The impact of Technology (Textiles Industry)
Many parents were unwilling to allow their children to work in these new textile
factories. To overcome this labour shortage factory owners had to find other
ways of obtaining workers. One solution to the problem was to buy children from
orphanages and workhouses. The children became known as pauper
apprentices. This involved the children signing contracts that virtually made them
the property of the factory owner.
During the 19th century the factory system gradually replaced the system of
people working in their own homes or in small workshops. In England the textile
industry was the first to be transformed. The changes caused a great deal of
suffering to poor people.
The industrial revolution created a huge demand for female and child labour.
Children had always done some work but at least before the 19th century they
worked in their own homes with their parents or on land nearby. Children's work
was largely seasonal so they did have some time to play. When children worked
in textile factories they often worked for more than 12 hours a day.
The Industrial Revolution
was the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural change in the late 18th and early 19th
century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an economy
based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of
machinery. It began with the mechanisation of the textile industries and the development of iron-
making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved
roads and then railways. The introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered
machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production
capacity.[1] The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th
century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other
industries.