THE STANDARD OF LIVING DEBATE:
A DOCUMENT BASED ESSAY ACTIVITY
FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS
Brenda Santos
Bronx Leadership Academy High School
Bronx, NY
NEH Summer Seminar 2000
Historical Interpretations of the Industrial Revolution in Britain
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth at the University of Nottingham
Letter to the Teacher
This activity applies the philosophy that students learn best through inquiry. The goal is to guide
students through a thorough and complex investigation of historical evidence which culminates
in the formation of their own conclusions regarding a debated historical issue. The following
Document Based Essay Activity poses the question: Was the impact of the Industrial Revolution
on the standard of living of the working class positive or negative? Students are provided with a
variety of documents; some illustrate an improvement in the standard of living, while others
reveal the detrimental effect of industrialization on the living standard of the working classes.
The documents vary in difficulty, some requiring very careful analysis to assess the meaning and
usefulness of the evidence, and others allowing for differences of interpretation. The goal of the
student writing this Document Based Essay is to analyze the evidence, and use it to support his
or her thesis, in other words his or her response to the question. A sophisticated essay should not
ignore viewpoints which oppose its thesis, but instead point out contradictory evidence and
explain why the more convincing evidence leads to the thesis of the essay and not the opposite
interpretation. In preparation for this activity, the students should gain familiarity with the topic
of industrialization in Britain and the major issues involved with this period of transition. It is
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suggested that this activity be utilized as a culminating project by the whole class or individual
students. Of course, adaptation for the needs of each specific class is best.
There are various ways in which this project can be adapted to the needs of different classes.
With some students it may be appropriate to select one or a few of the documents for closer
analysis. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration provide a useful worksheet for
document analysis on line at:
http://www.archives.gov/digitaI_classroom/lessons/analysisworksheets/document.html
To focus specifically on the paintings featured in the Document Based Activity, project the
image in the classroom, and allow students to make observations, first objective statements about
what they see and then subjective statements about what the painting might indicate. A teacher
may also decide to do a "jigsaw" activity. In order to facilitate this activity, divide the students
into groups and direct each group to analyze one of a selection of the documents. Then
reconfigure the groups so that each new group contains one member of each of the former
groups. Now students may combine their expertise in order to discuss the question of living
standard. In some classes, an organized debate might be an appropriate method of approaching
this activity. Another effective activity for engaging students with the documents is the
"document shuffle," a method developed by Robert DiLorenzo, a master teacher at DeWitt
Clinton High School, Bronx, NY. Students, in groups, are provided with a packet of documents,
each on a separate sheet of paper, and must determine into what two categories the documents
fall. By dividing the documents and naming the categories, students analyze each document and
assess the relationship between the different pieces of evidence, gaining an understanding of how
the evidence frames a debate between two different points of view.
The goal of this activity is to engage students in historical analysis. By participating in the
process of historical inquiry and investigation, students will gain a better understanding not
merely of the events and issues of history but also of what history as a discipline really is. The
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documents and their presentation enrich the experience of learning history, a subject many high
school students associate with a large, heavy book.
Directions: Using the following documents and your knowledge of history, write an essay which
addresses the question posed below. Read carefully, and remember to define important terms,
brainstorm outside information, and outline your main points before writing. The body of the
essay must support your thesis with clear references to the documents.
Historical Context Britain is the undisputed birthplace of industrialization. At the turn of the
eighteenth century, the country was experiencing gradual but significant and sustained changes
in the methods and intensity of production. This was not merely an economic revolution, though.
The deeper significance of this revolution was its social consequences, in its own day and into
the future. Britain's philosophers and governors have been much consumed by thought and
discussion about the implications and repercussions of this fate. At the forefront of this discourse
is the standard of living debate. Contemporaries of the industrial period, Robert Southey and
Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay were contributors to the competing and ideologically
opposed publications, the conservative Quarterly Review and the radical Edinburgh Review,
respectively. Although these two never debated directly, their writings reflected the national
disagreement over the impact of industrialization on the standard of living of the common
Briton. While Macaulay has been called "the first optimist" for his high hopes for industrialized
society under laissez faire capitalism, Southey represents a more pessimistic view of
uncontrolled capitalism in the industrial world, arguing that government must respond to the
social problems caused by industrialism. At the root of this debate is the much disputed question
of how industrialization affected the standard of living of the working people.
