For this assignment you are an investigative news reporter during

industrialization in Britain . you have collected the information presented in the

primary source documents below , and now you must write a news article about
the conditions faced by workers in the English textile factories . use the format
guide below to assist you in writing your article . ( This will show you what is
expected .)
WORKERS ARE EXPLOITED IN TEXTILE FACTORIES IN THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
In England, cradle of the Industrial Revolution that took place from 1715 to 1850,
workers worked in textile factories under unsanitary conditions, with long working hours
and low wages, where even children and women worked under precarious conditions.
Because the number of people in cities grew, industrialists were ambitious and there
were no laws protecting workers, what happened in factories was that workers had no
choice but to work under risk of accident, low wages, and and may suffer verbal and
physical abuse from employers. Enclosures were a phenomenon in which large
farmers bought public land and put fences on it, which forced local farmers to move to
cities, which associated with the population explosion that took place in the 18th
century because of the increase in food production, it made a very large number of
uneducated people available to work in factories.
Child labor was very common at that time, as children earned less and did not have
many rights, and the consequences were that children's health was very compromised
and their life expectancy was greatly reduced, as described in the document The
Manufacturing Population . of England [P. Gaskell , London, 1833, pp.161-162, 202-
203.], “ Cooped up in a heated atmosphere , debarred the necessary exercise ,
remaining in one position for a series of hours, one set or system of muscles alone
called into activity , it cannot ok wondered at -- that its effects are injurious to the
physical growth of a child .”
Many children started working at the age of 5, usually as piecers or scavengers , which
were very dangerous professions as they involved activities while the machine was still
on. William Dodd , who started working as a piecer at the age of 6, writes: “ my
evenings were spent in preparing for the following day - in rubbing my knees , ankles ,
elbows , and wrists with oil , etc. I went to bed , to cry myself to sleep .”
Women were also victims of various abuses and aggressions in the textile factory
environment; in 1849 Sarah Carpenter was interviewed for The Ashton Chronicle ,
where she reported: “ There was a young woman , Sarah Goodling , who was poorly
and only she stopped her machine . James Birch , the overlooker , knocked her to the
floor . She got up as well as she could . he knocked her down again . Then she was
carried to the apprentice house . Her bed-fellow found her dead in bead .”
Elizabeth Bentley , interviewed by Michael Sadler's Parliamentary Committee on 1832,
states that “I worked from five in the morning till nine at night . I lived two miles from the
mill . We had no clock . If I had been too late at the mill , I would have been quartered .
I mean that if I had been a quarter of an hour too late, a half an hour would have been
taken off. I only got a penny an hour, and they would have taken a halfpenny ”. This
quote shows that the concept of hours, as it exists today, was invented by industrialists
to exploit the workforce more.
The workers who worked in the coal mines, from where the energy for the textile
factories came, were also in a similar situation, with exposure to several accidents,
working in high temperatures and often in the dark. Isabella Read , a 12-year-old coal-
bearer , reports that: “I carry about 1 cwt . and a quarter on my back ; have to stoop
much and creep through water , which is frequently up to the calves of my legs . When
first down fell frequently asleep while waiting for coal from heat and fatigue .”
The law began to improve from 1833 onwards, with the Factory Acts and of which Lord
Ashley was of great importance in Parliament. At the beginning the Factories Acts were
intended to protect children in factories and coal mines, but from 1844 onwards they
were also intended for women, and as there were improvements in worker productivity
and a reduction in accidents, from 1860 the laws began to involve other industries. . In
a speech to Parliament in 1879, Lord Ashley comments on some gains that have had
the reduction of the working day: “ When I visited Bradford, under the limitation of
hours some years afterwards , I called for a similar exhibition of cripples ; but , God ok
praised ! there was not one to ok found in that vast city . yet the work of these poor
sufferers had been light, if measured by minutes, but terrific when measured by hours
.”