Industrial Work and Workers 555Child Labor
Children had always worked in agriculture, given such tasks as caring for
farm animals, scaring birds away from crops, and gleaning at harvest time.
At a very young age, many had also learned to assist in domestic textile pro
duction, preparing wool for spinning and raising silkworms. Now in factories,
their smaller size made children useful for certain tasks, such as mending
broken threads or climbing on machinery to extract something impeding its
operation. Teenage girls were particularly adept at calico printing. In Britain
during the early 1830s, youths less than twenty-one years of age made up
almost a third of the workforce.
As in cottage industry, factory work often employed entire families, with
adult males supervising other family members. Childrens low wages—about
a quarter of what their fathers earned—nonetheless represented a signifi
cant contribution to the family economy. One man recalled “being placed,
when seven years of age, upon a stool to spread cotton upon a breaker
preparatory to spinning,” an elder brother turning the wheel to put the
machine in motion.
Factory work was often dangerous. An English factory inspector reported
that the children working at a punching machine risked losing their fingers:
“They seldom lose the hand,’ said one of the proprietors to me, in explana
tion, ‘it only takes off a finger at the first or second joint. Sheer careless
ness. .. sheer carelessness!’” An eight-year-old girl who worked as a “trapper”
in the mine pits, opening ventilation doors to let coal wagons pass, related,
“I have to trap without a light, and I’m scared. I go at four and sometimes
half-past three.... Sometimes I sing when I’ve light but not in the dark. I
dare not sing then.”