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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #69958 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69958)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The factory, by Jonathan Thayer
-Lincoln
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The factory
-
-Author: Jonathan Thayer Lincoln
-
-Release Date: February 5, 2023 [eBook #69958]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Bob Taylor, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
- https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
- generously made available by The Internet Archive)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FACTORY ***
-
-
-
-
-
- Transcriber’s Note
- Italic text displayed as: _italic_
-
-
-
-
-By Jonathan Thayer Lincoln
-
-
- THE FACTORY.
- THE CITY OF THE DINNER-PAIL.
-
-
- HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
- BOSTON AND NEW YORK
-
-
-
-
-THE FACTORY
-
-
-
-
- THE FACTORY
-
- BY
- JONATHAN THAYER LINCOLN
-
-
- [Illustration: decoration]
-
-
- BOSTON AND NEW YORK
- HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
- The Riverside Press Cambridge
- 1912
-
-
-
-
- COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY JONATHAN THAYER LINCOLN
-
- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
-
- _Published January 1912_
-
-
-
-
-TO MY FATHER
-
-
-
-
-NOTE
-
-
-This essay is based upon a course of lectures delivered before the
-Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance associated with
-Dartmouth College. These lectures were subsequently printed in _The
-Mediator_, a magazine published in Cleveland, Ohio, and devoted to
-establishing a better social understanding between the man who buys
-and the man who sells labor.
-
-
-
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
-
-
-In preparing the historical part of this essay I have consulted many
-authorities, and in particular I have made free use of the following
-works.
-
-DEFOE, Daniel
-
- A plan for the English Commerce, London, 1728.
-
-BAINES, Edward
-
- History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain. London, 1835.
-
-GUEST, Richard
-
- A Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture. Manchester, 1823.
-
- The Theory and Practice of Cotton Spinning. Glasgow, 1833.
-
-URE, Andrew, M.D.
-
- The Philosophy of Manufactures. London, 1835.
-
-BABBAGE, Charles
-
- On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. London, 1822.
-
-CARLYLE, Thomas
-
- Essay on Chartism.
-
-TAYLOR, Richard Whately Cooke-
-
- The Modern Factory System. London, 1891.
-
-ABRAM, Annie
-
- Social England in the Fifteenth Century. London, 1909.
-
-Among the many articles printed in the periodical press the following
-from the _Quarterly Review_ are especially helpful.
-
- Vol. XLI, 1829. Condition of the English Peasantry.
-
- Vol. LVII, 1836. The Factory System.
-
- Vol. LXVII, 1841. Infant Labour.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- I. The Industrial Revolution 3
-
- II. Sir Richard Arkwright 16
-
- III. Mechanical Inventions 30
-
- IV. The Factory System 46
-
- V. The Factory Towns 64
-
- VI. Chartism 85
-
- VII. The Factory and Social Progress 99
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-As you approach the City of the Dinner Pail from the west, the blue
-waters of the harbor lie between you and the towering factories which
-line the opposite shore. By day the factories are not attractive
-to the eye, their massive granite walls, prison-like and unlovely,
-suggest only the sordid side of toil,—the long day’s confinement of
-twenty-seven thousand men and women amidst the monotonous roar of
-grinding wheels. But should you thus approach the city late on a
-winter afternoon the scene is marvelously changed; the myriad lights
-of the factories shine through the early darkness, transforming
-prison-walls into fairy palaces, castles of enchantment reflected
-with mysterious beauty in the deep waters of the bay. There is
-no suggestion now of sordid toil, the factory walls have become
-ramparts of light and speak of some romantic story.
-
-Realism and romance lie very near together, and we shall find the
-factory, when we come to study the history of it, something more than
-granite walls and grinding machinery; the factory, indeed, has been
-an important instrument in the upward progress of mankind. There is
-an ugly side to the story, especially in the beginning, for when the
-craftsmen of the world were transformed into factory operatives,
-thousands suffered a degree of poverty never known before, and many
-perished in the transition to the new system of manufacturing; but in
-the end that system revolutionized the whole social order, gave to
-toil its rightful dignity, and, creating a new loyalty to the cause
-of labor, became an element in the development of modern democracy.
-It is this brighter side of the story that we have now to consider.
-
-
-
-
-THE FACTORY
-
-
-
-
-THE FACTORY
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
-
-
-In the fifteenth century the wealth of England, which until then had
-been made up chiefly of raw products, was greatly increased by the
-introduction of manufactures, the most important being the making
-of cloth. Previous to this first extension of industry, it had been
-impossible for the toiler to rise out of his class except by becoming
-a priest or a soldier; but with the increase of manufactures wealth
-became a means of social advancement, and thus industry not only
-tended to break down the feudal order by tempting serfs away from
-their masters, but the wealth created by manufactures became an
-important element in the creation of the middle class.
-
-The sudden and extensive introduction of machinery at the close of
-the eighteenth century drove hand labor out of employment, and, for
-a time, caused great suffering among the masses; but in the end it
-created an ever increasing demand for labor—a new labor more skillful
-than the old. Moreover, it concentrated the laboring population in
-great centres of industry, thus creating a class consciousness which
-demanded that attention should be given to the rights of labor,
-created a new ideal of the dignity of toil and gave to the world that
-vision of the inclusive cause of labor which was destined to advance
-in a marvelous way to the social progress of mankind.
-
-Slavery had been abolished in England long before the Industrial
-Revolution, and yet, in the first quarter of the last century men
-in chains worked in the British coal-mines and were bought and
-sold when the property changed hands. For generations before the
-Industrial Revolution, the lord of the manor had ceased to demand
-the labor of the villein as his due, but while serfdom had been
-abolished, the traditions of it still remained; and it was not until
-the establishment of the factory that labor became free in fact as
-for generations it had been in name.
-
-The historical event, that great movement which led in our generation
-to a complete reconstruction of the social order, we call the
-“Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century.” It was an
-extremely complex event, originating in economic, political, and
-social conditions; but while it was the consequence of many causes,
-it derived its chief influence in the beginning from a series of
-remarkable inventions in the art of making textile fabrics.
-
-This art is as old as civilization, originating when men, advancing
-from barbarism, put aside the skins of beasts for raiment of their
-own making; but from the days of the first rude distaff and the
-simple bamboo loom until the time so recently past when, by a series
-of the most brilliant inventions known to any craft, the art was
-revolutionized, the implements remained unchanged. Up to the year
-1769 the machines in use in the manufacture of cotton cloth in
-England were practically the same as those which for centuries had
-been employed in India. There were no factories as there are to-day:
-the cotton was spun and woven into cloth by hand, and both the
-spinning and the weaving were done in the cottages of the craftsmen.
-
-The first of these inventions was a simple one, but it made necessary
-all that followed. From the beginning of the art, one man could
-weave into cloth all the yarn that several spinners could produce.
-Indeed, it was seldom that a weaver’s family, his wife and children
-all working at the spinning wheel, could supply sufficient weft for
-his loom; and this difficulty was increased by the invention of the
-fly-shuttle in the year 1738. This invention, made by John Kay,
-consisted in giving motion to the shuttle by a mechanical device
-which saved time and exertion to the weaver and nearly doubled the
-daily product of his loom. The increased demand for yarn led to
-many experiments, and at last a machine was produced upon which
-many threads could be spun by a single pair of hands: the water
-frame commonly attributed to Richard Arkwright. With this important
-invention came many others in the same field, making famous the names
-of Hargreaves, Crompton, and Cartwright.
-
-The moment it became possible to accomplish by machinery what
-formerly had been done entirely by hand, the first effect was to
-increase the productive power of the workman and thus to add vastly
-to the wealth of the nation, and secondly, to gather into the
-factories the craftsmen who had formerly worked in their homes.
-
-In the beginning of the eighteenth century the textile manufacturing
-of England was carried on by craftsmen dwelling in the rural
-districts, the master clothiers living in the greater towns, sending
-out wool to be spun into yarn which, returned to them prepared for
-the loom, was re-distributed among other hand workers in other
-cottages. The Lancashire weaver worked in his cottage surrounded by
-a bit of land, and generally combined small farming with domestic
-manufacturing. Sometimes a single family performed all the labor,
-the wife and daughters working at carding and spinning, the father
-operating the loom; sometimes other craftsmen joined the household
-and worked as members of one family. The extent of mercantile
-establishments and the modes of doing business were very different
-from what they were soon to become. It is quite true that a limited
-number of individuals had, in previous ages, made fortunes by trade,
-but until the very end of the seventeenth century the capital in the
-hands of British merchants was small. Because of the bad condition
-of the roads and the lack of inland navigation, goods were conveyed
-by pack horses with which the Manchester chapmen traveled through
-the principal towns, selling their goods to the shopkeepers, or at
-the public fairs, and bringing back sheep’s wool to be sold to the
-clothiers of the manufacturing districts.
-
-In the writings of modern socialists we find the domestic system held
-up for admiration as the ideal method of production. The dreamers
-look back regretfully to the days when manufactures were combined
-with farming, and they quote from Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_.
-Let us, however, turn to a more prosaic but more trustworthy
-account, which is to be found in Daniel Defoe’s _Plan of the English
-Commerce_. The author is writing enthusiastically in praise of
-English manufactures, and, having pointed out how in the unemployed
-counties women and children are seen idle and out of business, the
-women sitting at their doors, the children playing in the street, he
-continues: “Whereas, in the manufacturing counties, you see the wheel
-going almost at every door, the wool and yarn hanging up at every
-window; the looms, the winders, the combers, the carders, the dyers,
-the dressers all busy; and the very children as well as the women
-constantly employed ... indeed there is not a poor child in the town
-above the age of four but can earn his own bread.”
-
-When we come to study the brutalizing social conditions which
-obtained in the manufacturing towns following the establishment of
-the factory, we shall do well to keep in mind these words written by
-an eighteenth century student in praise of the domestic system; when
-we hear the socialists declare that the factory created wage slavery,
-let us remember this earlier and more monstrous slavery.
-
-Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-frame, was a man of
-great genius. Endowed with the inventive faculty, and even more with
-the ability to perfect the inventions of others, he possessed as well
-extraordinary executive ability, and having brought his spinning
-machinery to the point of practical efficiency, he organized the
-modern factory system as the means of obtaining the highest results
-from the new mechanisms. The spinning frame was too cumbersome to be
-operated in the cottage, and, moreover, it required a greater power
-to operate it than that of the human hand, so Arkwright built his
-first factory which was run by horse power, and from this beginning
-was evolved the factory as we know it to-day. But important as were
-the inventions in cotton manufacture, the factory would never have
-become the mighty power that it is, except for the steam engine; and
-it is interesting to note that in the same year in which Arkwright
-took out his patent for spinning by rollers, Watt invented his
-device for lessening the consumption of fuel in fire engines, that
-epoch-making invention by means of which the factory system as
-perfected by Arkwright was to become the material basis of modern
-life.
-
-Like the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution was a movement
-destined to change the very course of human thought. Mechanical
-invention contributed to the force of the earlier movement—the
-invention of printing and of the mariner’s compass—so that side by
-side with the scholars restoring to the world its lost heritage of
-learning, craftsmen and sailors played their parts in printing the
-books by which the learning was disseminated, and in manning the
-ships that discovered new continents. The Renaissance, however, was
-essentially an intellectual movement to which mechanical invention
-was merely an aid, while the Industrial Revolution was due in an
-important measure to machinery. The movement began in the cotton
-industry, but soon a similar expansion occurred in all other
-manufactures. Machinery made possible a vast production; and the
-steam engine, first applied to manufacture, later became the means of
-distributing the commodities.
-
-The Industrial Revolution, thus springing from the sudden growth in
-the use of machinery, occasioned not only economic but political
-and social results. On the economic side, the effect was to extend
-old industries and to create new ones, as well as to revolutionize
-the methods of the production and distribution of wealth. On the
-social side it created new classes of men, breaking down the barriers
-of ancient feudalism, and on the political side it led to the
-enfranchisement of the working classes. The Industrial Revolution
-accomplished for England what the political revolution did for
-France, but by more peaceful means. Yet not alone in France was
-the event achieved in blood—for the Factory as well as the Terror
-had its victims. The history of the factory is no dry summary of
-patent rights and inventions, inventories of cotton and cotton
-goods, abstracts of ledgers, journals, cash-books, and pay-rolls,—it
-is a human story,—_laissez-faire_, over-production, enlightened
-selfishness, were no abstract terms, but vital human problems.
-
-Because the Industrial Revolution profoundly influenced the social
-and political life of England, and later of the whole world, the
-history of the factory, which contributed so much to its influence,
-becomes of vast importance. The first chapter relates to brilliant
-achievements in the field of mechanical invention. Then follows the
-dismal story of how a multitude of craftsmen were transformed into
-factory operatives—the untold suffering of oppressed workingmen.
-Later we see the English yeoman replaced by the master manufacturer
-who soon became a force in the political life of the nation, finding
-his way into Parliament and even into the Peerage. For the common
-people the revolution began with great suffering, but ended in
-opening new avenues for their social and political advancement.
-Antagonistic in the beginning to the welfare of the masses, it aided
-powerfully, in the end, the fulfillment of those ideals of liberty,
-equality, and fraternity which at that moment had taken such a mighty
-hold upon the thoughts of men.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT
-
-
-The _Shaving of Shagpat_, that remarkable allegory with the writing
-of which George Meredith commenced his literary career, has been
-given several interpretations; without seriously venturing another,
-it has seemed to me that this fanciful story deals with the chief
-events in the Industrial Revolution.
-
-“So there was feasting in the hall and in the city, and over earth”:
-we read towards the end of the tale, “great pledging the sovereign
-of Barbers, who had mastered an event and become the benefactor of
-his craft and of his kind. ’Tis sure the race of Bagarags endured for
-many centuries, and his seed were the rulers of men, and the seal of
-their empire stamped on mighty wax the Tackle of Barbers.”
-
-Shibli Bagarag,—could he not well have been Richard Arkwright, the
-barber, inventor of the spinning-frame, master of an event? In
-Shagpat the Clothier, we discover the smug and comfortable British
-aristocracy; in the Identical, that magic hair in Shagpat’s beard
-which gave him a position of power greater even than the King, we
-observe Feudal Privilege; the sword of Aklis, with the steel of which
-the Identical was cut, may well stand for the factory, a weapon
-gained after many trials by Arkwright, so that of him it might be
-written as it was of Shibli Bagarag: “Thou, even thou will be master
-of the event, so named in anecdotes, and histories, and records, to
-all succeeding generations.”
-
-Richard Arkwright, who first saw the light of day at Preston on the
-23d of December, 1732, was the youngest of thirteen children born
-to humble parents, and he grew to manhood without education, being
-barely able to read and write. At an early age he was apprenticed
-to a Preston barber and when he became a journeyman he established
-himself in the same business.
-
-Fate was in a jesting mood when she decreed that the chief actor in
-that remarkable social drama, the Industrial Revolution, should be a
-penny barber; and we may wonder if the governing classes appreciated
-the irony, when twenty years later, in recognition of his genius, the
-barber was raised to the honor of knighthood and his lady privileged
-to walk before the wives of the untitled gentry.
-
-Richard Arkwright, at the age of twenty-eight, was not content day
-after day to shave the stolid faces of lower class Englishmen, but,
-having gained a knowledge of a chemical process for dyeing human
-hair, he commenced to make wigs for upper class Englishmen—wigs
-dyed to suit any complexion. This occupation took him away from the
-barber’s chair and sent him traveling about the country. On such a
-tour in 1761, he met a lady in the city of Leigh,—Margaret Biggins
-was her name,—and he married her; and in the same city at a somewhat
-later date he heard of certain experiments which had been made by a
-man named High in constructing a machine for spinning yarn. He gained
-this secret from a clock-maker named Kay, with whom he afterwards
-formed a partnership, by getting Kay—so the gossips said—loquaciously
-drunk at a public-house. Concerning his wife, history has little to
-say except that she quarreled with him because of the interest he
-took in High’s machine; and commencing to make experiments on his own
-account he became so absorbed in his workshop that his lady, fearing
-that they might be thrown upon the parish for support, begged him to
-return to his razor, and because he refused smashed the first model
-of the spinning-machine and thus precipitated a tremendous family
-row.
-
-Arkwright is commonly credited with the invention of spinning by
-rollers, but while to him is undoubtedly due the success of that
-invention he did not originate it. The inventor of that ingenious
-process was neither Arkwright nor High, but John Wyatt of Birmingham,
-who in 1738 took out a patent in the name of Lewis Paul. In 1741 or
-1742 these two men set up in Birmingham a mill “turned by two asses
-walking around an axis,” and in which ten girls were employed; while
-later a larger mill containing two hundred and fifty spindles and
-giving employment to twenty-five operatives was built. Wyatt wrote a
-pamphlet entitled, _A Systematic Essay on the Business of Spinning_,
-in which he showed the great profits which would attend the
-establishment of a plant of three hundred spindles. Wyatt’s factory,
-however, did not prosper and it seems probable that his machinery
-also passed into the hands of Arkwright.
-
-It was in the year 1767 that Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny,
-and two years later Arkwright took out his patent claiming that he
-had “by great study and long application invented a new piece of
-machinery, never before found out, practiced or used, for the making
-of weft or yarn from cotton, flax, and wool; which would be of great
-utility to a great many manufacturers, as well as to His Majesty’s
-subjects in general, by employing a great number of poor people in
-working the said machinery and in making the said weft or yarn much
-superior in quality to any heretofore manufactured or made.” However
-lacking in originality this famous invention may have been, however
-great may have been the debt which Arkwright owed to Wyatt and Paul,
-to John Kay and to High, nevertheless, to him belongs all the credit
-of the first successful introduction of spinning by machinery.
-
-Having obtained this patent, Arkwright found himself without the
-capital necessary for carrying out his plans; and he returned to
-his native city of Preston and there applied to a friend, Mr.
-John Smalley, a liquor merchant, for assistance. So reduced were
-his circumstances at this time that going to vote at a contested
-election, which occurred during his visit to Preston, his wardrobe
-was in so tattered a condition that a number of his friends advanced
-the money to purchase decent clothes in which he might appear in
-the poll-room; and once during this period he having applied for
-pecuniary aid to a Mr. Atherton, that gentleman refused to entertain
-Arkwright’s plan because of the rags in which the inventor was
-dressed.
-
-It was in Preston, then, that Arkwright first fitted up his perfected
-spinning machine, in the parlor of a house belonging to the free
-grammar school. Here Arkwright successfully demonstrated the
-utility of his invention and first received financial support. In
-consequence of the riots which had taken place in the neighborhood
-of Blackburn on the invention of Hargreaves’s spinning-jenny, by
-which many of the machines were destroyed and the inventor driven
-from his native county to Nottingham, Arkwright and Smalley, fearing
-similar outrages, also went to Nottingham accompanied by John Kay,
-the loquacious clock-maker; so that Nottingham became the cradle of
-the two great inventions in cotton spinning. Here, Arkwright also
-applied for aid to the Messrs. Wright, Bankers, who made advances on
-the condition that they should share in the profits of the invention;
-but as the machine was not perfected as soon as they had hoped they
-withdrew their support and he turned to Mr. Samuel Need, a partner of
-Jedidiah Strutt, the inventor of the stocking frame. Strutt examined
-Arkwright’s mechanism, declared it to be an admirable invention,
-and the two men of wealth agreed to a partnership with the Preston
-barber; and a mill was erected at Nottingham.
-
-It was an unpretentious establishment, that first little cotton mill;
-it gave employment to not more than a dozen operatives, and the
-machinery was turned not by a great steam engine, but by a pair of
-patient horses harnessed to a treadmill,—yet it contained the germ of
-the modern factory and the modern factory system. Later, Arkwright
-built another and larger factory at Cromford in Derbyshire, driven by
-water power—from which circumstance his spinning-machine came to be
-called the water-frame.
-
-The cotton industry of England which Arkwright established developed
-slowly; in the five years, ending with 1775, the annual import of
-cotton into Great Britain was only four times the average import at
-the beginning of the century. But when in the year 1785 Arkwright’s
-patent was finally set aside and his spinning machinery became
-public property, a great extension of cotton manufacture followed,
-accompanied by a marvelous national prosperity. Arkwright, although
-deprived of his monopoly, was by this time so firmly established in
-the industry that he remained the dominant figure in the yarn market,
-fixing the price of the commodity for all other spinners; and thus he
-accumulated a great fortune.
-
-While Arkwright was without doubt perfectly familiar with the
-experiments of both Wyatt and High, nevertheless it was the Preston
-barber and not the original inventors who first produced yarn fit
-for weaving. It is proverbial that inventors seldom reap the harvest
-of wealth which they sow; they are the dreamers and their reward is
-in beholding a perfected mechanism—their work of art. So it was with
-Wyatt and High. They dreamed of spindles turned by power and saw
-their spindles turn; but Arkwright dreamed of a nation made rich
-and powerful by these same inventions, and he, too, lived to see his
-dream come true.
-
-Sir Richard Arkwright possessed all the qualities essential
-to success—tireless energy, enthusiasm, perseverance, and
-self-confidence. He believed in himself and so he compelled others
-to believe in him. His usual working day began at five o’clock in
-the morning and did not end until nine at night; when he was fifty
-years of age he lengthened this day by two hours, which he devoted
-to acquiring the education denied him in his youth. He had unbounded
-confidence in the success of his adventures and was accustomed to say
-that he would pay the national debt—an interesting circumstance, for
-surely by his genius the national debt was paid many times over.
