ANDREW URE: Decent Working and Living Conditions

Andrew Ure (1778-1857), a scientist and an early observer of industrialization, challenged the pessimists of his day. In the following passages from his Philosophy of Manufactures, Ure disagreed with the testimony given to the Sadler Commission and stressed the benefits to workers accruing from the factory system.

Points to Ponder:

1. In what ways did the author respond to the argument that factory work entailed unceasing hard labor?
2. What was his opinion of the working and living conditions in the districts that he had visited?
3. What comparison did he draw between factory districts and farming parishes?
4. Can the author's rhetoric suggest something to us about his general viewpoint?
5. Do you believe him? Why or why not?

Of all the common prejudices that exist with regard to factory labour, there is none more unfounded than that which ascribes to it excessive tedium and irksomeness above other occupations, owing to its being carried on in conjunction with the "unceasing motion of the steam-engine." In an establishment for spinning or weaving cotton, all the hard work is performed by the steam-engine which leaves for the attendant no hard labour at all, and literally nothing to do in general; but at intervals to perform some delicate operation, such as joining the threads that break, taking the cops off the spindles, &C. And it is so far from being true that the work in a factory is incessant, because the motion of the steam-engine is incessant, that the fact is, that the labour is not incessant on that very account, because it is performed in conjunction with the steam-engine. Of all manufacturing employments, those are by far the most irksome and incessant in which steam-engines are not employed, as in lace-running and stocking-weaving; and the way to prevent an employment from being incessant, is to introduce a steam-engine into it. These remarks certainly apply more especially to the labour of children in factories. Three-fourths of the children so employed are engaged in piecing at the mules.1 "When the Carriages of these have receded a foot and a half or two feet from the rollers," says Mr. Tufnell, "nothing is to be done, not even attention is required from either spinner or piecer." Both of them stand idle for a time, and in fine spinning particularly, for three~quarters of a minute, or more. Consequently, if a child remains at this business twelve hours daily, he has nine hours of inaction. And though he attends two mules, he has still six hours of non-exertion. Spinners sometimes dedicate these intervals to the perusal of books. The scavengers, who in Mr. Sadler's report have been described as being "Constantly in a state of grief, always in terror, and every moment they have to spare stretched all their length upon the floor in a state of perspiration," may be observed in cotton-factories idle for four minutes at a time, or moving about in a sportive mood, utterly unconscious of the tragical scenes in which they were dramatized.

Occupations which are assisted by steam-engines require for the most part a higher, or at least a steadier species of labour, than those which are not; the exercise of the mind being then partially substituted for that of the muscles, Constituting skilled labour, which is always paid more highly than unskilled. On this principle we can readily account for the Comparatively high wages which the inmates of a factory, whether children or adults, obtain. . . .

What I have myself witnessed at several times, both on Sundays and workingdays, has convinced me that the population of Belper is, in reference to health, domestic comfort, and religious culture, in a truly enviable state, compared with the average of our agricultural villages. The factory rooms are well aired, and clean as any gentleman's parlour. The children are well-complexioned, and we with cheerful dexterity at their respect occupations.

At Quarry Bank, near Wilmslow, Cheshire, is situated the oldest of the five establishments belonging to the great firm of Messrs. Greg and Sons, of Manchester, who work up the one-hundredth part all the cotton consumed in Great Britain. It is driven by an elegant water-wheel, 32 feet in diameter, and 24 feet broad equivalent in power to 120 horses. The country round is beautiful, and presents a succession of picturesque wooded dells interspersed with richly cultivated fields. At a little distance from the factory, on a sunny slope, stands a handsome house, two stories high, built for the accommodation of the female apprentices. Here are well fed, clothed, educated, and lodged, under kind superintendence, sixty young girls, who by their deportment at the mill as well as in Wilmslow Church on Sunday, where I saw them assembled, evince a degree of comfort most creditable to the humane and intelligent proprietors. . . .

Sufficient evidence has been adduced to convince the candid mind, that factories, more especially cotton-mills, are organized as to afford as easy and comfortable occupation as anywhere can fall as to the lot of the labouring classes.

What a pity it is that the party who lately declaimed so loudly about the inmates of factories being universally victims of oppression, misery, and vice, did not, from their rural or civic retreats, examine first of all into the relative condition of their own rustic operatives, and dispassionately see how the balance stood betwixt them! . . . It is, in fact, in the factory districts alone that the demoralizing agency of pauperism has been effectually resisted, and a noble spirit of industry, enterprise, and intelligence, called forth. What a contrast is there at this day, between the torpor and brutality which pervade very many of the farming parishes, as delineated in the official reports, and the beneficent activity which animates all the cotton factory towns, villages, and hamlets!

The regularity required in mills is such as to render persons who are in the habit of getting intoxicated unfit to be employed there, and all respectable manufacturers object to employ persons guilty of that vice; and thus mill-work tends to check drunkenness. Mr. Marshall, M.P. of Leeds, thinks that the health of persons employed in mills is better from the regularity of their habits, than of those employed at home in weaving.