Social Change in the Industrial Revolution

An Application of Theory to the British Cotton Industry

Neil J. Smelser

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136602184
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

First Published in 2005. The following study analyses several sequences of differentiation and a attempt to apply social theory to history. Such an analysis naturally calls for two components: (1) a segment of social theory; and (2) an empirical instance of change. For the first the author has selected a model of social change from a developing general theory of action; for the second, the British industrial revolution between 1770 and 1840. From this large revolution is the isolated the growth of the cotton industry and the transformation of the family structure of its working classes.

CHAPTER IX
PRESSURES ON THE FAMILY DIVISION OF LABOUR

Introduction. From the industrial perspective the cotton-textile revolution appears as a dramatic rearrangement of all the factors of production. The revolution originated with a series of dissatisfactions legitimized by the dominant value-system of the day. In several sequences of differentiation the industry emerged with a structure more adequate to meet the demands of the foreign and domestic markets. Such a revolution naturally did not occur in a vacuum. It was initiated by non-economic elements such as religious values, political arrangements, and social stratification. At the same time, the industrial revolution in cotton created a source of dissatisfactions, which, when combined with other elements, initiated several sequences of differentiation in other social sub-systems.

In the rest of this study we shall analyse structural differentiation in one of the cotton industry’s social neighbours: the family economy of its working classes. Because the industrial structure of labour changed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, pressure began to weigh immediately upon the family division of labour.* The immediate dissatisfactions produced by these industrial changes might be characterized as follows: in order to offer industrial labour on new terms (e.g., to become a factory hand instead of a domestic worker) and at the same time maintain its functions of socialization and tension-management, the family economy required a series of drastic structural modifications. Historically the family rose to this challenge by a process formally identical with that of the industrial change itself—the process of structural differentiation.

Several sequences led to the emergence of a new form of family. For a convenient starting-point, however, we shall consider the sequence initiated most dramatically by the industrial revolution—the differentiation of new labour roles in the family economy.** In this chapter we shall consider only Step 1 of this sequence by pinpointing the pressures on the family division of labour and eliciting the meaning of these pressures in terms of the dominant value-system. We shall ask what happened when machinery threw some family members out of employment and employed others on a new basis. We shall also examine the related questions of female and child labour. In short, we shall retell the story of the industrial revolution, not in terms of its productive achievements but in terms of its impact on the working-class family.

In Chapter X we shall investigate the initial symptoms of disturbance which issued from these institutional pressures, specifically the destruction of machinery, early radical reform, early co-operative ideology, labour violence and strikes, and the early agitation to limit factory hours. Analytically these eruptions constitute Step 2 of the sequence of structural differentiation. From these turbulent disturbances sprang several new, more differentiated social units. In Chapter XI we shall trace the emergence of the new family, in which economic roles were segregated gradually from other family roles. Factory legislation played a crucial role in “guiding” the family in this sequence. We shall analyse the thunderous agitation for such legislation, the handling and channelling of this agitation, and the subsequent paths by which the family gradually moved to a structure more in harmony with the new industrial society.

Above all, this analysis concerns family structure, not the history of individual families. In some cases individual families moved from the old labour force to the new; in other cases there was no continuity of membership. In the transition from hand-loom to power-loom weaving, for instance, we shall observe that very few of the hand-loom weavers themselves moved into the factories, even though the family structure of hand-loom weavers was being revolutionized.

This evolution of the family in turn initiated several other sequences of differentiation, most of which had their roots in the friendly society. In the eighteenth century this type of club served as a protective buffer between the working-class family and its economic environment. One of the friendly society’s functions was to save, or to withhold part of the labourers’ income for inelastic expenditures such as funerals, sickness, and old age.* At the same time it was a close-knit club for communal drinking.** Further, it enforced standards for skill and occupational training among members,* and dealt with wages and other conditions of employment.** The early friendly society was thus an insurance company, savings bank, associational status grouping, and trade union all in one.

When industrial and urban growth began to make the small and intimate friendly society obsolete, there appeared a number of new social units. In Chapter XII we shall apply the model of differentiation to the textile trade union, which became a more specialized guardian of the conditions of labour in the nineteenth century than the friendly society had been in the eighteenth. It also took over the saving function for contingencies such as unemployment. The friendly society, while it “lost” some of its comprehensiveness, continued as a medium for status spending. During the same period many of the friendly society’s functions of consumption and saving spread to a number of new social units which were geared more effectively to the new family economy. In Chapter XIII we shall trace the development of these units, particularly the savings bank and co-operative store; the rise of both conforms to the model of structural differentiation.

To illustrate these developments, the cotton industry is a fortunate choice, because it was characterized by two types of workpeople typical in periods of rapid industrialization. The first—spinners and other factory operatives—represent the “new” labour force which differentiated rapidly and shared fully in the new industrial world. Historians have treated the cotton-spinners, for instance, as the representative body par excellence of trade unionism in the early nineteenth century.¹ The hand-loom weavers, on the other hand, illustrate an “old,” sick trade which was painfully eliminated amidst a display of symptoms of disturbance. In our analysis of working-class history between 1770 and 1840 we shall refer frequently to the instructive contrasts between these groups.

