How Did Robert Owen Contribute To The Industrial Revolution

My source is an interview with a clothier that explains the conditions and behaviours of children who work in the mills. Robert Owen, a British socialist, was born on 14 May 1771 at Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Wales. In 1799, Owen purchased the mills in New Lanark, Scotland. The employees' well-being, including a few hundred poor children, were highly regarded by Owen and the mills were producing high quality products which made them famous. Owen wanted to remove the competitive economy by adding his own ideas into the economy with his growing fame, but he lost a few supporters with his attack on religion at a meeting in London. In 1825, after purchasing New Harmony, he experimented his ideas in the community, failed after a few years and lost a part of his wealth. He then return to England and wrote a book to spread his ideas: Book of the New Moral World. As new revolutionary forces and leaders
came, Owen was not the main current anymore. Later, he converted to spiritualism and wrote his Autobiography: a document of early socialist experience.
On 17 November 1858, he passed away in Newtown, Wales. The document was written during the industrial revolution, "...which took place in Great Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and in other European countries and America after 1815..." (Levack, Muir, and Veldman 655). This revolution included four major developments: using mineral sources of energy, concentrating labor in factories, new industrial technology and methods of transportation (Levack, Muir, and Veldman 655). In the late eighteenth century, coal oil and uranium replaced organic sources of energy because they were more efficient. This made the production and transportation of goods much easier (Levack, Muir, and Veldman 659). Mechanized factories also increased during the Industrial Revolution. These factories had many advantages over the rural industrial cottage and the large urban handicraft workshop: "... the entrepreneur could reduce the cost of labor and transportation, exercise tighter control over the quality of goods, and increase productivity by concentrating
workers in one location." (Levack, Muir, and Veldman 660). Transportation such as roads, bridges, canals and railroads were used to transport material to factories and goods to the markets. In the mid eighteenth century, railroad had become the main route of the industrial economy (Levack, Muir, and Veldman 660-61). In 1767, inventor James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny which spun more cotton yarn. Later, Richard Arkwright introduced the water frame which was then put together with the spinning jenny by Samuel Compton and named it the mule. This machine was the main spinning machine in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution (Levack, Muir, and Veldman 656-57). There was a large number of children and women who worked in the textile and mining industries during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. For example, 75 percent of the employees were women and children in the woolen industry. Some machines were even made just for women and children to use in the textile industry. The wages of children and women were also significantly lower than the men's salary (Levack, Muir, and Veldman 672). The main point of the document is the working conditions of the children in the woollen mills. Children who work in the woollen mill start at a young age: "The youngest age at which children are employed is never under five, but some are employed between five and six in woollen mills at piecing." (376). They also get up early in the morning and come back late in the evening: "[...]I have frequently seen them going to work between five and six in the morning[...] I have seen them at work in the summer season between nine and ten in the evening[...]" (376). They are cruelly treated at work and they are scared of being late in the morning. When they make a mistake at work because of fatigue, the children are hit with a strap or a billy-roller. They can't go to school because they are working at the mill and children who go to school are better behaved than those who work at the mill. I think that this document depicts how bad the lives of children were during the Industrial Revolution. Children should get plenty of sleep, but working in the textile mills until ten in the evening and waking up at five in the morning doesn't give the children enough sleep especially at such a young age where development is important. Also, working while fatigued doesn't help production and punishing the kids when they make a mistake might cause psychological problems when they turn adult. They are not going to school, therefore not getting an education and without education they are not contributing to further scientific or technological development of society. Abraham Whitehead sympathized with the children because he said his heart is ready to bleed for them when he sees the children so fatigued.