-
-In the year 1786 he was appointed high sheriff of Derbyshire, and
-when about that time the King narrowly escaped assassination at the
-hands of Margaret Nicholson, Arkwright, having presented an address
-of congratulation from his county to the King, received the honor
-of knighthood. He died on the 3d of August, 1792, at the age of
-sixty. The _Annual Register_ recording that event says not so much
-as a single word concerning Arkwright’s masterful genius which even
-then had set in motion a mighty social revolution. It mentions only
-the great fortune which he had acquired as a manufacturer of cotton
-yarn,—so difficult it is for the critic to place a true value on the
-life work of a contemporary.
-
-As you approach the City of the Dinner Pail from the west and
-gaze across the blue waters of the harbor, the eye rests upon the
-towering factories which line the opposite shore. Within those
-walls twenty-seven thousand men and women living in a degree of
-comfort never known before to the spinners and weavers of the world,
-earn their daily bread. Those towering factories are, every one,
-monuments to the genius of Richard Arkwright, the penny barber of
-Preston. If he appropriated the inventions of others, he perfected
-these inventions and made them of permanent value to mankind; and
-moreover, he arranged the machinery into series, organized the
-factory system, and revolutionized industry.
-
-Says Carlyle: “Richard Arkwright, it would seem, was not a beautiful
-man; no romance hero with haughty eyes, Apollo lip, and gesture like
-the herald Mercury; a plain, almost gross, bag-cheeked, pot-bellied
-Lancashire man, with an air of painful reflection, yet also of
-copious free digestion;—a man stationed by the community to shave
-certain dusty beards in the northern parts of England at halfpenny
-each.... Nevertheless, in strapping razors, in lathering of dusty
-beards, and the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon the
-man had notions in that rough head of his; spindles, shuttles,
-wheels and contrivances plying ideally within the same, rather
-hopeless looking, which, however, he did at last bring to bear. Not
-without great difficulty! his townsfolk rose in mob against him,
-for threatening to shorten labor, to shorten wages; so that he had
-to fly, with broken wash pots, scattered household, and seek refuge
-elsewhere. Nay, his wife, too, rebelled; burned his wooden model of
-his spinning wheel; resolute that he should stick to his razors,
-rather;—for which, however, he decisively, as thou wilt rejoice to
-understand, packed her out of doors. Oh! reader, what a Historical
-Phenomenon is that bag-cheeked, pot-bellied, much-enduring,
-much-inventing barber! French revolutions were a-brewing, to resist
-the same in any measure, Imperial Kaisers were impotent without the
-cotton and cloth of England; and it was this man who gave to England
-the power of cotton.”
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-MECHANICAL INVENTIONS
-
-
-A distinction should be made between the factory and the factory
-system. The latter was not new to England, having been employed
-during the Roman occupation; and with the introduction of the
-woolen industry under Edward III, we again find the factory system
-established on an extensive scale.
-
-John Winchcombe, commonly called Jack of Newbury, who died about the
-year 1520, made use of the factory system on a very extensive scale.
-In Fuller’s _Worthies_ you may read how he “was the most considerable
-clothier without fancy or fiction England ever beheld,” and how “his
-looms were his lands, whereof he kept one hundred in his house,
-each managed by a man and a boy.” Jack of Newbury was celebrated in
-a metrical romance, and the following lines taken from it contain an
-interesting description of his famous industrial establishment.
-
- “Within one room, being large and long,
- There stood two hundred looms full strong:
- Two hundred men the truth is so,
- Wrought in these looms all in a row;
- By every one a pretty boy
- Sat making quills with mickle joy.
- And in another place hard by
- A hundred women merily
- Were carding hard with joyful cheer
- Who, singing sat with voices clear;
- And in a chamber close beside
- Two hundred maidens did abide,
-
- * * * * *
-
- These pretty maids did never lin
- But in their place all day did spin:
-
- * * * * *
-
- Then to another room came they
- Where children were in poor array,
- And every one sat picking wool,
- The finest from the coarse to cull:
- The number was seven score and ten
- The children of poor silly men,
- Within another place likewise
- Full fifty proper men he spied,
- And these were sheer men every one,
- Whose skill and cunning there was shown:
-
- * * * * *
-
- A dyehouse likewise he had then
- Wherein he kept full forty men:
- And also in his fulling mill,
- Full twenty persons kept he still.”
-
-Here, indeed, we have the factory system—in which the division of
-labor is a conspicuous feature—employed with all its modern details;
-but not the steam-driven factory, building great cities and changing
-the whole social life of the kingdom.
-
-The original mode of converting cotton into yarn was by the use of
-distaff and spindle, a method still employed in the remote parts of
-India. The distaff is a wooden rod to which a bundle of cotton is
-tied loosely at one end, and which the spinner holds between the left
-arm and the body while with his right hand he draws out and twists
-the cotton into a thread. This simple process is the basis of all the
-complicated spinning machinery in use at the present time.
-
-In a modern cotton factory there are three departments of labor,
-carding, spinning, and weaving; and we have now to consider briefly
-these three processes. The purpose of carding is to clean the
-cotton and lay the fibres in a uniform direction. This was at first
-accomplished by hand, the implement employed being little different
-from an ordinary comb; later an improved device was used consisting
-of a pair of large wire brushes. This, we must observe, was a
-primitive operation, and the amount of cotton which one person could
-thus prepare for spinning was very small.
-
-We have already seen that the invention of the fly-shuttle so
-increased the demand for yarn that ingenious men were induced to
-make mechanical experiments for the purpose of supplying this
-demand—experiments which, in the end, led to the invention of the
-spinning-frame. The spinning-frame, in turn, increased the demand for
-carded cotton and skillful mechanics again set about to meet this new
-requirement, and the result was the building of the carding-engine.
-This invention was not made at once, nor by any particular
-individual; but was the result of a number of improvements made
-at different times and by different persons. One of these men was
-Thomas High, the inventor of the spinning-jenny; another was James
-Hargreaves who so improved the jenny that he is commonly called the
-inventor of it; and finally, Richard Arkwright himself took the crude
-machine devised by these men and perfected it. Thus it came about
-that the modern carding-engine as well as the spinning-frame, was
-made of practical value by this much-enduring, much-inventing barber.
-
-The invention of the fly-shuttle, as we have seen, led to an
-increased demand for yarn, and this demand was further augmented
-about the year 1760 when the Manchester merchants began to export
-cotton goods in considerable quantities to Italy, Germany, and the
-North American colonies. It was then no uncommon thing for a weaver
-to walk three or four miles in the morning, and call on five or six
-spinners, before he could collect yarn enough to serve him for the
-remainder of the day.
-
-Ingenious mechanics set about the task of producing more yarn. The
-first of these was Thomas High, a reed maker, residing in the town of
-Leigh, who engaged one Kay, a clock-maker, and this is the same Kay
-who was afterwards employed by Arkwright to make the wheels and other
-apparatus for a spinning-machine. This machine was set up in the
-garret of High’s house. Now, Thomas High had a daughter who watched
-with keen interest the progress of his experiments—her name was
-Jane—and in honor of her he called the machine the spinning-jenny.
-It is commonly stated—even in so authoritative a history as Baines’s
-we find the error—that the credit for the original invention of
-the spinning-jenny is due to Hargreaves, he having made the first
-machine in 1767. But Guest has shown quite conclusively by the sworn
-statement of one Thomas Leather, a neighbor of High, that the latter
-completed a similar machine in 1764.
-
-However this may be, James Hargreaves, a weaver of Stand-Hill, near
-Blackburn, perfected the original jenny and made it a practical
-working machine so that history has quite justly named him the
-author. From the first Hargreaves was aware of the value of his
-invention, but not having the ambition to obtain a patent he kept the
-machine as secret as possible, using it only to spin yarn for his own
-weaving. An unprotected invention of such importance, however, could
-not remain long the private property of a single weaver, and soon
-a knowledge of his achievement spread throughout the neighborhood;
-but instead of gaining admiration and gratitude for Hargreaves, the
-spinners raised the cry that the invention would throw multitudes out
-of employment and a mob broke into his house and destroyed his jenny.
-
-After this, Hargreaves moved to Nottingham, where, with a Mr. Thomas
-James, he raised sufficient capital to erect a small mill; here he
-took out a patent in 1770,—one year after Arkwright had patented the
-water-frame. Before leaving Lancashire, Hargreaves made and sold to
-other weavers a number of jennies; and in spite of all opposition the
-importance of the invention led to its general use.
-
-A desperate effort was made in 1779, during a period of distress,
-to put down the machine. A mob scoured the country for miles around
-Blackburn demolishing jennies and with them all carding-engines,
-water-frames, and other machinery; but the rioters spared the
-jennies which had only twenty spindles, as these were by this time
-admitted to be useful to the craftsmen. Not only the working classes,
-but the middle and even the upper classes entertained at this time a
-profound dread of machinery. The result of these riots was to drive
-spinners and other capitalists from the neighborhood of Blackburn to
-Manchester, increasing the importance of that rapidly growing town
-which was destined to become the world centre of the cotton industry.
-
-The story of this early opposition to the introduction of machinery
-deserves attention not only as an interesting episode in the history
-of the factory, but because even to-day a similar opposition comes to
-the surface with each new improvement in the method of manufacture.
-It is also an interesting fact that Lord Byron made his maiden
-speech in the House of Lords in opposition to the Nottingham Riot
-Bills, introduced into Parliament for the protection of owners of
-machinery. There were two of these bills, one “for the more exemplary
-punishment of persons destroying or injurying any stocking- or
-lace-frames, or other machines or engines used in the frame-work
-knitting manufactory, or any articles or goods in such frames or
-machines”; the other “for the more effectual preservation of the
-peace within the county of Nottingham.”
-
-These two bills were the result of rioting among the lacemakers of
-this county and their object was to increase the penalty for breaking
-machinery, from transportation to death, to permit the appointment of
-special constables in times of disturbance, and to establish watch
-and ward throughout the disturbed parts. These bills and the debates
-upon them throw a strong light upon the extent of the disturbances,
-and indicate the attitude of the government, at that time, toward the
-laboring poor.
-
-The important inventions in carding and spinning led to a rapid
-advance in cotton manufacture; the new machines not only turned off a
-greater quantity of yarn than had been produced by hand, but the yarn
-was also of a superior quality. The water-frame spun a hard, firm
-yarn, well adapted for warps, while the jenny produced a soft yarn
-suitable for spinning weft; but the yarn produced on neither of these
-machines could be advantageously used for making the finer qualities
-of goods.
-
-This defect in the spinning-machinery was remedied by still another
-device called the mule jenny, but now termed simply the mule,
-so named because it combined the principles of both Arkwright’s
-water-frame and Hargreaves’ jenny. The mule was invented by Samuel
-Crompton, a weaver living at Hall-in-the-Wood near Bolton. He
-commenced his experiments in 1774, but it was five years before
-he completed the machine. Crompton took out no patent and only
-regretted that public curiosity would not allow him to keep his
-little invention for himself. The mule was first known as the
-Hall-in-the-Wood wheel, then as the muslin wheel because it made yarn
-sufficiently fine for weaving that fabric, and finally by its present
-name.
-
-As the inventor made no effort to secure a patent, the mule became
-public property, and was generally adopted by manufacturers, but
-Crompton himself received no other reward than a grant of five
-thousand pounds voted him by Parliament in 1812. Although his means
-were small, he was always in easy circumstances, until the latter
-part of his life, when, being no longer able to work, he was reduced
-to poverty. Certain manufacturers who had profited by his invention
-then subscribed for the purchase of a life annuity, to which fund
-foreign as well as English spinners contributed. Crompton died on
-January 26, 1827.
-
-Having considered the inventions in the art of spinning, we now turn
-to the power loom built in 1785 by the Reverend Edmund Cartwright,
-of Hollander House, Kent. A loom moved by water power had been
-contrived as early as the seventeenth century by one De Gennes, and
-described as “a new engine to make linen cloth without the help of
-an artificer.” But the machine never came into general use; and in
-about the middle of the eighteenth century there is record of another
-power loom, also a French invention, which suffered a similar fate.
-Describing his own loom Cartwright says that in the summer of 1784 he
-fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester who were discussing
-Arkwright’s spinning-machinery. One of the company observed that, as
-soon as Arkwright’s patents expired, so many mills would be erected
-and so much cotton spun that hands could not be found to weave it.
-
-To this observation the ingenious clergyman replied that Arkwright
-should set his wits to work to invent a weaving-mill. But the
-Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was
-impractical. Cartwright argued, however, that, having seen exhibited
-in London an automaton figure which played at chess, he did not
-believe it more difficult to construct a machine which would weave.
-He kept this conversation in mind and later employed a carpenter and
-a blacksmith to carry his ideas into effect. Thus he built a loom
-which, to his own delight, produced a piece of cloth. The machine,
-however, required two powerful men to work it, but Cartwright, who
-was entirely unfamiliar with the art of weaving, believed that he had
-accomplished all that was required, and on the 4th of April, 1785,
-he secured a patent. It was only then that he commenced to study the
-method by which the craftsmen wove cloth, and he was astonished when
-he compared the easy working of the hand loom with his own ponderous
-engine. Profiting by his study, however, he produced a loom which in
-its general principles is precisely the same as the looms used to-day.
-
-Thus was invented the machinery of the cotton mill; but there
-remains to be considered the one other contrivance without which the
-vast extension of manufactures would have been impossible and the
-manufacturing towns, which we are about to consider, would never have
-attained the size and importance which enabled them to become factors
-in the political life of England. I refer to the steam engine.
-
-In 1763, James Watt was employed in repairing a model of Newcomen’s
-steam engine, and, noting certain basic defects, undertook to remedy
-them. He perceived the vast possibilities of a properly constructed
-engine and, after years of patient labor he gave to the world the
-mighty power of steam. Previous to this time, and indeed until the
-year 1782, the steam engine had been used almost exclusively to pump
-water out of mines, but with Watt’s improvements it became possible
-for the engine to give rotary motion to machinery.
-
-The first cotton mill to install a steam engine made by
-Boulton and Watt was the one owned by the Messrs. Robinson in
-Nottinghamshire—this was about the year 1785. Two years earlier,
-Arkwright had made use of an atmospheric engine in his Manchester
-factory, but it was not until 1789 that an improved steam engine was
-set up in that city and it was a year later when Arkwright adopted
-the device.
-
-The invention of spinning-machinery created the cotton manufacture of
-England, but the industry would never have reached the proportions
-which it presently did except for the genius of Watt.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-THE FACTORY SYSTEM
-
-
-When the cotton manufacture was in its infancy, all the operations,
-from dressing the raw material to folding the finished fabric, were
-completed under the roof of the weaver’s cottage. With Arkwright’s
-invention it became the custom to spin the yarn in factories and
-weave it by hand in cottages. With the invention of the power loom,
-it again became the practice to perform all the processes in a single
-building.
-
-The weaver’s cottage, then, with its rude apparatus of peg warping,
-hand cards, spinning-wheels, and wooden looms, was the steam
-factory in miniature; but the amount of labor performed in a single
-factory was as great as that which formerly gave occupation to the
-inhabitants of an entire district. A good hand-loom weaver could
-produce two pieces of shirtings each week; by 1823, a power-loom
-weaver produced seven such pieces in the same time.
-
-A factory containing two hundred looms was operated by one
-hundred persons who wove seven hundred pieces a week, and it was
-estimated that under the domestic system at least eight hundred and
-seventy-five looms would have been required to weave this amount of
-cloth, because the women of the household had their home duties to
-perform while the men were required to devote a considerable portion
-of their time to farming. It was therefore further estimated that
-the work done in a steam factory containing two hundred looms would,
-if performed by hand, give employment and support to a population of
-more than two thousand persons. It is interesting here to note, that,
-whereas a hand-loom weaver could produce two pieces of shirtings
-a week, an ordinary weaver is now able to turn off eight or ten
-pieces of equal length every ten hours; so that a modern weave room
-containing two hundred power looms operated by twenty-five weavers
-represents the labor of a community of sixty thousand craftsmen,
-their wives and their children. A population of thirty million would
-be required to perform by hand the work now produced by the Fall
-River factories alone.
-
-“Watt,” said a celebrated French engineer, “improves the steam
-engine, and this single improvement causes the industry of England
-to make an immense stride. This machine, at the present time [about
-1830], represents the power of three hundred thousand horses or
-of two million men, strong and well fitted for labor, who should
-work night and day without an interruption and without repose....
-A hairdresser invents, or at least brings into action, a machine
-for spinning cotton; this alone gives the British industry immense
-superiority. Fifty years only, after this great discovery, more than
-one million of the inhabitants of England are employed in those
-operations which depend, directly or indirectly, on the action of
-this machine. Lastly, England exports cotton, spun and woven by an
-admirable system of machinery, to the value of four hundred million
-francs yearly.... The British navigator travels in quest of the
-cotton of India, brings it from a distance of four thousand leagues,
-commits it to an operation of the machines of Arkwright, carries back
-their products to the East, making them again to travel four thousand
-leagues, and in spite of the loss of time—in spite of the enormous
-expense incurred by this voyage of eight thousand leagues, the cotton
-manufactured by the machinery of England becomes less costly than the
-cotton of India, spun and woven by hand near the field that produced
-it, and sold at the nearest market. So great is the power of the
-progress of machinery.”
-
-Two distinct systems of production preceded the factory. First,
-the system of isolated handicraft labor, and second, the system of
-cottage industry, which we have already considered and in which the
-several members of a family participated,—this, too, was handicraft.
-The craftsman, as we have seen, worked with his family in his own
-cottage; he owned his loom and the other simple machinery necessary
-for the production of cloth, and either he owned his raw material or
-received it from the master manufacturer to be returned in the form
-of finished fabric. But in either case, the craftsman was his own
-master and sold cloth not labor.
-
-With the establishment of the factory, these conditions were
-completely changed. The master manufacturer not only owned the
-factory building and the machinery, but he owned the raw material.
-Moreover to him the operative sold his labor which thereby became
-a commodity quite as completely as the cotton he wove into cloth.
-This latter circumstance is important because it became the source
-of the vast social discontent which, in the end, aided powerfully in
-revolutionizing the structure of British society.
-
-To the consideration of this event we shall soon return. For the
-moment we must consider briefly the most characteristic distinction
-in the process of manufacture under the new system—the extension of
-the principle of division of labor.
-
-The principle itself was in no wise new, for the first application
-of it was made in a very early stage in the evolution of society. At
-the very dawn of civilization it must have become apparent that more
-comforts and conveniences could be acquired by one man restricting
-his occupation to a single craft—and the development of independent
-arts was in itself a division of labor. The same principle was then
-carried into the different trades, and at last we find it fully
-developed in the cottage system of industry. Thus we find carding,
-spinning, and weaving carried on by separate members of the family.
-Carding and spinning, which required less bodily strength, was
-performed by the women, while the more laborious work of weaving was
-given over to the men. With the establishment of the factory and the
-introduction of machinery, means were supplied by which this system
-could attain its highest development.
-
-The advantages resulting from the division of labor are evident. When
-the whole work in any art is executed by one person, that person
-must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult, and
-sufficient strength to perform the most laborious, of the processes;
-but by employing a division of labor several persons may be kept at
-work executing that part of the whole for which he is best fitted.
-
-The further advantages may be most briefly stated in the familiar
-words of Adam Smith: “The great increase in the quantity of work,
-which, in consequence of the division of labor, the same number
-of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different
-circumstances: first, to the increase of dexterity in every
-particular workingman; secondly, to the saving of time, which is
-commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another,
-and, lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which
-facilitate and abridge labor and enable one man to do the work of
-many.”
-
-It should be noted that the factory was, in the beginning, not the
-creation of capital, but of labor. The early master manufacturers
-were risen workingmen. Sir Richard Arkwright, the creator of the
-factory, the man who dominated industrial activities in the first
-great period of expansion, was a penny barber; but he died a Knight
-Bachelor with an income greater than that of many a prince. The
-process of social elevation by means of trade began back in the
-fifteenth century with the first extension of manufactures. By the
-beginning of the eighteenth century it was possible to name five
-hundred great estates within a hundred miles of London, which, at
-no remote time, had been possessions of the ancient English gentry,
-but had later been bought up by tradesmen and manufacturers. The
-ancestors of these new landed proprietors had been, less than three
-hundred years before, not soldiers, but serfs.
-
-Moreover, generations before the establishment of the factory,
-important towns had been raised by manufactures—towns of which
-Manchester and Birmingham were examples, in which there were few or
-no families of the gentry, yet which were full of families richer
-by far than many a noble house. And side by side with this process
-of tradesmen rising to the gentry had gone the other process of
-declining gentry placing their sons in trade. So, as Defoe pithily
-said, “Tradesmen became gentlemen by gentlemen becoming tradesmen.”
-
-The successful artisan under the domestic system became in time
-master clothier, and when the factory became the means of further
-increase to their fortunes the capital which this class had already
-amassed was utilized in building mills and machinery. To this class
-belonged the grandfather of Sir Robert Peel, a resident of Blackburn,
-who supported himself from the profits of a farm in the neighborhood
-and devoted his spare time to mechanical experiments. From this he
-came to operate a print-works, and later commenced the manufacture of
-cloth.
-
-His son, the first Sir Robert,—the father of the Prime Minister,—was
-apprenticed to the trade and came to manhood at the time when the
-impulse given to manufactures in England, through the introduction
-of machinery, led to a more rapid accumulation of wealth than
-had been known in any previous period of history. It is said that
-in his youth Robert Peel entertained a presentiment that he would
-become the founder of a family. By means of the factory, he amassed
-a fortune, was raised to the honor of knighthood, and realized his
-presentiment—for in the next generation no name is more famous in the
-annals of government than that of Sir Robert Peel, the grandson of a
-domestic manufacturer.