Was the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the standard of living of the working class
positive or negative? Support your answer with evidence from the documents and from your own
knowledge.
Document I
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Daniel Defoe (1659? 173 1), A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 3 vols. 1724 -26,
11, from The Factory System, Vol. 1, Birth and Growth.
...Then it was I began to perceive the reason and nature of the thing, and found that this division
of the land into small pieces, and scattering of the dwellings, was occasioned by, and done for
the convenience of the business which the people were generally employ'd in, and that, as I said
before, though we saw no people stirring without doors, yet they were all full within; for, in
short, this whole country, however mountainous, and that no sooner we were down one hill but
we mounted another, is yet infinitely full of people; those people all full of business; not a
beggar, not an idle person to be seen, except here and there an alms house, where people antient,
decrepid, and past labour, might perhaps be found; for it is observable, that the people here,
however laborious, generally live to a great age, a certain testimony to the goodness and
wholesomness of the country, which is, without doubt, as healthy as any part of England; nor is
the health of the people lessen'd, but help'd and establish'd by their being constantly employ'd,
and, as we call it, their working hard; so that they find a double advantage by their being always
in business... This business is the clothing trade...Document 2
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 97), The Blacksmith's Shop 1771,
50 1/2 x 41 in. (128.3 x 104.1 cm)
Document 3
Letter To the Editors of the Leeds Mercury, by "A Briton," Fixby Hall, near Huddersfield, Sept.
29, 1830. Leeds Mercury, 16 October 1830;
from The Factory System, Vol. 11: The Factory System and Society
... Gentlemen, No heart responded with truer accents to the sounds of liberty which were heard in
the Leeds Cloth hall Yard, on the 22nd instant, than did mine, and from none could more sincere
and earnest prayers arise to the throne of Heaven, that hereafter slavery might only be known to
Britain in the Pages of her history. One shade alone obscured my pleasure, arising not from any
difference in principle, but from the want of application of the general principle to the whole
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empire. The pious and able champions of negro liberty and colonial rights should, if I mistake
not, have gone farther than they did; or perhaps, to speak more correctly, before they had
traveled so far as the West Indies should, at least for a few moments, have sojourned in our own
immediate neighbourhood, and have directed the attention of the meeting to scenes of misery,
acts of oppression, and victims of slavery, even on the threshold of our homes. Let truth speak
out, appalling as the statement may appear. The fact is true. Thousands of our fellow creatures
and fellow subjects, both male and female, the miserable inhabitants of a Yorkshire town,
(Yorkshire now represented in Parliament by the giant of anti slavery principles) are this very
moment existing in a state of slavery, more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system
'colonial slavery'. These innocent creatures drawl out, un pitied, their short but miserable
existence, in a place famed for its profession of religious zeal, whose inhabitants are ever
foremost in professing 'temperance' and 'reformation', and are striving to outrun their neighbours
in missionary exertions, and would fain send the Bible to the farthest comer of the globe aye, in
the very place where the anti slavery fever rages most furiously, her apparent charity is not more
admired on earth, than her real cruelty is abhorred in Heaven. The very streets which receive the
droppings of an 'Anti Slavery Society' are every morning wet by the tears of innocent victims at
the accursed shrine of avarice, who are compelled (not by the cart whip of the negro slave driver)
but by the dread of the equally appalling thong or strap of the over looker, to hasten, half
dressed, but not half fed, to those magazines of British infantile slavery the worsted mills in the
town and neighbourhood of Bradford!!! Document 4
Dr. Andrew Ure (1778 1857), The Philosophy of Manufactures, London, 1835. From the
pamphlet, "The Gregs and the Factory System at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal."
At a distance from the factory stands a handsome house, two storeys high, built for the
accommodation of the apprentices. Here are well fed, clothed, educated and lodged under kind
superintendence 60 young girls.
