Western civilization - New social classes

By class1j
  • Radcliffe

    Radcliffe was ready to commence buisness for himself and by the year 1789 he was well established and employed many hands both in spinning and weaving as a master manufacturer.
  • Radcliffe

    Radcliffe was operating a factory employing a thousand workers.
  • 1816

    Only one mill in five in the important industrial city of Manchester was in the hands of its original owner.
  • Working conditions

    Thus ran a report on working conditions in the cotton industry in 1824.
  • Women and children

    By 1830, women and children made two-thirds of the cotton industry's labor.
  • Jobless

    The poor law act of 1834, established workhouses for the jobless poor people. The jobless poor was forced to live there.
  • Children in work

    In the cotton factories in the 1838, children under 18 made up 29 percent of the total workforce, children as young as 7 worked 12-15 hours per day, 6 days a week, in cotton mills.
  • The 1840s

    By the 1840s, only 10 percent of British industrial firms employed more than five thousand workers, 43 percent had fewer than one hundred.
  • Coal mines

    In 1842, the coal mines act forbade the use of boys younger than ten and women in the mines
  • New business

    By 1850 in Britain at least, the kind of traditional entrepreneurship that had created the industrial revolution was declining and was being replaced by a new business aristocracy. This new generation of entrepreneurs stemmed from the professional and industrial middle classes, especially as sons inherited the succesful businesses established by their fathers.
  • 1851

    According to the 1851 cencus in Britain, there were 1.8 million agricultural laborers and 1 million domestic servants but only 811,00 wokers in the cotton and woolen industries. And one-third of these were still working in small workshops or at home.
  • 1851

    In 1851, fully 40 percent of the female workforce in Britain consisted of domestic servants.