-
-As the number of factories increased it became possible for
-operatives to rise, first to positions of trust within the factory,
-and later to the rank of master manufacturer—so that many a bobbin
-boy became a cotton lord.
-
-Within the factory the effect was to intensify that spirit of
-discontent which presently arose among the workers—for risen
-workingmen are apt to prove the hardest task masters. A graphic
-picture of this aspect of factory life as it existed in Manchester
-in the first half of the last century, when discontent had become
-articulate and the great Chartist movement reached its height is to
-be found in Dickens’s _Hard Times_. In that story Josiah Bounderby
-of Coketown is typical of this class of risen workingmen—the early
-employers of labor under the factory system; Josiah Bounderby, who
-learnt his letters from the outside of shops and was first able to
-tell time from studying the steeple clock at St. Giles’s Church,
-London; Josiah Bounderby, vagabond, errand boy, laborer, porter,
-clerk, chief manager, small partner, merchant, banker, manufacturer.
-There was very little in the training of Josiah Bounderby, or any
-of his class to make them humane employers of labor—and among the
-several causes which made the early relation of employer and employee
-under the factory system one of bitter strife, this cause, so
-strictly social in its origin, is one of the most important.
-
-The establishment of the factory altered completely the relation
-between employer and employee. Indeed in the modern sense these
-relations were then first established. Labor became a commodity which
-the master manufacturer, who was also the capitalist, bought and
-which the workingman sold. When in the year 1785 Arkwright’s patents
-were set aside and the use of his perfected spinning machinery became
-free to all manufacturers, a great extension of the cotton industry
-followed. Factories were built throughout Lancashire and about these
-factories important cities sprang up in which the modern problem of
-the relation of employer and employee had its beginning.
-
-The factory produced cloth more cheaply and in far greater quantity
-than was possible under the domestic system. Hand workers sought
-employment in the factories. Vast numbers of purely agricultural
-laborers left the rural districts for the manufacturing towns. And,
-augmenting this great supply of labor, came thousands of children—for
-an eight-year-old child was capable of operating a spinning-frame,
-in which, for this very reason, the spindles were set near to the
-floor. With an unlimited supply of labor, the cotton masters had
-only the cost of production to consider, and so it came about that
-they thought only of their profits and forgot the human hands
-which operated the machinery. England had fallen under the sway of
-a book—Adam Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_, which, as Southey said,
-“considers man as a manufacturing animal, estimating his importance
-not by the goodness and knowledge he possesses, not by his virtues
-and charities, not by the happiness of which he may be the source and
-centre, not by the duties to which he is called, not by the immortal
-destinies for which he is created, but by the gain that may be
-extracted from him or of which he may be made the instrument.”
-
-The crowding of this vast laboring population into great industrial
-centres, however, gave rise to a class-consciousness which
-demanded that attention should be paid to the human element which
-distinguished labor from all other commodities, demanded that the
-cotton masters should no longer regard the workingman as a slave,
-or as merely a part of the machine, but as a free man, and which
-demanded further that this free man should be recognized as a citizen
-and given the right of suffrage.
-
-It would be interesting for us to follow the history of the factory
-where we now leave it, firmly established as the cornerstone of Great
-Britain’s wealth, down to the present time, and trace its development
-not only in England and America but throughout the civilized world.
-It is a surprising story of industrial progress, an important chapter
-in the social progress of mankind. But enough has already been
-said to prepare us for the consideration of the way in which the
-establishment of the factory affected England’s laboring poor. The
-actual development of the cotton industry surpasses any dream that
-even the barber of Preston could have imagined when he exclaimed that
-he, unaided, would pay the national debt.
-
-Less than a century and a half ago, Richard Arkwright built his
-first little mill at Nottingham which gave employment to a dozen
-operatives. To-day there are one hundred great cotton factories in
-the city of Fall River alone, operating three and one half million
-spindles, nearly one hundred thousand looms, and giving employment
-to twenty-seven thousand operatives. There are more than twenty-five
-million spindles in daily operation in the United States, and even
-a greater number on the continent of Europe, while Great Britain
-contains over fifty million; and when to these we add the spindles of
-India, Japan, and China, we have a total of one hundred and twenty
-million spindles giving employment to an army of workers as great as
-the entire population of England when Arkwright took out his patents
-for spinning by rollers. Nor is this all. The factory system first
-applied to the cotton industry has been applied to all manufactures
-as well as to agriculture and has become the central fact in modern
-industrial life.
-
-We are now to take up the question of how the establishment of the
-factory affected England’s laboring poor, and to study a little
-more in detail the social effects of the Industrial Revolution. In
-preparing the way for this discussion we should remember that the
-factory was not the sole cause of the Industrial Revolution, although
-it was a very important one. Other elements besides the introduction
-of machinery had gradually made possible production on a large scale.
-Chief among these was the decline of state regulation of industry,
-the development of rationalism quickening the scientific spirit,
-the growth of the empire and prestige of England which opened great
-export markets for the goods of British manufacture, the extension
-of banking facilities, and the construction of roads and canals.
-All these were elements in producing the Industrial Revolution. But
-what gave the movement force to revolutionize the social life of
-the common people was the factory, which gathered great masses of
-the population into industrial centres in which became possible the
-development of class consciousness.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-THE FACTORY TOWNS
-
-
-The dictionary contains the history of the race, if you search deep
-into its mysteries; every word tells its own story and bears its
-present meaning because men, at different times, thought precisely as
-they did and not otherwise.
-
-Servius Tullius made six divisions of the citizens of Rome for the
-purposes of taxation and these divisions were called classes. A
-seventh included the mass of the population, those who were not
-possessed of any taxable property—that is to say the laboring
-poor. It is from this circumstance that our word “class” derives
-its peculiar meaning. Now it is significant that before the great
-extension of manufactures occasioned by the factory, we find no
-reference in our language to the working classes. The laboring
-poor belonged to no class; but when great cities grew up about
-the factories, populated by toilers whose interests in life were
-identical, the masses suddenly became conscious of their common
-life, their common needs, their common hopes. Blindly at first, and
-then more surely, they struggled for recognition as a class, and at
-last the struggle found expression in the language of their time.
-The arousing of this class consciousness amongst the workers I take
-to be the chief contribution of the factory to the social progress
-of mankind; and for this reason the rise of the manufacturing towns
-becomes a subject of great importance.
-
-In the town hall at Manchester there is a fresco by Ford Maddox
-Brown which bears the title of “The Establishment of Flemish Weavers
-in Manchester,” and shows Queen Philippa visiting the colony which
-she founded in 1363. Mr. George Saintsbury, in his history of
-Manchester, questions the historical accuracy of the event portrayed;
-“but,” he adds, “Queen Philippa did many things which we should
-all be sorry to give up as art and literature and which, yet, are
-somewhat dubious history.”
-
-No one knows when Manchester first became a manufacturing town,
-and the introduction of Flemish artificers in the reign of Edward
-III is rather a probable than a certain starting-point. Nothing
-is distinctly known of the progress of woolen manufacture, until
-the reign of Henry VIII, at which time it had evidently grown into
-considerable importance. In the statute of the thirty-third year of
-his reign it appears that the inhabitants of Manchester carried on
-a considerable manufacture both of linens and woolens by which they
-were acquiring great wealth; but no mention has yet been found of
-cotton manufacture in that city earlier than the year 1641. By this
-time, however, it had become well established.
-
-The labor was entirely handicraft; and it was not until the
-establishment of the factory by Arkwright that Manchester and the
-other manufacturing towns of England came into prominence in the
-political life of the nation; indeed it was not until the nineteenth
-century was well advanced that the inhabitants of these cities were
-represented in Parliament.
-
-It has been held that the factory is an episode, not an element, in
-modern sociological development, and in a strict sense this is true.
-But because the factory led to the growth of great manufacturing
-towns and caused the migration thither of a vast population from the
-agricultural districts, and because it was among this population
-that the social discontent, which for a long period had existed in
-the lower classes, first became articulate, the factory directly
-contributed to the development of modern democracy.
-
-The factory transformed not only craftsmen into operatives, but
-agricultural laborers as well, the latter becoming for the first
-time free to dispose of their own labor; for while serfdom had been
-declared illegal long before the establishment of the factory, yet
-the peasant remained dependent, in a large measure, upon the good
-will of his employer and he was bound by custom if not by law to the
-soil he tilled. The migration of this vast laboring population from
-the fields to the towns led to far-reaching social results.
-
- “Meanwhile, at social Industry’s command
- How quick and fast an increase! From the germ
- Of some poor hamlet, rapidly produced,
- Here a large town, continuous and compact,
- Hiding the face of earth for leagues—and there,
- Where not a habitation stood before,
- Abodes of men irregularly massed
- Like trees in forests—spread through spacious tracts,
- O’er which the smoke of unremitting fires
- Hangs permanent, and plentiful as wreaths
- Of vapor glittering in the morning sun.”
-
-Thus Wordsworth in _The Excursion_ describes the rise of the
-manufacturing towns.
-
-Our first concern is with the social conditions existing in these
-great manufacturing cities. The factory system was first applied
-to the spinning of yarn; but weaving continued, for a time, as a
-handicraft. This period was one of great prosperity to the hand-loom
-weavers. Before the invention of spinning-machinery, several spinners
-were required to furnish one loom with yarn; and one half of the
-weaver’s time was spent in waiting for work. This time was employed
-in farming. But with the establishment of the spinning-mills the
-situation was reversed, and the weaver, plentifully supplied with
-yarn, ceased to cultivate the soil and devoted his whole time to the
-loom, a far more profitable occupation.
-
-Villages of hand-loom weavers sprang up throughout the country
-adjacent to the manufacturing towns, and hither the master spinners
-sent their yarn and received back the finished cloth; while sometimes
-the weaving was done in “dandy” shops containing eight or ten and
-often as many as twenty looms. These little factories were usually
-owned by a single weaver who hired others to assist him in his work;
-but whatever the method, the profits from the business were always
-great.
-
-“One of the happiest sights in Lancashire life at this time,” writes
-a contemporary historian, “was the home of a family of weavers....
-There could be heard the merry song to the tune of the clacking
-shuttles and the bumping of the lathes; the cottage surrounded with
-a garden filled with flowers and situated in the midst of green
-fields where the larks sang and the throstles whistled their morning
-adoration to the rising sun. The weaving thus carried on at home,
-where several persons of the same family and apprentices were
-employed, made them prosperous small manufacturers and a proud lot of
-people.” This was about 1800.
-
-“The trade of muslin weaver,” says a Bolton manufacturer of the same
-period, “was that of a gentleman. The weavers brought home their work
-in top boots and ruffled shirts; they had a cane and took a coach
-in some instances, and appeared as well as military officers of the
-first degree. They used to walk about the streets with a five-pound
-Bank of England note spread out under their hat-bands; they would
-smoke none but long churchwarden pipes, and objected to the intrusion
-of any other craftsman into the particular rooms of the public-houses
-which they frequented.” This abnormal prosperity, however, preceded
-their downfall. Two events were preparing it,—the invention of the
-power loom and the application of steam power to all the processes of
-manufacture.
-
-Before considering the condition of the laboring population after
-the establishment of factories for weaving as well as for spinning,
-we should glance backward into the previous history of the laboring
-poor. During the prevalence of the feudal system the population
-of England was purely agricultural. The chief landed proprietors
-possessed a certain number of slaves who were employed generally in
-domestic service, but who also manufactured the wearing apparel and
-household furniture. “Priests are set apart for prayer,” says an
-ancient chronicle, “but it is fit that noble chevaliers should enjoy
-all ease, and taste all pleasures, while the laborer toils, in order
-that they may be nourished in abundance—they, and their horse, and
-their dogs.” This class of laborers, however, was never very large.
-
-The great body of the peasantry was composed, first, of persons who
-rented small farms, and who paid their rent either in kind or in
-agricultural labor; and secondly, of cottagers, each of whom had
-a small parcel of land attached to his dwelling, and the privilege
-of turning out a cow, or pigs, or a few sheep into the woods,
-commons and wastes of the manor. During this whole period the entire
-population derived its subsistence immediately from the land. The
-mechanics of each village, not having time to cultivate a sufficient
-quantity of land to yield them a sustenance, received a fixed annual
-allowance of produce from each tenant. The peasantry worked hard and
-fared scantily enough, but still there was never an absolute want of
-food; the whole body was poor, but it contained no paupers.
-
-During the fourteenth century the demand for wool not only to supply
-the markets of the Netherlands, but also the newly established
-manufacture of England, rapidly increased and the owners of the land
-found sheep-feeding more profitable than husbandry; and the sudden
-extension of manufacture in the fifteenth century greatly increased
-the demand. This circumstance led to an important change in the
-distribution of the population and the peasants previously employed
-in tillage were turned adrift upon the world. The allotments of
-arable land which had formerly afforded them the means of subsistence
-were converted into sheep walks and this policy greatly accelerated
-a social revolution which had already commenced. It eventually
-led to a complete severance between the English peasantry and the
-English soil; and with the exception of those employed in domestic
-manufacture, the little farmers and cottiers of the country were
-converted into day laborers depending entirely upon wages for their
-subsistence.
-
-Thus when we come to consider the pitiable condition of the working
-classes, following the establishment of the factory, we must remember
-this underlying cause of the poverty and suffering, holding in mind
-the fact that from the beginning the increase of English poor rates
-kept pace visibly with the progress of the enclosure of the common
-land. Complaints against vagrancy and idleness, and the difficulty of
-providing for the poor increased proportionately with the progress of
-the system of consolidating farms, and abstracting from the English
-cottager his crofts and rights to the common lands. Upon the factory
-has fallen the blame for social conditions which had their source
-in causes long antedating its establishment—but the factory has
-sufficient misery for which to answer.
-
-Arkwright’s inventions, as we have seen, took manufactures out
-of the cottages and farm houses of England and assembled them in
-factories. Thousands of hands were suddenly required especially in
-Lancashire, which until then was comparatively thinly populated.
-A great migration of population from the rural districts to the
-manufacturing towns was set in motion, thousands of families leaving
-the quiet life of the country for the intenser life of the city, but
-still the new demand for labor was unsatisfied. The custom sprang
-up of procuring apprentices from the parish workhouses of London,
-Birmingham, and elsewhere; and many thousand children between the
-ages of seven and fourteen years were thus sent to swell the numbers
-of the laboring population. Beside the factories stood apprentice
-houses in which the children were lodged and fed; and it was also the
-custom for the master manufacturer to furnish the apprentice with
-clothes.
-
-The work required of the children was exacting. The pay of
-the overseers was fixed in proportion to the work produced, a
-circumstance which bore hard on the apprentices. The greatest
-cruelties were practiced to spur the children to excessive labor;
-they were flogged, fettered, and in many cases they were starved
-and some were driven to commit suicide. We have it on the authority
-of Mr. John Fielding, himself, a master manufacturer and member of
-Parliament for Oldham, that the happiest moments in the lives of many
-of these children were those passed in the workhouse.
-
-The profits of manufacturing were enormous and so was the greed of
-the newborn manufacturing aristocracy. Night work was begun, the day
-shift going to sleep in the same beds that the night shift had just
-quitted, so that it was a common saying in Lancashire that the beds
-never got cold. Although the master manufacturers were unmoved by
-the dictates of humanity, they were not proof against the malignant
-fevers which broke out in the congested districts and spread their
-ravages throughout the manufacturing towns.
-
-Public opinion was soon aroused which led to the institution in
-Manchester of a board of health which in the year 1796 made an
-interesting report. It appeared that the children and others working
-in the cotton factories were peculiarly disposed to the contagion of
-fever; and that large factories were generally injurious to those
-employed in them even when no particular disease prevailed, not only
-on account of the close confinement and the debilitating effect of
-the hot and impure air, but on account of the untimely labor of the
-night and the protracted hours of the working day.
-
-These conditions with respect to the children not only tended to
-diminish the sum of life by destroying the health and thus affecting
-the vital stamina of the rising generation; but it also encouraged
-idleness and profligacy in the parents, who, in many instances,
-lived upon the labor of their children. It further appeared that the
-children employed in factories were debarred from all opportunities
-of education as well as from moral and religious instruction. The
-investigation produced this report and nothing more—“when the dangers
-of infection were removed the precautions of mercy were forgotten.”
-
-Later, in the Parliamentary debate of 1815, Mr. Horner, one of the
-early factory reformers, graphically described the practices of the
-apprentice system. He told how, with a bankrupt’s effects, a gang of
-workhouse children were put up for sale and publicly advertised as a
-part of the property; how a number of boys apprenticed by a parish
-in London to one manufacturer, had been transferred to another and
-in the process were left in a starving condition; how an agreement
-had been made between a London parish and a Lancashire manufacturer
-by which it was stipulated that with every twenty sound children one
-idiot should be taken.
-
-Among the master manufacturers who had been incredulous concerning
-these conditions until the alarm of contagion arose, was the
-first Sir Robert Peel. He made a personal investigation and saw
-the abominations of the system; he declared his convictions and
-introduced into Parliament the first legislative measure for the
-protection of children. This was in the year 1802, and after many
-reverses he ultimately obtained the act known as the 42d Geo. III,
-“for the preservation of the Health and Morals of Apprentices and
-others, employed in Cotton and other mills.”
-
-This act is chiefly interesting because it established the principle
-of factory legislation, a principle which later in the century
-was greatly to promote the welfare of the masses. His first bill,
-however, referred only to apprentices and after its enactment
-children instead of being imported from the workhouses as formerly
-were nevertheless hired from their parents. Their services were
-dignified by the name of free labor, but because they were not
-accorded the protection given to apprentices their condition was
-little better than that of actual slavery.
-
-The next step in the progress of factory legislation was to extend
-the protection to young persons engaged in manual employment whether
-apprentices or not. Time does not permit us to follow the interesting
-history of factory legislation, under the devoted leadership of Mr.
-Horner, Sir John Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton), Mr. Saddler,
-and Lord Astley (afterwards the Earl of Shaftesbury). But the
-evidences of the social condition of the toilers brought out by the
-Parliamentary debates of 1816, 1818, 1819, and 1832, are all of the
-same nature and reveal a state of human misery without a parallel in
-history.
-
-We turn now from child labor to the sanitary conditions of the
-manufacturing towns. The report printed by Doctor Kay in 1832,
-is an astounding document; it shows that out of six hundred and
-eighty-seven streets inspected, more than one half contained
-heaps of refuse or stagnant pools; and of nearly seven thousand
-houses inspected, more than one third were out of repair, damp, or
-ill-ventilated, and an equally large proportion lacked all sanitary
-conveniences, even of the most primitive kind.
-
-The population lived on the simplest diet. Breakfast consisted of tea
-or coffee with a little bread, while sometimes the men had oatmeal
-porridge; dinner consisted generally of boiled potatoes heaped into
-one large dish over which melted lard was poured and sometimes a few
-pieces of fried fat bacon were added. Those who obtained higher wages
-or families whose aggregate income was large added a greater portion
-of animal food to this meal at least three times a week, but the
-quantity of meat consumed by the laboring population was not large.
-
-The typical family sat around the table, plunging their spoons into
-the common dish and with animal eagerness satisfied the cravings of
-their appetite. The evening meal consisted of tea, often mingled
-with spirits and accompanied by a little bread. The population
-thus scantily nourished was crowded in one dense mass in cottages,
-separated by narrow, unpaved streets, in an atmosphere loaded with
-smoke. Engaged in an employment which unremittingly exhausted their
-physical energies, these men and women lacked every moral and
-intellectual stimulus; living in squalid wretchedness and on meagre
-food it was small wonder that their superfluous gains were spent
-in debauchery. With domestic economy neglected, domestic comfort
-unknown, home had no other relation to the factory operative than
-that of a shelter. At this period the number of operatives above the
-age of forty was incredibly small.
-
-In a pamphlet printed during a great turnout in 1831, we find
-certain very interesting statistics concerning 1665 persons whose
-ages ranged between fifteen and sixty. Of these 1584 were under
-forty-five years of age, only fifty-one between forty-five and
-fifty were counted as fit for work, while only three had lived to
-be sixty years old. Such figures make it evident that large numbers
-of workers, prematurely unfitted for labor, came to live upon the
-toil of their own children. Nor was this all, for “puny and sickly
-parents gave birth to puny and sickly children, and thus the mischief
-continued its progress, one generation transmitting its accumulated
-evils to the next.”
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-CHARTISM
-
-
-Such was the condition of the manufacturing population of England
-in the early days of the factory system. It is evident that these
-conditions must inevitably give rise to a deep social discontent
-which sooner or later must become articulate, and we find from the
-very beginning of the factory system the records of innumerable riots.
-
-The history of these disturbances begins with the opposition to the
-introduction of new machinery. Rebellious craftsmen bound themselves
-by fearful oaths into secret organizations, the members of which were
-known as Luddites, from the name of their legendary leader—Ben Ludd.