The female apprentices at Quarry Bank mill come partly from its own parish, partly from
Chelsea, but chiefly from the Liverpool workhouse. The proprietors have engaged a man and a
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woman who take car of them in every way; also a school master and school mistress and a
medical practitioner.... Document 5
Dr. Andrew Ure (1778 1857), The Philosophy of Manufactures: or, An Exposition of the
Scientific, Moral, and Commerical Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain, 1835, 5 8,
13 14, 17 19, from The Factory System, Vol. 1: Birth and Growth
... The blessings which physico mechanical science has bestowed on society, and the means it
has still in store for ameliorating the lot of mankind, has been too little dwelt upon; while, on the
other hand, it has been accused of lending itself to the rich capitalists as an instrument for
harassing the poor, and of exacting from the operative an accelerated rate of work. It has been
said, for example, that the steam engine now drives the power-looms with such velocity as to
urge on their attendant weavers at the same rapid pace; but that the hand weaver, not being
subjected to this restless agent, can throw his shuttle and move his treddles at his convenience.
There is, however, this difference in the two cases, that in the factory, every member of the loom
is so adjusted, that the driving force leaves the attendant nearly nothing at all to do, certainly no
muscular fatigue to sustain, while it procures for him hood, unfailing wages, besides a healthy
workshop gratis: whereas the non factory weaver, having everything to execute by muscular
exertion, finds the labour irksome, makes in consequence innumerable short pauses, separately
of little account, but great when added together; earns therefore proportionally low wages, while
he loses his health by poor diet and the dampness of his hovel. Dr. Carbutt of Manchester says,
"With regard to Sir Robert Peel's assertion a few evenings ago, that the hand loom weavers are
mostly small farmers, nothing can be a greater mistake; they live, or rather they just keep life
together, in the most miserable manner, in the cellars and garrets of the town, working sixteen or
eighteen hours for the merest pittance.
The constant aim and effect of scientific improvement in manufactures are philanthropic, as to
tend to relieve the workmen either from niceties of adjustment which exhaust his mind and
fatigue his eyes, or from painful repetition of efforts which distort or wear out his frame....
... In my recent tour, continued during several months, through the manufacturing districts, I
have seen tens of thousands of old, young, and middle aged of both sexes, many of them too
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feeble to get their daily bread by any of the former modes of industry, earning abundant food,
raiment, and domestic accommodation, without perspiring at a single pore, screened meanwhile
from the summer's sun and the winter's frost, in apartments more airy and salubrious than those
of the metropolis in which our legislative and fashionable aristocracies assemble. In those
spacious halls the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads of willing
menials, and assigns to each the regulated task, substituting for painful muscular effort on their
part, the energies of his own gigantic arm, and demanding in return only attention and dexterity
to correct such little aberrations as casually occur in his workmanship. The gentle docility of this
moving force qualifies it for impelling the tiny bobbins of the lace machine with a precision and
speed inimitable by the most dexterous hands, directed by the sharpest eyes. Hence, under its
auspices, and in obedience to Arkwright's polity, magnificent edifices, surpassing far in number,
value, usefulness, and ingenuity of construction, the boasted monuments of Asiatic, Egyptian,
and Roman despotism, have, within the short period of fifty years, risen up in this kingdom, to
show to what extent capital, industry, and science may augment the resources of a state, while
they meliorate the condition of its citizens....
.
Document 6
Peter Gaskell (1806 41), Artisans and Machinery: The Moral and Physical Condition of the
Manufacturing Population considered with reference to Mechanical Substitutes for Human
Labor, ix, 1 2, 61, 66 7, 78, 103, 104, 162, 164 5, 166, 172, 231, 262, 264, 268 9, 276, 277-8.
1836. from The Factory System, Vol. 11: The Factory System and Society
... The employment of children in manufactories ought not to be looked upon as an evil till the
present moral and domestic habits of the population are completely reorganized. So long as
home education is not found for them, they are to some extent better situated when engaged in
light labour, and the labour generally is light which falls to their share. The duration of mill
labour, from the natural state of the body during growth, and where there is a previous want of
healthy development, is too long.
.
