semi- and unskilled workers the factory operatives attracted a good deal of attention from contemporaries. They represented for most observers the heart of the new industrial civilisation, about whose benefits or iniquities there was so much argument. As always, investigators tended to find what they were looking for: the lot of the factory operative was presented both as a state of continual misery and as a life of modest comfort and respectability. Here are two contrasting examples. The first is a rosy description of the homes of the operatives near Messrs Ashworth’s model cotton mill at Turton, near Bolton, Lancashire. It was written by William Cooke Taylor in 1842:
‘The situation [of Banktop, the operatives’ village], though open and airy, is not unsheltered; the cottages are built of stone, and contain from four to six rooms each; back-premises with suitable conveniences are attached to them all…. I visited the interior of nearly every cottage; I found all well, and very many respectably, furnished: there were generally a mahogany table and chest of drawers. Daughters from most of the houses, but wives, as far as I could learn, from none, worked in the factory. Many of the women were not a little proud of their housewifery, and exhibited the Sunday wardrobes of their husbands, the stock of neatly folded shirts, etc.: … I found that there were some processes connected with the cotton manufacture which the women were permitted to execute in their own houses. “The pay,” said one of the women, “is not much, but it helps to boil the pot.” … I was informed by the operatives that permission to rent one of the cottages was regarded as a privilege and favour, that it was in fact a reward reserved for honesty, industry and sobriety…. All were not merely contented with their situation, but proud of it … It is not easy to fix upon a statistical test for measuring the intelligence of the adult operatives. I found clocks and small collections of books in all their dwellings; several had wheel-barometers…. I have more than once gone down in the evening to Turton Mills, to see the operatives coming from work … The boys were as merry as crickets: there was not one of the girls who looked as if she would refuse an invitation to a dance.’4
A very different impression is left by William Dodd’s account of a young girl factory worker in Manchester in 1841. After the watchman has knocked on the window at 4.30 in the morning, the girl’s mother:
‘rouses the unwilling girl to another day of toil. At length you hear her on the floor; the clock is striking five. Then, for the first time, the girl becomes conscious of the necessity for haste; and having slipped on her clothes, and (if she thinks there is time) washed herself, she takes a drink of cold coffee, which has been left standing in the fireplace, a mouthful of bread (if she can eat it), and having packed up her breakfast in her handkerchief, hastens to the factory. The bell rings as she leaves the threshold of her home. Five minutes more, and she is in the factory, stripped and ready for work. The clock strikes half-past five; the engine starts, and her day’s work commences.
‘At half-past seven … the engine slacks its pace (seldom stopping) for a short time till the hands have cleaned the machinery and swallowed a little food. It then goes on again and continues at full speed till twelve o’clock, when it stops for dinner. Previously to leaving the factory, and in her dinner-hour, she has her machines to clean. The distance of the factory is about five minutes’ walk from her home. I noticed every day that she came in at half-past twelve, or within a minute or two, and once she was over the half hour; the first thing she did was to wash herself, then get her dinner (which she was seldom able to eat), and pack up her drinking for the afternoon. This done, it was time to be on her way to work again, where she remains, without one minute’s relaxation, till seven o’clock; she then comes home, and throws herself into a chair exhausted. This [is] repeated six days in the week (save that on Saturdays she may get back a little earlier, say, an hour or two)…. This young woman looks very pale and delicate, and has every appearance of an approaching decline. I was asked to guess her age; I said, perhaps fifteen…. Her mother…. told me she was going nineteen … She is a fair specimen of a great proportion of factory girls in Manchester.’5
Within the textile industry, where most of the factory operatives were to be found, wages and working conditions were affected by a number of factors. The particular branch of the industry (cotton, wool, worsted, flax, silk), the constant replacement of one machine or process by another, the relative use of women and children instead of men, and the vagaries of unemployment, all helped to determine the fortunes of any one group of operatives. In general, however, a male factory hand in Yorkshire or Lancashire (employed, say, as a third grade spinner) could hope to earn between 14s and 22s a week. If to this could be added the earnings of his wife and children the weekly family income would be raised to 30s or more, depending on the age and number of the children. The women were employed as throstle spinners (in cotton) and as power loom weavers, and their wages were 5s to 10s a week. Children were frequently used as piecers and paid 2s 6d to 5s weekly. In Leeds in 1839 male cloth pressers averaged 20s a week, cloth drawers 24s 6d, slubbers 24s and wool sorters 21s – which compared favourably with 16s for tailors and 14s for shoemakers.6 The situation in one Leeds spinning mill in the 1830s was summarised thus:7
It was a characteristic of the factory operatives, as of some other sections of the labouring poor, that the unit of earning was the family, not a single breadwinner. No aspect of the factory system aroused more controversy than this, and the employment of women and children became a focus for agitation and legislation in the 1830s and 1840s. Some of the wider implications of this will be examined later. In relation to social stratification it provided another distinction between the élite of skilled workers and the majority of working people.
As the textile mill operative was felt to be the representative type of worker in the machine age, so the handloom weaver was the representative figure from the past. The golden age of handloom weaving (still within the memory of the old weavers) had come to an end before the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, but the craft remained attractive despite a fall in earnings. It was an occupation which was pursued in the worker’s own home surrounded (and also assisted) by his wife and family. He could, and did, work at his own pace and to suit his own convenience. If he wished to work hard for four days and loaf for three, he was at liberty to do so. He was free from the irksome discipline of the factory, and if most yardage weaving was monotonous he could always break off for a smoke or a drink when he felt inclined. Traditionally many of the weavers of the West Riding had also been farmers, and the substantial stone houses with their third storey loom shops stood as reminders of a prosperous past. Handloom weaving was popular because of its freedom and because it satisfied the old artisan craving for independence. Unfortunately it was also, at least in its plain and coarser departments, a skill which was easily acquired. Little capital was necessary: a loom and lodgings could be hired in Burnley and Colne for a shilling a week. There were no restrictive apprenticeship regulations, and much of the work could be done by women and children. An assistant commissioner who enquired into the state of the industry in 1838–9, reported that in Barnsley thirty Irishmen entered the town one morning and set up as handloom weavers, though they had never done any weaving before. From 1815 to the 1830s the hand weaver’s earnings were reduced drastically, and he was forced to work longer and longer hours and accept more onerous conditions for the privilege of getting work. By 1838–9 in Manchester the total family earnings of weavers of coarse fabrics averaged only 8s a week, and similar figures were reported from Glasgow and Barnsley. Although there were important differences between cotton weavers in Lancashire, woollen and worsted weavers in Yorkshire, and silk weavers in London and Coventry, the trend was everywhere the same. Selected groups of weavers who did extra fine or specialised work were able to make up to 16s a week. But such earnings were a sad reward for a once-proud craft.
The ‘distress’ of the handloom weavers in the 1830s and 1840s received a good deal of publicity, though little constructive help. They were, after the agricultural workers and domestic servants, the
