HISTORY ZONE

The Factory movement as such disappeared in the 1850s with great success to its credit. As yet the legislation applied only to textiles and Lord Ashley, who in 1851 become the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, continued the battle in Parliament to extend legislation to unprotected trades. In many respects, however, 1850 remained the legislative high water mark. There were three stages to the development of factory reform:

1. The first phase occurred naturally, if somewhat illogically, on the hitherto excluded textile industries and their satellites such as bleaching and dyeing. This process had begun in 1845 when the 1844 legislation was extended to calico printing.
2. Next the great range of other child-employing industries where working conditions and arrangements were similar to those in cotton manufacture came under review. These included pottery, the metal trades, paper-making, chemicals, glassworks and printing.
3. Finally the principle of comparability was applied to units of production, whatever their size.

In 1862 Shaftesbury suggested the establishment of the Children's Employment Commission to inquire into the conditions in the unregulated trades. By 1866 the Commission had published five reports that the Russell government was preparing to act on. The last report was published in 1867 and drew attention to the practice of employing women and children in gangs in some agricultural counties[1]. The minority Conservative government took up these plans and in 1867 produced two measures: the Factory Act Extension Act and the Hours of Labour Regulation Act, that applied to premises including private houses with less than fifty workers. The former applied to premises with more than fifty employees in industries such as metalwork, printing, paper and glassworks, while the main effects of the latter were felt in clothing. Children under eight were forbidden to work and older children were required to have ten hours' schooling a week. Young people and women were also protected, and in all the measures affected 1.4 million people. The second measure was left to the local authorities instead of the factory inspectorate to enforce and they did it badly. The extension of the jurisdiction of the inspectorate to cover the handicrafts had to wait until 1878.

By the late 1860s over a wide range of industries the abolition of infant labour, the reduction of the hours of children to six and a half, the principles of 'protected classes' [children, young persons and women] in the mills and workshops, the 60 hour week all round, compulsory education over the age of eight and rudimentary forms of the modern working week and of factory safety and health codes had been achieved. The circle of exceptions was ever-widening but it remained and this meant continued gross abuse of infant, child, adolescent and female labour elsewhere -- to say nothing of adult males.

The next decade saw the final rounding off and consolidation of early Victorian factory reform. The electoral consequences of the 1867 Reform Act were felt much more powerfully in the general election of 1874 than in that of 1868. Factory hours were an issue, especially in Lancashire during the election. The result was a spate of legislation on factories and trade unions introduced by Disraeli's Conservative administration [1874-1880]: in 1874 and 1878 there were factory acts and in 1875 the Trade Union Act, Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act and the repeal of the remaining master and servant legislation.  The Factory Act 1874 was the work of Richard Cross, Disraeli's Home Secretary. It

1. Finally established the ten-hour day, the historic working class goal, as far as the factories and workshops embraced in the 1867 legislation were concerned.
2. Carried forward for the first time in a quarter of a century the frontier of regulation:

• The minimum age of half-time employment was raised from eight [which it had been since 1844] to ten.
• The minimum age for full-time employment was raised from thirteen [which it had been since 1833] to fourteen.
• Women and young persons were specifically included in the body of 'protected persons', who were to receive the benefits of the ten-hour day.
• Men were deliberately excluded: they gained the ten-hour day not in their own right but through the accident of working side by side with the protected persons.

The Factory Act 1878, followed from a Royal Commission established in 1876, and, though the more comprehensive act, it was essentially a consolidating Act pulling together all the provisions into one scheme.

The depression of the 1870s inclined some to argue that factory reform had gone too far and indeed was a major cause of the country's failure to keep up with her new industrial competitors. By that time, however, the principle of state intervention had been well established and could not be reversed. Children, young people and women at work were the responsibility of the state, secured by legal provisions enforceable through a bureaucratic machine. The effectiveness of the provision depended on the effectiveness of the inspectorate itself.  The size of the inspectorate meant that it was always unlikely that there would be comprehensive coverage. In coal mining only one inspector [H.S.Tremenheere] was appointed in 1842 and it was not until the Coal Mines Inspection Act 1850 that officials were empowered to make underground inspections. The number of inspectors was raised to four in 1850, six in 1852 and twelve in 1855. Even this gave each inspector an impossibly large area to administer and this was equally true of the factory inspectorate where a reorganisation in 1839 left each inspector some 1500 mills to supervise with the assistance of four superintendents. The total establishment for the factory inspectorate was raised to about twenty in 1839, at which level it remained for some thirty years. The inspectors were also hampered by inadequate budgets: in the mid 1860s the mines inspectorate had a budget of only £10,000 while that of the factory inspectorate was about a third more.

The inspectorates were never intended as an industrial police force supervising industry's every move. They were intended to create a moral climate of observance by the principle of inspection. Indeed, it was strongly believed that inspectors should not take from employers the ultimate responsibility for running decent industrial establishments. Almost inevitably the inspectors did not act in concert as a unified service -- in fact the 1876 Royal Commission questioned whether any unified policy existed. It was therefore common for inspectors to have different prosecution rates and to concentrate on different sorts of offences. In matters of fencing and safety at work the inspectorate was often quite ineffectual in raising standards but in other areas there was much greater levels of success. Well over three-quarters of prosecutions were successful and at times the rate was over 90 per cent. This was, in part, the result of prosecuting only in those cases that had a good chance of success.

The legislation of the 1870s represented the consummation of the early Victorian endeavour. 'Protection' was an unchallenged principle. Despite the changes in emphasis and disagreements within the factory debate, the combatants of 1833 soon found common ground in the notion of 'freedom of contract' as expressed by John Stuart Mill in his Principles of political economy[2]. Mill started from the overriding proposition that every individual was the best judge of his own interests and should be free to pursue them without interference from the state. However, he recognised that there were circumstances under which this was unacceptable. The issue was one of defining where and why the overriding proposition justified state action. Mill accepted three circumstances in which state intervention was acceptable:

1. Children and 'young persons' could not be the vest judges of their own interest: for them 'freedom of contract' was often 'but another name for freedom of coercion'. This is the essence of liberal paternalism.
2. In such an area as education, since good judgement itself might depend upon being subjected to it, compulsion was justifiable.
3. There were 'matters in which the interference of law was required, not to overrule the judgement of individuals respecting their own interests, but to give effect to that judgement'. So, if some employers wished to establish a ten-hour day, they might be restrained from pursuing what they conceive to be in their own best interests because their rivals resisted the innovation. Here all would have to be coerced if 'the judgement of individuals respecting their own interests' were to be given effect.