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Document 7
Sir Edwin Chadwick (1800 1890), Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population
and on the Means of its Improvement, 1842, 240 4, from The Factory System, Vol. 1: Birth and
Growth
.....The chief advantages of the improved arrangements of the places of work were, on the side of
the workpeople, improved health; security for females and for the young against the dangers of
fatal accidents, and less fatigue in the execution of the same amount of work. But beyond these
the arrangement of the work in one room had moral advantages of high value. The bad manners
and immoralities complained of as attendant on assemblages of workpeople of both sexes in
manufactories, generally occur, as may be expected, in small rooms and places where few are
employed, and that are secluded from superior inspection and from common observation. But
whilst employed in this one large room, the young are under the inspection of the old; the
children are in many instances under the inspection of parents, and all under the observation of
the whole body of workers, and under the inspection of the employer. It was observed that the
moral condition of the females in this room stood comparatively high. It would scarcely be
practicable to discriminate the moral effects arising from one cause where several are in
operation; but it was stated by ministers that there were fewer cases of illegitimacy and less vice
observable among the population engaged in this manufactory than amongst the surrounding
population of the labouring class. The comparative circumstances of that population were such
as, when examined, would establish the conclusion that it must be so.
.
Document 8
British Parliamentary Papers: Children's Employment (MINES) 1842 Volumes XV, XVI, and
XVII (Reprinted by Irish University Press, Volumes 6, 7, and 8.)
Employment of Women and Children in Mines and Collieries, Speech by Lord Ashley in the
House of Commons, June 7, 1842.
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Again, Mr. James Wright says and here I am very anxious for the attention of the House, because
I would entreat them to observe how the mischief is first engender, and then perpetuated by the
toleration of these practices. Women are allowed to work below [the pits], and because they are
so, the evils here stated, continue without abatement: a man would complain and resist, but a
woman is submissive"I feel confident (he says) that the exclusion of females will advantage the colliers in a physical
point of view, inasmuch as the males will not work on bad roads (females are wrought only
where no man can be induced to draw or work; they are mere beasts of burden). This will force
the alteration of the economy of the mines."
But now mark the effect of the system on women: it causes a total ignorance of all domestic
duties; they know nothing that they ought to know; they are rendered unfit for the duties of
women by overwork, and become utterly demoralized. In the male the moral effects of the
system are very sad, but in the female they are infinitely worse, not alone upon themselves, but
upon their families, upon society, and, I may add, upon the country itself It is bad enough if you
corrupt the man, but if you corrupt the woman, you poison the waters of life at the very fountain.
Sir, it appears that they are wholly disqualified from even learning how to discharge the duties of
wife and mother.
.
Document 9
Report of the Children's Employment Commission, May 1842, Source 19 from Caphouse
Colliery Study Pack, National Coal Mining Museum of England.
No. 206. Fanny Drake, aged 15. Examined at Overton, near Wakefield, May 9th: -
I have been 6 years last September in a pit. I work at Charlesworth's Wood Pit. I hurry by myself
, I have hurried to dip side for four or five months. I find it middling hard. It has been a very wet
pit before the engine was put up. I have had to hurry up to the calves of my legs in water. It was
as bad as this a fortnight at a time; and this was for half a year, last winter; my feet were skinned,
and just as if they were scalded, for the water was bad: it had stood some time; and I was off my
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work owing to it, and had a headache and bleeding at my nose. I go down at 6, and sometimes 7;
and I come out at 5, and sometimes 6; at least the banksman has told me it was 6, and after 6, but
there's no believing him. We stop at 12; but we have often to go into hole to work at the dinnerhour. We stop to rest half an hour, and odd times longer. I stop to rest at hole with the getter, and
there is none else with us. I don't like it so well. Its cold, and there's no pan [fire] in the pit. I'd
rather be out of pits altogether. I'd rather wait on my grandmother. I push with my head
sometimes, it makes my head sore sometimes, so that I cannot bear it touched: it is soft too. I
have often had headaches, and colds, and coughs, and sore throats. I cannot read, I can say my
letters. I work for James Greenwood; he is no kin to me. I have a singlet and a shift and petticoat
on in the pit. I have had a pair of trousers. The getter I work with wears a flannel waistcoat when
he is poorly, but when he is quite well he wears nothing at all. It is about 32 inches high where
we hurry, and in some places a yard. [This girl is 4 feet 5 1Ž 2 in. in height, and she looked very
healthy.
.
Document 10
Report on Children's Employment: Mines 1842 Volume 7, p. 218 9.
Document 11
Rule, John. The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England, 1750-1850. Essex: Longman
Group UK Limited, 1986, p.89.
Document 12
Report on Children's Employment: Mines 1842 Volumes XV, XVI, and XVII (Reprinted by Irish
University Press, Volumes 6, 7, and 8).
Document 13
E.W. Gray, Notes and Observations written during a Ramble of Seven Weeks, Newbury, 1843.
