115 The First Factories
25.2.3: The First Factories
The factory system was a new way of organizing labor made necessary by the development of machines, which were too large to house in a worker’s cottage and too expensive to be owned by the worker, who now labored long hours and lived under hazardous conditions in fledgling cities.
Learning Objective
Describe the effects the advent of factories had on British society
Key Points
- The factory system was a new way of organizing labor made necessary by the development of machines, which were too large to house in a worker’s cottage and much too expensive to be owned by the worker. One of the earliest factories was John Lombe’s water-powered silk mill at Derby, operational by 1721. By 1746, an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. However, Richard Arkwright is credited as the brains behind the growth of factories, specifically the Derwent Valley Mills.
- Between the 1760s and 1850, the nature of work transitioned from a craft production model to a factory-centric model. Textile factories organized workers’ lives much differently than did craft production. Handloom weavers worked at their own pace, with their own tools, within their own cottages. Factories set hours of work and the machinery within them shaped the pace of work. Factories brought workers together within one building to work on machinery that they did not own. They also increased the division of labor, narrowing the number and scope of tasks.
- The early textile factories employed many children. In England and Scotland in 1788, two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills were children. By 1835, the share of the workforce under 18 years of age in cotton mills in England and Scotland had fallen to 43%. The eventual transition of child workforce into experienced adult factory workforce helps to account for the shift away from child labor in textile factories. While child labor was common on farms and under the putting-out system, historians agree that the impact of the factory system and the Industrial Revolution generally on children was damaging.
- Marriage during the Industrial Revolution became a sociable union between wife and husband in the laboring class. Women and men tended to marry someone from the same job, geographical location, or social group. The traditional work sphere was still dictated by the father, who controlled the pace of work for his family. However, factories and mills undermined the old patriarchal authority. Factories put husbands, wives, and children under the same conditions and authority of the manufacturer masters.
- The factory system was partly responsible for the rise of urban living, as large numbers of workers migrated into the towns in search of employment in the factories. Until the late 19th century, it was common to work at least 12 hours a day, six days a week in most factories, but long hours were also common outside factories. The transition to industrializatio