Central to Mill's entire position was the principle that full persons should be contractually liberated, altogether 'free' to pursue their interest, as they themselves judged it, in selling their time and labour. 'Interference' was rapidly accepted on all sides but only as an extraordinary suspension of a master principle. The principle was expressed as freedom of contract and the normal settled as the adult male. This can be seen in Cross's speech to the Commons in 1874 when he felt he must pay lip-service to the old Chadwick doctrine of the free agent: 'So far as adult males are concerned there could be no question that freedom of contract must be maintained and men must be left to take care of themselves.'

The legislation of 1874 and 1878 may have marked a 'victorious' climax to a phase but there were harbingers of a new era. In the early 1870s several bills were introduced in the Commons proposing a nine-hour day for men as for protected persons; and the royal commission of 1876 entered at length into the consideration of both health and hygiene in factories. There were early indicators that the battle was to move on to new ground.

New Horizons

Attention shifted to the sweated trades, those trades often carried on in domestic workshops or actually in a house, where hours were notoriously long and wages low. In 1888 a Select Committee of the House of Lords was appointed to report on the sweated trades and in 1892 another Royal Commission was established on labour conditions generally but which provided valuable information on both sweated and non-sweated trades. In 1901 the Factories and Workshops Act consolidated the law further.

Meanwhile in the major industries a new practice had grown up that had a further influence on the limiting of hours. This was the setting up of Wages Boards or Trades Boards on which both employers and employees were represented. In determining wages, working hours had also to be taken into consideration and this was particularly important as there was still no legislation specifically restricting the working hours of men. The Nottingham Hosiery Board dated from the 1860s while the Midland Iron and Steel Board came into informal existence in 1872, being re-constituted more formally in 1876. The Midlands Mining Wages Board also began informally in 1874, having an official existence from 1883 onwards. In addition, in the Birmingham area, the 'alliance system' was used from time to time. Under this arrangement employers would fix wages and employ only one union, while the workmen would all join the union and work only for employers in the alliance. In this way it was hoped to avoid competitive wage cutting by employers.

If one explanation for the early opposition to factory reform was simple ignorance of conditions, there could be no such excuse by 1900. In addition to Royal Commission and Select Committee reports there were the annual Reports of the Mines Inspectors and the Inspectors for Factories and Workshops which became more detailed as the century advanced. Early in the twentieth century two further advances occurred:

1. In 1908 the Liberal government passed the Eight Hours Act, the first Act regulating the hours of work for men fixing the working day for miners.
2. In 1909 the Sweated Industries Act [sometimes called the Trades Board Act] was passed, made necessary by the continued sweating of workers in certain trades. The Act required wage boards to be set up in specified sweated industries such as tailoring so that even these notoriously difficult to control industries came under increasing supervision. The Shops Act 1912 extended rights to shop assistants.

The working week after 1850 was gradually reduced in length. Although it was still a six day week, Saturday labour was less than before and only a half-day was worked in many trades from the 1870s onwards. Working men acquired four statutory holidays with the passing of the Bank Holiday Acts in 1871 and 1875. By 1900 a week's holiday a year was not unknown though it was more likely to be enjoyed by skilled workers than unskilled workers.

Regulations grew increasingly complex in the area of safety at work. The Coal Mines Acts provide a good illustration of this. By 1900 safety regulations were very extensive and the 1911 Act added further regulations covering many different matters: the fixing of hours for engine men, the provision of baths and facilities for drying clothes at the bigger pits and the searching of men for matches and other forbidden items. Accidents still happened and the rules were not always obeyed but the contrast with the 1850s is very striking. At other places of work employers found themselves under increasing pressure to make their premises safe. The Employers Liability Act 1880 and the Workman's Compensation Act 1905 required employers to pay compensation to any workman injured of suffering disease resulting from unsafe or unhealthy working conditions. National Insurance after 1911 and voluntary insurance before were no longer the only ways of coping with industrial injuries.

[1] These gangs worked long hours under so-called gang-masters who frequently exploited and abused their workers. By the Agricultural Gangs Act 1888 all gang-masters had to be licensed by JPs, no boy or girl under eight was to be employed, and a licensed gang-mistress was necessary when women and girls were included in the gang.

[2] On the question of 'freedom of contract' see the illuminating and contentious study P.S. Atiyah The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract, OUP, 1971.

Industrialisation is as much a process of cultural as economic and social change. Workers, employers and observers formulated languages in which to negotiate the relationships between each other and to a changing environment[1]. The factory was a concentrated metaphor for hopes and fears about the direction and pace of industrial change and its significance extended beyond the direct impact of factory labour. Language and the construction of public debate is a central concern. Power in society is exercised partly through the privileging of certain modes of discourse and the disqualifying of others. Different discourses address different areas of life and, even in relatively stable periods, the boundaries can be ill defined, debated and re-negotiated. The debate over the 'factory question' was one of the creations of discourses addressed to different audiences in the early 1830s, a narrowing of this range during the 1840s and an effective closure of the debate in the 1850s and 1860s.

Early thrusts: a movement for conflict?

The early ten hour movement had a number of strands, loosely held together by a rhetoric variously composed of evangelical religion, conceptions of a due social balance threatened by unregulated economic change, populist radical ideas of fair employment and labour as property, and patriarchal values. Such rhetoric embodied notions of a 'moral economy' in opposition to the aggressive economic liberalism of the manufacturer's lobby. This clustering of views can be represented in terms of appeals to tradition and a paternalist mutuality of interests, with the values of 'rural' society taken as a touchstone to judge the excesses of industrialism. This articulation of a moral voice is seen best in the writings and speeches of Richard Oastler, who played a pivotal (if self-dramatised) role in organising the ten hour movement round such feelings.  Oastler brings together the elements of the early factory movement to produce a kind of populist traditionalism or 'Tory Radicalism'.  Evangelical religion and gothic romanticism are particularly important. Oastler speaks of the 'monstrous' nature of the factory system and the 'terrors' of child labour. He denounced political economy as 'earthly, selfish and devilish' and pointed to the abnormality of 'the tears of innocent victims [wetting] the very streets which receive the droppings of an Anti-Slavery Society'.

Substantial sections of the propertied classes, merchants, gentry and professional men saw their interests and values as identified with he artisans and domestic economy and feared the threat of unchecked factory concentration to community cohesion and social balance. These attributes cut across the political spectrum from traditionalist Tories to Whigs, to a patrician radicalism. The radicalism of artisans and factory workers shared many of these views. It was saturated in romantic imagery, of the 'golden age' of domestic production and of seeing their labour in terms of 'freedom', 'tyranny' and 'slavery'. The difference was that their accounts of abuse were based on experience rather than observation.