INSTITUTIONAL PRESSURES ON THE FACTORY OPERATIVES, 1770–1840

Historical Background. The typical textile family of the mid eighteenth century was a domestic enterprise within the putting-out system. The independent weaver was a thing of the past, of course; most weaving families depended on the putter-out both for the acquisition of raw materials and for the disposal of woven cloth. Nevertheless, the weaving family maintained a certain isolation as a productive unit. The father was occupational head of the family. He himself wove and supervised occasional weaving by women and children.¹ Formally weaving was based on seven years’ apprenticeship under a master, though this had decayed by mid eighteenth century. Most small weaving masters who had not been apprenticed in masters’ shops, however, were taught weaving by their fathers or brothers.² Women and children were responsible for spinning and preparatory activities.

This family has been the subject of frequent romantic reminiscence.

… removed from many of those causes which universally operate to the deterioration of the moral character of the labouring man, when brought into large towns … [the working man] presented [an] orderly and respectable appearance. It is true that the amount of labour gone through … [and] … the quantity of cloth or yarn produced [were] small… . They were, however, sufficient to clothe and feed himself and family decently, and according to their station; to lay by a penny for an evil day, and to enjoy those amusements and bodily recreations then in being. He was a respectable member of society; a good father, a good husband, and a good son.³

Guest and Engels lingered over the benevolent squire, the wholesome outdoor sports, the communal holidays, the happy rural courtship, and the rest of village life. It is an open question whether these communities justify the romantic contrast with the industrial world of a half-century later; it nevertheless is true that work, religion, recreation, and amusements were confined to a small, relatively undifferentiated community.⁴ Just as these domestic and putting-out systems were the starting-point for the industrial revolution, so the productive arrangements of the family constitute the starting-point for our analysis of changes in the family division of labour.

What dissatisfactions did the new industrial society create for this typical textile family ? To sort out these pressures, we shall consider spinning and its allied activities separately from weaving. For spinning we shall isolate three stages: (a) from the introduction of the domestic jenny and mule to their incorporation into the factory (c. 1770 to c. 1790); (b) from the rise of the factory system to the 1820’s, a period of transitional equilibrium for the family economy; (c) from the mid-1820’s to the 1840’s, when the family economy of the factory operatives moved to a new level of differentiation. For background material we shall devote Appendix A to the long-term course of factory operatives’ wages as well as short-term fluctuations in their wages and employment.

Spinning 1770–1790. Two separate industrial changes in this period influenced the family economy: (a) the introduction of the jenny and mule, which merely rearranged labour within the domestic system, and (b) the beginning of the water-frame mills, which drew family members from the home.

The cottage machines were not without their dramatic consequences. Through 1780 the jennies “increased the gains of the females in a family, and of the family in general.” ¹ After this, women were displaced by the water-frame factories and the skilled male jenny and mule operatives. For a time the latter enjoyed the status of an “aristocracy of spinners.” Apparently many were former weavers who had capital to invest in the new spinning machines. All these changes eclipsed the female hand-spinner, who, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, had disappeared almost entirely. In textile families her decline mattered less, for machine-spinning or weaving offset the drop in women’s earnings. Indeed, one movement which probably complemented the exodus of wealthy weavers into machine-spinning was the drift of former female spinners into hand-loom weaving.²

From the standpoint of social structure, however, the cottage jenny and mule reshuffled rather than reorganized labour. The main earning power, at least after 1780, still rested with the husband, whether spinner or weaver. Some women began to weave beside their husbands,¹ but in other cases the wife became more secondary economically because hand-spinning had been taken from her. Further, the new cottage machines did not disturb the traditional relationship between father and son; in either spinning or weaving the father continued to instruct his son in the trade. Perhaps more important, the other family functions of child-rearing and tension-management were relatively unaltered, because the family economy remained in the home. In many ways, therefore, the period between 1780 and 1790 was a “golden’ age” for the domestic spinner; his earnings increased, but the structure of his employment remained the same.

Side by side with the domestic jenny and mule came the water-frame and the mill. While we should not minimize the hardships in these early mills, particularly for parish apprentices,* we must remember the correctives which pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• I Introduction
• II Some Empty Theoretical Boxes
• III Filling the Boxes
• IV Structural Differentiation in Spinning
• V Structural Differentiation in Spinning (continued)
• VI Structural Differentiation in Spinning (concluded)
• VII Structural Differentiation in Weaving
• VIII Refilling the Boxes
• IX Pressures on the Family Division Of Labour
• X Symptoms of Disturbance In The Family
• XI Differentiation of the Family Structure: Factory Legislation
• XII New Conditions of Employment: the Evolution of Trade Unions
• XIII Structural Change in Consumption and Savings: the Poor Law, Friendly Societies, Savings Banks, and Co-operative Societies
• XIV The Question of Explanation in Working-class History
• XV Summary of the Analysis
• Bibliography
• Index