Child Labour In The Industrial Revolution

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Child Labor in the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the start of something new, and has transformed the works of manufacturing to what it is today. It was known to be the most influential period of time where the dependent work of agriculture was no longer needed. The use of machinery goods had begun to speed up the production of different types of products including cloth, and textiles.
This type of Revolution had significantly expanded Britain’s economy, and it just so happened to benefit the transformation of the working class. The growth of Britain’s working class was resulted because of child labor within the work forces. Children had no choice but to branch out and join the labor forces during industrialization to …show more content…
Jonathan Saville had shared his encounter during the time period of industrialization as “Until I was seven years old, I lived partly with my father and grandmother and partly in Horton Workhouse. I was then bound apprentice to a man… on which my father said to him, ‘I had rather you’d tie a stone round his neck, and drowned him” (Humphries, 396). Though Jonathan Saville was working to provide his own family with money, his father was willing to have his son killed. The father originally sent Jonathan to work, so he could provide for the family. This type of task was mutual throughout any family during this time. Despite the hard work Saville had put in for his family, it shows how children were a weight that could not be lifted. Parents could not bear the amount of stress and money that goes into children anymore. This was due to the hardships families had to face with an unacceptable amount of income, which had resulted into complete distress. Jonathan Saville was just one of many who had faced this exact …show more content…
He had stated, “The key to economic well-being was the level and regularity of a father’s wages, which could easily slip below what was needed to withhold children from the labour market” (Humphries, 412). Which explained how fathers would spend portions of their wages on personal expenses rather than putting their families well-being first. Ultimately the father could have stepped up and been able to pay the income efficiently without the help of the children. When new technology had been brought upon industrialization, there was less manual labor needed. The wages began to decrease, but the population of children continued to rise. This had left families in need of more money, and jobs to provide for their own. Fathers tend to abandon their family when things had gotten tough. During this period of time about “eight percent of fathers whom autobiographers would acknowledge had deserted their families, and it appears that eighteen percent of boys grew up in households that were abandoned by their male heads” (Humphries, 413). This contributes to the fact that fathers were not able to survive in the work force, but their children could. As it may not be seen as abandonment, war has taken a toll on families during the Industrial Revolution. For the men who did return from war “were often physically or mentally disabled or simply unable to readjust to civilian life. There
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