1. Textile employers did not constitute a homogeneous group. There was a significant Tory and Anglican presence and, within the liberal community, differences between the narrow economism and the broader vision of more established manufacturing firms. The claims of 'Manchester Liberalism' to speak for the manufacturing interest as a whole, or even for Manchester itself, are open to question:
2. Attitudes to factory reform arose from readings of the legitimate economic interests of employers and of the 'manufacturing interest' of which they felt themselves to belong but also from wider considerations of their status, cultural aspirations and claims to authority.
3. Economic interests were rarely understood in narrow cash nexus terms and the aspirations of the average businessman was perhaps less to maximise profits than to reproduce his position and that of his family. Paternalism was not confined to Oastler and the ten hour movement and many manufacturers accepted their civic duty as men of property to engaged actively in schooling, management of housing, charity and moral surveillance. Paternalistic controls over the labour force were justified in a language of mutual obligations and the mission of the enlightened manufacturer as improver of the poor. Conversely competitive effectiveness and further accumulation of capital enabled employers to fulfil their moral mission -- in this sense there was no contradiction between the economic ethics of political economy and the moral imperatives of industrial paternalism.
4. Textile manufacturers found themselves in a vulnerable and isolated position when the factory issue exploded in the early 1830s and were divided over their response to it. 'Evils' were recognised, but in terms far removed from the language of factory slavery.
5. The language used by employers, whether in favour or against legislation, provided interesting contrasts between sectors and regions. In the cotton districts opponents pointed to the diminished rate of profit and the material increase in the cost of manufacture with a consequent reduction in labour employed. The responses from woollen and worsted manufacturers were less standardised. Opponents emphasised the threat from foreign competition and the absolute rights of property.

The variation in employers attitudes and opinion cannot adequately be explained in terms of big, technically progressive and small, technically-backward factories. Legislation had different implications for cotton with its higher proportion of steam power and great urban concentration. The question of stopping the moving power is only the best known aspect of such differences. Even employers who favoured reform could differ on the proper balance between state and voluntary initiatives.

Redefining the question: towards conciliation?

The redefining of the factory question is part of the shaping of the Victorian state and the accommodation of interests within it. If the 1830s saw the elaboration of Benthamite responses to reform and vigorous resistance to them, at both popular and ruling-class levels, the 1840s saw modifications to this project through its incorporation into a broader consensus that shaped the agenda of the 'condition of England' question. This had several dimensions:

1. The writing of the new public agenda owed something to expert knowledge and the role of the factory inspectorate. Initially the inspectors had been inclined to defer to the expertise of leading employers but the pressure of public agitation pushed them into taking a more independent line.
2. Popular unrest and the desire to contain unrest pushed inspectors, parliament and elite public opinion to take a firmer line on enforcement. In 1840, Leonard Horner, a leading inspector, presented the benefits of factory regulation in terms of the growth of more rational attitudes among both employers and employees. He presented a case of moral order and economic efficiency appealing to the longer-term rational interests of employers and workers and projected the role of state servants in monitoring this diffusion of rationality.
3. The issue became one, not of introducing new legislation, but fulfilling the intention of existing law by taking action to remedy defects in the 1833 Act. The key issue was enforcement, especially the vexed questions of age certification and the rights of entry to factories. Opposition to legislation was not solely in the interests of employers but of workers as well. Reducing instances of child labour led to reductions in family budgets, hence much working class opposition. Adult labour had been left unaltered by the 1833 Act.

Oastler and the ten hour movement in the 1830s had projected a vision in which the regulation of the factory, and the protection of labour generally was the key to remedying social distress. The factory question in the 1840s can be seen through the language of negotiation within a growing consensus in favour of further regulation: the prosperity of trade and the welfare of the nation were increasingly seen as two sides of the same coin. Two particular emphases worked to incorporate social criticism about the distress, moral degeneration and Chartist threat and the awareness of working class conditions, into a liberal vision of a rationalised factory system:

1. The development of state regulation and the associated public debate tended to project a series of distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' factories and of the need to improve the 'bad'.
2. The agenda of the 'condition of England' extended into mines, child and female labour generally, the weavers, out-work and sweating and urban conditions. As a result the factory lost its centrality as a focus of social concern.

Public opinion saw social problems as separate and the evils of the factory as by no means the worst, though possibly the most readily remediable form of social distress. Education and a morally improved working force became the key. The debate continued to embody distinctive workers' perspectives, though these were perhaps less challenging than in the 1830s. Ten-hour legislation insisted on the minimal protection of labour, including adult men's labour. This was constructed as a moral imperative and a necessary limitation of the sphere of political economy. The eventual introduction of a fairly effective Ten Hours Act could be seen as a logical development within this framework.

A symbolic resolution

The Ten Hours Act, together with the repeal of the Corn Laws, came to form part of the symbolic 'social settlement' underpinning the apparent social harmony of the mid-Victorian period. The absence of factory acts became part of a collective memory of the 'bad old days', an unacceptable face of capitalism that no doubt worked to make its current face seem more benign. From the 1860s the factory agitation could be recalled as part of the general progress of society. For employers, the improvements associated with the Acts became part of an image of the well-regulated factory as the site of that economic, social and moral progress that the Victorian middle classes liked to represent as its mission in life. The factory inspectors saw themselves as agents of moral improvement among the operatives, as much as their protectors from unscrupulous employers.

Factory reform had some bearing on the making of mid-Victorian industrial paternalism. The consensual rhetoric of factory reform could, however, have different meanings in particular contexts. For workers, they were important as a symbol of 'industrial legality', especially where trade unions were relatively weak. The construction of women and children as protected categories reinforced notions of the adult male 'breadwinner' as an independent free labourer. Much of the debate concerned the drawing of boundaries -- between morality and the market, dependent and free agents, the state and the rights of property, the household, the factory and the school. Factory reform reflected a recognition that the market of liberal economics existed in a moral and legal framework. This contention was open to debate in the 1830s but from the 1840s the boundaries appear more settled and with an authoritative discourse of reform and moral improvement framing economic and Benthamite language with a moralising social commitment.

[1] For what follows see Robert Gray 'The languages of factory reform in Britain c.1830-1860' in Patrick Joyce (ed.) The historical meanings of work, pp.143-179.