-His name was the password to their secret meetings, at which plans
-were made for the destruction of property, plans afterwards carried
-out with open violence. Then followed innumerable riots arising
-from that growing social discontent which led in the beginning to
-factory legislation, and later to Parliamentary reform. It must not
-be thought that only the factory folk were discontented. The unrest
-was general throughout the lower classes; it was felt, moreover, in
-the ranks of the rapidly growing middle class, and the justice of the
-demand for better conditions was admitted now and then by individuals
-in the governing class—men of the broader vision. I have in my
-possession an interesting pamphlet containing the proceedings in the
-trial of indictment against Thomas Walker, a merchant of Manchester,
-and others, for a conspiracy to overthrow the constitution and
-government and to assist the French, the King’s enemies, should they
-invade the Kingdom. The case was tried at the Assizes at Lancaster,
-in 1794, and the account throws light upon the true state of the
-public mind in Manchester at that time.
-
-Thomas Walker, so it appeared to his accusers, was a pernicious,
-seditious, and ill-disposed person, greatly disaffected to the King,
-and who did in the hearing of divers liege subjects utter the words:
-“What are kings! Damn the King!” Moreover, Mr. Thomas Walker was a
-member of the Manchester Reformation Society, a body composed chiefly
-of working people. They met at a public house—the Old Boar’s Head,
-where the works of Tom Paine were read aloud over innumerable pots
-of ale; and a correspondence was carried on with the Society of the
-Friends of the People in London and with other more questionable
-organizations. The publican, warned by the magistrates that he must
-no longer give entertainment to this society, turned the reformers
-into the streets, whereupon they sought shelter in the warehouse
-of Mr. Walker. Here it was alleged they were trained in the use of
-firearms; and here one night they were attacked by members of the
-Church and King Club, and a riot ensued. The Reformation Society,
-however, maintained that the sole object of their meetings was to
-obtain, by constitutional means, an adequate representation of the
-people in Parliament.
-
-Discontent continues rife in Manchester, increasing with each year,
-and at last we come to an event which typifies to all time this
-upward struggle of toiling humanity—the massacre on St. Peter’s Field
-which occurred on the 16th of August, 1819. Throughout the whole
-preceding summer, on account of the distressed condition of trade,
-discontent had been rife in the manufacturing towns; agitation was
-at white heat; and the voice of the demagogue was heard with that of
-the conscientious reformer. It was proposed to hold at Manchester on
-the 9th of August an immense meeting to consider the election by the
-unrepresented inhabitants of Manchester of a Parliamentary delegate;
-but the purpose of this meeting was declared illegal and it was
-prohibited by the authorities. Then another meeting was advertised to
-take place on the 16th of August, the stated object being to consider
-the most legal and effectual means of obtaining Parliamentary reform.
-It was said that this meeting was attended by over one hundred
-thousand persons.
-
-Several of the divisions that composed the assembly came upon the
-field in regular military formations, accompanied by bands of music
-and preceded by banners bearing such mottoes as “Equal Representation
-or Death.” Many of the marchers were armed with bludgeons. Most of
-the columns, however, marched in silence; and except for the loud
-shouts of defiance on the appearance of the yeomen cavalry, sent to
-disperse the meeting, there was no disturbance on the part of the
-populace.
-
-The assembly was in charge of Henry Hunt, the famous radical, who,
-mounting the platform which had been erected upon a cart had just
-commenced his opening speech when the civil authorities attempted
-to arrest him. This the mob resisted, whereupon the yeoman cavalry
-shouting, “Have down with their banners!” charged upon the field, put
-the crowds to flight, and in the disorder which followed, a number
-were killed and many were wounded.
-
-Says Carlyle: “Who shall compute the waste and loss, the obstruction
-of every sort, that was produced in the Manchester region by Peterloo
-alone. Some thirteen unarmed men and women cut down—the number of the
-slain and maimed is very countable; but the treasury of rage, burning
-hidden or visible in all hearts ever since, is of unknown extent.
-‘How ye came among us, in your cruel armed blindness, ye unspeakable
-County Yeomanry, sabres flourishing, hoofs prancing, and slashed us
-down at your brute pleasure; deaf, blind to all our claims, and woes
-and wrongs; of quick sight and sense to your own claims only. There
-lie poor sallow, workworn weavers, and complain no more now; women
-themselves are slashed and sabred, howling terror fills the air; and
-ye ride prosperous, very victorious,—ye unspeakable: Give us sabres
-too and then come on a little!’”
-
-The treasury of rage burning hidden became visible to all.
-Chartism—the demand of the people for equal political rights—sprang
-into being; the outward and visible sign of inward suppressed
-discontent filled the manufacturing towns with unrestrained
-murmurings, and government felt the castle of privilege trembling at
-its foundation. Some days later Sidmouth, writing from Whitehall,
-congratulated the yeomanry in the name of the Prince Regent for
-their effective services in preserving public tranquillity. Public
-tranquillity indeed! The cries of those stricken weavers shall yet
-shake the empire of Britain.
-
-Peterloo was typical of the discontent which had spread throughout
-the laboring population of England. Parliament was assembled in
-special session to consider the state of the country and to enact
-measures for the suppression of disorder. Lord Grenfell in a
-brilliant speech discussed sedition, declaring that the whole nation
-was inundated with inflammatory publications intended to stimulate
-the multitude to acts of savage violence against all who were eminent
-for birth or rank, for talent or virtue. Mr. Canning placed the blame
-entirely upon discontented radicals, underrating the wide-spread
-demand for parliamentary reform, and advocated the acts which were
-passed prohibiting meetings like the one held in Manchester, and in
-other ways restricting the liberties of the masses in discussing
-social conditions. All of these acts tended to increase the
-discontent and hasten forward that reform which alone could save
-England from revolution.
-
-All famous Englishmen, however, did not view Peterloo with the eyes
-of Lord Grenfell or Mr. Canning. Writing to Thomas Love Peacock,
-Shelley said: “Many thanks for your attention in sending the papers
-which contained the terrible and important news of Manchester. These
-are, as it were, the distant thunders of the terrible storm which
-is approaching. The tyrants here, as in the French Revolution, have
-first shed blood. May their execrable lessons not be learnt with
-equal docility.” Inspired by the Manchester massacre, Shelley wrote
-“The Masque of Anarchy,” the spirit of which is summed up in these
-stanzas:—
-
- “Men of England, heirs of Glory,
- Heroes of unwritten story,
- Nurselings of one mighty Mother,
- Hopes of her, and one another;
-
- “Rise like Lions after slumber
- In unvanquishable number,
- Shake your chains to earth like dew
- Which in sleep has fallen on you—
- Ye are many—they are few.”
-
-And in the same year he wrote:—
-
- “Men of England, wherefore plough
- For the Lords who lay ye low?
- Wherefore weave with toil and care
- The rich robes your tyrants wear?
-
- “Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,
- From the cradle to the grave,
- Those ungrateful drones who would
- Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?
-
- “The seed ye sow, another reaps;
- The wealth ye find, another keeps;
- The robes ye weave, another wears;
- The arms ye forge, another bears.
-
- “Sow seed,—but let no tyrant reap;
- Find wealth,—let no impostor heap;
- Weave robes,—let not the idle wear;
- Forge arms,—in your defense to bear.”
-
-Fortunately the appeal to arms was unnecessary. The working classes
-of England were destined to exemplify Shelley’s lesson,—but by
-peaceful means,—were destined to teach the world the great truth that
-the many, if accordant and resolute, can always control the few. And
-this peaceful conquest is recorded in the history of Chartism.
-
-I have known many labor agitators living in the City of the Dinner
-Pail, and almost without exception these men were the sons of English
-Chartists. From them I had learned to honor the early British
-labor agitator, and to give to the name of pothouse politician
-something more than a contemptuous meaning. At the Old Boar’s Head,
-in Manchester, and at many another less famous public house in the
-manufacturing cities, groups of workingmen gathered, evening after
-evening to discuss their wrongs; and over many a pot of ale, and
-through many a cloud of tobacco smoke, there emerged at last certain
-definite demands for reform.
-
-Workingmen and radicals joined hands; liberal leaders combined with
-working-class leaders, and presently there was issued the famous
-Charter with its six points,—manhood suffrage, annual parliaments,
-the ballot, abolition of property qualifications, payment of members,
-and equality of electoral districts. A very sober programme this, but
-popular leaders like Fergus O’Connor and Ernest Jones with incendiary
-oratory gave it a revolutionary aspect.
-
-So the discontent grew year by year, and year by year it gathered
-force. Events in France and elsewhere on the continent excited the
-imagination of the governing classes, and every meeting place of
-workingmen appeared to be bristling with firearms, but still the
-movement grew, and at last the workingmen were ready with their
-petition to Parliament. When, on the morning of the 10th of April,
-1848, bands of Chartists began to gather on Kennington Common,
-carrying red banners and tricolors, all London was astir with
-excitement. Government had taken precaution for its defense; the guns
-of the Tower were manned and loaded; the employees of the post-office
-were supplied with two thousand rifles; the bank was surrounded with
-artillery; and behind sand-bags piled upon its roof stood a regiment
-of infantry. The bridges and approaches to Westminster were defended
-by an army of ten thousand horse, foot, and artillery, while the six
-thousand police of London lined the streets, supported by an army of
-special constables. And in command of this elaborate defense of the
-city against four thousand unarmed workingmen assembled on Kennington
-Common to bear a petition to Parliament, was none other than the Iron
-Duke himself—Wellington. Surely the voice of the pothouse politicians
-had been heard throughout England; it had penetrated the halls of
-government—what need had the reformers for powder and shot? And
-must we not believe that when five years later the great reform
-was enacted, credit for that event was in some measure due to the
-resolute and accordant factory folk? Yes, the wheels and spindles of
-which Arkwright dreamed brought something more than material wealth
-to England; his vision made the nation rich and powerful and his
-vision likewise gave to the masses equal political rights.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-THE FACTORY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
-
-
-We have now traced the history of the factory, from its beginning
-with the inventions of Arkwright down to its permanent establishment
-in the first half of the last century, and we have noted its
-influence upon the social life of England. We have seen how, as early
-as the fifteenth century, the introduction of manufactures assisted
-in breaking down the feudal system, and how, by making possible the
-accumulation of wealth by men of humble birth, it contributed to the
-rise of the middle class. We have further seen that at the close of
-the eighteenth century the introduction of machinery intensified
-these tendencies and exerted a powerful influence on the development
-of our modern democracy.
-
-We have, however, confined our attention to a single industry as it
-developed in a particular nation,—we have taken the cotton factory as
-typical of all factories and its growth in England as typical of its
-growth throughout the Western world. But the factory has developed
-differently in each industry and its social influence has never been
-quite alike in any two nations. When, for instance, Samuel Slater
-introduced cotton manufacturing into America, he set up in Rhode
-Island an exact counterpart of the English factory. When, later,
-other factories were built in New England there took place the same
-transition of a vast laboring population from the rural districts
-to the manufacturing towns;—but this population was very unlike the
-manufacturing population of England. The American factories were
-operated by the sons and daughters of Yankee farmers, reared in the
-atmosphere of democracy and springing from a race unaffected by the
-traditions of feudalism; for them political equality had been already
-won, yet even in America the factory became an instrument for social
-progress. In the rapidly growing manufacturing towns these country
-folk found a new life of opportunity for social advancement; they
-did not remain operatives long, but advanced to higher callings;
-and to take the places which they left, thousands of workers came
-from Lancashire here to enjoy that civic freedom for which their
-brothers in the Old World were still contending. To-day in our
-Southern States we see a similar process at work,—another race of
-men advancing in the social scale by means of the factory; from the
-mountains of the Carolinas thousands of young men and women, reared
-in a civilization almost unbelievably primitive, are flocking to the
-manufacturing towns, there to enjoy the advantages of modern life.
-But however varied have been the phases of the development of the
-factory in different parts of the world there has always been this
-common phenomenon—the concentration of the laboring population in
-manufacturing cities and the development of social discontent leading
-to social progress.
-
-The nineteenth century was the age of Power Discovered; mechanical
-inventions, the concentration of industry, the extension of the
-factory system, new means of transportation destroyed the last
-vestige of the feudal world and left the democratic ideal triumphant
-but unfulfilled: a new century dawns,—the age of Power Humanized.
-The industrial world in which we live, with all its peculiar
-characteristics, has been built upon the ruins of the feudal order,
-and in due time will give place to a newer and better civilization.
-Radicals of to-day see visions of to-morrow; reformers fired by the
-visions seek to make them real; while conservatives, clinging to the
-traditions of a dead past, strive to stay the inevitable progress of
-mankind. Truth never changes, but the knowledge of truth grows deeper
-with each age; no political institution, no social institution is
-sacred unless it is founded upon some eternal truth, and all human
-institutions must change with the increasing knowledge of mankind.
-Everywhere in the Western world the condition of the laboring
-population is vastly better to-day than when, a century and a half
-ago, the factory was established; vastly better than when, sixty
-years ago, the governments of Europe trembled before a working-class
-revolt,—when British Chartism triumphed in reform; when Karl Marx,
-exiled from Prussia, called upon the workingmen of the world to
-unite; when Mazzini, another exile in London, preached to the toilers
-of Italy the gospel of God and humanity, of progress through
-education. But the evolution is incomplete, and the discontent of
-the laboring population still remains a vital force in the upward
-progress of mankind.
-
-To-day we in America are confronted by the amazing spread of
-Socialism; Socialism which the radicals preach, the reformers seek
-to establish, and the conservatives fear. We cannot evade its
-issues, for Socialism is something more than a political creed,—it
-is the modern expression of that same spirit of human progress which
-destroyed slavery in the ancient world, serfdom in the middle ages
-and, creating modern democracy, cannot rest until it has guaranteed
-to all men not only equal political rights but equal social rights.
-Two men, smoke-room companions of mine during a Pacific voyage, stand
-for the contending ideals of the feudal and the modern world. One
-was a noble earl, the other a British tea merchant; both were men
-of wealth,—the one of large but unproductive estates, the other of a
-great business giving employment to thousands of men. Of the two, the
-tea merchant, though lacking in fine manners, was the more important
-person; yet he would not have exchanged those hours of familiar
-gossip with the noble earl for more chests of tea than would fill the
-hold of the ship. And there was a reason for this feeling, because
-the Groom of the Bedchamber stood for that aristocracy of culture and
-good manners which has an important value in any society. Under the
-militant structure of society this value belonged to the few; in our
-present democracy it has become increasingly the privilege of the
-many. Public education, public libraries, public art galleries, the
-perfected art of printing have opened the highest culture to children
-of the humblest birth. May we not, then, look forward to the time
-when “the best that has anywhere been in the world shall be the lot
-of every man born into it”—that is to say, the lot of every man who
-desires the best?
-
-Every thinking man must admit that there is something wrong in our
-present industrial régime. The progress of avowed Socialism and
-the more rapid progress of particular socialistic ideas indicate
-quite clearly that we Americans are alive to the unequal social
-conditions which now exist and are anxious to find a remedy. But
-whatever may be the utopian dreams of the reformers, all immediate
-progress must be made in the industrial world as we find it to-day;
-the industrial state of the Socialist is too remote in time,—our task
-is with social conditions as they now exist. The splendid machinery
-of production created during the last century must not be destroyed,
-but utilized for the benefit of mankind. The question which we have
-now to ask ourselves is this: What is the ultimate purpose for which
-the business of the world is conducted, what the real purpose
-of all this planting and reaping, this mining and manufacturing,
-this exchanging of commodities? Is it not, primarily, to furnish
-each human creature with food, shelter, and clothing,—the means of
-supporting life? Men require something more than the mere means of
-subsistence; but before the individual can cultivate his mind and
-soul his body must be made comfortable, and this, after all, is the
-whole end of our complex commercial régime. The test of right and
-wrong conduct in business refers to this fundamental purpose,—that
-conduct only is praiseworthy which advances the time when every man
-capable of industry shall be rewarded for his labor, not only with a
-loaf of bread, but with hours of fruitful leisure.
-
-Captains of Industry! that was a noble title Carlyle gave to the
-prosaic business man, when gazing beyond the squalid turmoil of
-his day with its dominant industrialism, triumphant mercantilism,
-doctrines of _laissez-faire_, overproduction, surplus population,
-he with clear vision foresaw the future freedom of the masses won
-through their own strength and the ability of their leaders. Until
-Richard Arkwright was born, the leaders of men in their progress
-towards human freedom had been soldiers; henceforward they were to
-be men of affairs. Great soldiers won their victory by the loyalty
-they inspired in their followers; no adventurer seeking personal
-glory ever won a lasting victory, but only those heroes, forgetful
-of themselves who consecrated their service to the cause of freedom.
-In such wise must Captains of Industry win their victories; the
-adventurer can but for a time prevail; fame is secure only to those
-leaders who see in wealth accumulated a treasure held in trust from
-which they are to feed and clothe the armies that they lead to
-peaceful conquests. Social reformers of sentimental temper have
-deemed the comparison between the modern employer of labor and the
-feudal lord as ill-chosen, but history seems to justify it. Yet we
-have, indeed, gone far since the Middle Ages. When the feudal lord
-demanded loyalty from his retainers the demand was alone sufficient,
-but the Captain of Industry, in order to obtain the loyalty of the
-toilers, must not only demand but deserve it; he too must be loyal to
-the great cause he serves—the eternal cause of human freedom.
-
-
-THE END
-
-
-
-
- The Riverside Press
- CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
- U · S · A
-
-
-
-
- Transcriber’s Notes
-
- pg 54 Added period after: three hundred years before, not soldiers,
- but serfs
- pg 72 Changed who paid their rent either in kind or in agicrultural
- to: agricultural
- Many hyphenated and non-hyphenated word combinations left as written.
-
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- The Factory | Project Gutenberg
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The factory, by Jonathan Thayer Lincoln</p>
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-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The factory</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Jonathan Thayer Lincoln</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 5, 2023 [eBook #69958]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
- <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Bob Taylor, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FACTORY ***</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover">
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="pageborder">
-<p>By Jonathan Thayer Lincoln</p>
-<hr class="r25">
-
-<p class="fs80 lh">THE FACTORY.</p>
-<p class="fs80 lh">THE CITY OF THE DINNER-PAIL.</p>
-
-<p class="fs80 lh">HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</p>
-<p class="center fs80 no-indent"><span class="smcap">Boston and New York</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h1 class="nobreak" id="THE_FACTORY">THE FACTORY</h1>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="center fs200 no-indent">THE FACTORY</p>
-<br>
-<p class="center fs80 no-indent">BY</p>
-<p class="center no-indent">JONATHAN THAYER LINCOLN<br>
-<br>
-<br>
-<figure class="figcenter illowp20" id="title" style="max-width: 21.6875em;">
- <img class="w100" src="images/title.jpg" alt="decoration">
-</figure>
-<br>
-<br>
-<br>
-<p class="center no-indent fs80">BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br>
-HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br>
-The Riverside Press Cambridge<br>
-1912<br>
-</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="no-indent center fs80">
-COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY JONATHAN THAYER LINCOLN<br>
-<br>
-ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br>
-<br>
-<em>Published January 1912</em><br>
-</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="center no-indent fs120">TO MY FATHER</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="NOTE">NOTE</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>This essay is based upon a course of lectures
-delivered before the Amos Tuck School of
-Administration and Finance associated with
-Dartmouth College. These lectures were subsequently
-printed in <cite>The Mediator</cite>, a magazine
-published in Cleveland, Ohio, and devoted to
-establishing a better social understanding between
-the man who buys and the man who sells
-labor.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="BIBLIOGRAPHICAL_NOTE">BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>In preparing the historical part of this essay I have
-consulted many authorities, and in particular I have
-made free use of the following works.</p>
-
-<p>DEFOE, Daniel</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>A plan for the English Commerce, London, 1728.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>BAINES, Edward</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great
-Britain. London, 1835.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>GUEST, Richard</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>A Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture.
-Manchester, 1823.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The Theory and Practice of Cotton Spinning. Glasgow,
-1833.</p>
-
-<p>URE, Andrew, M.D.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The Philosophy of Manufactures. London, 1835.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>BABBAGE, Charles</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures.
-London, 1822.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>CARLYLE, Thomas</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Essay on Chartism.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</span></p>
-
-<p>TAYLOR, Richard Whately Cooke-</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>The Modern Factory System. London, 1891.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>ABRAM, Annie</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Social England in the Fifteenth Century. London,
-1909.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Among the many articles printed in the periodical
-press the following from the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite> are
-especially helpful.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>Vol. XLI, 1829. Condition of the English
-Peasantry.</p>
-
-<p>Vol. LVII, 1836. The Factory System.</p>
-
-<p>Vol. LXVII, 1841. Infant Labour.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<table class="autotable">
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr" style="width:10%">I.</td>
-<td class="tdl" style="width:80%">The Industrial Revolution</td>
-<td class="tdr" style="width:10%"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">II.</td>
-<td class="tdl">Sir Richard Arkwright</td>
-<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">III.</td>
-<td class="tdl">Mechanical Inventions</td>
-<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
-<td class="tdl">The Factory System</td>
-<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">V.</td>
-<td class="tdl">The Factory Towns</td>
-<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
-<td class="tdl">Chartism</td>
-<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
-<td class="tdl">The Factory and Social Progress</td>
-<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</span></p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p class="drop-cap">As you approach the City of the Dinner
-Pail from the west, the blue
-waters of the harbor lie between you and
-the towering factories which line the opposite
-shore. By day the factories are not
-attractive to the eye, their massive granite
-walls, prison-like and unlovely, suggest only
-the sordid side of toil,—the long day’s confinement
-of twenty-seven thousand men and
-women amidst the monotonous roar of
-grinding wheels. But should you thus approach
-the city late on a winter afternoon
-the scene is marvelously changed; the myriad
-lights of the factories shine through the
-early darkness, transforming prison-walls
-into fairy palaces, castles of enchantment
-reflected with mysterious beauty in the deep
-waters of the bay. There is no suggestion
-now of sordid toil, the factory walls have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</span>
-become ramparts of light and speak of some
-romantic story.</p>
-
-<p>Realism and romance lie very near together,
-and we shall find the factory, when
-we come to study the history of it, something
-more than granite walls and grinding
-machinery; the factory, indeed, has been an
-important instrument in the upward progress
-of mankind. There is an ugly side to
-the story, especially in the beginning, for
-when the craftsmen of the world were transformed
-into factory operatives, thousands
-suffered a degree of poverty never known
-before, and many perished in the transition
-to the new system of manufacturing; but
-in the end that system revolutionized the
-whole social order, gave to toil its rightful
-dignity, and, creating a new loyalty to
-the cause of labor, became an element in
-the development of modern democracy.
