Pollard Eta Factory Village

The Factory Village in the Industrial RevolutionAuthor(s): Sidney PollardSource: The English Historical Review, Vol. 79, No. 312 (Jul., 1964), pp. 513-531Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/560991 .

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I964

The Factory Village in the Industrial Revolution'

I

T HE question of the standard of living during the industrial revolution continues to be a subject of acute controversy.2 As

always, however, the scene of battle is shifting during the contest, and it is nowadays increasingly recognized that no single answer can be given, since different classes and industries fared differently, while at the same time the issue of the quality of life in the new factory towns will have to remain largely a matter of subjective judg- ment.

One comer of this controversy is, or ought to be, the conditions prevailing in the company towns and villages, for here some of the main developments of the industrial revolution were epitomized: here were whole townships under the social and economic control of the industrialist, their whole raison d'6tre his quest for profit, their politics and laws in his pocket, the quality of their life under his whim, their ultimate aims in his image. What is to our immediate purpose, they have in the past raised as much controversy as the issue of the industrial revolution itself.

At their best, they were, or could have become, models of social progress, the creations of men with a conscience and some social ideal- ism, vehicles for transferring at least some of the benefits of industrial invention and work to the mass of the working population. Such was Robert Owen's New Lanark. But others were typefied by the owner who oppressed Robert Blincoe and his fellow apprentices, or the master of the mill at Backbarrow who obtained notoriety by turning his apprentices loose in a period of slack trade, to beg their

1 This essay is part of a larger study on industrial management in the industrial revolution, which has been made possible by a grant by the Houblon-Norman Fund.

2 The most recent contributions are: R. M. Hartwell, 'The Rising Standard of Living in England, 80oo-850 ', Econ. Hist. Rev. (2nd ser.), xiii (I96) ; E. J. Hobs- bawm, ' The British Standard of Living, I790-1850 ', ibid. x (I957) and discussion in ibid. xvi/i (I963) ; A. J. Taylor, 'Progress and Poverty in Britain, I780-850 : A Reappraisal', History xlv (I960).

VOL. LXXIX--NO. CCCXII KK

5 I 3



514 THE FACTORY VILLAGE July

way into their home parishes,1 and these were eloquently described by the Hammonds.2

Historians today are increasingly inclined to see them, not in terms of social conscience, but in terms of managerial necessity. Smelser, in his recent perceptive study of the cotton industry, was driven to the conclusion that, great though the outward difference was between the flogging masters and the model community builders, 'from the standpoint of control of labour . . ., both types of factory management display a concern with the enforcement of discipline'. 'The much publicized evils of the factory system', concluded another historian 'were symptoms ofmanagerialinefficiency and inadequate capital resources rather than the inevitable con- comitant of factory employment.'3 The importance of this aspect has been underrated in the past, and it is the object of this paper to provide a new evaluation of it in the period up to 830o, and examine some of the consequences of this approach.

II

The large scale entrepreneur of the day had to manage his firm personally, in the virtual absence of a managerial, clerical or admin- istrative staff,4 as well as without the indispensable aids to modern management, from telephones and typewriters upwards. He wrote his own letters, visited his own customers, and belaboured his men with his own walking-stick.5 Yet his range of responsibilities was much wider than that of today's entrepreneur, who is concerned almost exclusively with the activities inside the factory, with buying, producing and selling. In the early years of industrialization many outside services now taken for granted or dealt with by the single action of paying taxes, had to be provided by the large manufacturer himself.

Among the most important were those creating the 'infrastruc- ture ' of an undustrial economy. There were, first of all, the costly means of transport. The large collieries on the Tyne and Wear, it is

1 Select Committee on the Children Employed in the Manufactories, Parl. Papers I8I6, iii. i8I, 295, ev. John Moss, pp. 290-I, ev. Wm Travers; J. D. Marshall, Furness and the Industrial Revolution (Barrow-i.-F., I 958), pp. 52-53.

2 The new towns, they wrote in a well-known passage, ' were not so much towns as

barracks: not the refuge of a civilization but the barracks of an industry .... They were settlements of great masses of people collected in a particular place because their fingers or their muscles were needed on the brink of a stream here or at the mouth of a furnace there. These people were not citizens of this or that town, but hands of this or that master.' J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Town Labourer (1919), pp. 39, 40. 3 N. J. Smelser, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (1959), p. 05 ; J. D. Chambers,' Industrialization as a Factor in Economic Growth: England, I700-900 ', in Contributions To the First International Conference of Economic History (Paris, 960), p. 208. Cf. also M. Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism ( 947 edn.), p. 266.

4 The question of the managerial staff is of major importance by itself, and I hope to deal with it elsewhere.

6 Neil McKendrick, ' Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline ', Historical Journal, iv (I96) ; Charles Wilkins, The History of the Iron, Steel, Tinplate, and Other Trades of Wales (Merthyr Tydfil, I903), p. 69.



1964 IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 515

well known, provided their own rail systems from about I605 onwards; by I725, one line was 5 miles long and within a generation some local lines reached lengths of 8-Io miles. Hetton colliery in I826-7 had an 8-mile long railway, three steam locomotives, six stationary engines and five brake contrivances, including inclined planes.1 Elsewhere, Whingill colliery at Whitehaven, for example, had Io miles of iron railroads to keep up by 1827, and the duke of Norfolk's Sheffield collieries some 8 miles. Some iron works were similarly placed : the Merthyr tramroad system maintained by the local ironmasters extended to 40 miles, and by 183 , it was reputed, to 120 miles.2

In the canal era, the duke of Bridgewater's agent had to supervise the building of the premier canal as part of his duties of running the Worsley collieries, besides managing an extensive agricultural estate, draining marshes, dovetailing a tree planting programme and gener- ally supervising the erratic innovating genius of Brindley.3 Many other coalowners found canals indispensable and had to build them; elsewhere the canals built by Wedgwood, by the Carron works, the Horsley ironworks and by Samuel Oldknow have long since become standard examples in the textbooks. Other entrepreneurs, again, had to build ports and harbours. This includes the major coal mag- nates, in West Cumberland, the Lowthers, the Curwens and the Stenhouses, as well as the Anglesea copper mining companies, which had to create the harbour of Amlwch; they, indeed, also owned much shipping, as did Carron. Others, again, built roads: Arkwright's small mill at Bakewell spent Ci,ooo on roadmaking, besides the personal contributions of the owners to the County's turnpike system.4

Other enterprises had to go in for large scale farming mainly for the sake of food for workers, fodder for the horses (the works transport), pit props or timber for fuel. Ambrose Crowley devoted much

1 C. E. Lee, ' The World's Oldest Railway ', Transactions of the Newcomen Society, xxv (I945-7), ( Tyneside Tramroads of Northumberland', ibid. xxvi (I947-9), and 'The Wagonways of Tyneside', Archaeologia Aeliana (4th ser.), xxix (95I), I35 ff. ; C. F. Dendy Marshall, A History of British Railways down to the Year 1830 (I938), p. 25; R. A. Mott, 'Abraham Darby (I and II) and the Coal-Iron Industry ', Trans. Newc. Soc. xxxi (I95 7-9). 88-89; R. L. Galloway, Annals of Coal Mining and the Coal Trade (1898), p. 284.

