Child Labour During The British Industrial Revolution

The British Industrial Revolution was the era where a series of technological discoveries increased the production rate of manufacturing. As the manufacturing production increased, so did the demand for products, leaving factories looking for a way to quicken their production rate. The solution came in very small packages… children. They were a fundamental part of the human workforce that powered the Industrial Revolution. However, they were often treated in the most un-human ways possible. Therefore, we can state that child labour during the British Industrial Revolution brought benefits to the country’s economy. However, the physical and psychological impacts it had on them out-weighed the economical benefits.

Children often suffered physically

Factory owners prefered to hire children as workers since kids were often paid much less than a normal worker. Businessmen are always looking for a way to increase their company’s income and by hiring children they could obtain the same amount of work as if they hired men, for less than half of the cost. This would obviously sound appealing to them since it would make them more successful than their competition and since during the Industrial Revolution, the demand for products increased, it was vital for companies to step up their game. Factory owners hired infants because they could impose power on them more easily than on an adult worker and also, they were less likely to rebel and would rather submit into how they were being treated. Children will always be in a “power disadvantage” with respect to a grown man. This is firstly caused by size since a man can easily overpower a small child. Secondly, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, children were not considered powerful at all. They were meant to work just as their parents did and “earn respect” by working for the well-being of their family. Factory managers could easily trick and overpower children into doing whatever they wanted the infants to do and they saw it and used it as an advantage. This sense of power also produced "safety" within the factory for the management since the children would not rebel and cause a halt in the production line regarding their deplorable working conditions simply because they were not heard at the time, so factory managers were confident about their harsh working hours and conditions imposed on the infants. Children were often thought to be the perfect size for the machinery found in factories since their small bodies and extremities, could easily manipulate small and low machines. The fact of children being small, gave them several advantages against any men worker.