，从而帮助他们最终摆脱贫困周期。然而，如果我们看起来更接近工厂的行为的影响，我们可以看到，虽然孩子们现在休息，他们的其他11个小时仍然花在狭窄和通风条件差的条件下。此外，许多离开纺织工业的孩子离开了其他行业，没有孩子的劳动法规，并经常遭受比他们经历过的更糟糕的条件。此外，由于新的立法机关削减了孩子可以工作的时间，纺织米尔斯只雇用了两倍的孩子工作半轮班。这意味着在更大的图景中，童工可能实际上增加了。此外，由于在纺织行业的技术进步和年轻的儿童工人的供应越来越缺乏对童工的需求日益增长，由于在大不列颠岛的收入水平的上升，可以看出，童工正在稳步下降，对自己的，没有工厂的行为和新规定的帮助。这也使我们的一点，工厂的行为并没有完全消除童工，而是作为一个催化剂，更换童工与女性劳动（女性劳动允许工厂保持他们的工作条件，仍然保持法律）。综上所述，可以说，虽然1933厂的行为帮助孩子做工厂工作条件和减少一定量的童工在纺织行业对工业革命的结束，我们也必须说，行为是伴随着玩，他们更多的下降的作用比产生更大的力量。”的意思，他们加快了在劳动力的儿童参与的缺乏，但没有指使下降。