After 1760, Great Britain experienced a visible shift in the workplace from the artisan’s shop and cottage industries to the factory. The dramatic changes in agriculture, rapid increase in population, immigration, rise in consumerism, relaxing of legal restrictions related to the poor, and rapid innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit created conditions favorable for a supply of labor to work in the larger factory enterprises by the time of Richard Arkwright (see Document 4).
The transition had begun in the late 17th century. As an example, some farmers in Yorkshire had combined agriculture with wool cloth production in order to supplement their income. Within the space of just several decades some of these farmers had purchased additional wool and hired others to produce the cloth for them. Within a generation, these families had separated themselves from the others and begun to form their own class, hiring and firing workers as disposable pieces in their enterprises and viewing themselves as socially superior. The primitive model for factory work and organization had begun. By the 1730s this new approach became more commonplace as the population began to grow rapidly. The impact of agricultural changes brought about by the consolidation of land holdings and new efficient techniques reduced the opportunities related to farming. While the overall agrarian population increased during the 18th century, its percentage of the workforce actually declined. Thus, businesses and entrepreneurs turned to hiring wage earners to perform labor for them.
Technology also played a major role in the establishment of the new workforce profile. While the more primitive handcrafts remained viable well into the 19th century, it became increasingly apparent that mechanization served as a magnet to draw workers into the new factory organizations. These workers could be unskilled or require only rudimentary training to operate devices associated with manufacturing. As the process of spinning and weaving in the cotton industry became wedded with the power of steam, factory centers grew rapidly near energy sources or where a large pool of workers was available. The result was a significant demographic change in Great Britain between the late 18th and middle of the 19th centuries. Of the ten largest cities in Great Britain in 1851, six were factory towns, of which only three were of any national importance before 1700. Indeed, two of the factory towns—Birmingham and Leeds—were unincorporated until the 1830s. Manchester, the cotton capital of Great Britain by 1830, grew from a population of 25,000 in 1777 to more than 300,000 in 1851.5 Glasgow and Bradford’s population leaped four times in the first half of the 19th century. The important centers of textile manufacturing and metal working, Birmingham, Leeds, and Sheffield, increased in population by more than 40% in the period 1821 to 1851.6 During this era a majority of British families moved and saw their livelihood shift from a reliance on agriculture to one associated directly or indirectly with industrial activity.
The demographic shift had to overcome some impediments. The 18th century transportation infrastructure had to improve before the mobility of the population could be affected. The road network, although often unsafe due to banditry or kidnapping, was sufficient for foot traffic but often unsuitable for heavy transport. It would take the appearance of improvements such as the macadam roadbed, the canal system, and later the railroads to speed the transformation. Another restraint was the administration of the Poor Law. In the 18th century the law stipulated that if a person left his parish and remained in another for a year he lost his relief privileges in the former and could apply for such in his new domicile. For this reason, many parishes frowned upon accepting newcomers. As a result, business owners in dire need of workers often resorted to hiring laborers for short periods of time. Workers who fell on hard times were forced to return to their original homes in order not to lose their relief subsidies. In addition, it took some time for earlier work practices to adjust to the new economic realities. In certain corporate towns, it had long been illegal to earn a skill without first becoming an apprentice for six or seven years. While this deterrent withered away fairly quickly as the process of industrialization gained pace, employers also faced the difficult task of selecting those persons who seemed capable of quickly learning and adapting to the new form of industry and at the same time prevent them from accepting some better wage offer. The Watt-Boulton enterprise, for example, required men who constructed their steam engines to enter into either a three or five year labor agreement. Other individual factory owners had arrangements that might range from twenty-five years to life. One might assume that where labor arrangements were not specific, there might have been a rash of ‘‘labor raiding.’’ However, other natural forces were at work. If an employer sought to entice a worker from another area, he often found that he might be unable to offer work to other members of the worker’s family. Thus, some employers developed creative solutions such as diversifying their operations by starting a textile mill near their iron works to provide women and children employment opportunities or ensuring agricultural work for the men where female and child factory labor was the aim.
Other factors also arose to ensure that the labor supply for the factories grew to meet the need. As the pace of industrialization quickened in the late 18th century, large numbers of unemployed and unskilled persons who fell under the Poor Law relief provisions were encouraged to move from London and the south to the textile factories in the northern and western portions of Great Britain. As word spread of higher wages being paid in manufacturing and in the face of famines of 1782 to 1784 and 1821 to 1823, large numbers of Irish men and women poured into Britain, a substantial portion taking up occupations in the mining and textile industries. Some of these labor gains were offset by the departure of Englishmen and Scots for overseas locations, although the British government expressly prohibited the emigration of individuals in certain positions in order to prevent the loss of industrial secrets to competitors. These restrictions were lifted by a series of statutes between the years 1815 and 1824, and afterwards British labor could move freely to any country.
Thus, in the first half of the 19th century, Great Britain had accumulated a large body of wage-earners who now toiled in the factories, occasionally peddled their labor by moving from place to place, and found their pay closely tied to the overall economic dynamics at work in the country at large. The details of the 1851 census reveal the depth of the transition for the British working classes. Approximately 4 million persons (43% of the workforce) were engaged in manufacturing and mining industries, while 2.1 million persons (22% of the workforce) were tied to agriculture.7 The cities also supported a large domestic work force and artisans and crafts people continued to have viable trades for a time, but the latter’s inability to compete with the cheaply produced factory goods spelled eventual doom. Women and children also sought employment in factories and mines. The former economic system of local markets that operated in a less than perfect manner now had evolved into a national economy where wages in one industry were tied to those in others, to include even farm laborers. This change in the lifework of individuals marked a far cry from the agricultural economy that had dominated Great Britain prior to the 18th century. While it was truly a significant event in the long-term, it did not occur evenly or quickly throughout Great Britain.
World History
