What Does Birley Do During The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a time of major societal reform, but at a severe cost. During the 18th century in Great Britain, people started to move from the countryside to cities. Human labor was replaced with machinery, like the cotton gin, that changed the way goods were made. Machines and factories had to compete with each other to keep up with each other and the demand for consumer goods. For example, as the Spinning Jenny was invented, there was a surplus of thread, so cloth needed to be woven faster. As a result, the power loom was created, and so on and so forth. This machinery allowed goods to be made cheaper, quicker, and more efficiently. Factories were built to house these new machines, and people were employed to use these machines.
This was detrimental for children in particular because it is proven that working for long periods of time can cause behavioral problems as well as sleep deprivation. In addition, it was also impossible to receive an education while working in factories because of the long workdays and work weeks. John Birley, who lived during the 1800s, worked in a factory as a child. He writes that he and the other boys would typically worked “from five in the morning till nine or ten at night; and on Saturday, till eleven, and often twelve o’clock at night...No time was allowed for breakfast and no sitting for dinner...we went back to work without sitting down.” Children worked extremely long hours, and they had very few breaks and are left standing all day long. The expectations that were required of children were extreme, inhumane, and even dangerous. Industrialization influenced the shifts children had to work. As more products were wanted from consumers, factory workers had to work longer and harder to supply these demands. As John Birley shows, standing and working all day without proper breaks was unsafe and an awful way to treat
Children were payed much less than their adult counterparts. One source of a woman who worked in a cotton mill as a child writes, “We worked twelve hours a day for fifty cents. When paydays come around, I drawed three dollars. That was for six days, seventy-two hours. I remember I lacked fifty cents having enough to pay my board.” These wages were not enough to support someone or their family. People thrived off of manufactured goods, so factories and their owners earned plenty of money; they just did not pay their workers enough. The low wages left children and families in poverty, which made it difficult to provide basic necessities, such as food, for themselves and their families. This lead to serious health issues such as malnutrition, anemia, and fatigue. Not only were the conditions of factories during the Industrial Revolution inhumane and unsuitable for children, but the side effects of their jobs seriously jeopardized their