Textiles and the industrial revolution

The British Textile Industry and Economic Developments

Dec 14, 2008

The textile industry especially the British textile industry played a very important role in the emergence and the subsequent development of the industrial revolution.

The Importance Of Textiles

The textile industry especially the British textile industry played a very important role in the emergence and the subsequent development of the industrial revolution. The textile industry primarily based around the English counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire had been an important part of the British economy for two or three centuries before the beginning of the industrial revolution.

English Textiles Take Over

The English counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire had whole towns and cities such as Bolton and Bradford reliant upon the textiles industry for their prosperity. The mill owners and textile factory owners even had some influence over the British Parliament, for instance insisting upon the closing down of the textile industry in Bengal because it was cheaper and more productive than the English textile industry.

For the textiles industry, or to be more precise for the mill and factory owners the industrial revolution was generally assumed to be a beneficial process. The invention of industrial looms and spinning machines combined with steam-powered engines made cotton mills and textile factories far more productive than had previously been the case.

Larger as well as more productive cotton mills and textile factories needed a greater number of workers, loom operators, and machine operators to keep the machinery operating around the clock. In the early decades of the industrial revolution cotton mill and textile factory owners tended to prefer child labour to work on their machines. When child labour was outlawed in Great Britain the owners and employers preferred to employ women as they were more agile for handling small machinery parts, and because they could offer them lower wages than men would had been paid.

Poverty And Child Labour

However it is not surprising that young children were used as workers in the industrial revolution. In Great Britain poverty was widespread in the working or lower classes, with every able bodied member of every poor family having to find paid employment or face live in the workhouse. In the poorest families grandparents, parents, and children would all have to work from the earliest possible age right through to the oldest possible age. A failure to work meant either starvation, or the workhouse.

During the industrial revolution employers would often prefer to employ young children in textile factories, cotton mills, down coalmines, and as chimney sweeps. Children were cheaper to employ than adult men were, and they could work in confined spaces or on faster machines that would be dangerous or difficult for adults to have used.

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