Factory children

Mill owners said that they had to keep their prices down. That was why workers' hours had to be long, and wages low. Women and children got lower wages than men, so the owners employed a lot of women and children.

Children as young as six or seven worked up to fourteen hours a day in the mills. Their pay was about three shillings (15p) a week. Many were killed or injured by the moving parts of the machines they had to clean. Others were maimed by a foreman's fist or strap. Sadly, many of them were forced to work by their own parents. Their fathers were out of work, and the family needed the few shillings that they could earn.

Some decent employers paid their workers a fair wage. Some even built good houses for them, and ran schools for their children. Some mill-owners took part in a movement for factory reform. Most mill-owners were against the reformers, though. They said that shorter hours for children would put up their costs, and bring them to ruin.

Mill-owners did not obey Parliament's first acts cutting mill hours. But an act passed in 1833 said that inspectors would enforce the law. The act banned all children under nine from cotton mills. Children over nine were allowed to work, but there were strict controls on their hours. By 1847, ten hours per day was the limit for boys and all female workers.

Walter Robson: Britain 1750 – 1900; Oxford University Press, 1993/2002, page 22