The ten-hour movement had been out-manoeuvred by the Whigs and its campaign against the 1833 Act proved ineffective. In October 1833 Oastler formed the Factory Reformation Society to continue the campaign but in November Robert Owen and John Fielden announced a Society for Promoting National Regeneration with the impractical but popular demand for an 8-hour day with 12 hours pay. Oastler rejected 'Regenerationist' invitations and it failed during the general Owenite collapse of 1834 carrying with it much of the Short Time agitation. From 1834 the Factory Movement had a chequered history. Oastler and his supporters became increasingly involved in anti-Poor Law campaigns and there were growing local differences:

1. Lancashire reformers, experienced in evasions of previous legislation, demanded that mill engines should be stopped at set times to make enforcement certain -- a policy Oastler supported but 'dare not ask for'.
2. Some of the parliamentary spokesmen, such as Hindley and Brotherton, were prepared to compromise on the Ten Hours demand and adopted a gradualist approach by arguing for 11 hours.
3. In Scotland the committees in Aberdeen, Arbroath, Edinburgh and Paisley tended to rely on the support of professional men and Presbyterian ministers while the Glasgow committee was under working class control until 1837.
4. Yorkshire was less prone to division and controversy within the organisation but even here there were differences.

The pace of the campaign of the 1840s varied considerably. Ashley Cooper failed to inject 'ten hours' into unsuccessful bills in 1838, 1839 and 1841. By 1840 the Inspectors were also in favour of further reform and hopes rose with the return of the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel in 1841. Peel remained steady in his opposition to the Ten Hour movement right up to the passage of the 1847 Factory Act. He had adopted the argument of political economists that wages would fall under a ten-hour day and the cost of production would increase with consequences for rising prices.  This was not a doctrinaire approach but one grounded in a genuine concern for the welfare of workers.  In 1841, however, this concern was mistaken by a West Riding short-time deputation as an acceptance of the ten hour principle. This led to widespread and misleading publicity, raising then shattering workers' hopes and intensifying their hostility to the government during 1842.

Peel was, however, prepared to accept intervention to control working conditions when convinced that the moral case was overwhelming.  He opposed Ashley over ten-hour legislation because he believed that the moral case was weaker than the economic one. But was prepared to accept the moral arguments implicit in the Mines Act 1842. Working conditions in collieries were dangerous and children and women played an important part in mining coal. In 1840 a Royal Commission was established to investigate the working conditions of children in coalmines and manufactories. Its findings were horrific with children as young as five or six working as 'trappers' [operating doors to enable air-coursing]. There were also many comments about the poor health of the mining community. Artists were employed to go underground and make sketches of workers.  These appeared in the Commissioners' Report published in 1842.  They were graphic and immediate and public opinion was shocked. Shaftesbury drafted a bill that became law at the end of 1842. It

1. Made the employment of women underground illegal.
2. Said boys under 10 could no longer work underground.
3. Said parish apprentices between 10 and 18 could continue to work in mines.

There were no clauses relating to hours of work and inspection could only take place on the basis of checking the 'condition of the workers'. Many women were annoyed that they could no longer earn much needed money. In 1850 a further Act widened the authority of colliery inspectors; they could now check the condition of machines.

Peel's good intentions were insufficient to dampen class and sectarian antagonisms that intensified during the industrial distress and disturbances of 1841 and 1842. The 'Plug Plots' of mid-1842 speeded government action and in March 1843 Graham introduced a Factory Bill that would restrict children aged 8-13 to 6½ hours' work with three hours' daily education in improved schools largely controlled by the Church.  Fear and prejudice came together in the massive campaign by nonconformist groups, stressing the virtues of 'voluntaryism' and professing concerns about the 'Romanising' effects of the Oxford Movement. Peel and Graham agreed on the importance of improving educational provision for the working population and making the educational clauses of the 1833 Factory Act effective. Graham's proposal for state assistance in the education of factory children -- motivated by the need to raise the 'moral feeling' of the people as a counter to radical agitation -- was thought by Nonconformists and Roman Catholics to favour the Church of England unfairly.  Parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition resulted in the whole bill being withdrawn in the summer.

Oastler mounted a major campaign in the spring of 1844 but he was unable to graft a '10 hour clause' on to the revised factory bill, shorn of its contentious educational clauses, which was reintroduced in early 1844. Ashley moved a ten hour amendment that carried with 95 Conservatives  supporting it.  Peel refused to accept ten hours or compromise with eleven hours and the bill was only passed  by threatening resignation unless his wayward supporters  rescinded their earlier vote. The Factory Act 1844 actually effected considerable improvements:

• children [8-13] became 'half-timers', working six and a half hours
• dangerous machinery was to be fenced in
• women shared the young persons' 12 hour restriction
• it was permissible for a factory to operate for fifteen hours in a day

There was, however, considerable disappointment in the textile towns and this provoked compromises and local negotiations. A series of conferences sought to maintain unity by reviving the Ten Hours Bill in Parliament, and after a wide winter campaign Ashley Cooper moved for leave to introduce it in January 1846. However, the debate over industrial conditions was now overshadowed by the nation-wide controversy over the Corn Laws. Ashley felt morally obliged to resign his seat and Fielden took his place as parliamentary leader but lost his seat in May. As another campaign was mounted in the autumn a gathering industrial recession weakened the case for opposition. Final Whig attempts to compromise on 11 hours were defeated and Fielden triumphed in May 1847 with the Ten Hours Act receiving the royal assent in June.

Northern rejoicing was still premature. From 1848 there were reports of evasions in Lancashire and of masters' campaigns to repeal the Act. Several employers resorted to the relay system that meant that hours of work could not be enforced: the 15 hours per day clause in the 1844 Act had not been repealed. Gradually, a new campaign emerged to protect the Act but it was increasingly obvious that the Factory Movement was divided: Ashley Cooper and a 'liberal' group were prepared to accept some compromise while Oastler was not. A test case on the illegality of the relay system -- Ryder v Mills -- was heard in early 1850 and failed. The Factory Act 1850 increased weekly hours from 58 to 60 hours in return for banning relays by establishing a working day between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Attempts to include children in the standard day failed and, as a result, men might work 15 hours, aided by relays of children beyond the hours allowed for women and young persons. Children only received their fixed day in the 1853 Factory Act and Disraeli only restored the ‘10 hours’ in 1874. In the meantime, however, similar legislation had been extended to a wide range of workers.

The industrial revolution cannot be viewed as a simple transition from an agricultural and domestic economy to one dominated by factory regimes but rather as a restructuring of economy and society equivalent to that of the 1920s and 1930s and which entailed the decline of old industries as much as the growth of new ones. For individual workers this meant the abandoning of old skills as well as the development of new ones, while increasing regional specialisation of industry created differing impacts from one locality to another. Although contemporaries placed considerable emphasis on the development of large-scale factory production, domestic production and small workshops dominated manufacture until the mid-nineteenth century [1].