2 Mechanics' Magazine, 25 June 1831 ; Stanley Mercer, ' Trevethick and the Merthyr Tramroad ', Trans. Newc. Soc. xxvi (I947-9), 90; also ibid. xxix. 6; Norfolk Muniments (MSS., Sheffield City Library), S.232; Charles Wilkins, The South Wales Coal Trade (Cardiff, I888), p. I87. 3 Edith Malley, The Financial Administration of the Bridgewater Estate I78o- 8 o (M.A. Thesis, Manchester, ?i929), pp. 119, I46 ff.

4 J. M. Norris, 'The Struggle for Carron', Scottish Historical Review, xxxvii (I958), 137; J. R. Harris, The Copper Industry in Lancashire and North Wales, I76o-i 8y, (Ph.D. Thesis, Manchester, n.d.) p. 240; O. Wood, Coal, Iron and Shipbuilding of West Cumberland 1I70-g114 (Ph.D. Thesis, London, I952), pp. 5-6, 26-28, 41 ; C. M. C. Bouch and G. P. Jones, A Short Economic and Social History of the Lake Counties o00-I 830 (Manchester, 1961), pp. 227-8 ; R. H. Campbell, Carron Company (Edinburgh and Lon- don, 1961), pp. II5-I8 ; H. M. Mackenzie, 'The Bakewell Mill and the Arkwrights ', Journ. Derbyshire Arch and Nat. Hist. Society, lxxix (959), 64.



5i6 THE FACTORY VILLAGE July

energy to his works farm, and examples in the period 1770- 830 may be found in a wide range of industries represented by Plymouth and Cyfarthfa ironworks, Litton mill, Greg's at Styal, Oldknow at Mellor, the Backbarrow Co., the Swinton pottery, the Cheadle New Wire Co., Woolaton pits, the Quaker Lead Co., Darley Abbey cotton mills, and the Parys Mine Co. The early cotton mills, again, had to be their own engineers. Thus the New Lanark machine shop cost annually C8,ooo, employing 87 men, and the works at Deanston were scarcely less extensive ; Heathcoat's, re- moving to an engineering backwater at Tiverton, had an engineering branch which soon acquired its own reputation, building agricultural machinery.1

Finally, the early entrepreneurs frequently had to arrange for their own security. It was not only in the barbarian Highlands that troops had to be provided in the absence of reliable local police, or in the mining areas where it was said that there were 'strong, healthy and resolute men, setting the law at defiance, no officer dared to execute a warrant against them '.2 The introduction of new machinery such as cotton frames, gig mills or power looms, could cause riots and so could ordinary strikes and food shortages. Some managers were then turned into military officers on top of their other duties.

All these, however, were tasks which might face the men managing factories and mines anywhere in Britain. We must now turn to those which fell especially on the men who set up in isolated villages and created, in effect, company towns and villages.

III

The first and most obvious need was to provide houses. In Scotland, in particular, the decision to establish a large works in the open country was taken to be synonymous with the need for new housing: Adam Bogle, managing the Blantyre mills, calculated simply that the working of double shifts would involve Monteith, Bogle & Co. in an expenditure of ?I 5-20,000 on new houses. But in England, too, Isaac Hodgson of Lancaster assumed that if he wanted to expand his cotton mill, he would have to build more houses for his workers, while Brameld took it for granted thathe could re-open the Swinton pottery in 181o only if Earl Fitzwilliam built

1 Robert Owen, Life of Owen (1920 edn.), p. 187, and A New View of Society (1927 edn.), p. I7 ; H. G. MacNab, The New Views of Mr. Owen of Lanark Impartially Exam- ined (I 89), pp. 67, 07 ; Sir John Sinclair (Old) Statistical Account of Scotlandxv (Edin- burgh, 1795), p. 36 ; Factories Inquiry Commission, First Report (referred to henceforth as Factories Commission), Parl. Papers, I833, xx, Sec. Ai, 65 ; William Felkin, A History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures (1867), p. 264; J. D. Marshall, op. cit. p. 5I.

2 Robert Edlington, A Treatise on the Coal Trade (I8I3), p. I8.



IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

cottages for his workers.' The north-eastern collieries, as a rule, provided cottages ('hovels ') for their men, who would vacate them when changing their employment, and each mining village was

simply a group of pits, with its attached colliers' houses. Cottages entered into normal capital costs, and were included in the standard

yearly miners' bond. Cumberland, as always, followed the Tyne- side practice closely.2

A list of large works providing their own attached cottage estates or a controlling share of them reads like a roll-call of the

giants of the industrial revolution. From Ambrose Crowley and Sir

Humphrey Mackworth, the fore-runners at the turn of the century, and the Newlands (iron) Company and' New York ' a little later, the list includes, among English cotton mills, Hyde, Newton, Dukin- field, Cromford, Milford, Belper, Bakewell, Mellor, Staleybridge, Cressbrook, Backbarrow, Darley Abbey, Styal and Bollington, the Peels' settlements at Bury and the Horrocks's at Preston ; in Scot- land, New Lanark, Deanston, Catrine, Blantyre, the Stanley Mills and in Belfast, Springfield. Among ironworks there was Carron, Ebbw Vale, Cwmavon, Dowlais, Plymouth, Nantyglo, Ketley, Butterley (Golden Valley and Ironville) and the Walkers of Masbro '. There was Benjamin Gott's in the woollen trade, and the Worsley complex of enterprises. In the copper industry, the Warmley Co. Charles Roe's and Morrison; in lead, Nent Head, Carrigill, Middleton, and Leadhills. There was Melingriffith in the tinplate trade, Tremadoc and Port Madoc in slate, and Etruria in pottery.

In a few cases, workers were housed in one large block. Boulton put his workers in the top floor of the wings of the first block at Soho. At Paisley, John Orr housed thirty-five families in one building. At Neath, Sir James Morris's 'castellated lofty mansion, of a collegiate appearance, with an interior quadrangle, containing dwellings for forty families, all colliers, excepting one tailor and one shoemaker, who are considered as useful appendages to the fraternity ', had a higher reputation than Henry Houldsworth's block at Anderston, Glasgow, of which even Dr. Ure could find

1 Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments (MSS., Sheffield City Library), F. io6a; House of Lords Committee on Apprentices, Parl. Papers, I818, v. 214; S.C. on Children in Manufacture, p. I69; cf. also David Loch, Essay on the Trade, Commerce and Manufactures of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1775), p. 47; D. F. Macdonald, Scotland's Shifting Population, I770- i8yo (Glasgow, 1937), pp. 62, 64; Anon., 'Some Glasgow Customers of the Royal Bank around i800 ', Three Banks Review No. 48 (I960), p. 39; Sinclair, loc. cit. p. 40.

