Impact of Early Industrial Revolution Factories on Workers' Lives

3 years after Darby's Iron Bridge was unveiled to the world an industrialist called Samuel Greg built a factory in

the village of style in chesher and I've come here because I want to start unpacking now the impact

of the Industrial Revolution on ordinary people the way it transformed the fabric of our working lives

Quarry bank is an early industrial cotton mill a building dedicated to the production of cotton thread and woven

cloth it owes its existence to the invention in the mid 18th century of machines of startling Ingenuity designed

to speed up the process of textile manufacturing spinning mules like these could spin 200 40 m of cotton thread a

day power looms wo cloth at speed's barely conceivable a generation [Music]

earlier these machines were the driving force of the Industrial Revolution but no less extraordinary were the buildings

created to house them a new kind of building in Britain a factory designed for the express purpose of work a place

where workers would assemble where they'd work their shifts dictated by the factory

Bell nowadays we take the idea of going to work for granted most working people in this

country are employees we work for someone else we have our breakfast we leave the house we go to our place of

employment be it a factory an office a call center whatever and there we do our allotted 9 to 5 9

to6 with maybe an hour off for lunch and the structure of our working lives is dictated To Us by the culture of the

workplace and by rules basically laid down by our employers well that whole culture of

working life that we now take so for granted it was invented in the early Decades of the Industrial Revolution

here in the factories for some the offer of regular work 6 days a week

rain or shine was a blessing Farm laborers and their families came to Quarry bank they took

employment grateful now that the wheels would turn regardless of the seasons no fear of being laid off in the harsh

winter months but for others employed here the factory system was more of a shock

they' worked in textiles all their lives not in factories but at home in cottage industries spinning thread on spinning

wheels weaving cloth on hand looms this in its day was skillful highly paid well-respected

work come the machines though the days of the handloom Weaver were numbered machines like these were too

big to fit in anyone's front room and they needed a power source water most of all though to buy infrastructure like

this you needed Capital Money more than any humble Weaver could afford and so emerged a new player in

the game the entrepreneur the mill owner the capitalist a man prepared to invest a fortune for high

returns and the handloom Weavers forced out of the market turned cap in hand to the factories for

work here they'd be no longer their own masters just cogs in the [Music]

machine you get the sense these places aren't designed on a human scale the width of this room is dictated by the

width of the spinning mule the ceilings are low to maximize the number of stor to cram in as many machines as possible

the workers you sense were an afterthought so what was it like to work in an early industrial

Factory well frankly it was pretty brutal don't forget this was all in its day an experiment machines like these

had never existed before and the factory system was never designed with the workers in mind

the air on the factory floor was thick with cotton dust it got into the lungs it caused all kinds of pneumatic

diseases the Looms were designed for Speed not safety accidents were common fingers arms caught in the

machines shifts could last 14 15 16 hours dignity in labor common Humanity all sacrificed in the Quest for

profit I suppose to Modern Eyes the most telling detail in this Grim new industrial world was the presence of

children some as young as six or seven employed to Scurry under the machines picking up scraps of waste

cotton only children were small enough to do the job but it left them stooped and broken most had physical infirmities

later in life [Music] there's a very revealing story of a poet

a man called Robert Sai who visited a mill much like this one and he dared to question the presence of these scraps of

humanity huddling under the Looms but the man who was showing him around puffed himself up with pride far better

he said for these children to earn their own bread than to be a burden on their parents a burden on the parish and how

joyful in this temple of industry that they should learn the value of A Hard Day's Work there is no idleness

here no idleness certainly and in time the factory system transformed Britain's economy launching

us into Global dominance as the workshop of the world but this glorious experiment came

at a human cost how great a cost we were yet to discover [Music]