The Factory problem

Technological change and the development of new work conditions had gained sufficient strength by the 1830's to necessitate a serious and sustained effort by the state to regulate their application. Both employers and workers believed themselves locked into a system of attitudes, actions and responses. Employers regarded their position as defined by the laws of a competitive market of which they had no control. Insensitive, repressive and largely indifferent to the conditions of their workers, many were motivated by a belief in profit, a belief buttressed by their subversion of religious piety.  Endemic drunkenness among the workforce, as escape from these pressures, seemed to confirm employer belief that the workforce could and would not respond to better treatment.  These attitudes percolated down into the workforce itself and there is ample evidence of the exploitation of and cruelty towards workers, especially children, by fellow workers.  Masters and workers had been related to each other by simple contract and face-to-face contact  but industrialisation had created a new set of relationship patterns. Workers had become 'operatives', human extensions of new technology, 'dehumanised' and 'dehumanising'.

By no means were all factories similar and there was a wide range of work experience within any one factory unit. Many late eighteenth and early nineteenth century textile mills were rural and recruited labour from the local domestic industries. Families often moved together to a new factory so that all members of a household could gain employment. A weaver used to the workings of a small weaving shed would be familiar with many aspects of the work environment -- if not the scale -- within a factory. Boys would probably be apprenticed to weaving, power spinning or in the machine shop; girls might work in the carding room before moving to other low-technology jobs within the mill. Generally, as new technology was adopted, men took control of the new processes in spinning and weaving while women were left with the older machines and more poorly paid jobs.

Increasingly, as factories moved to steam-powered sites, the labour force moved from rural mills to towns. The new large urban mills offered greater opportunities and a wider range of employment in towns was some insurance against recession and unemployment. But factory work altered labourers' lives in a variety of ways. Most obvious was the loss of freedom and independence, especially for men who had previously been their own masters. Factory workers could no longer intersperse industrial work with agricultural labour or other activities. Many factory masters introduced rigid and draconian regulations to keep the workforce at their machines for long hours and to break their irregular work patterns.

The Ten Hour Movement and the 1833 Factory Act

The emergence of the short-time or Ten Hour movement after 1830 has its origins in the late eighteenth century when concerns about the deteriorating conditions in child employment initially developed. Early legislative efforts, however, depended largely on benevolent individuals. Sir Robert Peel senior was behind both the 1802 and 1819 Acts but he received considerable popular support from Lancashire cotton spinners, in liaison with at least three distinguishable groups:

1. Old labour aristocracies such as the east Midland framework-knitters, Yorkshire woollen croppers and the ubiquitous handloom weavers saw the factories with their technological innovations as threats to both their social status and their incomes.
2. Some pioneers of social medicine drew attention to the pernicious effects of factory labour on health.
3. Northern clergymen played important roles in successive factory campaigns. Both clergymen of the old High Church tradition and those tinged with new Evangelical enthusiasm took part. Oastler wrote in 1836 that 'his only object was to establish the principles of Christianity, the principles of the Church of England in these densely people districts....the Factory question was indeed .... a Soul-question -- it was Souls against pounds, shillings and pence....'

The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 was extended in 1819 from pauper apprentices to cover all cotton factory children restricting them to twelve hours daily labour.  A further burst of agitation in the 1820s by the cotton spinners led only to John Cam Hobhouse obtaining minor improvements to existing legislation in 1825 and 1829, as the Lancashire cotton operatives became disillusioned with the lack of enforcement of existing law and demoralised by the collapse of strikes against wage reductions. It is, however, clear that the Factory Movement began in Lancashire rather than with the better known Yorkshire agitation begin by Richard Oastler in 1830 and that it was the militant Cotton Spinner's Union that first created the rudiments of a popular organisation and gained support from the radical press.

The early industrial reformers had little or no organisation. The campaign between 1825 and 1829 had achieved little but it was at this stage that Richard Oastler, a Tory land steward from Huddersfield, burst upon the scene when he sent his celebrated letter to the Leeds Mercury on 'Yorkshire Slavery'. Most of the founders of the Ten Hour Movement were Tories and Anglicans from northern industrial towns, committed to a romantic and paternalistic model of society which, if necessary, might be promoted through state intervention. They were as deeply hostile to parliamentary reform and workers' organisations as they were to Dissenters, orthodox political economy and the newly rich manufacturers. Many of those who financed the movement, like Michael Sadler, were themselves well established factory owners and members of the Tory urban elite facing a challenge locally from Dissenting entrepreneurs.  It is possible to identify four principal pressure groups in favour of factory reform[2]:

1. There were the mill operatives themselves and their supporters, of whom Richard Oastler was the most prominent. Their demands for a 10-hour working day used to debate over child labour both as a way of exposing the hardship of the children and as a way of seeking a limitation on the working day of adults. In the laissez-faire atmosphere of the period, any direct attempt to achieve State regulation of the hours of adult males was doomed to failure. But because juveniles aged 10-13 were an essential part of the workforce it was hoped that restrictions on their hours would percolate through to the rest. The reformers did not opposed child labour as such but were merely against unregulated labour. They judged legislation not by its direct effect on child labour but by its indirect effect on the position of adult workers.
2. Secondly, there were the Tory humanitarians among whom Lord Ashley was most active. They were concerned about the moral and religious deprivation of young workers and the ineffectiveness of existing protective legislation.
3. Romantics like William Wordsworth, Robert Southey and William Cobbett looked back to a pre-industrial 'golden age' and blamed the industrial revolution for alienating workers from the land and forcing children to play a major role in the workforce.
4. A fourth body of reformers came to the fore in the debates over amendments to the factory legislation that occurred in the 1840s. They included active supporters of laissez-faire principles, such as Thomas Babington Macaulay, but who argued for regulation on economic and moral grounds. Child labour, they suggested, damaged the health of youngsters who were then later in life not able to achieve their potential productivity. Restricting child labour was a rational means of promoting investment in the country's future workforce.

During the winter of 1830-1 there was a furious controversy in the Yorkshire press and rival views became polarised. Oastler acted as the pivot and central organiser. He possessed considerable oratorical skills and journalistic gifts; he controlled the central funds and he imparted a crusading verve to the movement. The question of child exploitation was a 'moral' one and he became head of a network of 'short-time committees' that demanded the ten-hour day. Pamphlets, petitions and tracts were issued by the thousand, as 'missionaries' were despatched throughout the textile areas of England and Scotland to highlight the horrors of child labour in the mills. Thousands of workers were willing to ignore the hostility of the Factory Movement's leaders to their political aspirations (1830-32 also saw the agitation for parliamentary reform) and put aside their hostility to the Church of England and turned a blind eye to the darker side of paternalism with its insistence on a harsh penal code, savage game laws and low wages and living conditions for the rural labourer and support the Movement[3].