2 E. Hughes, North Country Life in the Eighteenth Century (I952), p. 257; Hylton Scott, ' The Miner's Bond in Northumberland and Durham', Proceedings of the Soc. of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (4th ser.), xi (I947), 64; J. B. Simpson, Capital and Labour in Coal Mining (Newcastle, I900), p. 29; T. S. Ashton, ' The Coal-Miners of the Eighteenth Century', Economic History i (1928), 311 ; John Holland, The History and Description of Fossil Fuel, The Collieries and Coal Trade of Great Britain ( 83 5), p. 293 ; 0. Wood, op. cit. pp. 42, 135.

I964 517



nothing better to say than that it was very healthy after ventilation had been put in.'

At Merthyr Tydfil, a company town in many respects, though dominated by four iron companies rather than one, Crawshay, having monopolized all the likely building land round his works, leased it out to others, with disastrous results for the health and amenities of the area. Richard Hill, at neighbouring Plymouth, being too poor to build workers' cottages himself, had them built by a Bristol merchant who found the speculation most profitable.2

Few works outside the factory villages had large housing pro- grammes. City firms might own a few houses for key workers, at best, and if small firms provided a row or two of cottages, these had no further social significance. According to the returns of the Factory Commission of 833, of 881 large firms, 299 gave no details, 414 made no housing provisions and I68 provided some houses.3 But of these, the majority provided a few only.

The management of the housing property gave the villages their character and was usually symbolic of the employers' attitude to his workmen in general. Robert Owen began4 by building a second storey on to the New Lanark houses, having the dung-heaps cleared, and organizing a permanent cleansing service. Finlay's, at Deans- ton, offered prizes for the best-kept houses, and at least fourteen other works in Scotland reported in 1833 special incentives, or Com- pany services, in cleaning and whitewashing their cottage property. Thomas Ashton's stone-built houses at Hyde, having at least four rooms, with pantry, a small backyard and a privy, were 'an object of wonder and admiration',5 and Samuel Greg paid special attention to housing in his model settlement at Bollington. At such excep- tional firms as David Rattray's flax mills in Perthshire, workers lived rent free ; elsewhere rent was deducted from pay before pay-day. The works management, rather than a special housing manager, thus looked after the settlement and housing could be turned into a

1D. T. Williams, The Economic Development of Swansea (Cardiff, 1940), pp. 175-6, quoting Walter Davies, General View of Agriculture and Domestic Economy of South Wales, (I815), i. 134-5 ; also G. G. Francis, The Smelting of Copper in the Swansea District (I881 edn.), p. 132 ; D. C. Webb, Four Excursions ... in the Years 18So and I8iI (81 2), p. 35 5 ; (Thomas Martyn) A Tour to South Wales (National Library of Wales MS. No. 1340, x80o), fo. 80; Factories Commission, Second Suppl. Report, Renfrewshire; Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures (I835 edn.), p. 393. The Owenist settlement at Orbiston was also housed in a large four-storeyed block. W. H. G. Armytage, Heavens Below (1961), p. 97.

2 Wilkins, op. cit. p. I49 ; T. Rees, A Topographical and Historical Description of South W'ales (I8I5), p. 646.

3 Factories Commission, Suppl. Report, part ii, P.P. 1834. xx. 4 Robert Dale Owen, Threading My Way (1874), pp. 71-72; Life of Owen, p. 84;

G. D. H. Cole, Robert Owen (1925), p. 72. 5 Frances Collier, The Family Economy of the Workers in the Cotton Industry during the Period of the Industrial Revolution 1784-1833 (M.A. Thesis, Manchester, I921), p. I37; Ure, op. cit. p. 349 ; F. Hill, National Education (2 vols. 1836), p. I35 ; Factories Com- mission, First Report, D. 2, p. 83, Supplementary Report, part ii.

July 5 8 TH3E FACTORY VIL;LAGE:




tool of discipline. Not only were evictions, for example in the coal- fields, used to defeat strikes, but even as routine policy, the Worsley mines explicitly reserved the best houses for the best workers, and withdrew them when their discipline or obedience showed signs of falling off.1

In addition, the houses had of course to be made to pay, and this was not difficult when cottages cost about ?5 to build, rising from about ?40-45 in the seventeen-seventies to ?60 during the war inflation,2 while rents were 2s. to 3s. a week, and certain. With yields thus well over io per cent, housing accounts chalked up regular profits in most firms.3

IV

In Scotland, by tradition, schools were provided in every parish, and even the less enlightened owners of flax mills round Aberdeen and Dundee, and of cotton mills round Glasgow and Paisley, provided at least school rooms and often the teaching also.4 In Eng- land and Wales school provision was rarer.5 It was again, largely confined to the entrepreneurs who were also community builders.

In the textile areas schooling was particularly important, since the pupils were not the workers' children, but the ' hands ' themselves. Everywhere, however, it was partly subsidized, and partly paid for by the children themselves. In many villages much thought and effort went into the organization of the day and evening schools, and some were dovetailed with working hours and came under works discipline. Sunday schools had a far more important part to play, being largely designed to inculcate current middle-class morals and obedience, but they were widespread in the cities as well as in the factory villages.

1 Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor, 4th Report (I798), p. 239.

2 Hugh Malet, The Canal Duke (Dawlish and London, I961), p. I65 ; Herculaneum Pottery Minute Book (Liverpool Central Library MSS., 380 M.D. 47), io March I807, 7 June, 6 Dec. 1814, 6 June x815, 2 April I8I6, 25 Nov. 18I7, 6 June 1820 ; Cyfarthfa MSS. (National Library of Wales), Box 12; Henry English, A Compendium ... relating to the Companies formedfor working British Mines (1826), p. 120.

3 P. Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of England (1833), p. 348 ; R. S. Fitton and A. P. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights (Manchester, i958), p. 246 ; Factories Commission, First Report, A. I, pp. 92, 97; Cyfarthfa MSS., Box 12, Profit and Loss Accounts 1814, 1819, 1820 ; Select Committee on Manufactures, Commerce and Shipping, Parl. Papers 1833, vi, QQ. 9800-2. Also Boulton and Watt MSS. (Birmingham Assay Office), Correspondence, Boulton to Thos. Loggan, 14 Dec. 1794; J. E. Cule, The Financial History of Matthew Boulton, I7yJ9-I800 (M.Com. Thesis, Birmingham, I935), p. 191 ; John Horner, The Linen Trade of Europe during the Spinning-Wheel Period (Belfast, I920), p. I05.

4 E.g. Replies to Questionnaire, Factories Commission, Supplementary Report II, and FirstReport, A. I : pp. I, 3, i8, 21, 30, 3I, 62, 65, 79, 92, 93, II ; A. 2 : pp. 35, 49, 73.