-It is this brighter side of the story that
-we have now to consider.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</span></p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p>
-<p class="center no-indent fs120">THE FACTORY</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="center fs150 no-indent">THE FACTORY</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I<br>
-THE INDUSTRIAL<br>
-REVOLUTION</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap">In the fifteenth century the wealth of
-England, which until then had been
-made up chiefly of raw products, was
-greatly increased by the introduction of
-manufactures, the most important being
-the making of cloth. Previous to this first
-extension of industry, it had been impossible
-for the toiler to rise out of his class
-except by becoming a priest or a soldier;
-but with the increase of manufactures wealth
-became a means of social advancement, and
-thus industry not only tended to break down
-the feudal order by tempting serfs away
-from their masters, but the wealth created<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>
-by manufactures became an important element
-in the creation of the middle class.</p>
-
-<p>The sudden and extensive introduction
-of machinery at the close of the eighteenth
-century drove hand labor out of employment,
-and, for a time, caused great suffering
-among the masses; but in the end it
-created an ever increasing demand for
-labor—a new labor more skillful than the
-old. Moreover, it concentrated the laboring
-population in great centres of industry,
-thus creating a class consciousness which
-demanded that attention should be given
-to the rights of labor, created a new ideal
-of the dignity of toil and gave to the world
-that vision of the inclusive cause of labor
-which was destined to advance in a marvelous
-way to the social progress of mankind.</p>
-
-<p>Slavery had been abolished in England
-long before the Industrial Revolution, and
-yet, in the first quarter of the last century
-men in chains worked in the British coal-mines<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>
-and were bought and sold when the
-property changed hands. For generations
-before the Industrial Revolution, the lord
-of the manor had ceased to demand the
-labor of the villein as his due, but while serfdom
-had been abolished, the traditions of it
-still remained; and it was not until the establishment
-of the factory that labor became
-free in fact as for generations it had
-been in name.</p>
-
-<p>The historical event, that great movement
-which led in our generation to a
-complete reconstruction of the social order,
-we call the “Industrial Revolution
-of the Eighteenth Century.” It was an
-extremely complex event, originating in
-economic, political, and social conditions;
-but while it was the consequence of many
-causes, it derived its chief influence in
-the beginning from a series of remarkable
-inventions in the art of making textile
-fabrics.</p>
-
-<p>This art is as old as civilization, originating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>
-when men, advancing from barbarism,
-put aside the skins of beasts for raiment of
-their own making; but from the days of
-the first rude distaff and the simple bamboo
-loom until the time so recently past when,
-by a series of the most brilliant inventions
-known to any craft, the art was revolutionized,
-the implements remained unchanged.
-Up to the year 1769 the machines in use
-in the manufacture of cotton cloth in
-England were practically the same as those
-which for centuries had been employed in
-India. There were no factories as there
-are to-day: the cotton was spun and woven
-into cloth by hand, and both the spinning
-and the weaving were done in the cottages
-of the craftsmen.</p>
-
-<p>The first of these inventions was a simple
-one, but it made necessary all that
-followed. From the beginning of the art,
-one man could weave into cloth all the
-yarn that several spinners could produce.
-Indeed, it was seldom that a weaver’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
-family, his wife and children all working
-at the spinning wheel, could supply sufficient
-weft for his loom; and this difficulty
-was increased by the invention of the fly-shuttle
-in the year 1738. This invention,
-made by John Kay, consisted in giving
-motion to the shuttle by a mechanical device
-which saved time and exertion to the
-weaver and nearly doubled the daily product
-of his loom. The increased demand
-for yarn led to many experiments, and at
-last a machine was produced upon which
-many threads could be spun by a single
-pair of hands: the water frame commonly
-attributed to Richard Arkwright. With
-this important invention came many others
-in the same field, making famous the
-names of Hargreaves, Crompton, and Cartwright.</p>
-
-<p>The moment it became possible to accomplish
-by machinery what formerly had
-been done entirely by hand, the first effect
-was to increase the productive power of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
-the workman and thus to add vastly to the
-wealth of the nation, and secondly, to
-gather into the factories the craftsmen who
-had formerly worked in their homes.</p>
-
-<p>In the beginning of the eighteenth century
-the textile manufacturing of England
-was carried on by craftsmen dwelling in
-the rural districts, the master clothiers living
-in the greater towns, sending out wool
-to be spun into yarn which, returned to
-them prepared for the loom, was re-distributed
-among other hand workers in
-other cottages. The Lancashire weaver
-worked in his cottage surrounded by a bit
-of land, and generally combined small
-farming with domestic manufacturing.
-Sometimes a single family performed all
-the labor, the wife and daughters working
-at carding and spinning, the father operating
-the loom; sometimes other craftsmen joined
-the household and worked as members of
-one family. The extent of mercantile establishments
-and the modes of doing business<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>
-were very different from what they
-were soon to become. It is quite true that a
-limited number of individuals had, in previous
-ages, made fortunes by trade, but until
-the very end of the seventeenth century the
-capital in the hands of British merchants
-was small. Because of the bad condition of
-the roads and the lack of inland navigation,
-goods were conveyed by pack horses with
-which the Manchester chapmen traveled
-through the principal towns, selling their
-goods to the shopkeepers, or at the public
-fairs, and bringing back sheep’s wool to be
-sold to the clothiers of the manufacturing
-districts.</p>
-
-<p>In the writings of modern socialists we
-find the domestic system held up for admiration
-as the ideal method of production.
-The dreamers look back regretfully to the
-days when manufactures were combined
-with farming, and they quote from Goldsmith’s
-<cite>Deserted Village</cite>. Let us, however,
-turn to a more prosaic but more trustworthy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
-account, which is to be found in Daniel
-Defoe’s <cite>Plan of the English Commerce</cite>. The
-author is writing enthusiastically in praise
-of English manufactures, and, having
-pointed out how in the unemployed counties
-women and children are seen idle and
-out of business, the women sitting at their
-doors, the children playing in the street, he
-continues: “Whereas, in the manufacturing
-counties, you see the wheel going almost
-at every door, the wool and yarn hanging
-up at every window; the looms, the winders,
-the combers, the carders, the dyers, the
-dressers all busy; and the very children as
-well as the women constantly employed
-... indeed there is not a poor child in
-the town above the age of four but can
-earn his own bread.”</p>
-
-<p>When we come to study the brutalizing
-social conditions which obtained in the
-manufacturing towns following the establishment
-of the factory, we shall do well
-to keep in mind these words written by an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
-eighteenth century student in praise of the
-domestic system; when we hear the socialists
-declare that the factory created wage
-slavery, let us remember this earlier and
-more monstrous slavery.</p>
-
-<p>Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the
-spinning-frame, was a man of great genius.
-Endowed with the inventive faculty, and
-even more with the ability to perfect the
-inventions of others, he possessed as well
-extraordinary executive ability, and having
-brought his spinning machinery to the
-point of practical efficiency, he organized
-the modern factory system as the means of
-obtaining the highest results from the new
-mechanisms. The spinning frame was too
-cumbersome to be operated in the cottage,
-and, moreover, it required a greater power
-to operate it than that of the human hand,
-so Arkwright built his first factory which
-was run by horse power, and from this beginning
-was evolved the factory as we know
-it to-day. But important as were the inventions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
-in cotton manufacture, the factory
-would never have become the mighty
-power that it is, except for the steam
-engine; and it is interesting to note that in
-the same year in which Arkwright took
-out his patent for spinning by rollers, Watt
-invented his device for lessening the consumption
-of fuel in fire engines, that epoch-making
-invention by means of which the
-factory system as perfected by Arkwright
-was to become the material basis of modern
-life.</p>
-
-<p>Like the Renaissance, the Industrial
-Revolution was a movement destined to
-change the very course of human thought.
-Mechanical invention contributed to the
-force of the earlier movement—the invention
-of printing and of the mariner’s
-compass—so that side by side with the
-scholars restoring to the world its lost heritage
-of learning, craftsmen and sailors played
-their parts in printing the books by which
-the learning was disseminated, and in manning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>
-the ships that discovered new continents.
-The Renaissance, however, was
-essentially an intellectual movement to
-which mechanical invention was merely
-an aid, while the Industrial Revolution was
-due in an important measure to machinery.
-The movement began in the cotton industry,
-but soon a similar expansion occurred
-in all other manufactures. Machinery made
-possible a vast production; and the steam
-engine, first applied to manufacture, later
-became the means of distributing the commodities.</p>
-
-<p>The Industrial Revolution, thus springing
-from the sudden growth in the use of
-machinery, occasioned not only economic
-but political and social results. On the economic
-side, the effect was to extend old industries
-and to create new ones, as well as to
-revolutionize the methods of the production
-and distribution of wealth. On the social
-side it created new classes of men, breaking
-down the barriers of ancient feudalism, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
-on the political side it led to the enfranchisement
-of the working classes. The Industrial
-Revolution accomplished for England
-what the political revolution did for
-France, but by more peaceful means. Yet
-not alone in France was the event achieved
-in blood—for the Factory as well as the
-Terror had its victims. The history of the
-factory is no dry summary of patent rights
-and inventions, inventories of cotton and
-cotton goods, abstracts of ledgers, journals,
-cash-books, and pay-rolls,—it is a human
-story,—<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">laissez-faire</i>, over-production,
-enlightened selfishness, were no abstract
-terms, but vital human problems.</p>
-
-<p>Because the Industrial Revolution profoundly
-influenced the social and political
-life of England, and later of the whole
-world, the history of the factory, which
-contributed so much to its influence, becomes
-of vast importance. The first chapter
-relates to brilliant achievements in the
-field of mechanical invention. Then follows<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>
-the dismal story of how a multitude
-of craftsmen were transformed into factory
-operatives—the untold suffering of oppressed
-workingmen. Later we see the English
-yeoman replaced by the master manufacturer
-who soon became a force in the
-political life of the nation, finding his way
-into Parliament and even into the Peerage.
-For the common people the revolution began
-with great suffering, but ended in opening
-new avenues for their social and political
-advancement. Antagonistic in the beginning
-to the welfare of the masses, it aided
-powerfully, in the end, the fulfillment of
-those ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity
-which at that moment had taken such
-a mighty hold upon the thoughts of men.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II<br>
-SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap">The <em>Shaving of Shagpat</em>, that remarkable
-allegory with the writing of
-which George Meredith commenced his
-literary career, has been given several interpretations;
-without seriously venturing
-another, it has seemed to me that this fanciful
-story deals with the chief events in
-the Industrial Revolution.</p>
-
-<p>“So there was feasting in the hall and in
-the city, and over earth”: we read towards
-the end of the tale, “great pledging the
-sovereign of Barbers, who had mastered an
-event and become the benefactor of his craft
-and of his kind. ’Tis sure the race of Bagarags
-endured for many centuries, and his
-seed were the rulers of men, and the seal
-of their empire stamped on mighty wax
-the Tackle of Barbers.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
-
-<p>Shibli Bagarag,—could he not well
-have been Richard Arkwright, the barber,
-inventor of the spinning-frame, master of
-an event? In Shagpat the Clothier, we
-discover the smug and comfortable British
-aristocracy; in the Identical, that magic
-hair in Shagpat’s beard which gave him
-a position of power greater even than the
-King, we observe Feudal Privilege; the
-sword of Aklis, with the steel of which
-the Identical was cut, may well stand for
-the factory, a weapon gained after many
-trials by Arkwright, so that of him it might
-be written as it was of Shibli Bagarag:
-“Thou, even thou will be master of the
-event, so named in anecdotes, and histories,
-and records, to all succeeding generations.”</p>
-
-<p>Richard Arkwright, who first saw the
-light of day at Preston on the 23d of
-December, 1732, was the youngest of thirteen
-children born to humble parents, and
-he grew to manhood without education,
-being barely able to read and write. At an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
-early age he was apprenticed to a Preston
-barber and when he became a journeyman
-he established himself in the same business.</p>
-
-<p>Fate was in a jesting mood when she
-decreed that the chief actor in that remarkable
-social drama, the Industrial Revolution,
-should be a penny barber; and we
-may wonder if the governing classes appreciated
-the irony, when twenty years later,
-in recognition of his genius, the barber was
-raised to the honor of knighthood and his
-lady privileged to walk before the wives of
-the untitled gentry.</p>
-
-<p>Richard Arkwright, at the age of twenty-eight,
-was not content day after day to
-shave the stolid faces of lower class Englishmen,
-but, having gained a knowledge
-of a chemical process for dyeing human
-hair, he commenced to make wigs for upper
-class Englishmen—wigs dyed to suit
-any complexion. This occupation took
-him away from the barber’s chair and sent
-him traveling about the country. On such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
-a tour in 1761, he met a lady in the city
-of Leigh,—Margaret Biggins was her
-name,—and he married her; and in the
-same city at a somewhat later date he heard
-of certain experiments which had been
-made by a man named High in constructing
-a machine for spinning yarn. He gained
-this secret from a clock-maker named Kay,
-with whom he afterwards formed a partnership,
-by getting Kay—so the gossips
-said—loquaciously drunk at a public-house.
-Concerning his wife, history has
-little to say except that she quarreled with
-him because of the interest he took in
-High’s machine; and commencing to make
-experiments on his own account he became
-so absorbed in his workshop that his
-lady, fearing that they might be thrown
-upon the parish for support, begged him to
-return to his razor, and because he refused
-smashed the first model of the spinning-machine
-and thus precipitated a tremendous
-family row.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>
-
-<p>Arkwright is commonly credited with
-the invention of spinning by rollers, but
-while to him is undoubtedly due the success
-of that invention he did not originate
-it. The inventor of that ingenious process
-was neither Arkwright nor High, but John
-Wyatt of Birmingham, who in 1738 took
-out a patent in the name of Lewis Paul.
-In 1741 or 1742 these two men set up in
-Birmingham a mill “turned by two asses
-walking around an axis,” and in which ten
-girls were employed; while later a larger
-mill containing two hundred and fifty spindles
-and giving employment to twenty-five
-operatives was built. Wyatt wrote a pamphlet
-entitled, <cite>A Systematic Essay on the
-Business of Spinning</cite>, in which he showed
-the great profits which would attend the
-establishment of a plant of three hundred
-spindles. Wyatt’s factory, however, did not
-prosper and it seems probable that his machinery
-also passed into the hands of Arkwright.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span></p>
-
-<p>It was in the year 1767 that Hargreaves
-invented the spinning-jenny, and two years
-later Arkwright took out his patent claiming
-that he had “by great study and long
-application invented a new piece of machinery,
-never before found out, practiced
-or used, for the making of weft or yarn
-from cotton, flax, and wool; which would
-be of great utility to a great many manufacturers,
-as well as to His Majesty’s subjects
-in general, by employing a great number
-of poor people in working the said
-machinery and in making the said weft or
-yarn much superior in quality to any heretofore
-manufactured or made.” However
-lacking in originality this famous invention
-may have been, however great may have
-been the debt which Arkwright owed to
-Wyatt and Paul, to John Kay and to High,
-nevertheless, to him belongs all the credit
-of the first successful introduction of spinning
-by machinery.</p>
-
-<p>Having obtained this patent, Arkwright<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
-found himself without the capital necessary
-for carrying out his plans; and he returned
-to his native city of Preston and there
-applied to a friend, Mr. John Smalley, a
-liquor merchant, for assistance. So reduced
-were his circumstances at this time that
-going to vote at a contested election, which
-occurred during his visit to Preston, his
-wardrobe was in so tattered a condition that
-a number of his friends advanced the money
-to purchase decent clothes in which he
-might appear in the poll-room; and once
-during this period he having applied for
-pecuniary aid to a Mr. Atherton, that gentleman
-refused to entertain Arkwright’s
-plan because of the rags in which the inventor
-was dressed.</p>
-
-<p>It was in Preston, then, that Arkwright
-first fitted up his perfected spinning machine,
-in the parlor of a house belonging to
-the free grammar school. Here Arkwright
-successfully demonstrated the utility of his
-invention and first received financial support.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>
-In consequence of the riots which had
-taken place in the neighborhood of Blackburn
-on the invention of Hargreaves’s spinning-jenny,
-by which many of the machines
-were destroyed and the inventor
-driven from his native county to Nottingham,
-Arkwright and Smalley, fearing similar
-outrages, also went to Nottingham
-accompanied by John Kay, the loquacious
-clock-maker; so that Nottingham became
-the cradle of the two great inventions in
-cotton spinning. Here, Arkwright also
-applied for aid to the Messrs. Wright,
-Bankers, who made advances on the condition
-that they should share in the profits
-of the invention; but as the machine was
-not perfected as soon as they had hoped
-they withdrew their support and he turned
-to Mr. Samuel Need, a partner of Jedidiah
-Strutt, the inventor of the stocking frame.
-Strutt examined Arkwright’s mechanism,
-declared it to be an admirable invention,
-and the two men of wealth agreed to a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
-partnership with the Preston barber; and
-a mill was erected at Nottingham.</p>
-
-<p>It was an unpretentious establishment,
-that first little cotton mill; it gave employment
-to not more than a dozen operatives,
-and the machinery was turned not
-by a great steam engine, but by a pair of
-patient horses harnessed to a treadmill,—yet
-it contained the germ of the modern
-factory and the modern factory system.
-Later, Arkwright built another and larger
-factory at Cromford in Derbyshire, driven
-by water power—from which circumstance
-his spinning-machine came to be
-called the water-frame.</p>
-
-<p>The cotton industry of England which
-Arkwright established developed slowly;
-in the five years, ending with 1775, the
-annual import of cotton into Great Britain
-was only four times the average import at
-the beginning of the century. But when
-in the year 1785 Arkwright’s patent was
-finally set aside and his spinning machinery<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>
-became public property, a great extension
-of cotton manufacture followed, accompanied
-by a marvelous national prosperity.
-Arkwright, although deprived of his monopoly,
-was by this time so firmly established
-in the industry that he remained the
-dominant figure in the yarn market, fixing
-the price of the commodity for all
-other spinners; and thus he accumulated a
-great fortune.</p>
-
-<p>While Arkwright was without doubt
-perfectly familiar with the experiments of
-both Wyatt and High, nevertheless it was
-the Preston barber and not the original
-inventors who first produced yarn fit for
-weaving. It is proverbial that inventors seldom
-reap the harvest of wealth which they
-sow; they are the dreamers and their reward
-is in beholding a perfected mechanism—their
-work of art. So it was
-with Wyatt and High. They dreamed of
-spindles turned by power and saw their
-spindles turn; but Arkwright dreamed of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>
-a nation made rich and powerful by these
-same inventions, and he, too, lived to see
-his dream come true.</p>
-
-<p>Sir Richard Arkwright possessed all the
-qualities essential to success—tireless energy,
-enthusiasm, perseverance, and self-confidence.
-He believed in himself and so
-he compelled others to believe in him.
-His usual working day began at five o’clock
-in the morning and did not end until nine
-at night; when he was fifty years of age
-he lengthened this day by two hours,
-which he devoted to acquiring the education
-denied him in his youth. He had unbounded
-confidence in the success of his adventures
-and was accustomed to say that he
-would pay the national debt—an interesting
-circumstance, for surely by his genius
-the national debt was paid many times over.</p>
-
-<p>In the year 1786 he was appointed
-high sheriff of Derbyshire, and when
-about that time the King narrowly escaped
-assassination at the hands of Margaret<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>
-Nicholson, Arkwright, having presented
-an address of congratulation from his
-county to the King, received the honor
-of knighthood. He died on the 3d of August,
-1792, at the age of sixty. The <cite>Annual
-Register</cite> recording that event says not so
-much as a single word concerning Arkwright’s
-masterful genius which even then
-had set in motion a mighty social revolution.
