The living and working conditions in Great Britain were a lot worse than the conditions in the US. In Great Britain, there was a high demand for land with the growing population, but there wasn't enough land to meet these demands. Families were getting kicked off of their farm land and were extremely poor. Families badly needed money to survive. This limited land “created a large population of young children who could be hired at cheap wages” (Background Essay). Since people were so poor, they needed money from the factories badly, so the factories didn’t have to try very hard to convince parents to send their children. The factories could pay cheap wages, and didn't have to spend money on good conditions because the families would send their kids no matter what the factories were like because they needed the money. The factories in Great Britain had extremely bad conditions. The punishments, accidents, food, and deformities were harsh and appalling. The overlookers in the factories were brutal and merciless. There was lots of brutal beatings that occurred in the factories. If the workers didn’t do their work right or if they didn’t do it fast enough, they were beaten. Sometimes, they were even beaten for no reason. Girls were more likely to be beaten than boys, and children were more likely to be beaten than adults. The machines they worked were also very dangerous. Many accidents occurred in the factories because the workers limbs would often get “caught in the machinery; in many instances the muscles, and the skin is stripped down to the bone” (interview with Dr. Ward by Lord Kenyon's House of Lords Committee on 25th March, 1819). Workers could easily get pulled into the machines and have their bodies and limbs mangled. As well as losing limbs from the machines, later in life workers’ bodies could be permanently damaged. Children’s bones are still soft when they are young, and from standing for such long hours in the factories, their bones would form unhealthy shapes. One example is they can become knock-kneed. “By long continued standing, the knees become so weak that they turn inwards, producing that deformity which is called ‘knock-knees’ and I have sometimes seen it so striking, that the individual has actually lost twelve inches of his height by it.” (interview with Sir Samuel Smith by Michael Sadler's House of Commons Committee on 16th July, 1832). Girls pelvises could also become turned inward or “distorted” which caused problems with childbirth, and the marrow in the workers’ bones would sometimes be worn down. Lastly, food was dirty and unhealthy. The most common food was oatcakes, and there was often pieces of cotton and dirt in the food. There was a very small quantity of food given, and the workers had to continue working while they ate their meals. There were no plates or silverware, and the food, along with the living and working conditions in Great Britain, were unsanitary.
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| Cripples from the factories in London, England http://www2.maxwell.syr.edu/plegal/tips/t6prod/rodneywilliamswq1.html |
However, the US was in the opposite situation of Great Britain. The U.S. was “expanding westward which (kept) most parents and children working on farms together. It would take a very attractive system of wages, supervision, and working and living conditions to convince parents from around New England to send their children to new mill towns” (Background Essay). The U.S. was not in as much poverty as Great Britain because people had plenty of farmland to work on and grow food with because of the land expansion. They weren’t getting kicked off of their land or struggling to survive like Great Britain. It would take a lot for parents to send their children to the factories because they didn’t need the money as badly. Factories had to work hard to convince families to send their kids, so their factories had to have much better conditions and better wages so that they could get workers. The US invented a system to try to convince US families to send their daughters to mills to sew. This system was called the Lowell Experiment. The Lowell Experiment was devised to avoid the negative aspects associated with the mills and factories during industrialization that were happening in England. Lowell advertised that “they were a new kind of factory, free of the misery of England’s industrial cities” and they “suggested that young women could work in the mills for a few years and then move on to better lives, thus maintaining their independence” (Lowell- “The Factory in the Garden”). This experiment was a "paternal" system very similar to a family. There was a fatherly figure in the mills who set the rules and supervised the behavior of the girls. There was also a motherly figure who was the boardinghouse director and would regulate the girls' behavior outside of mill hours. There was a very homely and family based dynamic to the mills, and this made parents feel comfortable with sending their girls there. There were good conditions in the US factories; much better working spaces, wages, food, boarding houses, and sanitation than Great Britain. When Charles Dickens visited these factories, he said the girls were “all well dressed… They were healthy in appearance, many of them remarkably so, and had the manners of young women: not of degraded brutes of burden” (Document A). He also said that there was “much fresh air, cleanliness, and comfort. I solemnly declare I cannot recall… one young face that gave me a painful impression” (Document A). The factories were cleaner and nicer than Great Britain, and working wasn’t so brutal and miserable in the US. Although wage cuts eventually became a problem in the US, the workers protested, and the conditions were nowhere near as bad as in Great Britain. The sanitation, safety, and living and working conditions were worse in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution than they were in the US.
Sources:
Background Essay: from the DBQ Packet including excerpts from: "Charles Dickens". Curriculum Materials, Tsongas Center for Lowell History. http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/Curriculum_Materials/Curriculum_Packets/Dickens_Guide.pdf
Document A: Charles Dickens, "General Appearance of Mill Workers," from American Notes, 1842. Excerpted from
http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/Curriculum_Materials/Curriculum_Packets/Dickens_Guide.pdfAll other sources found from class readings
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