5 The educational provisions of the Act of 1802 remained a dead letter, and even those of 1833 had little immediate effect. Hill, op. cit. p. I29 ; G. Ward, ' The Educ- ation of Factory Child Workers, I833-I850 ', Economic History, iii (I935), IIo ff.

i964 5 I 9



Dissenters among the community builders, like the Strutts, Newton Chambers or the Gregs, built chapels, others built churches, and Quakers, like Darby's, joined with many of their staff in regular religious meetings. At one extreme, Robert Owen provided out of his own pocket for a number of different sects, with none of whose teaching he agreed. At the other, Richard Crawshay laid it down that he 'wishes every Man to worship God his own way, but is no friend to new fanatick sectarys. The two establishments of Church and Presbytery afford choice enough for Humble Men to find their own way to God, Grace and Holy Spirit.'1

In some industries, as e.g. in the Cornish tin mines, in the dock- yards, and in some South Wales Ironworks, medical assistance was commonly provided by a 2d. weekly deduction from wages.2 Else- where, I d., id., or even ?d. a week might be deducted, and White- haven miners paid 2zo a year to a surgeon in the mid-eighteenth century 'for cureing burnt men '.3 At least as often, firms paid surgeons direct, either by retainer or whenever they were called in. Apprentices, in particular, usually had regular attention.

This service was usually accompanied by the support of Sick Clubs, and by pensions. Sick clubs were largely financed by the men themselves, but in numerous cases the employer, by virtue of a small or contingent contribution, had absolute control over the management of the Fund, directly or indirectly, and used it as a means of disciplinary control, by combination with a system of fines and rewards.4 Among the best-known works schemes were that of Matthew Boulton, copied widely, though leading to much dis- satisfaction in Soho because of its autocratic government, and that of Curwen, established I786 at Workington and Harrington, as he pro- posed its extension to the whole country, in place of the Poor Law, in i8i6.5 In some firms, membership was compulsory, and deductions were made from wages for it.

1 Arthur Raistrick, Dynasty of Ironfounders, the Darbys and Coalbrookdale (I953), p. 4; H.E.E., Thorncliffe, a Short History of Newton Chambers e Co. Ltd. serialized in Thorn- cliffe News (I953 on), ii; Frances Collier, ' An Early Factory Community', Economic History, ii (1930), Ix8 ; S.C. on Manufactures, P.P. I833, vi, QQ. 11416-7 ; Fitton and Wadsworth, p. Ioo ; National Library of Wales, MS. No. 2,873 17 Oct. I793; ' One Formerly a Teacher at New Lanark ', Robert Owen at New Lanark (Manchester, i839), pp. 11-12.

2 Madeleine Elsas (ed.) Iron in the Making: Dowlais Iron Company Letters, 1782-1860 (Country Records Committee, Glamorgan, and Guest Keen Iron and Steel Co. I960), p. 72; Arthur Titley, ' Cornish Mining', Trans. Newc. Soc. xi (1930-1), 30; P.R.O. ADM 42/553; Select Committee on Payment of Wages, Parl. Papers I842, ix, QQ. 3019 ff.

3 Galloway, Annals, p. 347; A. H. John, The Industrial Development of South Wales, 17yo-I8Xo (Cardiff, 1950), p. 86 ; Hill, op. cit. p. 137 ; Factories Commission, Second Report, P.P. I833, xxi, D. 2, p. 56; 0. Wood, p. I36.

4E.g. Marshall Papers (MSS., Brotherton Library, Leeds), No. 43, Articles io March I795 ; Factories Commission, First Report, C. I, pp. 46-47 ; Jean Lindsay, ' An Early Industrial Community. The Evans' Cotton Mill at Darley Abbey', Business History Review, xxxiv (1960), 299.

6 Erich Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation ... Boulton & WVatt, i77f- I8o0 (9530), pp. 223-34; Stebbin Shaw, History and Antiquities ofStaffordshire (i8oi), ii.

July THE FACTORY VILLAGE 520




Some of these funds made death grants also and other firms paid pensions. Provision varied widely, from the derisory sum of Liz a year set aside by the Strutt's for compensation to accident victims at a time when there were 200 a year, to the average of ?8 a week paid out year after year, by the Mona Mine Co. to widows of men killed at work, to injured men, and to retired agents.'

V

The master of a factory town had the same ultimate objective as his counterpart, the town employer : he wanted his hands to work hard, reguarly and well, and he wanted them to abstain from rioting and from making use of what other bargaining power theypossessed. The town employer, however, could get by with simple model of worker psychology, in which money was the sole stimulant, and its operation encouraged by the convenient doctrine that the hands worked the better, the less they were paid. Some philosophers and some employees might well have emancipated themselves from this view by 175 o,2 but in most factories the traditional view of the overriding dominance of the cash nexus took at least two or three more generations to break down.3

The man in charge of the factory village, on the other hand, was forced to take account of the worker's behaviour outside working hours, of his family, the likelihood of his migration, and of his attitude to the industrial system as a whole, often called by contemporaries his 'moral outlook'. At the same time, he had more tools at his disposal to mould his worker by moulding his environment and to impress his own system of morals on the whole factory community.

Sometimes this took curious, almost unintelligible forms, as in the extraordinary preoccupation with bad language, and the length

121; H. W. Dickinson, Matthew Boulton (Cambridge, I937), p. 179; W. B. Crump (ed.), The Leeds Woollen Industry, I780-I820 (Leeds, I931), p. I87 ; Herbert Heaton, 'Ben- jamin Gott and the Industrial Revolution in Yorkshire', Ec. Hist. Rev., iii (I93I), 6i; John Lord, Capital and Steam Power (I923), p. 205 ; A. Raistrick, Two Centuries of Indus- trial Welfare, The London (Quaker) Lead Company, I692-I90o (1938), pp. 47-48 ; Sir F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor (I797), pp. 78-80, I64-5 ; 0. Wood, op. cit. p. 44.

1 Fitton and Wadsworth, p. 253; Mona Mine MSS. (Univ. Coll. Bangor), Nos. 641, 2252, 3I74-5; John Rowlands, Social and Economic Changes in the Town and Parish of AmlJwch, Ir7o-I8;o (M.A. Thesis, Wales (Bangor), I960), p. 273.

2 A. W. Coats, ' Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth Century', Econ. Hist. Rev. (2nd ser.), xi (1958); E. S. Furniss, The Position of the Labourer in a System of Nationalism (N. York, I957 edn.), pp. 178 if. 3 New Lanark always excepted. E.g. Cole, Robert Owen, p. I05 ; Peter Gorb, 'Robert Owen as a Business Man ', Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, xxv (I95 ), 144; J. Lord, op. cit. p. 226 ; Ure, op. cit. pp. 364-5 ; A. H. John, op. cit. pp. 70-72; Raistrick, Two Centuries, p. 22; P. Russell (ed.), England Displayed (1769), ii. 94; Lords Committee on Apprentices, p. 24; Joseph Kulischer, Allgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Munich, I958 repr.), pp. 182-3 ; S.C. on Manufactures, p. 30I ; L. Urwick and E. F. L. Brech, The Making of Scientific Management (I959 edn.), ii. ii. The banality of much later writing on management is anticipated in J. Montgomery, The Theory and Practice of Cotton Spinning (Glasgow, 1833), pp. 25I-3.