From the pamphlet, "The Gregs and the Factory System at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal."
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For [the apprentices'] amusement each had a small piece of garden; and in the playground a
'weigh jolt' and a swing are fixed, and the ball and battle dore were lying about. Hours are
appointed for school, and the copy books of the eleven Newbury girls were shown to me; and all
their performances in this respect were good and creditable to all the parties concerned.
.
Document 14
Friedrich Engels (1820 1895), The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1844. from the
pamphlet, "The Gregs and the Factory System at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal."
You come to Manchester; you wish to make yourself acquainted with the state of affairs in
England ... you are maid acquainted with a couple of the first Liberal manufacturers, Robert
Hyde Greg, perhaps, Edmund Ashworth, Thomas Ashton or others. They are told of your wishes.
The manufacturer understands you, knows what he has to do. He accompanies you to his factory
in the country; Mr. Greg to Quarry Bank in Cheshire, Mr. Ashworth to Turton near Bolton, Mr.
Ashton to Hyde. He leads you through an admirably arranged building, perhaps supplied with
ventilators, he calls your attention to the lofty airy rooms, the fine machinery, here and there a
healthy looking operative. He gives you an excellent lunch and proposes to you to visit the
operatives' homes, he conducts you to the cottages, which look new, clean and neat, and goes
with you into this one and that one, naturally only overlookers, mechanics etc., so that you may
see families who live wholly from the factory. Among other families you might find that only
wife and children work, and the husband dams stockings. The presence of the employer keeps
you from asking direct questions; you find everyone well paid, comfortable, comparatively
healthy by reason of the country air; you begin to be converted from your exaggerated ideas of
misery and starvation. But that the cottage system makes slaves of the operatives, that there may
be a truck shop in the neighbourhood, that the people hate the manufacturer, this thy do not pint
out to you, because he is present. He has built a school, church, reading room etc. That he uses
the school to train children to subordination, that he tolerates in the reading room such prints
only as represent the interests of the bourgeoisie, that he dismisses employees if they read
Chartist or Socialist papers or books this is all concealed from you ... But woe to the operatives
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to whom it occurs to think for themselves and become Chartists! For them the paternal affection
of the manufacturer comes to a sudden end.
.
Document 15
Ford Madox Brown (1821 1893), Work 1852 1865, Oil on Canvas, arched top 137 x 197.3 cm.
Manchester Art Gallery
Document 16
Ernest Jones (1819-1869). 'The Factory Town', in The Battle-Day, and other poem, 82. 1855
"The Factory Town"
The night had sunk along the city,
It was a bleak and cheerless hour;
The wild winds sang their solemn ditty
To cold grey wall and blackened tower.
The factories gave forth lurid fires
From pent up hells within their breast;
E'en Etna's burning wrath expires,
But man's volcanoes never rest.
Women, children, men were toiling,
Locked in dungeons close and black,
Life's fast failing thread uncoiling
Round the wheel, the modern rack!
Pen the very stars seemed troubled
With the mingled fume and roar;
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The city like a cauldron bubbled,
With its poison boiling o'er.
For the reeking walls environ
Mingled groups of death and life:
Fellow workmen, flesh and iron,
Side by side in deadly strife.
There, amid the wheels' dull droning
And the heavy, choking air,
Strength's repining, labour's groaning,
And the throttling of depair...
Stood half naked infants shivering
With heart frost amid the heat;
Manhood's shrunken sinews quivering
To the engine's horrid beat!...
Yet their lord bids proudly wander
Stranger eyes thro' factory scenes;'
Here are men, and engines yonder'.
'I see nothing but machines...
Thinner wanes the rural village,
Smokier lies the fallow plain
Shrinks the cornfields' pleasant tillage,
Fades the orchard's rich domain;
And a banished population
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Festers in the fetid street:
Give us, God, to save our nation,
Less of cotton, more of wheat.
Take us back to lea and wild wood,
Back to nature and to Thee!
To the child restore his childhood
To the man his dignity
.
Document 17
Grindrod, Ralph Barnes. "The Slaves of the Needle; An Exposure of tile Distressed Condition,
Moral and Physical, of Dress Makers, Milliners, Embroiderers, Slop Workers, and c." London:
William Brittain, and Charles Gilpin.