The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate;

has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:

machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.Our knowledge has made us cynical,

our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little:

More than machinery we need humanity;More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

-- Charlie Chaplin

• Though those people living under the Classical Liberalism of the Industrial Revolution lived a more DEMOCRATIC existence, the goals of efficiency and the accumulation of wealth were more important than equality.

• In the views of many, Classical Liberalism exploited many for the benefit of a few…

Assembly line = Profits

Workers are seen as a commodity

Factories and Workers’ Housing

Poverty, hunger, disease, crime

• Coal crucial to the Industrial Revolution

• Before 1842 there were no protection laws regarding age limits, hours or conditions of work

• Teams of women employed to use windlass to lift coal and workers.

• Men refused to do such work.

CHILDREN WORKING IN MINES

“I have been down six weeks and made 10 to 14 trips from the face to the top each day. I carry a full 56 lbs of coal in a wooden bucket. I work with sister Jesse and mother. It is dark the time we go”

(girl 6 years old)

“I have a belt around my waist, and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet. The road is very steep and we…hold onto anything we can…I am not as strong as I was…I have drawn til I had the skin off me…” (32 year old woman)

IN THE TEXTILE MILLS

Youngest children usually employed as scavengers and piecers

SCAVENGERS

• picked up loose cotton from under machinery

• extremely dangerous, children were expected to carry out the task while machines were still working

PIECERS

• children had to lean over spinning machines to repair broken threads

• might walk 20 miles per day

UNCOMPLAINING ACCEPTANCE

• Life, work conditions brutal and degrading

• Poverty, periodic unemployment, over-crowded and inadequate housing, bad work conditions, restricted opportunities

• High incidence of dismemberment, disease, death

• Human existence is a struggle, survival is an end in itself

• Fatalistic attitude, ‘God gives and God takes away’

CRIPPLED

PARISH (PAUPER) APPRENTICES

Many parents -unwilling to allow children to work in textile factories.

Labour shortage - factory owners had to find other ways of obtaining workers.

Solution - buy children from orphanages and workhouses.

Pauper apprentices - children signing contracts that virtually made them property of the factory owner

Apprentices who ran away were in danger of being sent to prison…potential runaways were sometimes placed in irons

Oliver Twist!

.

MINES ACT (1842)

•no females employed underground

•no boys under 10 years old underground

•nothing regulating hours of work

FACTORY ACT (1833)

•To improve conditions for children working in factories

•No children under 9 years of age

•Reduced hours for children 9-18

•Children not to work at night

• Two hours schooling per day

•Four inspectors appointed for entire country

NEW POOR LAW (1834)Provide refuge for ailing & helpless

Anyone accepting relief in ‘repellent’ workhouse must lack moral determination to survive

Principle of ‘less eligibility’ – conditions insideworkhouse should never be better than those of

an independent laborer of lowest class

Reduce cost of looking after the poor

Encourage poor people to work hard to support themselves

Workhouse intended to replace all other forms of relief

Essentially the poor could work to survive

Who was Jacob Riis and what contribution did he make to improve

the lives of the working poor? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHAp0omdSfk