The Early Industrial
Revolution and European
Society,
1800-1850
APEURO – Lecture 5E
Mrs. Kray
Some slides taken from Susan Pojer
Capital and Labor in the Early
Industrial Revolution
The Factory System
 As the factory system spread,
the putting out system
disappeared
 Early factories exposed workers
to:
 Rigid schedule  12-14 hr/day
 Strict rules punished tardiness &
fraternization
 Dangerous conditions.
 Mind-numbing monotony.
 Factories had no safety
requirements and workers had
little job security
The Use of Women and Child Labor
Child
“hurriers”
 The demand for cheap labor led to widespread
employment of women and young children especially
because cottage workers refused to work in the factories
Factory Wages in Lancashire,
1830
Age of Worker
Male Wages
Female Wages
under 11
2s 3d.
2s. 4d.
11 - 16
4s. 1d.
4s. 3d.
17 - 21
10s. 2d.
7s. 3d.
22 - 26
17s. 2d.
8s. 5d.
27 - 31
20s. 4d.
8s. 7d.
32 - 36
22s. 8d.
8s. 9d.
37 - 41
21s. 7d.
9s. 8d.
42 - 46
20s. 3d.
9s. 3d.
47 - 51
16s. 7d.
8s. 10d.
52 - 56
16s. 4d.
8s. 4d.
57 - 61
13s. 6d.
6s. 4d.
Conditions of Work: Were Workers
Exploited?
 Working in the factory meant more discipline and less personal freedom
 Urban factories attracted whole families, as did coal mining, and tended to
preserve kinship ties
 Ultimately, however, the IR turned the family from a unit of production to one of
consumption
 Parliament acted to limit child labor
 1802: banned use of pauper children
 Factory Act of 1833 – limited child labor and the number of hours children could
work in textile factories
 Required factory owners to establish elementary schools for the children of their
employees
 1792-1820: little improvement in real wages for workers
 Evidence that living conditions actually decline during this period
 After 1840 wages there’s substantial improvement in real wages
 Diet probably improved along with the supply of clothing but housing did not
Middle-Class Prosperity:
 Industrialization created new social
classes
 The bourgeoisie (middle class) enjoyed
unprecedented prosperity, political power,
and leisure time
 The haute bourgeoisie included wealthy
bankers, merchants, and industrialists
 The petite bourgeoisie included
shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional
men, and the clergy
 Although few in number, they set a social
tone of frugality, respectability, and hard
work exemplifying the ideal of social
mobility through self-help.
The Proletariat
 Unskilled working class
 Their growth paralleled that of the
bourgeoisie
 Owned no capital or personal
property
 Forced to sell their labor at a
disadvantage
 b/c the supply of workers continued
to grow and employers freely
dismissed those deemed
unproductive or troublesome
 Remained a relatively small
segment of the population in
Europe until after 1850

