What were the working conditions like? Why were children allowed to work? Why would factory owners hire children? Was it anybody’s fault that these children were working, or were they victims of economic circumstance?

Children who worked were subject to appalling conditions Children who worked were subject to appalling conditions. Many who worked died before they reached 25 Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312764/Britains-child-slaves-New-book-says-misery-helped-forge-Britain.html#ixzz1gHQdRVb6

Child chimney sweeps often had to crawl through holes only 18in wide - and cruel masters would light fires to make them climb faster. Many fell to their deaths Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312764/Britains-child-slaves-New-book-says-misery-helped-forge-Britain.html#ixzz1gHQN92UK

Real life Oliver Twists: Child workers were often beaten, abused, hungry and tired. Their childhood was often over before it had begun Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312764/Britains-child-slaves-New-book-says-misery-helped-forge-Britain.html#ixzz1gHQsbkAw

Pauper apprentice: Children were often sold to masters as it meant their parents had one fewer month to feed Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312764/Britains-child-slaves-New-book-says-misery-helped-forge-Britain.html#ixzz1gHR288HV

Others were stunted in growth or had twisted limbs Others were stunted in growth or had twisted limbs. Most remained uneducated. Members of the Ashley Mines Commission heard about 17-year-old Patience Krenshaw… “I go to the mine at 5 o’clock in the morning and come out at 5 in the evening…The bald place upon my head is made by pushing the corves [carts full of coal]. a mile and more and back…I wear a belt and chain… to get the corves out.” Source: Ellis, Elisabeth G., and Anthony Esler. World History: Connections to Today. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001. 503. Print.

“I don’t know how old I am. I began to work when I was about 9 “I don’t know how old I am. . . . I began to work when I was about 9. I first worked for a man who used to hit me with a belt. . . . I used to sleep in the pits that had no more coal in them; I used to eat whatever I could get; I ate for a long time the candles that I found in the pits. . . .” — E. Royston Pike adapted from Hard Times, Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution

This is an excerpt from William Cooper’s testimony before the Sadler Committee in 1832. Sadler: When did you first begin to work in mills? Cooper: When I was ten years of age. Sadler: What were your usual hours of working? Cooper: We began at five in the morning and stopped at nine in the night. Sadler: What time did you have for meals? Cooper: We had just one period of forty minutes in the sixteen hours. That was at noon. Sadler: What means were taken to keep you awake and attentive? Cooper: At times we were frequently strapped. Sadler: When your hours were so long, did you have any time to attend a day school? Cooper: We had no time to go to day school.

This is an excerpt from the testimony of Joseph Hebergam to the Sadler Committee. Sadler: Do you know of any other children who died at the R___Mill? Hebergam: There were about a dozen died during the two years and a half that I was there. At the L____ Mill where I worked last, a boy was caught in a machine and had both his thigh bones broke and from his knee to his hip . . . . His sister, who ran to pull him off, had both her arms broke and her head bruised. The boy died. I do not know if the girl is dead, but she was not expected to live. Sadler: Did the accident occur because the shaft was not covered? Hebergam: Yes.

. . . The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them. It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchens and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and [nothing] to feed their children. These children were destitute [poor] and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation. . . . — Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, A Treatise on Economics, Yale University Press

What were the working conditions like? Why were children allowed to work? Why would factory owners hire children? Was it anybody’s fault that these children were working, or were they victims of economic circumstance?