I964 52I



THE FACTORY VILLAGE

to wlhich the masters would go to prevent their children having any leisure whatever on Saturdays and Sundays.l But more typically, Robert Owen, Busby & Co. at Mearns, James Finlay at Ballindaloch Robert McGregor at New Kilpatrick, Joseph Stephenson at Antrim, the Blantyre and Deanston works took special measures and employed special staff to control the ' morals ' of their villages. The Board of the British Plate Glass Company, discussing the salary of its manager in 18 15, resolved that 'the moral order and regularity of the small community belonging to the works must be seen to enable the Committee to form a just estimate of the Superintendent's merits'. The Quaker Lead Company lauded for its social conscience, never dismissed anyone except those guilty of 'tippling, fighting, night- rambling, mischief and other disreputable conduct, or evidence of a thankless and discontented disposition '.2 Those dismissed were never taken on again and in effect, in those isolated mining villages, forced to starve or to emigrate. Discipline in the works and in the villages could not be separated: 'We have had a most uneasy time for many months past with our people,' complained Josiah Wedg- wood, after the move to Etruria, 'they seem to have got a notion that as they are come to a new place with me they are to do what they please.'3

The vexed question of drink does, perhaps, show the link most clearly. Drunkenness was, in fact, the only cause of dismissal oper- ating at New Lanark; it was equally seriously regarded by the Quaker Lead Co., by Marshall's of Leeds, and by other model employers.4 It was indeed, a perennial problem especially among skilled men, who were paid enough to be able to afford it, and who were scarce enough not to be sacked too easily. Boulton and Watt were repeat- edly troubled by it as it affected some of their best engineers, and at one strike at Soho, negotiations had to be suspended for a day, as the men were all drunk. Carron suffered similarly, and Kelsall, in Wales, found some of his iron workers in 1729 off work, ' committed to the stocks for being drunk and abusive '. Wedgwood was much troubled by it, and so were the Manchester mill-owners, as is evident from Robert Owen's well-known account of his interview with Drinkwater.5 Later, indeed, it was claimed that Manchester mill

1 This is treated at greater length in my forthcoming paper on' Factory Discipline in the Industrial Revolution'.

2 T. C. Barker and J. R. Harris, A Mersey Town in the Industrial Revolution: St. Helens 17Jo-900o (Liverpool, I954), p. II6 ; A. Raistrick, 'The London Lead Company, I692-I905 ', Trans. Newc. Soc. xiv (I933-4), I56. 3 Josiah Wedgwood, Letters to Bentley, I771-I780 (Priv. circ. I903), p. I3I, 6 Feb. 1773.

4 Owen, Threading My Way, pp. 70, 72; A. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry (I950), p. 174; Two Centuries, pp. 31, 78 ; 'London Lead Company ', pp. 36, I57; Ure, op. cit. p. 355.

5 Roll, op. cit. pp. 6i, 64; A. E. Musson and Eric Robinson,' The Early Growth of Steam Power', Econ. Hist. Rev. (2nd ser.), xi (I959), 434 ; Birmingham Assay Office, Boulton & Watt Correspondence, Watt to Boulton, 4 Oct. I779, 4 Oct. 1781, I March 1788,

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workers were healthier and better workers than men in other occupations, as the factory left them no time for drink and debauchery.1

The community builder could do more than punish the offenders: he could restrict the sale of liquor. Owen made it a monopoly of his own shop, entered all purchases of liquor in a book, and used the profits to pay for his school; neither Deanston nor Blantyre permitted any public house to open in their villages.2 Lord Penrhyn, also, enforced the same ban in his model village. In 183 1, J. J. Guest re-affirmed that no one in his employ would be allowed to keep a public house or a beershop,3 but the reasons for this were not merely those of keeping the workforce sober and industrious: they were largely concerned with the prevention of truck.

VI

The facts about the truck system in the company towns are well known. In our present context, however, they require a new inter- pretation : for truck shops were not only, like workers' cottages, sources of welcome petty profiteering : they also added yet further to the sheer burdens of management.

Not all company shops were predatory. Clearly, the occasional purchase of grain wholesale, to be sold at cost price or less in times of harvest failure was to benefit the company only in as far as it bene- fited the workers, and such deliveries are known to have been made by Coalbrookdale, the Quaker Lead Co., David Dale, the Anglesea mines, the Lambton collieries, the Whitehaven collieries, the Tehidy estate, Tredegar and Sir Watkin Wynne's collieries. Further, from the early examples of the Elizabethan copper mines onwards, and in mines in the early seventeenth century, when it was, recognized that in isolated areas a manager, to start up, would need 'meate, drinke and rayment, sufficient to suffice them; also coyne and money for such workmen, to provide for themselves ',4 community builders have been forced, at times, to look after the food supply.5 26 Jan. 1789, 25 or 26 Sept. I786 ; Kelsall MSS. (Friend's House, London), v, 22 May I729; Urwick and Brech, pp. 44 ff.; Campbell, Carron Company, pp. 52, 70; A. Birch, 'The Haigh Ironworks, I789-I856 ', Bulletin of the John Ryland's Library, xxxv (i953), 33 ; Committee on the Woollen Manufacture of England, Parl. Papers 806, iii. 77; V. W. Bladen, ' The Potteries in the Industrial Revolution ', Economic History, i (I926), I30. 1 Lords' Committee on Apprentices, pp. 8, 24.

2 Select Committee on Children in Manufactories, P.P. I8i6, iii, pp. I64, I67, i68, I77; Factories Commission, Supplementary Report, II; A. H. Dodd, The Industrial Revolution in North Wales (Cardiff, 1933), p. 206. 3 Elsas, op. cit. p. 79. 4 Stephen Atkinson, The Discoverie and Historie of the Gold Mynes in Scotland (I6I9, repr. Edinburgh, I825) ; W. G. Collingwood, Elizabethan Keswick (Cumberland and Westmorl. and Antiqu. and Archaeol. Soc. Tract Series, viii, Kendal, I9I2), p. 7. 5 Bouch and Jones, op. cit. pp. 227-8 ; G. G. Hopkinson, The Development of Lead Mining, and of the Coal and Iron Industries in North Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, 7 oo-i 8 o (Ph.D. Thesis, Sheffield, I958), p. 362; Fitton and Wadsworth, pp. 249-50; Cole, Robert Owen, pp. 68, 77; Two Centuries, pp. 24, 40; Collier,' Early Factory Community', pp. 118-21 ; Factories Commission, First Report, C. I, pp. II4-15; Collier, Family Economy, p. 121 ; S.C. on Payment of Wages, P.P. I842, QQ. 2995-7.