-It mentions only the great fortune
-which he had acquired as a manufacturer
-of cotton yarn,—so difficult it is for the
-critic to place a true value on the life
-work of a contemporary.</p>
-
-<p>As you approach the City of the Dinner
-Pail from the west and gaze across the
-blue waters of the harbor, the eye rests
-upon the towering factories which line
-the opposite shore. Within those walls
-twenty-seven thousand men and women
-living in a degree of comfort never
-known before to the spinners and weavers
-of the world, earn their daily bread.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>
-Those towering factories are, every one,
-monuments to the genius of Richard Arkwright,
-the penny barber of Preston. If
-he appropriated the inventions of others,
-he perfected these inventions and made
-them of permanent value to mankind;
-and moreover, he arranged the machinery
-into series, organized the factory system,
-and revolutionized industry.</p>
-
-<p>Says Carlyle: “Richard Arkwright, it
-would seem, was not a beautiful man; no
-romance hero with haughty eyes, Apollo
-lip, and gesture like the herald Mercury;
-a plain, almost gross, bag-cheeked, pot-bellied
-Lancashire man, with an air of
-painful reflection, yet also of copious free
-digestion;—a man stationed by the community
-to shave certain dusty beards in the
-northern parts of England at halfpenny
-each.... Nevertheless, in strapping
-razors, in lathering of dusty beards, and
-the contradictions and confusions attendant
-thereon the man had notions in that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
-rough head of his; spindles, shuttles,
-wheels and contrivances plying ideally
-within the same, rather hopeless looking,
-which, however, he did at last bring to
-bear. Not without great difficulty! his
-townsfolk rose in mob against him, for
-threatening to shorten labor, to shorten
-wages; so that he had to fly, with broken
-wash pots, scattered household, and seek
-refuge elsewhere. Nay, his wife, too, rebelled;
-burned his wooden model of his
-spinning wheel; resolute that he should
-stick to his razors, rather;—for which,
-however, he decisively, as thou wilt rejoice
-to understand, packed her out of doors.
-Oh! reader, what a Historical Phenomenon
-is that bag-cheeked, pot-bellied,
-much-enduring, much-inventing barber!
-French revolutions were a-brewing, to resist
-the same in any measure, Imperial
-Kaisers were impotent without the cotton
-and cloth of England; and it was this man
-who gave to England the power of cotton.”</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III<br>
-MECHANICAL INVENTIONS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap">A distinction should be made between
-the factory and the factory
-system. The latter was not new to England,
-having been employed during the Roman
-occupation; and with the introduction of
-the woolen industry under Edward III, we
-again find the factory system established on
-an extensive scale.</p>
-
-<p>John Winchcombe, commonly called
-Jack of Newbury, who died about the year
-1520, made use of the factory system on a
-very extensive scale. In Fuller’s <cite>Worthies</cite> you
-may read how he “was the most considerable
-clothier without fancy or fiction England
-ever beheld,” and how “his looms were
-his lands, whereof he kept one hundred in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>
-his house, each managed by a man and a
-boy.” Jack of Newbury was celebrated in
-a metrical romance, and the following lines
-taken from it contain an interesting description
-of his famous industrial establishment.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">“Within one room, being large and long,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">There stood two hundred looms full strong:</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Two hundred men the truth is so,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Wrought in these looms all in a row;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">By every one a pretty boy</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Sat making quills with mickle joy.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">And in another place hard by</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">A hundred women merily</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Were carding hard with joyful cheer</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Who, singing sat with voices clear;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">And in a chamber close beside</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Two hundred maidens did abide,</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">
-
-<hr class="tb"></div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">These pretty maids did never lin</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">But in their place all day did spin:</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">
-
-<hr class="tb"></div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">Then to another room came they</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Where children were in poor array,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">And every one sat picking wool,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">The finest from the coarse to cull:</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>
- <div class="verse indent0">The number was seven score and ten</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">The children of poor silly men,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Within another place likewise</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Full fifty proper men he spied,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">And these were sheer men every one,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Whose skill and cunning there was shown:</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">
-
-<hr class="tb"></div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">A dyehouse likewise he had then</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Wherein he kept full forty men:</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">And also in his fulling mill,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Full twenty persons kept he still.”</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Here, indeed, we have the factory system—in
-which the division of labor is a
-conspicuous feature—employed with all
-its modern details; but not the steam-driven
-factory, building great cities and changing
-the whole social life of the kingdom.</p>
-
-<p>The original mode of converting cotton
-into yarn was by the use of distaff and spindle,
-a method still employed in the remote parts
-of India. The distaff is a wooden rod to
-which a bundle of cotton is tied loosely at
-one end, and which the spinner holds between
-the left arm and the body while with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>
-his right hand he draws out and twists the
-cotton into a thread. This simple process
-is the basis of all the complicated spinning
-machinery in use at the present time.</p>
-
-<p>In a modern cotton factory there are
-three departments of labor, carding, spinning,
-and weaving; and we have now to
-consider briefly these three processes. The
-purpose of carding is to clean the cotton and
-lay the fibres in a uniform direction. This
-was at first accomplished by hand, the implement
-employed being little different
-from an ordinary comb; later an improved
-device was used consisting of a pair of large
-wire brushes. This, we must observe, was
-a primitive operation, and the amount of
-cotton which one person could thus prepare
-for spinning was very small.</p>
-
-<p>We have already seen that the invention
-of the fly-shuttle so increased the demand
-for yarn that ingenious men were induced
-to make mechanical experiments for the
-purpose of supplying this demand—experiments<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>
-which, in the end, led to the
-invention of the spinning-frame. The spinning-frame,
-in turn, increased the demand
-for carded cotton and skillful mechanics
-again set about to meet this new requirement,
-and the result was the building of the
-carding-engine. This invention was not
-made at once, nor by any particular individual;
-but was the result of a number of
-improvements made at different times and
-by different persons. One of these men
-was Thomas High, the inventor of the
-spinning-jenny; another was James Hargreaves
-who so improved the jenny that he
-is commonly called the inventor of it; and
-finally, Richard Arkwright himself took the
-crude machine devised by these men and perfected
-it. Thus it came about that the modern
-carding-engine as well as the spinning-frame,
-was made of practical value by this
-much-enduring, much-inventing barber.</p>
-
-<p>The invention of the fly-shuttle, as we
-have seen, led to an increased demand for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>
-yarn, and this demand was further augmented
-about the year 1760 when the
-Manchester merchants began to export
-cotton goods in considerable quantities to
-Italy, Germany, and the North American
-colonies. It was then no uncommon thing
-for a weaver to walk three or four miles
-in the morning, and call on five or six spinners,
-before he could collect yarn enough
-to serve him for the remainder of the day.</p>
-
-<p>Ingenious mechanics set about the task
-of producing more yarn. The first of these
-was Thomas High, a reed maker, residing
-in the town of Leigh, who engaged one
-Kay, a clock-maker, and this is the same
-Kay who was afterwards employed by Arkwright
-to make the wheels and other apparatus
-for a spinning-machine. This machine
-was set up in the garret of High’s house.
-Now, Thomas High had a daughter who
-watched with keen interest the progress of
-his experiments—her name was Jane—and
-in honor of her he called the machine<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>
-the spinning-jenny. It is commonly stated—even
-in so authoritative a history as
-Baines’s we find the error—that the credit
-for the original invention of the spinning-jenny
-is due to Hargreaves, he having made
-the first machine in 1767. But Guest has
-shown quite conclusively by the sworn statement
-of one Thomas Leather, a neighbor
-of High, that the latter completed a similar
-machine in 1764.</p>
-
-<p>However this may be, James Hargreaves,
-a weaver of Stand-Hill, near Blackburn,
-perfected the original jenny and made it a
-practical working machine so that history
-has quite justly named him the author.
-From the first Hargreaves was aware of
-the value of his invention, but not having
-the ambition to obtain a patent he kept the
-machine as secret as possible, using it only
-to spin yarn for his own weaving. An unprotected
-invention of such importance,
-however, could not remain long the private
-property of a single weaver, and soon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>
-a knowledge of his achievement spread
-throughout the neighborhood; but instead
-of gaining admiration and gratitude for
-Hargreaves, the spinners raised the cry that
-the invention would throw multitudes out
-of employment and a mob broke into his
-house and destroyed his jenny.</p>
-
-<p>After this, Hargreaves moved to Nottingham,
-where, with a Mr. Thomas James,
-he raised sufficient capital to erect a small
-mill; here he took out a patent in 1770,—one
-year after Arkwright had patented the
-water-frame. Before leaving Lancashire,
-Hargreaves made and sold to other weavers
-a number of jennies; and in spite of all
-opposition the importance of the invention
-led to its general use.</p>
-
-<p>A desperate effort was made in 1779,
-during a period of distress, to put down
-the machine. A mob scoured the country
-for miles around Blackburn demolishing
-jennies and with them all carding-engines,
-water-frames, and other machinery; but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
-the rioters spared the jennies which had only
-twenty spindles, as these were by this time
-admitted to be useful to the craftsmen. Not
-only the working classes, but the middle and
-even the upper classes entertained at this
-time a profound dread of machinery. The
-result of these riots was to drive spinners and
-other capitalists from the neighborhood of
-Blackburn to Manchester, increasing the
-importance of that rapidly growing town
-which was destined to become the world
-centre of the cotton industry.</p>
-
-<p>The story of this early opposition to the
-introduction of machinery deserves attention
-not only as an interesting episode in
-the history of the factory, but because
-even to-day a similar opposition comes to
-the surface with each new improvement in
-the method of manufacture. It is also an
-interesting fact that Lord Byron made his
-maiden speech in the House of Lords in
-opposition to the Nottingham Riot Bills,
-introduced into Parliament for the protection<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>
-of owners of machinery. There were
-two of these bills, one “for the more exemplary
-punishment of persons destroying
-or injurying any stocking- or lace-frames,
-or other machines or engines used in the
-frame-work knitting manufactory, or any
-articles or goods in such frames or machines”;
-the other “for the more effectual
-preservation of the peace within the
-county of Nottingham.”</p>
-
-<p>These two bills were the result of rioting
-among the lacemakers of this county
-and their object was to increase the
-penalty for breaking machinery, from
-transportation to death, to permit the
-appointment of special constables in times
-of disturbance, and to establish watch and
-ward throughout the disturbed parts. These
-bills and the debates upon them throw a
-strong light upon the extent of the disturbances,
-and indicate the attitude of the
-government, at that time, toward the laboring
-poor.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
-
-<p>The important inventions in carding and
-spinning led to a rapid advance in cotton
-manufacture; the new machines not only
-turned off a greater quantity of yarn than
-had been produced by hand, but the yarn
-was also of a superior quality. The water-frame
-spun a hard, firm yarn, well adapted
-for warps, while the jenny produced a soft
-yarn suitable for spinning weft; but the
-yarn produced on neither of these machines
-could be advantageously used for making
-the finer qualities of goods.</p>
-
-<p>This defect in the spinning-machinery
-was remedied by still another device called
-the mule jenny, but now termed simply
-the mule, so named because it combined
-the principles of both Arkwright’s water-frame
-and Hargreaves’ jenny. The mule
-was invented by Samuel Crompton, a
-weaver living at Hall-in-the-Wood near
-Bolton. He commenced his experiments
-in 1774, but it was five years before he
-completed the machine. Crompton took<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
-out no patent and only regretted that public
-curiosity would not allow him to keep
-his little invention for himself. The mule
-was first known as the Hall-in-the-Wood
-wheel, then as the muslin wheel because
-it made yarn sufficiently fine for weaving
-that fabric, and finally by its present name.</p>
-
-<p>As the inventor made no effort to secure
-a patent, the mule became public property,
-and was generally adopted by manufacturers,
-but Crompton himself received no
-other reward than a grant of five thousand
-pounds voted him by Parliament in 1812.
-Although his means were small, he was
-always in easy circumstances, until the
-latter part of his life, when, being no
-longer able to work, he was reduced to
-poverty. Certain manufacturers who had
-profited by his invention then subscribed
-for the purchase of a life annuity, to which
-fund foreign as well as English spinners
-contributed. Crompton died on January
-26, 1827.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p>
-
-<p>Having considered the inventions in the
-art of spinning, we now turn to the power
-loom built in 1785 by the Reverend Edmund
-Cartwright, of Hollander House,
-Kent. A loom moved by water power had
-been contrived as early as the seventeenth
-century by one De Gennes, and described
-as “a new engine to make linen cloth
-without the help of an artificer.” But the
-machine never came into general use;
-and in about the middle of the eighteenth
-century there is record of another power
-loom, also a French invention, which suffered
-a similar fate. Describing his own
-loom Cartwright says that in the summer
-of 1784 he fell in company with some
-gentlemen of Manchester who were discussing
-Arkwright’s spinning-machinery.
-One of the company observed that, as
-soon as Arkwright’s patents expired, so
-many mills would be erected and so much
-cotton spun that hands could not be found
-to weave it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p>
-
-<p>To this observation the ingenious clergyman
-replied that Arkwright should set his
-wits to work to invent a weaving-mill.
-But the Manchester gentlemen unanimously
-agreed that the thing was impractical.
-Cartwright argued, however,
-that, having seen exhibited in London
-an automaton figure which played at
-chess, he did not believe it more difficult
-to construct a machine which would
-weave. He kept this conversation in mind
-and later employed a carpenter and a
-blacksmith to carry his ideas into effect.
-Thus he built a loom which, to his own
-delight, produced a piece of cloth. The
-machine, however, required two powerful
-men to work it, but Cartwright, who was
-entirely unfamiliar with the art of weaving,
-believed that he had accomplished all that
-was required, and on the 4th of April,
-1785, he secured a patent. It was only then
-that he commenced to study the method
-by which the craftsmen wove cloth, and he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>
-was astonished when he compared the easy
-working of the hand loom with his own
-ponderous engine. Profiting by his study,
-however, he produced a loom which in its
-general principles is precisely the same as
-the looms used to-day.</p>
-
-<p>Thus was invented the machinery of
-the cotton mill; but there remains to be
-considered the one other contrivance without
-which the vast extension of manufactures
-would have been impossible and
-the manufacturing towns, which we are
-about to consider, would never have attained
-the size and importance which enabled
-them to become factors in the political
-life of England. I refer to the steam
-engine.</p>
-
-<p>In 1763, James Watt was employed in
-repairing a model of Newcomen’s steam
-engine, and, noting certain basic defects,
-undertook to remedy them. He perceived
-the vast possibilities of a properly constructed
-engine and, after years of patient<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>
-labor he gave to the world the mighty
-power of steam. Previous to this time,
-and indeed until the year 1782, the steam
-engine had been used almost exclusively
-to pump water out of mines, but with
-Watt’s improvements it became possible
-for the engine to give rotary motion to
-machinery.</p>
-
-<p>The first cotton mill to install a steam
-engine made by Boulton and Watt was the
-one owned by the Messrs. Robinson in
-Nottinghamshire—this was about the
-year 1785. Two years earlier, Arkwright
-had made use of an atmospheric engine
-in his Manchester factory, but it was not
-until 1789 that an improved steam engine
-was set up in that city and it was a year
-later when Arkwright adopted the device.</p>
-
-<p>The invention of spinning-machinery
-created the cotton manufacture of England,
-but the industry would never have
-reached the proportions which it presently
-did except for the genius of Watt.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV<br>
-THE FACTORY SYSTEM</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap">When the cotton manufacture was
-in its infancy, all the operations,
-from dressing the raw material to folding
-the finished fabric, were completed under
-the roof of the weaver’s cottage. With
-Arkwright’s invention it became the custom
-to spin the yarn in factories and weave
-it by hand in cottages. With the invention
-of the power loom, it again became the
-practice to perform all the processes in a
-single building.</p>
-
-<p>The weaver’s cottage, then, with its rude
-apparatus of peg warping, hand cards, spinning-wheels,
-and wooden looms, was the
-steam factory in miniature; but the amount
-of labor performed in a single factory was
-as great as that which formerly gave occupation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>
-to the inhabitants of an entire district.
-A good hand-loom weaver could produce
-two pieces of shirtings each week; by 1823,
-a power-loom weaver produced seven such
-pieces in the same time.</p>
-
-<p>A factory containing two hundred looms
-was operated by one hundred persons who
-wove seven hundred pieces a week, and it
-was estimated that under the domestic system
-at least eight hundred and seventy-five
-looms would have been required to weave
-this amount of cloth, because the women
-of the household had their home duties to
-perform while the men were required to
-devote a considerable portion of their time
-to farming. It was therefore further estimated
-that the work done in a steam factory
-containing two hundred looms would,
-if performed by hand, give employment
-and support to a population of more than
-two thousand persons. It is interesting
-here to note, that, whereas a hand-loom
-weaver could produce two pieces of shirtings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>
-a week, an ordinary weaver is now
-able to turn off eight or ten pieces of equal
-length every ten hours; so that a modern
-weave room containing two hundred power
-looms operated by twenty-five weavers
-represents the labor of a community of
-sixty thousand craftsmen, their wives and
-their children. A population of thirty million
-would be required to perform by hand
-the work now produced by the Fall River
-factories alone.</p>
-
-<p>“Watt,” said a celebrated French engineer,
-“improves the steam engine, and
-this single improvement causes the industry
-of England to make an immense stride.
-This machine, at the present time [about
-1830], represents the power of three hundred
-thousand horses or of two million men,
-strong and well fitted for labor, who should
-work night and day without an interruption
-and without repose.... A hairdresser
-invents, or at least brings into action,
-a machine for spinning cotton; this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>
-alone gives the British industry immense
-superiority. Fifty years only, after this
-great discovery, more than one million of
-the inhabitants of England are employed
-in those operations which depend, directly
-or indirectly, on the action of this
-machine. Lastly, England exports cotton,
-spun and woven by an admirable system
-of machinery, to the value of four hundred
-million francs yearly.... The British
-navigator travels in quest of the cotton of
-India, brings it from a distance of four
-thousand leagues, commits it to an operation
-of the machines of Arkwright, carries
-back their products to the East, making
-them again to travel four thousand leagues,
-and in spite of the loss of time—in spite
-of the enormous expense incurred by this
-voyage of eight thousand leagues, the cotton
-manufactured by the machinery of
-England becomes less costly than the cotton
-of India, spun and woven by hand near the
-field that produced it, and sold at the nearest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
-market. So great is the power of the
-progress of machinery.”</p>
-
-<p>Two distinct systems of production preceded
-the factory. First, the system of
-isolated handicraft labor, and second, the
-system of cottage industry, which we have
-already considered and in which the several
-members of a family participated,—this,
-too, was handicraft. The craftsman, as we
-have seen, worked with his family in his own
-cottage; he owned his loom and the other
-simple machinery necessary for the production
-of cloth, and either he owned his
-raw material or received it from the master
-manufacturer to be returned in the
-form of finished fabric. But in either case,
-the craftsman was his own master and
-sold cloth not labor.</p>
-
-<p>With the establishment of the factory,
-these conditions were completely changed.
-The master manufacturer not only owned
-the factory building and the machinery,
-but he owned the raw material. Moreover<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>
-to him the operative sold his labor which
-thereby became a commodity quite as completely
-as the cotton he wove into cloth.
-This latter circumstance is important because
-it became the source of the vast social
-discontent which, in the end, aided
-powerfully in revolutionizing the structure
-of British society.</p>
-
-<p>To the consideration of this event we
-shall soon return. For the moment we must
-consider briefly the most characteristic
-distinction in the process of manufacture
-under the new system—the extension of
-the principle of division of labor.</p>
-
-<p>The principle itself was in no wise new,
-for the first application of it was made in
-a very early stage in the evolution of society.
-At the very dawn of civilization it
-must have become apparent that more comforts
-and conveniences could be acquired
-by one man restricting his occupation to a
-single craft—and the development of independent
-arts was in itself a division of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>
-labor. The same principle was then carried
-into the different trades, and at last we find
-it fully developed in the cottage system of
-industry. Thus we find carding, spinning,
-and weaving carried on by separate members
-of the family. Carding and spinning,
-which required less bodily strength, was
-performed by the women, while the more
-laborious work of weaving was given over
-to the men. With the establishment of the
-factory and the introduction of machinery,
-means were supplied by which this system
-could attain its highest development.</p>
-
-<p>The advantages resulting from the division
-of labor are evident. When the
-whole work in any art is executed by one
-person, that person must possess sufficient
-skill to perform the most difficult, and sufficient
-strength to perform the most laborious,
-of the processes; but by employing
-a division of labor several persons may be
-kept at work executing that part of the
-whole for which he is best fitted.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p>
-
-<p>The further advantages may be most
-briefly stated in the familiar words of Adam
-Smith: “The great increase in the quantity
-of work, which, in consequence of the division
-of labor, the same number of people
-are capable of performing, is owing to three
-different circumstances: first, to the increase
-of dexterity in every particular workingman;
-secondly, to the saving of time, which
-is commonly lost in passing from one species
-of work to another, and, lastly, to the
-invention of a great number of machines
-which facilitate and abridge labor and enable
-one man to do the work of many.”</p>
-
-<p>It should be noted that the factory was,
-in the beginning, not the creation of capital,
-but of labor. The early master manufacturers
-were risen workingmen. Sir Richard
-Arkwright, the creator of the factory,
-the man who dominated industrial activities
-in the first great period of expansion,
-was a penny barber; but he died a Knight
-Bachelor with an income greater than that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>
-of many a prince. The process of social
-elevation by means of trade began back in
-the fifteenth century with the first extension
-of manufactures. By the beginning of
-the eighteenth century it was possible to
-name five hundred great estates within a
-hundred miles of London, which, at no
-remote time, had been possessions of the
-ancient English gentry, but had later been
-bought up by tradesmen and manufacturers.
-The ancestors of these new landed proprietors
-had been, less than three hundred years
-before, not soldiers, but serfs.</p>
-
-<p>Moreover, generations before the establishment
-of the factory, important towns
-had been raised by manufactures—towns
-of which Manchester and Birmingham
-were examples, in which there were few or
-no families of the gentry, yet which were
-full of families richer by far than many a
-noble house. And side by side with this process
-of tradesmen rising to the gentry had
-gone the other process of declining gentry<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>
-placing their sons in trade. So, as Defoe
-pithily said, “Tradesmen became gentlemen
-by gentlemen becoming tradesmen.”</p>
-
-<p>The successful artisan under the domestic
-system became in time master clothier,
-and when the factory became the means of
-further increase to their fortunes the capital
-which this class had already amassed
-was utilized in building mills and machinery.