In the event, Oastler and his movement had little success with the Whig government and Peel and the Conservative opposition kept the agitation at arm's length. When Michael Sadler moved a Ten Hour Bill in March 1832 he was obliged to accept the appointment of a Select Committee to take evidence from the operatives. Meanwhile the factory masters organised a vigorous lobby to resist further legislation, arguing that shorter working hours could result only in a victory for foreign competition, leading to lower wages and unemployment. The dissolution of Parliament in 1832 led to Sadler's defeat at Leeds in December and to his replacement, at the suggestion of the Reverend George Bull, by the young Evangelical Anthony Ashley Cooper as parliamentary spokesman for the Ten Hour campaign. The publication of Select Committee report in January 1833 brought the stark realities of conditions and led Anthony Ashley Cooper to introduce a factory bill. Criticisms, largely justified, that the 1833 report was somewhat one-sided  as it had only heard the workers' views resulted, in April 1833, in the government setting up a Royal Commission to investigate the employment of children in factories.  The Whigs had effectively taken reform out of the hands of the Ten  Hour Movement and became a government sponsored issue.

Why did the Whigs take control of factory reform? Extra-parliamentary agitation occurred not only in the context of conflict between capital and labour but of other economic and social rivalries.  Social, ideological, religious and political rivalry  between industrialists and neighbouring agriculturalists was exploited by operatives who turned for protection  from millowners to county JPs. The result was an Anglican Tory-Radical alliance on the factory question, grounded in notions of paternalism rather than the tenets of political economy and less inhibited in their support of the industrial poor than Whig Radicals. This alliance was weakened by the reform agitation of 1831-2  but remained important till the late 1830s and the onset of Chartism.  Parallel to this Tory paternalist approach was one supported  by some Whig radicals and a  group  of  philanthropic millowners in which nonconformist belief was a unifying  force.

The agitation in Yorkshire had already convinced the Whigs that a factory  act was inevitable. Determining the composition of the Royal Commission ensured that the range of options available  to them would be wider and less unpalatable to manufacturers than a Ten Hours bill. The Royal Commission Report was placed in the hands of Edwin Chadwick.  The report, produced in forty-five days, looked at factory  conditions far less emotionally than the Select Committee.  Its conclusions were not based on humanitarian grounds, the position adopted by the Ten Hour Movement,  but on the question of efficiency. Chadwick argued that human suffering and degradation led to less efficient production and that a good working environment would lead to health, happiness and an efficient workforce. Its recommendations were firmly placed on the question of children's employment and it was consequently criticised  for failing to deal with the issue of  adult  labour.

The Factory Act 1833 that implemented its recommendations restricted:

• children aged 9-14 [by stages] to 8 hours actual labour in all textile mills [except lace-manufacture], with 2 hours at school
• young persons under 18 to 12 hours
• four Factory Inspectors were appointed to enforce the Act

It was confined to children's work and applied only to textile mills but it did establish a small inspectorate to enforce the legislation. Inspection was the prime condition of effectiveness  making enforcement possible and, perhaps in the early stages  more importantly, providing a continuous stream of information about the conditions of workers in a range of industries.  Despite the intense criticism of the 1833 Act and the problems encountered in enforcement, it would be unfair to underestimate the Whig achievement in the area of factory reform. The debates in 1832 and 1833 led to the issue being publicly aired as never  before. The extra-parliamentary movement may have been frustrated by what had been achieved and the 1833 Act may have not been based on any real principles, but it did mark an important stage in the emergence  of effective factory legislation and underpinned the developments of the 1840s.

[1] The  shortest introduction to factory reform is U. Henriques The  Early Factory Acts and their Enforcement, The Historical Association, 1971. J.T. Ward  The Factory Movement 1830-1850, Macmillan, 1962 is the most detailed study though it has, in part, been superseded by R. Gray The Factory Question and Industrial England 1830-1860, CUP, 1996.  C. Driver Tory Radical: A Life of Richard Oastler, OUP, 1946 and A. Weaver John Fielden and the Politics of Popular Radicalism 1832-1847, OUP, 1987 are useful biographies which go beyond factory reform.  Geoffrey  Finlayson The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury 1801-1885, Methuen, 1981 is a detailed biography  which contains much on factory conditions. Clark Nardinelli Child Labour and the Industrial Revolution, Indiana University Press, 1990 examines the most contentious of the questions surrounding factory conditions. J.T. Ward (ed.) The Factory System, two volumes, David & Charles, 1970 contains primary material.

[2] P. Horn Children's Work and Welfare 1780-1880s, Macmillan 1994 and Eric Hopkins Childhood Transformed. Working Class Children in Nineteenth Century England, Manchester University Press, 1994 are excellent on child labour. They need to be considered in relation to the contested study by Clark Nardinelli Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution, Bloomington, 1990.

[3] For a short summary of the issues see J.T. Ward 'The Factory Movement' in J.T.Ward (ed.) Popular Movements 1830-1850, Macmillan, 1970, pp.78-94.

The advent of mechanisation and the spread of more specialist forms of farming helped changed both the nature of work and household structures. By 1800 the earning of wages became increasingly important for the survival of working class families. The process of manufacture moved outside the home though the transition had never been total. Earlier forms of domestic production, in clothing, toy-making and now even computer services, are still visible today. Employment was as diverse and the locations for that employment. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of work in working class life. Work helped determine two fundamental elements of working class existence: the ways in which workers spent many, if not most, of their waking hours; and the amounts of money they had to their disposal. Work also determined most other aspects of working class life: the standards of living they enjoyed; standards of health; the type of housing they lived in; the nature of the family and neighbourhood life; the ways in which leisure time was spent and the social, political and other values that were adopted[1].

A transition in work

The swing away from domestic forms of production can be roughly explained by three developments: the growth of population, the extension of enclosure with a consequent reduction in demand for rural labour and the advent of mechanised production boosting productivity and fostering the growth of new towns and cities. The result was a change in the structure of the labour market.