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THE FACTORY VILLAGE

Truck shops, profitable or not, were yet another burden on the limited managerial capacity available. They created permanent ill-will, disputes and occasional riots, such as those caused by the truck shops at Dowlais and Penydarren in 80o.1 Of the notorious shop at Dowlais, opened in i800, the senior partner wrote in 1803 : 'Tis a pity that our shopkeeping has been so very much less profitable than our neighbours. Mr. Lewis and myself have made up our minds that we will not have anything to do with shopkeeping other than receiving a good rent for it.' Hence it was let, but the tenant, despite the trouble taken to suppress competition for his sake, had paid neither rent or interest on the stock advanced after five years, and had to be sold up. A manager was then put in, and was paid a salary plus a share of the profits, but there were further difficulties. At neighbouring Cyfarthfa, likewise, William Crawshay ordered 'I must desire that neither Butter, Cheese, Flour, Tallow or aught else may be bo't for money', as it locked up his precious capital.2

Deductions from wages for tools, etc., could also be most troublesome to the limited clerical and managerial staff available. Thus the Mona Mine Co. had to deduct, at each pay day (once every two months) separate items for powder, candles, German steel, blister steel, waste of iron, shovels, mats, copper wire, smiths' cost, carpenters' bill, drawing, week's club, cartage and sieve rims : and of the oo payments due on 3 I December 825 for example, only 39 had credit balances left, the rest were in debt which had to be carried over to the next period.3 Also, it should not be forgotten that com- petitors who did not engage in truck got away with paying lower wages, and that indebtedness worked both ways: while it tied the worker to his master, it also, in effect, forced the firm to continue to employ the worker.4

The link with the truck shop was often the substitute of shop notes for cash in wage payments. This was another expedient which could be turned to good account, as Samuel Oldknow found,5

1 D. J. Davies, The Economic History of South Wales Prior to 18oo (Cardiff, 1933), p. I38 ; John Lloyd, The Early History of the Old South Wales Ironworks (I76o- 840) (I906), p. 95 ; Elsas, op. cit. p. 36. Also Dodd, loc. cit. p. 405 ; Charles Hadfield, British Canals (I950), p. 37; Select Committee on ArtiZans and Machinery, Parliamentary Papers, I824, v, pp. 6II-I3.

2 Cyfarthfa MSS., i, 30 Nov. I8I5, 17 Jan., 5 April I8I6 ; Dowlais Letters (MSS., Glamorgan County Record Office), 27 Sep. i8oo, 26 July, 28 July I803, 2 Oct. 18I2.

3 Mona Mine MSS., Nos. 80, 2648. 4 For Crawshay, see the revealing letter in Mechanics' Magazine, 24 Sep. 1831 ; also

John P. Addis, The Crawshay Dynasty (Cardiff, 1957), p. 4 ; Davies, op. cit. p. 138; Wilkins, Iron Trade, pp. 97-98 ; H. M. Cadell, The Rocks of West Lothian (1925), p. 330 ; Henry Hamilton, The English Brass and Copper Industries to I8oo (I926), pp. 316-17; Campbell, Carron Company, p. 231 ; Quaker Lead Company, Minute Book (MS., North of England Institute, Newcastle), Regulation adopted io Sep. I784 ; Cyfarthfa MSS., Box II, I5 Dec. I830 ; G. W. Hilton, 'The British Truck System in the Nineteenth Century ', Journal of Political Economy, lxv (I957), pp. 253-4; S.C. on Manufactures, ev. Wm. Matthews, QQ. 9893,9899. 5 Geo. Unwin et al., Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights (Manchester, I924), chapter I2.

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but it was not an unmixed blessing, and could be more trouble than it was worth: ' Issue no more Promissory Notes under ?ioo at any date whatever,' ordered William Crawshay in 1816. 'It is not any- way honourable and respectable to issue small Notes,'-nor do they compensate for the trouble they cause. Similarly, his neighbour Taitt asserted in 1813 : 'We are not Bankers and do not wish to extend our circulation beyond our own payments,' and he noted with glee that Anthony Hill's notes in adjacent Penydarren never stayed out for more than ?I,ooo at a time. The work involved was, indeed, considerable. The Cyfarthfa balance sheet for i813 noted over C7,300 outstanding on the ?i, i guinea and C5 note account; while the printer's bill for Dowlais on 9 February 1822 included the following notes:

5,500 at ?' 5,000 ?I Is. od. 3,000 ?i Ios.od. 2,000 s5 Os. od.

500 ?IO besides 770 bills of exchange.l

VII The large-scale entrepreneurs of the day were dealing with such

unprecedented problems of technology, marketing and labour discipline and training, that they could have little initiative leftfor originat- ing and putting into practice any coherent social philosophy of their own. Rather, any social policies adopted were the result of being driven from expedient to expedient,andfromcrisis tocrisis. Yet someentre- preneurs, and their contemporaries, were aware that they were building communities2 and had an inkling of some of the socio-ethical problems involved, and they were articulate enough to express them. How did they view their role in history?

The large majority began with the unspoken assumption that the works and the profit-making drive behind it provided their own justi- fication,3 and that the attached townships were appendages to be judged only as such. By the same token, the workers and their families were, initially, viewed as pliable material in the hands of the employer, 'hands' without brains, Pavlovian dogs without initiative or discrimination. Robert Owen was forced to appeal to his fellow employers to look after their labour by drawing the parallel of the care with which they looked after their machinery-an appeal to consider workers' lives as ends in themselves would not have found much sympathetic understanding.

1 Cyfarthfa MSS., i, 13 Jan., 17 Jan. I8I6, Box I2, Balance Sheet for I8I3 ; Dowlais Letters, 22 Jan. I8I3, 9 Feb. 1822.

2 D. F. MacDonald, op. cit. p. 6 ; Samuel Greg, Two Letters to Leonard Horner, Esq. (1840).

8 Lord, Capital and Steam Power, p. 226; P. Garb, op. cit. p. 38.

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These views could be found at their crudest where the entrepreneur dominated local society in the absence of the landed upper class, as in West Cumberland, or South Wales.' Thus the police power in Merthyr Tydfil was merely an extension of the ironmasters' own long arms. In 1799, brandy dealers and trade unionists alike were dealt with by Homfray or Crawshay, the two ironmaster-magistrates.2 There was no doubt as to the outcome of the hearings, nor were the magistrates accused of impartiality. In 1793, Homfray had promised 'never to sign a licence for any Workman belonging to the Ironworks without an application being made by their Masters ', while in I799, workmen who withdrew from the Volunteers were punished by being summarily dismissed by Guest. Twenty years later, travelling troupes of actors still found it necessary to ask the employers' permission before opening in Merthyr. Small wonder, that William Crawshay Sr. bitterly opposed the notion of a resident magistrate for the town in i828 : 'You resident Ironmasters sh'd be the Justices and keep the Power in your hands, your stipendiary man may turn against you, ... it would not at all surprize me when once seated in Place he would annoy instead of serve the Iron masters ....' However, he need not have worried : Mr. Bruce, the man chosen, was a ' most proper Gentleman '.3

In Whitehaven, again, the Lowthers were kings. The first earl of Lonsdale, losing a case over subsidence in I791, simply decided to close all the town's collieries, and was only persuaded to re-open them, on a guarantee of indemnity in future cases, by 2,560 peti- tioners. His manager, John Bateman, found the local coroner in 1803 as dangerous as Crawshay had thought the stipendiary, as he had dared to hold an inquest on a woman killed in a mine accident.