-To this class belonged the grandfather
-of Sir Robert Peel, a resident of
-Blackburn, who supported himself from the
-profits of a farm in the neighborhood and
-devoted his spare time to mechanical experiments.
-From this he came to operate
-a print-works, and later commenced the
-manufacture of cloth.</p>
-
-<p>His son, the first Sir Robert,—the father
-of the Prime Minister,—was apprenticed
-to the trade and came to manhood at the
-time when the impulse given to manufactures
-in England, through the introduction
-of machinery, led to a more rapid<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>
-accumulation of wealth than had been
-known in any previous period of history.
-It is said that in his youth Robert Peel entertained
-a presentiment that he would become
-the founder of a family. By means of
-the factory, he amassed a fortune, was raised
-to the honor of knighthood, and realized
-his presentiment—for in the next generation
-no name is more famous in the annals
-of government than that of Sir Robert Peel,
-the grandson of a domestic manufacturer.</p>
-
-<p>As the number of factories increased it
-became possible for operatives to rise, first
-to positions of trust within the factory, and
-later to the rank of master manufacturer—so
-that many a bobbin boy became a
-cotton lord.</p>
-
-<p>Within the factory the effect was to
-intensify that spirit of discontent which
-presently arose among the workers—for
-risen workingmen are apt to prove the
-hardest task masters. A graphic picture of
-this aspect of factory life as it existed in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>
-Manchester in the first half of the last century,
-when discontent had become articulate
-and the great Chartist movement
-reached its height is to be found in Dickens’s
-<cite>Hard Times</cite>. In that story Josiah
-Bounderby of Coketown is typical of this
-class of risen workingmen—the early employers
-of labor under the factory system;
-Josiah Bounderby, who learnt his letters
-from the outside of shops and was first
-able to tell time from studying the steeple
-clock at St. Giles’s Church, London; Josiah
-Bounderby, vagabond, errand boy, laborer,
-porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner,
-merchant, banker, manufacturer. There
-was very little in the training of Josiah
-Bounderby, or any of his class to make them
-humane employers of labor—and among
-the several causes which made the early relation
-of employer and employee under the
-factory system one of bitter strife, this cause,
-so strictly social in its origin, is one of the
-most important.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span></p>
-
-<p>The establishment of the factory altered
-completely the relation between employer
-and employee. Indeed in the modern sense
-these relations were then first established.
-Labor became a commodity which the
-master manufacturer, who was also the
-capitalist, bought and which the workingman
-sold. When in the year 1785 Arkwright’s
-patents were set aside and the use
-of his perfected spinning machinery became
-free to all manufacturers, a great extension
-of the cotton industry followed.
-Factories were built throughout Lancashire
-and about these factories important cities
-sprang up in which the modern problem
-of the relation of employer and employee
-had its beginning.</p>
-
-<p>The factory produced cloth more cheaply
-and in far greater quantity than was possible
-under the domestic system. Hand
-workers sought employment in the factories.
-Vast numbers of purely agricultural
-laborers left the rural districts for the manufacturing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>
-towns. And, augmenting this
-great supply of labor, came thousands of
-children—for an eight-year-old child was
-capable of operating a spinning-frame, in
-which, for this very reason, the spindles
-were set near to the floor. With an unlimited
-supply of labor, the cotton masters had
-only the cost of production to consider, and
-so it came about that they thought only of
-their profits and forgot the human hands
-which operated the machinery. England
-had fallen under the sway of a book—Adam
-Smith’s <cite>Wealth of Nations</cite>, which, as Southey
-said, “considers man as a manufacturing
-animal, estimating his importance not by
-the goodness and knowledge he possesses,
-not by his virtues and charities, not by the
-happiness of which he may be the source
-and centre, not by the duties to which he
-is called, not by the immortal destinies for
-which he is created, but by the gain that
-may be extracted from him or of which
-he may be made the instrument.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
-
-<p>The crowding of this vast laboring population
-into great industrial centres, however,
-gave rise to a class-consciousness which
-demanded that attention should be paid to
-the human element which distinguished
-labor from all other commodities, demanded
-that the cotton masters should
-no longer regard the workingman as a
-slave, or as merely a part of the machine,
-but as a free man, and which demanded
-further that this free man should be
-recognized as a citizen and given the right
-of suffrage.</p>
-
-<p>It would be interesting for us to follow
-the history of the factory where we now
-leave it, firmly established as the cornerstone
-of Great Britain’s wealth, down to
-the present time, and trace its development
-not only in England and America but
-throughout the civilized world. It is a surprising
-story of industrial progress, an important
-chapter in the social progress of
-mankind. But enough has already been said<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>
-to prepare us for the consideration of the
-way in which the establishment of the factory
-affected England’s laboring poor. The
-actual development of the cotton industry
-surpasses any dream that even the barber
-of Preston could have imagined when he
-exclaimed that he, unaided, would pay the
-national debt.</p>
-
-<p>Less than a century and a half ago,
-Richard Arkwright built his first little mill
-at Nottingham which gave employment to
-a dozen operatives. To-day there are one
-hundred great cotton factories in the city
-of Fall River alone, operating three and one
-half million spindles, nearly one hundred
-thousand looms, and giving employment to
-twenty-seven thousand operatives. There
-are more than twenty-five million spindles
-in daily operation in the United States, and
-even a greater number on the continent of
-Europe, while Great Britain contains over
-fifty million; and when to these we add
-the spindles of India, Japan, and China, we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>
-have a total of one hundred and twenty million
-spindles giving employment to an army
-of workers as great as the entire population
-of England when Arkwright took out
-his patents for spinning by rollers. Nor is
-this all. The factory system first applied to
-the cotton industry has been applied to all
-manufactures as well as to agriculture and
-has become the central fact in modern industrial
-life.</p>
-
-<p>We are now to take up the question
-of how the establishment of the factory
-affected England’s laboring poor, and to
-study a little more in detail the social
-effects of the Industrial Revolution. In
-preparing the way for this discussion we
-should remember that the factory was not
-the sole cause of the Industrial Revolution,
-although it was a very important
-one. Other elements besides the introduction
-of machinery had gradually made
-possible production on a large scale. Chief
-among these was the decline of state<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>
-regulation of industry, the development
-of rationalism quickening the scientific
-spirit, the growth of the empire and
-prestige of England which opened great
-export markets for the goods of British
-manufacture, the extension of banking facilities,
-and the construction of roads and
-canals. All these were elements in producing
-the Industrial Revolution. But what
-gave the movement force to revolutionize
-the social life of the common people was
-the factory, which gathered great masses
-of the population into industrial centres in
-which became possible the development
-of class consciousness.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V<br>
-THE FACTORY TOWNS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap">The dictionary contains the history
-of the race, if you search deep into
-its mysteries; every word tells its own story
-and bears its present meaning because men,
-at different times, thought precisely as they
-did and not otherwise.</p>
-
-<p>Servius Tullius made six divisions of the
-citizens of Rome for the purposes of taxation
-and these divisions were called classes.
-A seventh included the mass of the population,
-those who were not possessed of
-any taxable property—that is to say the
-laboring poor. It is from this circumstance
-that our word “class” derives its peculiar
-meaning. Now it is significant that before
-the great extension of manufactures occasioned
-by the factory, we find no reference<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>
-in our language to the working classes.
-The laboring poor belonged to no class;
-but when great cities grew up about the
-factories, populated by toilers whose interests
-in life were identical, the masses suddenly
-became conscious of their common
-life, their common needs, their common
-hopes. Blindly at first, and then more
-surely, they struggled for recognition as a
-class, and at last the struggle found expression
-in the language of their time.
-The arousing of this class consciousness
-amongst the workers I take to be the chief
-contribution of the factory to the social
-progress of mankind; and for this reason
-the rise of the manufacturing towns becomes
-a subject of great importance.</p>
-
-<p>In the town hall at Manchester there is
-a fresco by Ford Maddox Brown which
-bears the title of “The Establishment of
-Flemish Weavers in Manchester,” and
-shows Queen Philippa visiting the colony
-which she founded in 1363. Mr. George<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>
-Saintsbury, in his history of Manchester,
-questions the historical accuracy of the event
-portrayed; “but,” he adds, “Queen Philippa
-did many things which we should all be sorry
-to give up as art and literature and which,
-yet, are somewhat dubious history.”</p>
-
-<p>No one knows when Manchester first
-became a manufacturing town, and the introduction
-of Flemish artificers in the reign
-of Edward III is rather a probable than a
-certain starting-point. Nothing is distinctly
-known of the progress of woolen manufacture,
-until the reign of Henry VIII,
-at which time it had evidently grown into
-considerable importance. In the statute
-of the thirty-third year of his reign it appears
-that the inhabitants of Manchester
-carried on a considerable manufacture both
-of linens and woolens by which they were
-acquiring great wealth; but no mention has
-yet been found of cotton manufacture in
-that city earlier than the year 1641. By
-this time, however, it had become well
-established.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p>
-
-<p>The labor was entirely handicraft; and
-it was not until the establishment of the
-factory by Arkwright that Manchester and
-the other manufacturing towns of England
-came into prominence in the political life
-of the nation; indeed it was not until the
-nineteenth century was well advanced that
-the inhabitants of these cities were represented
-in Parliament.</p>
-
-<p>It has been held that the factory is an
-episode, not an element, in modern sociological
-development, and in a strict sense
-this is true. But because the factory led to
-the growth of great manufacturing towns
-and caused the migration thither of a vast
-population from the agricultural districts,
-and because it was among this population
-that the social discontent, which for a
-long period had existed in the lower classes,
-first became articulate, the factory directly
-contributed to the development of modern
-democracy.</p>
-
-<p>The factory transformed not only craftsmen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>
-into operatives, but agricultural laborers
-as well, the latter becoming for
-the first time free to dispose of their own
-labor; for while serfdom had been declared
-illegal long before the establishment of the
-factory, yet the peasant remained dependent,
-in a large measure, upon the good
-will of his employer and he was bound by
-custom if not by law to the soil he tilled.
-The migration of this vast laboring population
-from the fields to the towns led to
-far-reaching social results.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">“Meanwhile, at social Industry’s command</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">How quick and fast an increase! From the germ</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Of some poor hamlet, rapidly produced,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Here a large town, continuous and compact,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Hiding the face of earth for leagues—and there,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Where not a habitation stood before,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Abodes of men irregularly massed</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Like trees in forests—spread through spacious tracts,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">O’er which the smoke of unremitting fires</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Hangs permanent, and plentiful as wreaths</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Of vapor glittering in the morning sun.”</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-</div>
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p>
-<p>Thus Wordsworth in <cite>The Excursion</cite> describes
-the rise of the manufacturing
-towns.</p>
-
-<p>Our first concern is with the social conditions
-existing in these great manufacturing
-cities. The factory system was first
-applied to the spinning of yarn; but weaving
-continued, for a time, as a handicraft.
-This period was one of great prosperity to
-the hand-loom weavers. Before the invention
-of spinning-machinery, several spinners
-were required to furnish one loom with
-yarn; and one half of the weaver’s time
-was spent in waiting for work. This time
-was employed in farming. But with the
-establishment of the spinning-mills the
-situation was reversed, and the weaver,
-plentifully supplied with yarn, ceased to
-cultivate the soil and devoted his whole
-time to the loom, a far more profitable
-occupation.</p>
-
-<p>Villages of hand-loom weavers sprang
-up throughout the country adjacent to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
-manufacturing towns, and hither the master
-spinners sent their yarn and received
-back the finished cloth; while sometimes
-the weaving was done in “dandy” shops
-containing eight or ten and often as many
-as twenty looms. These little factories
-were usually owned by a single weaver who
-hired others to assist him in his work; but
-whatever the method, the profits from the
-business were always great.</p>
-
-<p>“One of the happiest sights in Lancashire
-life at this time,” writes a contemporary
-historian, “was the home of a
-family of weavers.... There could be
-heard the merry song to the tune of the
-clacking shuttles and the bumping of the
-lathes; the cottage surrounded with a
-garden filled with flowers and situated in
-the midst of green fields where the larks
-sang and the throstles whistled their
-morning adoration to the rising sun. The
-weaving thus carried on at home, where
-several persons of the same family and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>
-apprentices were employed, made them
-prosperous small manufacturers and a proud
-lot of people.” This was about 1800.</p>
-
-<p>“The trade of muslin weaver,” says a
-Bolton manufacturer of the same period,
-“was that of a gentleman. The weavers
-brought home their work in top boots and
-ruffled shirts; they had a cane and took a
-coach in some instances, and appeared as
-well as military officers of the first degree.
-They used to walk about the streets with
-a five-pound Bank of England note spread
-out under their hat-bands; they would
-smoke none but long churchwarden pipes,
-and objected to the intrusion of any other
-craftsman into the particular rooms of the
-public-houses which they frequented.”
-This abnormal prosperity, however, preceded
-their downfall. Two events were
-preparing it,—the invention of the power
-loom and the application of steam power
-to all the processes of manufacture.</p>
-
-<p>Before considering the condition of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>
-laboring population after the establishment
-of factories for weaving as well as for spinning,
-we should glance backward into the
-previous history of the laboring poor.
-During the prevalence of the feudal system
-the population of England was purely agricultural.
-The chief landed proprietors
-possessed a certain number of slaves who were
-employed generally in domestic service, but
-who also manufactured the wearing apparel
-and household furniture. “Priests are set
-apart for prayer,” says an ancient chronicle,
-“but it is fit that noble chevaliers
-should enjoy all ease, and taste all pleasures,
-while the laborer toils, in order that
-they may be nourished in abundance—they,
-and their horse, and their dogs.”
-This class of laborers, however, was never
-very large.</p>
-
-<p>The great body of the peasantry was
-composed, first, of persons who rented
-small farms, and who paid their rent either
-in kind or in agricultural labor; and secondly,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>
-of cottagers, each of whom had a
-small parcel of land attached to his dwelling,
-and the privilege of turning out a
-cow, or pigs, or a few sheep into the woods,
-commons and wastes of the manor. During
-this whole period the entire population
-derived its subsistence immediately
-from the land. The mechanics of each
-village, not having time to cultivate a
-sufficient quantity of land to yield them a
-sustenance, received a fixed annual allowance
-of produce from each tenant. The
-peasantry worked hard and fared scantily
-enough, but still there was never an absolute
-want of food; the whole body was
-poor, but it contained no paupers.</p>
-
-<p>During the fourteenth century the demand
-for wool not only to supply the
-markets of the Netherlands, but also the
-newly established manufacture of England,
-rapidly increased and the owners of the
-land found sheep-feeding more profitable
-than husbandry; and the sudden extension<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>
-of manufacture in the fifteenth century
-greatly increased the demand. This
-circumstance led to an important change
-in the distribution of the population and
-the peasants previously employed in tillage
-were turned adrift upon the world.
-The allotments of arable land which had
-formerly afforded them the means of subsistence
-were converted into sheep walks
-and this policy greatly accelerated a social
-revolution which had already commenced.
-It eventually led to a complete severance
-between the English peasantry and the
-English soil; and with the exception of
-those employed in domestic manufacture,
-the little farmers and cottiers of the country
-were converted into day laborers depending
-entirely upon wages for their subsistence.</p>
-
-<p>Thus when we come to consider the pitiable
-condition of the working classes, following
-the establishment of the factory, we
-must remember this underlying cause of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
-the poverty and suffering, holding in mind
-the fact that from the beginning the increase
-of English poor rates kept pace visibly
-with the progress of the enclosure of
-the common land. Complaints against
-vagrancy and idleness, and the difficulty of
-providing for the poor increased proportionately
-with the progress of the system of
-consolidating farms, and abstracting from
-the English cottager his crofts and rights
-to the common lands. Upon the factory
-has fallen the blame for social conditions
-which had their source in causes long
-antedating its establishment—but the
-factory has sufficient misery for which to
-answer.</p>
-
-<p>Arkwright’s inventions, as we have seen,
-took manufactures out of the cottages
-and farm houses of England and assembled
-them in factories. Thousands of hands
-were suddenly required especially in Lancashire,
-which until then was comparatively
-thinly populated. A great migration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>
-of population from the rural districts
-to the manufacturing towns was set in
-motion, thousands of families leaving the
-quiet life of the country for the intenser
-life of the city, but still the new demand
-for labor was unsatisfied. The custom
-sprang up of procuring apprentices from
-the parish workhouses of London, Birmingham,
-and elsewhere; and many thousand
-children between the ages of seven
-and fourteen years were thus sent to swell
-the numbers of the laboring population.
-Beside the factories stood apprentice houses
-in which the children were lodged and
-fed; and it was also the custom for the
-master manufacturer to furnish the apprentice
-with clothes.</p>
-
-<p>The work required of the children was
-exacting. The pay of the overseers was
-fixed in proportion to the work produced,
-a circumstance which bore hard on the
-apprentices. The greatest cruelties were
-practiced to spur the children to excessive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>
-labor; they were flogged, fettered, and
-in many cases they were starved and some
-were driven to commit suicide. We have
-it on the authority of Mr. John Fielding,
-himself, a master manufacturer and member
-of Parliament for Oldham, that the
-happiest moments in the lives of many of
-these children were those passed in the
-workhouse.</p>
-
-<p>The profits of manufacturing were enormous
-and so was the greed of the newborn
-manufacturing aristocracy. Night
-work was begun, the day shift going to
-sleep in the same beds that the night shift
-had just quitted, so that it was a common
-saying in Lancashire that the beds never got
-cold. Although the master manufacturers
-were unmoved by the dictates of humanity,
-they were not proof against the malignant
-fevers which broke out in the congested
-districts and spread their ravages throughout
-the manufacturing towns.</p>
-
-<p>Public opinion was soon aroused which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>
-led to the institution in Manchester of a
-board of health which in the year 1796
-made an interesting report. It appeared
-that the children and others working in the
-cotton factories were peculiarly disposed to
-the contagion of fever; and that large factories
-were generally injurious to those
-employed in them even when no particular
-disease prevailed, not only on account of
-the close confinement and the debilitating
-effect of the hot and impure air, but on
-account of the untimely labor of the night
-and the protracted hours of the working
-day.</p>
-
-<p>These conditions with respect to the
-children not only tended to diminish the
-sum of life by destroying the health and
-thus affecting the vital stamina of the rising
-generation; but it also encouraged idleness
-and profligacy in the parents, who, in many
-instances, lived upon the labor of their
-children. It further appeared that the children
-employed in factories were debarred<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
-from all opportunities of education as well
-as from moral and religious instruction. The
-investigation produced this report and nothing
-more—“when the dangers of infection
-were removed the precautions of mercy
-were forgotten.”</p>
-
-<p>Later, in the Parliamentary debate of
-1815, Mr. Horner, one of the early factory
-reformers, graphically described the practices
-of the apprentice system. He told
-how, with a bankrupt’s effects, a gang of
-workhouse children were put up for sale
-and publicly advertised as a part of the property;
-how a number of boys apprenticed
-by a parish in London to one manufacturer,
-had been transferred to another and
-in the process were left in a starving condition;
-how an agreement had been made
-between a London parish and a Lancashire
-manufacturer by which it was stipulated
-that with every twenty sound children one
-idiot should be taken.</p>
-
-<p>Among the master manufacturers who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>
-had been incredulous concerning these conditions
-until the alarm of contagion arose,
-was the first Sir Robert Peel. He made a
-personal investigation and saw the abominations
-of the system; he declared his
-convictions and introduced into Parliament
-the first legislative measure for the protection
-of children. This was in the year
-1802, and after many reverses he ultimately
-obtained the act known as the 42d Geo.
-III, “for the preservation of the Health
-and Morals of Apprentices and others, employed
-in Cotton and other mills.”</p>
-
-<p>This act is chiefly interesting because it
-established the principle of factory legislation,
-a principle which later in the century
-was greatly to promote the welfare of the
-masses. His first bill, however, referred only
-to apprentices and after its enactment children
-instead of being imported from the
-workhouses as formerly were nevertheless
-hired from their parents. Their services
-were dignified by the name of free labor,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>
-but because they were not accorded the
-protection given to apprentices their condition
-was little better than that of actual
-slavery.</p>
-
-<p>The next step in the progress of factory
-legislation was to extend the protection
-to young persons engaged in manual
-employment whether apprentices or not.
-Time does not permit us to follow the
-interesting history of factory legislation,
-under the devoted leadership of Mr. Horner,
-Sir John Hobhouse (afterwards Lord
-Broughton), Mr. Saddler, and Lord Astley
-(afterwards the Earl of Shaftesbury). But
-the evidences of the social condition of the
-toilers brought out by the Parliamentary
-debates of 1816, 1818, 1819, and 1832,
-are all of the same nature and reveal a
-state of human misery without a parallel in
-history.</p>
-
-<p>We turn now from child labor to the
-sanitary conditions of the manufacturing
-towns. The report printed by Doctor Kay<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>
-in 1832, is an astounding document; it
-shows that out of six hundred and eighty-seven
-streets inspected, more than one half
-contained heaps of refuse or stagnant pools;
-and of nearly seven thousand houses inspected,
-more than one third were out of repair,
-damp, or ill-ventilated, and an equally
-large proportion lacked all sanitary conveniences,
-even of the most primitive kind.</p>
-
-<p>The population lived on the simplest
-diet. Breakfast consisted of tea or coffee
-with a little bread, while sometimes the
-men had oatmeal porridge; dinner consisted
-generally of boiled potatoes heaped
-into one large dish over which melted lard
-was poured and sometimes a few pieces of
-fried fat bacon were added. Those who obtained
-higher wages or families whose aggregate
-income was large added a greater
-portion of animal food to this meal at least
-three times a week, but the quantity of
-meat consumed by the laboring population
-was not large.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span></p>
-
-<p>The typical family sat around the table,
-plunging their spoons into the common
-dish and with animal eagerness satisfied the
-cravings of their appetite. The evening
-meal consisted of tea, often mingled with
-spirits and accompanied by a little bread.