0
 Exercised little political influence
“Upstairs”/”Downstairs” Life
“Separate Spheres”
The Sexual Division of Labor
 The man emerged as the family’s primary wage
earner
 Married women were much less likely to work outside the house after the first
child arrived – particularly among bourgeoisie
 Women that did work were confined to low-paying, dead-end jobs
 Historical debate over the causes of this division
 Deeply ingrained “patriarchal tradition” which grew out of preindustrial craft
unions
 Factory discipline conflicted with strong incentives on the part of mothers to
concentrate on child care
 This theory centers on the claim that women saw division of labor as the best
strategy for family survival in an industrialized society
 Effort to control the sexuality of working-class youth
The Growth of Cities
Urbanization
 Factory system transformed many
small towns into crowded cities
 Between 1800 and 1850, the number
of European cities with more than
100,000 inhabitants rose from 22 to 47
 Manchester – population surged from
45,000 in 1760 to 300,000 by 1850.
 Cities found their infrastructure could
not keep pace with the rapid growth
 Workers lived in crowded slums that
lacked sanitation
 Entire families lived in a single dark
room
Industrial Staffordshire
Worker Housing in Manchester
Early 19th Century London
Worker Housing in Newcastle
TODAY!!!
The Problems of Pollution
The Silent
Highwayman - 1858
 Cramped housing and
diseases, such as
cholera, dysentery, and
typhoid, reduced life
expectancy by half
compared with rural
areas.
 Air and water pollution
rendered even
breathing and drinking
dangerous activities.
The Capitalist System:
Supporters and Critics
Adam Smith, 1723-1790
The Father of Laissez-Faire Capitalism
 Wrote The Wealth of Nations, 1776
 Insisted that supply and demand would act
as an “invisible hand” so that selfish
individual acts would ultimately benefit the
whole society
 Forces of self-interest and competition
 Favored free trade
 Division of labor yielded greater efficiency
 Became the basis for classical British
economic theory
 This theory opposed government regulations
that interfered with the competitive free
market
 Believed government policies should be
limited to enforcing contracts, protecting
private property, and ensuring national
defense
Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834
 Essay on Human Population, 1798
 Argued human population grows
geometrically while food supply
expands arithmetically
 Insisted that human population growth
would inevitably outpace the food
supply thus making famine and misery
inevitable
David Ricardo, 1772-1823
 Influenced by Malthus’ pessimism
 “Iron Law of Wages”
 Labor is a commodity whose price is
determined by the law of supply and demand
 Argued if you increases wages then workers
just have more children.
 More children creates a large labor surplus that
depresses wages.
 Argued in the long run humanity could not
produce a higher standard of living
 Left no room for a better future for working
class families
 Provided strong support for opposing labor
unions and refusing the raise wages
Early Critics of Capitalism
 Romantic poets William Blake and
William Wordsworth protested the life of
the workers and the pollution of the
land and water
 Friedrich Engels The Condition of the
Working Class in England, 1844
 Written during his 2 yr. stay in Manchester
 Argued that the industrial revolution made
workers worse off
 He shows, for example, that in large industrial
cities mortality from disease, as well as deathrates for workers were higher than in the
countryside
 Blistering attack on the middle class
Early Critics of Capitalism:
The Luddites, 1811-1816
 Named after Ned Ludd
 Mythical figure who lived in
Sherwood Forest
 Rejected mechanized labor
 Broke into textile factories and
smashed machinery
 Parliament quickly passed a
law making the destruction
of machines a capital
offense
Rejecting Laissez-Faire
 Arguments in support of laissezfaire policies
 Every economic system has bad side
effects
 Tampering with the free market would
only create more suffering in the long
run
 Reformers feared in nothing was
done to fix the horrid working and
living conditions moral
breakdown or revolution could
occur.
Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832
Developed philosophy of
Utilitarianism
 The goal of society is the
greatest good for the greatest
number.
There is a role for
government intervention in
the economy -- provide
some social safety net.
The Peterloo Massacre, Aug. 1819
 St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, England
 Pressure generated by poor economic conditions, coupled with the lack
of suffrage in northern England, had enhanced the appeal of political
radicalism.
 Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating for parliamentary reform,
organized a demonstration to be addressed by a well-known radical orator,
Henry Hunt.
 Shortly after the meeting began, local magistrates called on the military
authorities to arrest Hunt disperse the crowd.
 The Cavalry charged into the crowd of 60,000-80,000 with sabers drawn
 Killed 15 and wounded 400-700
 One of the defining moments of its age
 Created a national outrage
 But its immediate impact was a government crackdown (the Six Acts)
The Peterloo Massacre
“Let us die
like men, and
not be sold
as slaves!”
The British Government Responds
 1832: Abolished of slavery in the colonies to
raise wages in Britain
 Reform Bill [1832] – broadens the vote for the
cities.
 Sadler Commission to look child labor in mines
and factories
 Led to Factory Act of 1833 – factory inspections,
limitation on hours, 2 hrs of education per day for
children
 1834: New Poor Law
 significantly modified the existing system of poor
relief from one which was administered
haphazardly at a local parish level to a highly
centralized system which encouraged the large
scale development of workhouses
It became clear that as individuals, workers could do little to
blunt the capitalist system. To exert collective power, laborers
formed unions
The Early Labor Movement
Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800
 Working-class solidarity and class
consciousness developed – particularly in
Northern England
 Employers felt unions were a form of
restriction on industrial growth and fought
them
 Combination Acts outlawed unions and
strikes
 Workers continued to organize and strike
 Under pressure from labor and middleclass reformers, Parliament repealed the
Combination Acts in 1824
Grand National Consolidated
Trade Union (GNCTU)
Robert Owen and others
attempted to create a national
union of workers
Tried organize all industrial
workers for strikes and labor
agitation
Hindered by Combination Acts
Robert Owen,
1771-1858
“New Model Unions”:
The Craft Unions
 Craft unionism refers to
organizing a union in a manner
that seeks to unify workers in a
particular industry along the lines
of the particular craft or trade that
they work in by class or skill level
 Example: Amalgamated Society of
Engineers
 Usually skilled workers
 After 1851, craft unions won
benefits for their members
 Better working conditions, higher
pay
The Chartists Movement
 A workers political movement that sought
universal male suffrage, shorter work
hours, and cheap bread
 The People’s Charter, 1838
 Drafted by William Lovett.
 Radical campaign for Parliamentary reform
of the inequalities created by the Reform Bill
of 1832.
 Votes for all men.
 Equal electoral districts (rotten boroughs) .
 Abolition of the requirement that Members of
Parliament [MPs] be property owners.
 Payment for Members of Parliament.
 Annual general elections.
A physical force—
 The secret ballot.
Chartists arming for
the fight.
British Reform Bills
Edwin Chadwick, 1800-1890
 The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring
Population, 1842
 Highlighted the need for improved
sewage and sanitary conditions in cities
 Public Health Act of 1848
 Sanitation systems and public health boards
for inspections
The Chartists
Key
Chartist
settlements
Centres of
Chartism
Area of plug
riots, 1842
The Chartists
A female Chartist
The Utilitarians:
Jeremy Bentham & John Stuart Mill

The goal of society is the greatest good for the greatest
number.

There is a role to play for government
intervention to provide some social safety
net.
Jeremy Bentham
The Socialists:
Utopians & Marxists
 People as a society would operate and own the
means of production, not individuals.
 Their goal was a society that benefited
everyone, not just a rich, well-connected few.
 Tried to build perfect communities [utopias].