Capital and Labor AP European History McKay, Chapter 22

I. Class Consciousness b 1. A new group of factory owners and industrial capitalists arose. These men and women and their families strengthened the wealth and size of the middle class, which had previously been made up mainly of merchants and professional people. b 2. The growth of new occupational groups in industry stimulated new thinking about social relations. Often combined with reflections of the French Revolution, this thinking led to the development of a new paradigm regarding social relationships.

II. The New Class of Factory Owners b 1. Artisans and skilled workers of exceptional ability had unparalleled opportunities. b 2. The ethnic and religious groups that had been discriminated against in the traditional occupations jumped at the new chances. b 3. Quakers and Scots were important in England and Protestants and Jews dominated banking in Catholic France. b 4. Many of the industrialist were newly rich, and, not surprisingly, they were very proud and self-satisfied. b 5. A greater sense of class consciousness emerged.

III. The New Factory Workers b 1. A pessimistic view of the life of factory workers and society in general was and accepted and reinforced by Friedrich Engels ( ), the future revolutionary colleague of Karl Marx. b 2. According to Engels, the new poverty of industrial workers was worse than the old poverty of cottage workers and agricultural laborers. The culprit was industrial capitalism. b 3. Not all shared Engels’ opinion, Andrew Ure wrote in 1835 in his study of the cotton industry that conditions in most factories were not harsh and in fact were quite good.

IV. Conditions of Work b 1. Early factories resembled English poor houses, where totally destitute people went to live on welfare. Some poor houses were industrial prisons where the inmates had to work in order to receive their food and lodging. b 2. Cottage workers reluctance to work in factories prompted early cotton mill owners to turn to abandoned and pauper children for their labor. By 1790 the use of pauper apprentices was in decline, and in 1802 it was forbidden by Parliament.

IV. Conditions of Work b 3. Many workers were now coming to the factories as family units where every member of the family worked in some aspect in the factory. b 4. Conditions for the workers were very difficult - in 1833, Parliament passed the Factory Act which limited the number of hours children could work and established that no children under nine could be employed and were placed in elementary schools.

V. Sexual Divisions of Labor b 1. The era of the Industrial Revolution witnessed major changes in the sexual division of labor. b 2. The man emerged as the family’s primary wage earner, while the woman found only limited job opportunities. b 3. Women were expected to concentrate on unpaid housework, child care, and craft work at home. b 4. The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited under gound work for all women as well as for boys under ten.

VI. The Early Labor Movement b 1. In 1799 Parliament passed the Combination Acts, which outlawed unions and strikes. b 2. The Combination Acts were widely disregarded by workers. Printers, papermakers, and other craftsmen continued to take collective action, and societies of skilled factory workers also organized unions. b 3. Unions sought to control the number of skilled workers, limit apprenticeship to members’ own children, and bargain with owners over wages. b 4. They were not afraid to strike; there was a general strike of adult cotton spinners in Manchester in b 5. Parliament repealed the Combination acts in 1824, and unions were tolerated, though not fully accepted after b 6. In 1834, Robert Owen organized one of the largest national unions, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. b 7. This failed and craft unions gained benefits for members and became an accepted part of the industrial scene.