1. The enclosure of common lands had a profound impact on the livelihood of rural workers and their families. It led to a contraction of resources for many workers and a greater reliance on earnings. The spread of enclosure pushed rural labourers on to the labour market in a search for work that was made the more frenzied by falling farm prices and wages between 1815-35, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic war. The result of the growth in labour supply and agricultural depression was the collapse of farm service in the south and east of the country. It had been customary for farm workers to be hired for a year, to enter service in another household and to live with another family, receiving food, clothes, board and a small annual wage in return for work, only living out when they wished to marry.
2. Added to this was the development of factory-based textile production that had a profound effect on the other source of earned income for rural workers: outwork. Different parts of the country were associated with different types of product: lace-making round Nottingham, stocking-knitting in Leicester, spinning and weaving of cotton and wool in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The appearance of the mills damaged the status and security of some very skilled branches of outwork. Many rural households found themselves thrown into poverty as such work became increasingly scarce and available only at pitifully low rates of pay. The fate of the handloom weavers, stocking-frame knitters and silk weavers in the 1830s and 1840s, all reflected the impact of technological change on the distribution of work[2]. Textiles were not the only industry to experience such structural changes. In both town and country, mechanisation had a marked impact on a wide variety of employments and the position of some skilled workers was undermined while the demand for new skills grew.

Urban workers had always been more reliant on the cash nexus [wages] than had their rural counterparts. Pre-industrial towns had tended to be commercial centres [markets] rather than centres of manufacture and employment there had been more specialised than elsewhere. Small units of production in which worked skilled artisans, providing local services and goods rather than commodities for export operated largely on a domestic basis through frequently under the control of the craft guilds. These stipulated modes of recruitment and training and the quality of products and founded the vocabulary of the rights of 'legal' or 'society' men who worked in 'legal' shops that permeated craft unions in the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century saw the position of the skilled urban artisan increasingly under threat from semi-skilled and less well-trained workers.

The Elizabethan Statute of Artificers [or Apprentices] 1563 provided a legal framework of craft regulation but had fallen into abeyance long before its apprenticeship clauses were repealed in 1811. Under the old system of apprenticeship, the pupil was formally indentured at 14-16 and joined a master's house for a period traditionally specified as seven years before being recognised as a journeyman, qualified to practice the trade. It was also usual for journeymen to 'live in', entitled to bed, board and wages in return to work, only moving out on marriage. Often journeymen tramped the country in search of work in part to extend their experience and knowledge of their trade but also to escape increasingly uncertain employment prospects in their immediate locality[3]. To become a master the journeyman had to produce his 'masterpiece', demonstrating his mastery of the skills of the specific trade. From the early nineteenth century fewer apprentices were completing their indentures and journeymen's wages were falling, both signs that employers were no longer bothered about hiring only men who had served their time. This led to a dilution in the labour force and an increased blurring of the boundaries between 'society' and 'non-society' men, a situation made worse by the mechanisation of production that required fewer skills than handwork.

The nature of training for skilled work changed; apprenticeships were shortened and concentrated on specific skills rather than on an extensive understanding of all aspects of production. Lads worked alongside journeymen rather than being attached to a master's household with various adverse results

• The new system bore heavily on apprentices' families, who frequently still paid for indentures while the apprentice lived at home and could expect little or no wages for his efforts until his time was served.
• The old stipulated ratios between journeymen and boys were increasingly ignored and apprentices became a cheap alternative for adult labour thus depressing the adult labour market.
• Such developments were resented by the journeymen expected to train recruits, souring relations and often making training uncooperative.
• The fate of boys was instant dismissal as soon as they were old enough to command an adult rate

Such practices were more common during depressed times. This abuse of apprenticeship provoked sporadic industrial disputes as skilled workers tried to protect their position and to prevent their trade from being flooded [or diluted] by excess labour.

At the same time, new mechanised processes facilitated cheaper forms of bulk production. As a result the market became saturated with semi-skilled workers, who knew something of the trade but did not possess the full range of skills expected of the qualified man. Henry Mayhew[4], chronicling London's labour market in the 1840s, contrasted the position of the 'honourable' tradesman with the 'slop' workers whose wages and product undercut old recognised prices and reduced job security long assumed to belong to the man with an established craft.

The most obvious impact of industrialisation was found in the more intense and strictly disciplined nature of work in those industries transformed by the new technology: textiles, coal-mining, metal-processing and engineering. Early mills were manned by convict and pauper labour [mostly children] because the regularity of work was alien to the adult population used to a greater degree of autonomy in conducting their working lives. The higher wages available in factories provided insufficient compensation for this loss of 'freedom'. Impoverished handloom weavers would send their daughters to work on the power looms but resisted the prospect themselves. Hours in the early factories were probably no longer than those in the domestic trades but what made it far less acceptable was the mind-crushing tedium of the work involved, the loss of public feast days and holidays and, for middle class commentators, the physical consequences of long hours and the appalling conditions in the factory towns.

The growth of labour market conditions in the nineteenth century makes it quite impossible to make clear distinctions between the employed, the unemployed, the underemployed, the self-employed and the economically inactive. Subcontracting was rife, notably in the clothing trade where middlemen 'sweated' domestic women to earn a profit. The 'slop' end of the fashion and furnishing trades competed frantically for such orders as were available at almost any price. Casualism became more visible towards 1900 as cities spread in size. Short-term engagements and casual employment were particularly associated with the docks and the construction industries.

Diversities

Variations in standards of living, wages and working conditions were at least as great in towns as in the countryside. Average urban wages were certainly higher but so were rent and food so that urban dwellers were not necessarily better off than their rural counterparts. Women's wages were invariably well below those of men and families dependent on a sole female wage earner were among the poorest of the urban population[5]. Jobs guaranteeing a regular weekly wage, with little cyclical unemployment, were rare, highly prized and jealously guarded. Cyclical unemployment was the norm for most workers and was a major factor in the urban labour market and in turn had a significant impact on standards of living, quality of housing and the residential areas to which people could aspire.

The urban population was organised in hierarchical terms, largely in terms of levels of skill[6]:

At the base of the urban labour hierarchy were the genuinely casual workers who formed a residual labour force that was often entered on initial migration to a town when no other work was available. Such work as hawking and street trading, scavenging, street entertainment, prostitution and some casual labouring and domestic work fell into this category. Below these were begging and poor relief.

1. Casual trades were largely concentrated in large cities, especially London, and the number fluctuated considerably.
2. Very low and irregular incomes condemned families dependent on casual work to rooms in slums, but in London they would emerge from the rookeries of St Giles to sell their goods in the cities or in middle class residential districts.
3. Large numbers of street traders in prosperous middle class areas caused antagonism and sometimes fear so that the police were often called to control street trading activities helping to reinforce middle class stereotypes of a dirty and dangerous sub-class that should be confined to the slums.

Above the casual street traders was a whole range of unskilled mainly casual occupations in which workers were hired for a few hours at a time and could be laid off for long periods without notice. These included labourers in the building trades, in sugar houses and other factories, carters, shipyard workers and especially dockers. All towns had such workers but they were especially important in port cities such as London, Liverpool, Bristol and London and in industries like coal mining or clothing that had a partly seasonal market.

