Editing Factory system (section)

==Societal effects==
Much manufacturing in the 18th century was carried out in homes under the domestic or [[putting-out system]], especially the [[weaving]] of cloth and the spinning of thread and yarn, often with just a single loom or spinning wheel. As these devices were mechanized, machine-made goods were able to underprice the cottagers, leaving them unable to earn enough to make their effort worthwhile.  Other products such as [[nail (fastener) |nails]] had long been produced in factory workshops, increasingly diversified using the [[division of labour]] to increase the efficiency of the system.

Factory workers typically lived within walking distance to work until the introduction of bicycles and electric [[street railway | street-railway]]s in the 1890s.  Thus the factory system was partly responsible for the rise of urban living, as large numbers of workers migrated into the towns in search of employment in the factories.  Many mills had to provide dormitories for workers, especially for girls and women.

The transition to industrialisation was not without difficulty. For example, a group of English workers known as [[Luddite]]s formed in the 1810s to protest against industrialisation and sometimes [[sabotage]]d factories. They continued an already-established tradition of workers opposing labour-saving machinery. Numerous inventors in the textile industry such as [[John Kay (spinning frame) |John Kay]] ({{floruit | 1767}}) and [[Samuel Crompton]] (1753-1827), suffered harassment when developing their machines or devices.
[[Image:Soho Manufactory ca 1800.jpg|thumb|right|The Soho Manufactory in 1800.]]
In other industries the transition to factory production was gradual.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Silverman |first=H. A. |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Studies_in_Industrial_Organization/oihFAQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=industries+transition+factory+production+gradual&pg=PA49&printsec=frontcover |title=Studies in Industrial Organization |date=2013-10-08 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-51317-6 |language=en}}</ref>

Until the late-nineteenth century it was common to work 12 hours a day, six days a week in most factories; however tenant farmers also worked long hours.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Steinbach |first=Susie L. |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Understanding_the_Victorians/U8PLDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=long+hours+common+outside+factories&pg=PT115&printsec=frontcover |title=Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain |date=2016-08-05 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-81825-9 |language=en}}</ref>

Debate arose concerning the morality of the system, as workers complained about unfair working conditions prior to the passage of labour laws.  One of the problems was women's labour; in many cases women were paid not much more than a quarter of what men made.  [[Child labour]] also became a major part of the system.  However, in the early-nineteenth century, education was not compulsory and in many families having children work was necessary due to low incomes ([[Samuel Slater]] (1768-1835) employed children but was required to provide basic education).  Children commonly did farm labour and produced goods for the household.  Besides working in factories, children worked in mines.  Automation in the late 19th century is credited with displacing child labour, with the automatic glass-bottle blowing machine ({{circa | 1890}}) cited by some as an example, having been said<ref>{{Cite book |last=Flannery |first=James L. |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Glass_House_Boys_of_Pittsburgh/Hm1QyfIXRPYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=automatic+glass-bottle+blowing+machine+child+labour&pg=PA2&printsec=frontcover |title=The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh: Law, Technology, and Child Labor |date=2009 |publisher=University of Pittsburgh Pre |isbn=978-0-8229-4377-8 |language=en}}</ref> to have done more to end child labour than child-labour laws.  Years of schooling began to increase sharply from the end of the nineteenth century.

Some industrialists themselves tried to improve factory -and living-conditions for their workers.  One of the earliest such reformers, [[Robert Owen]] (1771-1858), became known for his pioneering efforts in improving conditions for workers at the [[Robert Owen#Philanthropy in New Lanark (1800) |New Lanark mills]], and is often{{quantify|date=March 2023}} regarded as one of the key thinkers of the [[Utopian socialism |early  socialist movement]].

[[Karl Marx]] worried that the capitalist system would eventually lead to wages only sufficient for subsistence due to the [[tendency of the rate of profit to fall]].  Subsistence wages were indeed the case in parts of England.  The [[British Agricultural Revolution]] had been reducing the need for labour on farms for over a century and farm workers were forced to sell their labour wherever they could.  Conditions became particularly bad during the depression years of the late 1830s to early 1840s.  The depression was immediately followed by the [[Great Famine (Ireland) |Irish famine]] of 1845–1850, which brought large numbers of Irish immigrants to seek work in the English and American factories.

One of the best-known accounts of factory workers’ living conditions during the Industrial Revolution is [[Friedrich Engels|Friedrich Engels']] ''[[The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844]]''.  By the late 1880s, Engels noted that the extreme poverty and lack of sanitation he wrote about in 1844 had largely disappeared.<ref>Preface to the later editions (post 1887) of ''Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844''</ref>