... a thing neverpracticed here in my memory, such enquiry being supposed only calculated to frighten the ignorant and discourage them from going into the Pits; on this account the workmen were always forbid to even talk about any accidents which happened in the Pits ; your Lordship can judge better than me how far it may be proper to check this new Practice.4

Colliers lived in isolated and easily tyrannized communities,5 but textile manufacturers also cherished the power which the factory towns gave them. Richard Arkwright, Jr., reflected that in a large town he could not have the control over his workers which he had in Cromford, and G. A. Lee allowed that village mill owners ' command the population, and those who live in manufacturing

1 A. H. John, op. cit. pp. 68-69 ; Addis, op. cit. p. I4. 2 Elsas, op. cit. I7 Jan., 3 Feb. 1799. 3 Dowlais Letters, i8 Sep. 1793, 25 Apr. 1799, 4 Sep. x8i6, 9 June I8I8, I5 Sep.

1820 ; Cyfarthfa MSS., Box ii, 19 Jan. i828, 19 Feb. I829. 4 0. Wood, op. cit. pp. 2I, I20o-. 5 Robert Bald, A General View of the Coal Trade of Scotland (Edinburgh, I82), p.

72 ; Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, 4th Report, pp. 240-1.




towns are in some degree commanded by the customs of the population '.1

The extent of that control may be illustrated by Catrine, a typical cotton village : of a population of 2,7I6 in 1832, 1,304 were women and children at home, 853 worked in the Company Mills, 759 worked elsewhere, but of these 194 were employed in ancillary textile occupations. The proportions were similar in 1817 and 1819.2 Thus well over half of the earnings of the village came directly from the mill. In some villages, as in New Lanark, the proportion approached ioo per cent.

To this power of the employer was added the power of the village master. Housing, for example, was not only a social service, or useful for attracting labour : it was also a source of profit, and a power- ful weapon, often used cruelly, against trade unions and working class protests. The Herculaneum pottery, in I807, found not only that its cottage property yielded io per cent, but also that' the workmen ... are thereby become Domestics and the benefit and contin- uance of their labours with much greater certainty insured to the Proprietors '.3

Again, education, both religious and secular, was not simply philanthropic. Hannah More was concerned in her Mendip schools, 'to train up the lower classes to habits of industry and virtue ',4 and to religious beliefs which, in turn, were quietist.6 The Belper schools were praised as combating 'immorality and vice', but they also trained the men to abhor Luddism and trade unionism: 'they mostly understand that the masters' interest is their own.' The Quaker Lead Company's schools, so the manager declared, were res- ponsible for the absence of Chartism, Radicalism ' and every other abomination ' from the villages. The early Mechanics' Institutes were often expected to make the lower classes more amenable and teach them ' respect for property '.6

1 Collier, 'Factory Community', p. 117 ; Gorb, op. cit. pp. 136, I38; Collier, Family Economy, p. 125 ; S.C. on Children in Manufactories, pp. 279, 357.

2Factories Commission, Suppl. Report I, P.P. I834, xix, A. I, pp. 85-86; Lords' Committee, Evidence on the Factory Bill, Parl. Papers, 1818, xcvi, 66 ; Lords' Committee on Apprentices, Appx. 24; Ure, op. cit. p. 414.

3 Herculaneum Pottery, Minute Book, fo. I 9; Gaskell, op. cit. p. 352; Fitton and Wadsworth, p. I04; Wilkins, op. cit. p. 149; Two Centuries, pp. 30-31 ; J. E. Cule, op. cit. p. I91 ; Holland, Coal Trade, p. 293 ; Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, St. 6 (vi) 9 Apr. I8oo; 0. Wood, op. cit. pp. 43, I46; Campbell, Carron Co. p. 69; Collier, Family Economy, p. io8 ; Lindsay, op. cit. pp. 278, 295. 4 M. G. Jones, The Charity School Movement (Cambridge, I938), pp. 158-9.

6 A. E Dobbs, Education and Social Movement I7o o-i o (1919), p. 140; Committee on the Labour of Children in Mills and Factories, Parl. Papers, I 831 -2, xv, ev. Thomas Daniel; A. P. Wadsworth, 'The First Manchester Sunday Schools' Bull. John Rylands Libr. xxxiii (I951), 290-300 ; Hill, op. cit. p. 134 ; Smelser, op. cit. pp. 72-76. The early ' Ragged Schools' were similarly inspired, C. A. Bennett, History of Manual and Industrial Education up to 870o (Peoria, Ill. 1926), p. 223.

6 Fitton and Wadsworth, p. 103 ; Two Centuries, pp. 63 ff.; Mabel Tylecote, Mech- anics Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire before I8,I (Manchester, 195 ), pp. 44-49.

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Henry Ashworth, a noted philanthropist community builder

(who incidentally made the children pay for their own education) would 'always prefer a child who has been educated at an infant school, as those children are most obedient and docile'. If educated, it was widely recognized, they would be more valuable workers, and training by the employer would end apprenticeship and unionism in skilled trades.'

Just as education could be viewed as merely an expedient 'to turn workers into a reliable factor of production ', so ulterior motives could be found for sick clubs, which were in part established to lower the poor rates as by Boulton and by Wilkinson, or to under- mine unionism, as in the coal mines. Carron Company indeed decided in 770 that it was 'a bad practice to support the colliers when sick-for while they find we do so they will take the less care of themselves '.2 While trying to reduce drunkenness, one employer admitted having refused a man a licence for a very different reason, for 'I am certain if he keeps an Alehouse you will loose him as a Workman '.3

Nothing strikes so modem a note in the social provisions of the factory villages as the attempts to provide continuous employment. 'There are two objects you wish to gain,' Treweek, the Mona Mine

manager wrote to Sanderson, Lord Uxbridge's agent, 'the first is to make the Mine yield a profit, the second is if possible to employ all the men', and he went to great trouble to find them employment.4 Similarly, William Crawshay commanded in I817, 'Do not even hold out reduction of the men, employ them if they behave quietly... Bad and ruinous as the trade now is, we must lose rather than starve the labourer.'5 Yet, of these two places, Cyfarthfa was noted for its persecution of unionists, and at Amlwch, in I813, it was reported that with the decline in employment, 'many families have fled, and their cottages are now falling to ruin, but there is still a much more numerous population than can be tolerably supported by the mines, and numbers are consequently left in a miserable state of destitu- tion '.6 While some employers paraded their social conscience in finding continuous employment for members of their workers' families, it is clear from the example of Samuel Oldknow that this was a necessity, for otherwise the families could not have been kept

1 Factories Commission, First Report, E. p. 5, Second Report, E. p. 2 ; Two Centuries, p. 72 ; Hill, op. cii. pp. x30, I36; D. C. Coleman, The British Paper Industry 149y-I86o (1958), p. 236.