1. Precise numbers involved in casual work are impossible to determine. In Liverpool over 22 per cent of the employed population in 1871 were general, dock or warehouse labourers, many casual. When in work Liverpool dockers earned high wages, ranging from 27s for quay porters to 42s for a stevedore but few maintained such earnings for any length of time and in a bad week many earned only a few shillings.
2. Conditions changed little between 1850 and 1914. They were frequently in debt and regularly pawned clothes. In good times they would eat meat or fish but normally their diet consisted largely of bread, margarine and tea. Illness or industrial injury [common in dangerous dockland working conditions] would have led to financial disaster.
3. Casual workers needed to live close to their workplace since employment was often allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Liverpool dockers mostly lived close to the docks and this limited their housing choice to old, insanitary but affordable accommodation.

Factories provided more regular employment after 1830 as did public services as railway companies and many commercial organisations. Skilled manual labour was relatively privileged: a Lancashire skilled cotton spinner earned 27-30s per week in 1835 and a skilled iron foundry worker up to 40s. In coal mining skilled underground workers earned good wages and in key jobs such as shot-firing, putting, hewing and shaft sinking usually had regular employment although this often meant moving from colliery to colliery and between coalfields.

1. Textile towns like Manchester, Bradford and Leeds and metal and engineering centres such as Sheffield and the Black Country tended to suffer less from poverty from irregular earnings than cities like Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool or London.
2. Skilled engineering trades were amongst the earliest to unionise, along with artisans and craftsmen, particularly in London and northern industrial towns[7]. They protected their interests jealously and, despite some dilution in their position, they commanded higher wages and regular employment. This conferred many advantages: renting a decent terrace house in the suburbs thus avoiding the squalor of Victorian slums but with a long walk to work or the use of the 'workmen's trains'.

After 1850 the number of workings in white-collar occupations increased and a lower middle class emerged among the petit-bourgeoisie of small shopkeepers and white-collar salaried occupations of clerks, commercial travellers and schoolteachers. White-collar employment increased from 2.5 per cent of the employed population in 1851 to 5.5 per cent by 1891.

1. Such employment was found in all towns but especially in commercial and financial centres such as Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol.  White-collar workers were a diverse group: insurance and bank clerks commanded the highest incomes of over £3 per week and the greatest prestige; in contrast railway clerks often earned little more than skilled manual workers but had greater security of employment. White-collar employees certainly perceived themselves, and were perceived by others, to be in a secure and privileged position.
2. White-collar workers could afford not only a decent terrace house, but by 1880 could commute over longer distances by public transport, especially after 1880 when the suburban railway and tram network were established.
3. Despite long hours of work for clerks and shopkeepers, their occupations were less hazardous than most factory employment and, with more regular incomes and better housing, they were more likely to enjoy good health than most industrial workers.

Women were employed in all categories of work and in textile districts female factory employment was very significant. Single women often entered domestic service but married women who needed to supplement a low male wage or widows supporting several children, were severely limited in choice. Away from the textile districts most found work as domestic cleaners, laundry workers, in sewing, dressmaking, boot and shoemaking and other trades carried on either in the home of small workshops. Wages were always low with piece rates producing incomes ranging from 5s. to 20s per week.

• The proportion of women in industry declined from the 1890s, except in unskilled and some semi-skilled work but their role in higher professional, shop and clerical work increased.
• The telephone and typewriter revolution from the 1880s saw the army of male clerks replaced by female office workers.
• The revolution in retailing provided additional employment for women and by 1911 one-third of all shop assistants were female.

The number of women in commerce and many industries increased between 1891 and 1951, but the proportion of women in paid employment hardly changed and remained around 35 per cent. But the characteristics of female employment changed substantially. Before 1914 domestic service was still the overwhelming source of employment for women and girls, though the clothing and textile trades employed more women than men. Women, however, were also beginning to infiltrate the lower grade clerical and service occupations. In 1901 13 per cent of clerks were women, but by 1911 this had risen to 21 per cent, though the higher clerical grades remained almost exclusively male. Nevertheless the employment status of women remained inferior to that of men: in 1911 52.1 per cent of women occupied semi-skilled or unskilled jobs compared to 40.6 per cent of men.

The major restructuring of the British economy brought significant changes in the working conditions and operation of the labour market after 1890. Women played an increasingly important role in the workforce, new technology and machinery created different jobs demanding new and often less individually crafted skills. Older workers, particularly in heavy industries, often found it difficult to adjust to new work practices. The years 1890-1914 were a transitional period that retained many of the characteristics of the nineteenth century economy whilst signs of the new work patterns of the inter-war years began to develop.

[1] John Benson The Working Class in Britain 1850-1939, Longman, 1989, pp.9-38 is the best introduction to this issue. Patrick Joyce (ed.) The historical meanings of work, CUP, 1987 is an excellent collection containing a seminal introduction by the editor. Patrick Joyce 'Work' in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950: volume 2 People and their environment, CUP, 1990, pp.131-194 is a short summary of recent research.

[2] See Duncan Bythell The Handloom Weavers, CUP, 1969 and The Sweated Trades, Batsford, 1978 for a detailed discussion of this issue.

[3] See E.J. Hobsbawm 'The tramping artisan' in his Labouring Men, Weidenfeld, 1964, pp.34-63 and E.P.Thompson The Making of the English Working Class, Gollancz, 1963, Penguin, 1968 and 'Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism', first published in Past and Present, no.38 [December 1967], reprinted in Customs in Common, Merlin, 1991, pp.352-403.

[4] Henry Mayhew London Labour and the London Poor, 1861-2, 4 volumes, New York, 1968 and E.P.Thompson and E. Yeo (eds.) The Unknown Mayhew: Selections from the Morning Chronicle 1849-50, Penguin, 1971 provide evidence for the 1850s and should be used in conjunction with the six volumes of his The Morning Chronicle Survey of Labour and the Poor, 1849-50, Caliban, 1980. Anne Humpherys Travels into the Poor Man's Country: The Work of Henry Mayhew, University of Georgia Press, 1977 is the most recent biography.

[5] On this see Elizabeth Roberts Women's Work 1840-1940, Macmillan, 1988.

[6] For a classification of the labouring population up to 1850 see Richard Brown Society and Economy in Modern Britain 1700-1850, Routledge, 1991, pp.323-328.

[7] On the emergence of trade unions see Henry Pelling A history of Trade Unionism, Penguin, 5^th., ed., 1990, Ben Pimlott and Chris Cook (eds.) Trade Unions in British Politics: The First 250 Years, Longman, 2^nd., ed., 1991 and the more specific John Rule (ed.) British Trade Unions 1750-1850: The Formative Years, Longman, 1988.