-The population thus scantily nourished was
-crowded in one dense mass in cottages,
-separated by narrow, unpaved streets, in an
-atmosphere loaded with smoke. Engaged
-in an employment which unremittingly
-exhausted their physical energies, these
-men and women lacked every moral and
-intellectual stimulus; living in squalid
-wretchedness and on meagre food it was
-small wonder that their superfluous gains
-were spent in debauchery. With domestic
-economy neglected, domestic comfort unknown,
-home had no other relation to the
-factory operative than that of a shelter. At
-this period the number of operatives above
-the age of forty was incredibly small.</p>
-
-<p>In a pamphlet printed during a great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>
-turnout in 1831, we find certain very interesting
-statistics concerning 1665 persons
-whose ages ranged between fifteen and
-sixty. Of these 1584 were under forty-five
-years of age, only fifty-one between forty-five
-and fifty were counted as fit for work,
-while only three had lived to be sixty years
-old. Such figures make it evident that
-large numbers of workers, prematurely unfitted
-for labor, came to live upon the toil
-of their own children. Nor was this all,
-for “puny and sickly parents gave birth
-to puny and sickly children, and thus the
-mischief continued its progress, one generation
-transmitting its accumulated evils to
-the next.”</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI<br>
-CHARTISM</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap">Such was the condition of the manufacturing
-population of England in the
-early days of the factory system. It is evident
-that these conditions must inevitably
-give rise to a deep social discontent which
-sooner or later must become articulate, and
-we find from the very beginning of the
-factory system the records of innumerable
-riots.</p>
-
-<p>The history of these disturbances begins
-with the opposition to the introduction
-of new machinery. Rebellious craftsmen
-bound themselves by fearful oaths into
-secret organizations, the members of which
-were known as Luddites, from the name of
-their legendary leader—Ben Ludd. His<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>
-name was the password to their secret meetings,
-at which plans were made for the
-destruction of property, plans afterwards
-carried out with open violence. Then followed
-innumerable riots arising from that
-growing social discontent which led in the
-beginning to factory legislation, and later
-to Parliamentary reform. It must not be
-thought that only the factory folk were
-discontented. The unrest was general
-throughout the lower classes; it was felt,
-moreover, in the ranks of the rapidly growing
-middle class, and the justice of the
-demand for better conditions was admitted
-now and then by individuals in the governing
-class—men of the broader vision. I
-have in my possession an interesting pamphlet
-containing the proceedings in the trial
-of indictment against Thomas Walker, a
-merchant of Manchester, and others, for a
-conspiracy to overthrow the constitution
-and government and to assist the French,
-the King’s enemies, should they invade<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>
-the Kingdom. The case was tried at the Assizes
-at Lancaster, in 1794, and the account
-throws light upon the true state of
-the public mind in Manchester at that
-time.</p>
-
-<p>Thomas Walker, so it appeared to his
-accusers, was a pernicious, seditious, and ill-disposed
-person, greatly disaffected to the
-King, and who did in the hearing of divers
-liege subjects utter the words: “What are
-kings! Damn the King!” Moreover, Mr.
-Thomas Walker was a member of the
-Manchester Reformation Society, a body
-composed chiefly of working people. They
-met at a public house—the Old Boar’s
-Head, where the works of Tom Paine were
-read aloud over innumerable pots of ale;
-and a correspondence was carried on with
-the Society of the Friends of the People
-in London and with other more questionable
-organizations. The publican, warned
-by the magistrates that he must no longer
-give entertainment to this society, turned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>
-the reformers into the streets, whereupon
-they sought shelter in the warehouse of Mr.
-Walker. Here it was alleged they were
-trained in the use of firearms; and here one
-night they were attacked by members of
-the Church and King Club, and a riot ensued.
-The Reformation Society, however,
-maintained that the sole object of their
-meetings was to obtain, by constitutional
-means, an adequate representation of the
-people in Parliament.</p>
-
-<p>Discontent continues rife in Manchester,
-increasing with each year, and at last we
-come to an event which typifies to all time
-this upward struggle of toiling humanity—the
-massacre on St. Peter’s Field which
-occurred on the 16th of August, 1819.
-Throughout the whole preceding summer,
-on account of the distressed condition of
-trade, discontent had been rife in the manufacturing
-towns; agitation was at white
-heat; and the voice of the demagogue was
-heard with that of the conscientious reformer.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>
-It was proposed to hold at Manchester
-on the 9th of August an immense meeting to
-consider the election by the unrepresented
-inhabitants of Manchester of a Parliamentary
-delegate; but the purpose of this meeting
-was declared illegal and it was prohibited
-by the authorities. Then another
-meeting was advertised to take place on
-the 16th of August, the stated object being
-to consider the most legal and effectual
-means of obtaining Parliamentary reform.
-It was said that this meeting was attended
-by over one hundred thousand persons.</p>
-
-<p>Several of the divisions that composed
-the assembly came upon the field in regular
-military formations, accompanied by
-bands of music and preceded by banners
-bearing such mottoes as “Equal Representation
-or Death.” Many of the marchers
-were armed with bludgeons. Most of the
-columns, however, marched in silence; and
-except for the loud shouts of defiance on
-the appearance of the yeomen cavalry, sent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>
-to disperse the meeting, there was no disturbance
-on the part of the populace.</p>
-
-<p>The assembly was in charge of Henry
-Hunt, the famous radical, who, mounting
-the platform which had been erected upon
-a cart had just commenced his opening
-speech when the civil authorities attempted
-to arrest him. This the mob resisted,
-whereupon the yeoman cavalry shouting,
-“Have down with their banners!” charged
-upon the field, put the crowds to flight, and
-in the disorder which followed, a number
-were killed and many were wounded.</p>
-
-<p>Says Carlyle: “Who shall compute the
-waste and loss, the obstruction of every sort,
-that was produced in the Manchester region
-by Peterloo alone. Some thirteen unarmed
-men and women cut down—the number
-of the slain and maimed is very countable;
-but the treasury of rage, burning hidden
-or visible in all hearts ever since, is of unknown
-extent. ‘How ye came among us, in
-your cruel armed blindness, ye unspeakable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
-County Yeomanry, sabres flourishing, hoofs
-prancing, and slashed us down at your brute
-pleasure; deaf, blind to all our claims, and
-woes and wrongs; of quick sight and sense
-to your own claims only. There lie poor
-sallow, workworn weavers, and complain
-no more now; women themselves are
-slashed and sabred, howling terror fills the
-air; and ye ride prosperous, very victorious,—ye
-unspeakable: Give us sabres too
-and then come on a little!’”</p>
-
-<p>The treasury of rage burning hidden
-became visible to all. Chartism—the demand
-of the people for equal political
-rights—sprang into being; the outward
-and visible sign of inward suppressed discontent
-filled the manufacturing towns
-with unrestrained murmurings, and government
-felt the castle of privilege trembling
-at its foundation. Some days later Sidmouth,
-writing from Whitehall, congratulated
-the yeomanry in the name of the
-Prince Regent for their effective services in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>
-preserving public tranquillity. Public tranquillity
-indeed! The cries of those stricken
-weavers shall yet shake the empire of
-Britain.</p>
-
-<p>Peterloo was typical of the discontent
-which had spread throughout the laboring
-population of England. Parliament
-was assembled in special session to consider
-the state of the country and to enact measures
-for the suppression of disorder. Lord
-Grenfell in a brilliant speech discussed sedition,
-declaring that the whole nation
-was inundated with inflammatory publications
-intended to stimulate the multitude
-to acts of savage violence against all who
-were eminent for birth or rank, for talent
-or virtue. Mr. Canning placed the blame
-entirely upon discontented radicals, underrating
-the wide-spread demand for parliamentary
-reform, and advocated the acts
-which were passed prohibiting meetings
-like the one held in Manchester, and in
-other ways restricting the liberties of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>
-masses in discussing social conditions. All
-of these acts tended to increase the discontent
-and hasten forward that reform
-which alone could save England from
-revolution.</p>
-
-<p>All famous Englishmen, however, did
-not view Peterloo with the eyes of Lord
-Grenfell or Mr. Canning. Writing to
-Thomas Love Peacock, Shelley said:
-“Many thanks for your attention in sending
-the papers which contained the terrible
-and important news of Manchester.
-These are, as it were, the distant thunders
-of the terrible storm which is approaching.
-The tyrants here, as in the French Revolution,
-have first shed blood. May their
-execrable lessons not be learnt with equal
-docility.” Inspired by the Manchester
-massacre, Shelley wrote “The Masque of
-Anarchy,” the spirit of which is summed
-up in these stanzas:—</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">“Men of England, heirs of Glory,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Heroes of unwritten story,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>
- <div class="verse indent0">Nurselings of one mighty Mother,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Hopes of her, and one another;</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">“Rise like Lions after slumber</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">In unvanquishable number,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Shake your chains to earth like dew</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Which in sleep has fallen on you—</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Ye are many—they are few.”</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>And in the same year he wrote:—</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">“Men of England, wherefore plough</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">For the Lords who lay ye low?</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Wherefore weave with toil and care</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">The rich robes your tyrants wear?</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">“Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">From the cradle to the grave,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Those ungrateful drones who would</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">“The seed ye sow, another reaps;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">The wealth ye find, another keeps;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">The robes ye weave, another wears;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">The arms ye forge, another bears.</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">“Sow seed,—but let no tyrant reap;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Find wealth,—let no impostor heap;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Weave robes,—let not the idle wear;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Forge arms,—in your defense to bear.”</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-</div>
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span></p>
-<p>Fortunately the appeal to arms was unnecessary.
-The working classes of England
-were destined to exemplify Shelley’s lesson,—but
-by peaceful means,—were destined
-to teach the world the great truth that the
-many, if accordant and resolute, can always
-control the few. And this peaceful conquest
-is recorded in the history of Chartism.</p>
-
-<p>I have known many labor agitators living
-in the City of the Dinner Pail, and
-almost without exception these men were
-the sons of English Chartists. From them
-I had learned to honor the early British
-labor agitator, and to give to the name of
-pothouse politician something more than a
-contemptuous meaning. At the Old Boar’s
-Head, in Manchester, and at many another
-less famous public house in the manufacturing
-cities, groups of workingmen gathered,
-evening after evening to discuss their
-wrongs; and over many a pot of ale, and
-through many a cloud of tobacco smoke,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>
-there emerged at last certain definite demands
-for reform.</p>
-
-<p>Workingmen and radicals joined hands;
-liberal leaders combined with working-class
-leaders, and presently there was issued the
-famous Charter with its six points,—manhood
-suffrage, annual parliaments, the ballot,
-abolition of property qualifications, payment
-of members, and equality of electoral
-districts. A very sober programme this, but
-popular leaders like Fergus O’Connor and
-Ernest Jones with incendiary oratory gave
-it a revolutionary aspect.</p>
-
-<p>So the discontent grew year by year, and
-year by year it gathered force. Events in
-France and elsewhere on the continent
-excited the imagination of the governing
-classes, and every meeting place of workingmen
-appeared to be bristling with firearms,
-but still the movement grew, and at
-last the workingmen were ready with their
-petition to Parliament. When, on the morning
-of the 10th of April, 1848, bands of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>
-Chartists began to gather on Kennington
-Common, carrying red banners and tricolors,
-all London was astir with excitement.
-Government had taken precaution for its
-defense; the guns of the Tower were manned
-and loaded; the employees of the post-office
-were supplied with two thousand rifles; the
-bank was surrounded with artillery; and behind
-sand-bags piled upon its roof stood a
-regiment of infantry. The bridges and approaches
-to Westminster were defended by
-an army of ten thousand horse, foot, and
-artillery, while the six thousand police of
-London lined the streets, supported by an
-army of special constables. And in command
-of this elaborate defense of the city
-against four thousand unarmed workingmen
-assembled on Kennington Common
-to bear a petition to Parliament, was none
-other than the Iron Duke himself—Wellington.
-Surely the voice of the pothouse
-politicians had been heard throughout England;
-it had penetrated the halls of government—what<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>
-need had the reformers for
-powder and shot? And must we not believe
-that when five years later the great
-reform was enacted, credit for that event
-was in some measure due to the resolute
-and accordant factory folk? Yes, the wheels
-and spindles of which Arkwright dreamed
-brought something more than material
-wealth to England; his vision made the nation
-rich and powerful and his vision likewise
-gave to the masses equal political
-rights.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII<br>
-THE FACTORY AND SOCIAL<br>
-PROGRESS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap">We have now traced the history of the
-factory, from its beginning with
-the inventions of Arkwright down to its
-permanent establishment in the first half
-of the last century, and we have noted its
-influence upon the social life of England.
-We have seen how, as early as the fifteenth
-century, the introduction of manufactures
-assisted in breaking down the feudal system,
-and how, by making possible the accumulation
-of wealth by men of humble
-birth, it contributed to the rise of the
-middle class. We have further seen that at
-the close of the eighteenth century the introduction
-of machinery intensified these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
-tendencies and exerted a powerful influence
-on the development of our modern
-democracy.</p>
-
-<p>We have, however, confined our attention
-to a single industry as it developed in
-a particular nation,—we have taken the
-cotton factory as typical of all factories
-and its growth in England as typical of
-its growth throughout the Western world.
-But the factory has developed differently
-in each industry and its social influence
-has never been quite alike in any two nations.
-When, for instance, Samuel Slater
-introduced cotton manufacturing into
-America, he set up in Rhode Island an
-exact counterpart of the English factory.
-When, later, other factories were built in
-New England there took place the same
-transition of a vast laboring population
-from the rural districts to the manufacturing
-towns;—but this population was very
-unlike the manufacturing population of
-England. The American factories were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>
-operated by the sons and daughters of
-Yankee farmers, reared in the atmosphere
-of democracy and springing from a race
-unaffected by the traditions of feudalism;
-for them political equality had been already
-won, yet even in America the factory became
-an instrument for social progress. In
-the rapidly growing manufacturing towns
-these country folk found a new life of opportunity
-for social advancement; they did
-not remain operatives long, but advanced
-to higher callings; and to take the places
-which they left, thousands of workers came
-from Lancashire here to enjoy that civic
-freedom for which their brothers in the
-Old World were still contending. To-day
-in our Southern States we see a similar process
-at work,—another race of men advancing
-in the social scale by means of the
-factory; from the mountains of the Carolinas
-thousands of young men and women,
-reared in a civilization almost unbelievably
-primitive, are flocking to the manufacturing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>
-towns, there to enjoy the advantages
-of modern life. But however varied
-have been the phases of the development
-of the factory in different parts of the world
-there has always been this common phenomenon—the
-concentration of the laboring
-population in manufacturing cities and
-the development of social discontent leading
-to social progress.</p>
-
-<p>The nineteenth century was the age of
-Power Discovered; mechanical inventions,
-the concentration of industry, the extension
-of the factory system, new means of
-transportation destroyed the last vestige of
-the feudal world and left the democratic
-ideal triumphant but unfulfilled: a new
-century dawns,—the age of Power Humanized.
-The industrial world in which
-we live, with all its peculiar characteristics,
-has been built upon the ruins of the feudal
-order, and in due time will give place to
-a newer and better civilization. Radicals
-of to-day see visions of to-morrow; reformers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>
-fired by the visions seek to make
-them real; while conservatives, clinging
-to the traditions of a dead past, strive to
-stay the inevitable progress of mankind.
-Truth never changes, but the knowledge
-of truth grows deeper with each age; no
-political institution, no social institution
-is sacred unless it is founded upon some
-eternal truth, and all human institutions
-must change with the increasing knowledge
-of mankind. Everywhere in the
-Western world the condition of the laboring
-population is vastly better to-day than
-when, a century and a half ago, the factory
-was established; vastly better than when,
-sixty years ago, the governments of Europe
-trembled before a working-class revolt,—when
-British Chartism triumphed in reform;
-when Karl Marx, exiled from Prussia,
-called upon the workingmen of the
-world to unite; when Mazzini, another
-exile in London, preached to the toilers of
-Italy the gospel of God and humanity,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>
-of progress through education. But the
-evolution is incomplete, and the discontent
-of the laboring population still remains
-a vital force in the upward progress of
-mankind.</p>
-
-<p>To-day we in America are confronted
-by the amazing spread of Socialism; Socialism
-which the radicals preach, the reformers
-seek to establish, and the conservatives
-fear. We cannot evade its issues,
-for Socialism is something more than a
-political creed,—it is the modern expression
-of that same spirit of human progress
-which destroyed slavery in the ancient
-world, serfdom in the middle ages and,
-creating modern democracy, cannot rest
-until it has guaranteed to all men not only
-equal political rights but equal social rights.
-Two men, smoke-room companions of
-mine during a Pacific voyage, stand for
-the contending ideals of the feudal and the
-modern world. One was a noble earl, the
-other a British tea merchant; both were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>
-men of wealth,—the one of large but unproductive
-estates, the other of a great
-business giving employment to thousands
-of men. Of the two, the tea merchant,
-though lacking in fine manners, was the
-more important person; yet he would not
-have exchanged those hours of familiar
-gossip with the noble earl for more chests
-of tea than would fill the hold of the ship.
-And there was a reason for this feeling,
-because the Groom of the Bedchamber
-stood for that aristocracy of culture and
-good manners which has an important
-value in any society. Under the militant
-structure of society this value belonged to
-the few; in our present democracy it has
-become increasingly the privilege of the
-many. Public education, public libraries,
-public art galleries, the perfected art of
-printing have opened the highest culture
-to children of the humblest birth. May we
-not, then, look forward to the time when
-“the best that has anywhere been in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>
-world shall be the lot of every man born
-into it”—that is to say, the lot of every
-man who desires the best?</p>
-
-<p>Every thinking man must admit that
-there is something wrong in our present
-industrial régime. The progress of avowed
-Socialism and the more rapid progress of
-particular socialistic ideas indicate quite
-clearly that we Americans are alive to the
-unequal social conditions which now exist
-and are anxious to find a remedy. But
-whatever may be the utopian dreams of
-the reformers, all immediate progress must
-be made in the industrial world as we find
-it to-day; the industrial state of the Socialist
-is too remote in time,—our task
-is with social conditions as they now exist.
-The splendid machinery of production
-created during the last century must not
-be destroyed, but utilized for the benefit
-of mankind. The question which we have
-now to ask ourselves is this: What is
-the ultimate purpose for which the business<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>
-of the world is conducted, what the
-real purpose of all this planting and reaping,
-this mining and manufacturing, this
-exchanging of commodities? Is it not,
-primarily, to furnish each human creature
-with food, shelter, and clothing,—the
-means of supporting life? Men require
-something more than the mere means of
-subsistence; but before the individual
-can cultivate his mind and soul his body
-must be made comfortable, and this, after
-all, is the whole end of our complex commercial
-régime. The test of right and
-wrong conduct in business refers to this
-fundamental purpose,—that conduct only
-is praiseworthy which advances the time
-when every man capable of industry shall
-be rewarded for his labor, not only with
-a loaf of bread, but with hours of fruitful
-leisure.</p>
-
-<p>Captains of Industry! that was a noble
-title Carlyle gave to the prosaic business
-man, when gazing beyond the squalid<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>
-turmoil of his day with its dominant
-industrialism, triumphant mercantilism,
-doctrines of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">laissez-faire</i>, overproduction,
-surplus population, he with clear vision
-foresaw the future freedom of the masses
-won through their own strength and the
-ability of their leaders. Until Richard
-Arkwright was born, the leaders of men in
-their progress towards human freedom had
-been soldiers; henceforward they were to
-be men of affairs. Great soldiers won their
-victory by the loyalty they inspired in
-their followers; no adventurer seeking
-personal glory ever won a lasting victory,
-but only those heroes, forgetful of themselves
-who consecrated their service to the
-cause of freedom. In such wise must
-Captains of Industry win their victories;
-the adventurer can but for a time prevail;
-fame is secure only to those leaders who
-see in wealth accumulated a treasure held
-in trust from which they are to feed and
-clothe the armies that they lead to peaceful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>
-conquests. Social reformers of sentimental
-temper have deemed the comparison
-between the modern employer of labor
-and the feudal lord as ill-chosen, but
-history seems to justify it. Yet we have,
-indeed, gone far since the Middle Ages.
-When the feudal lord demanded loyalty
-from his retainers the demand was alone
-sufficient, but the Captain of Industry, in
-order to obtain the loyalty of the toilers,
-must not only demand but deserve it; he
-too must be loyal to the great cause he
-serves—the eternal cause of human freedom.</p>
-
-
-<p class="center">THE END</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span></p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="center fs80">The Riverside Press<br>
-CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS<br>
-U · S · A<br>
-</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<div class="transnote">
-
-<h2>Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
-
-<ul>
-<li>pg 54 Added period after: three hundred years before, not soldiers, but serfs</li>
-<li>pg 72 Changed who paid their rent either in kind or in agicrultural to: agricultural</li>
-<li>Many hyphenated and non-hyphenated word combinations left as written.</li>
-</ul>
-
-</div>
-
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