2 Roll, op. cit. p. 226; Holland, Coal Trade, p. 301 ; Campbell, Carron Co., p. 67. 3 Dowlais Letters, Homfray to Thompson, 18 Sep. I793. 4 Mona Mine MSS., No. 2553, 5 May I827, also Nos 205, 1048, 1374 ; Rowlands,

op. cit. pp. 256, 269 ; Dodd, op. cit. p. I6o. 5 Cyfarthfa MSS., 5 Feb. I8I7, also I5 June, 30 Aug. I820, I3 Jan. I822, Box ii, 22

May, x6 Nov. I830. 6 Richard Ayton, A Voyage Round Great Britain (8 I 5), ii. II.




alive on the starvation wage paid by the mill to women and children.1 Further, while even mediocre employers went to much trouble to pay their workers on Fridays or early on Saturdays to get the ad- vantage of a Saturday market,2 the senior partner in a respectable firm like the Dowlais Iron Co. could callously advocate' that we pay our men only once a month in future which will save us 3 broken days in the month besides those drunken combinations '.3

Conversely, truck payments could be advocated, and perhaps introduced, with the highest motives: they were alleged to have as their objects the reduction in drunkenness, the benefit of the shop- ping housewife, and compulsory saving for larger items of expendi- ture4; while miners were overcharged for candles, etc., in order, it was said, to reduce pilfering.5

VIII

This paper has attempted to establish two propositions. The first is that the pressure on the managerial and innovating energy and ability of factory village owners was very great by any standards, and has often been underrated. The second is that this pressure largely determined the nature of their ' social' policies. Community builders, before I830, did not start with a social ideal.6 Robert Owen's plans arose out of his experience and expedients, at New Lanark, and in Manchester, and Samuel Greg did not begin at Bollington until I832 after years of experience in other mills. There is no reason to assume that Walter Evans, of Darley Abbey, for example, was anything but a pragmatist, or that the Quaker Lead Company was looking for 'paternal responsibility' before circum- stances made it imperative.7 Samuel Oldknow's biographers, indeed claim that he was driven by' ambition to control and direct the life

1 Samuel Oldknow, pp. I66-8; for Arkwright's similar motivation, see Fitton and Wadsworth, p. 104.

2 E.g. Factories Commission, First Report, C. I, p. 38, B. I, p. 8I, E. Kilbur Scott (ed.), Matthew Murray, Pioneer Engineer, Records for 176y-1826 (Leeds, I928), p. 4; Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, A. 1389, Instruction Book, paras. 8, 3x.

8 Elsas, op. cit. p. 34, I7 Jan. I799. 4 G. W. Hilton,' The Truck Act of I831 ', Econ. Hist. Rev. (2nd ser.), x (I958), 470-

; L. T. C. Rolt, Thomas Telford (I958), p. 8i ; F. Collier, ' Workers in a Lancashire Factory at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century ', Manchester School, vii (I936), 52 ; Soc. for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, 4th Report, pp. 238-9 ; Sir Noel Curtis- Bennett, The Food of the People (949), p. 101 ; Malet, op. cit. p. I74; S.C. on Payment of Wages, Q. 3032; Collier, Family Economy, p. 42. 5 Titley, op. cit. p. 33; Mona Mine MSS., No. 2633, quoting letter 2 Dec. 1819.

6 Samuel Greg, op. cit. and Collier, Family Economy. Prof. Ashworth could find only two planned townships before 1830, and one of these is doubtful. W. Ashworth, 'British Industrial Villages in the x9th Century', Ec. Hist. Rev. (2nd ser.), iii (I951).

7 Sir Richard Phillips, A Personal Tour Through the United Kingdom (1828), pp. I25-6; Lindsay, op. cit. p. 278 ; Two Centuries, p. 5.

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VOL. LXXIX-NO. CCCXII LL



of a community ', or to 'found a community', even though this created financial difficulties for him, but there is no evidence whatever to support this view : all the records, on the contrary, point to a simple decision to establish a cotton mill on a village site, with only a belated recognition of the community needs involved.1

In the absence of any coherent or commonly accepted social doctrine, other than perhaps the irrelevant belief in laissez-faire, inter- preted in the light of narrow self-interest, each entrepreneur, when faced with the pressure of rapid decision making, was bound to draw on the deeper resources of his character to solve each immediate crisis. Thus Quakers showed some fine feeling for their workers, but made high demands of moral conformity on them; truly Christian masters, like Owen or the Fieldens, attempted to humanize not only their works, but also those of others ; and the hypocrites em-

ployed clergymen, sometimes paid with the workers' pence, to teach their hands how to suffer starvation wages without protest. Some masters, with very little cause, boasted of their humanity, and found sycophants to spread their fame, while others, quietly, set themselves very much higher standards of responsibility. Apart from the general agreement on the overriding primacy of profits over the interests of the village workers, there was no common standard of values to which to appeal.

But further, no matter how detached the community builder was from his workers as persons, and how crude his notion of worker psychology and motivation, the very fact of having to cater for their needs forced on him some modicum of understanding of the humanity of his ' hands '. It has often been remarked that the close personal touch of the early industrial employer did not prevent him from imposing vicious conditions on his workers and leaving them paupers when they were no longer useful 2; yet others provided playgrounds in their villages, musical instruction and instruments, libraries and such amenities as cooking and washing facilities, heating or a cafeteria in the works, without being driven to them by legislation or the healthy example of others. Labour shortages, fears of riots and epidemics, and other emergencies were not continuous, but every such occurrence left a residue of more humane outlook on the average employer, just as the recent period of full employment has led many employers to the reflection that high wages and good conditions are necessary, not because of economic pressures, but

1 Samuel Oldknow, pp. I35, I75. Nor is there any evidence that he was anything but a mediocre businessman, who never understood the reason for his windfall profits in the seventeen-eighties and his bankruptcy in the seventeen-nineties. He was merely fortunate in his biographers. The Moravians alone, at Dukinfield and later Fairfield, thought of the community first, but they did not run a modern factory. J. Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester (I795), pp. 232-3, 454; Armytage, Heavens Below, pp. 47-57.

2 E.g. Urwick and Brech, op. cit. pp. 8-9.

July THE FACTORY VILLAGE 530



1964 IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 5 31

because of their common humanity. In the industrial revolution the change of heart took a long time, perhaps far too long; but by the eighteen-thirties, when Factory Acts and other legislation began to reduce the freedom of the village master, he was halfway to being convinced that to treat his labour factor of production more kindly might make it more profitable also.

University of Shefield SIDNEY POLLARD



Pollard Eta Factory Village

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