Child Labor During the Industrial Revolution

Me at Work 

       My name is Emily Young, I am 8 years old, and I’ve been working in this factory for a very long time now. My day normally goes the same way every day. I only sleep from about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Once I wake up I have 2 hours, until 6 a.m., to eat and get to work. Any time left over from that is spare time. Once work starts, at 6 a.m., I worked up until 8 a.m. and then I get a 45 minute break to eat breakfast, which lasts until 8:45 a.m. I then return to the tiring work for 3 hours and 15 minutes. At noon I am given 2 hours to eat, travel, and whatever time is left is my spare time. I then continue work for another 6 hours. After these 6 hours of enduring painful and energy consuming labor I am given another 2 hours to eat, travel, and the remaining time is spare time. After this harsh day of labor I then fall asleep and continue life in the same schedule the next day. Life was much easier before me and my family moved to the city.
       Before we moved I worked at home helping my mother cook, clean, and sew clothes for my family. Sometimes I was even given special jobs at harvest time like collecting firewood, bringing water from the well, scaring away bids from our crops, catching rats and mice, gathering wild fruit and flowers for making wine, and gathering acorns to feed the pigs. Even though life was hard we had fresh air and a field to play in. It would have been nice to continue to live in this way but once these factories were made my family began needing more money to survive. With the money that I would make our family could make it. So I began working in this terrible factory.

       Right now I work as a piecer. This job involves having to lean over the spinning-machine to fix the broken threads. I have to piece the threads while the wheel is coming out, which doesn’t give me much time to do this. This job may not sound so hard but doing it for 6 hours straight and with so many broken threads needing fixing it can get very tiring. This job is even harder considering the conditions that I am forced to work in. The buildings were dirty, low-roofed, poorly ventilated, and ill drained. There was constantly dust everywhere.

I have seen many terrible things while on the job. If we were ever drowsy the overlooker would dip us in water head first, and even sometimes hit us. One day the drawing frame was stopped by a little boy. The overlooker walked up to a girl and asked why it had stopped and she said she didn’t know. He then began beating her with a stick. When he was finished she said that she would let her mother know. He fetched the master and she was once again beaten with a stick over the heads until it was full of lumps and bleeding. That was probably the most violent punishment I had seen while working. In other instances the children were just beat but not as much as the other little girl. My wage was about 4 shillings every 3 days. The money really helped my family out. Without I don't think we could make it. 
       Many people were against child labor so the government passed various acts to improve the labor for us including: 1802 Health and Morals Factory Act, 1819 Factory Act, 1833 Althrop’s Factory Act, 1833 Factory Act, 1844 Graham’s Factory Act, 1844 Factory Act, 1847 Fielder’s Factory Act, Factory Act 1847, 1847 Factory Act, and the 1874 Factory Act. These acts did various things such as improving working conditions but most of the restricted the amount of hours children could work a day and a week. I had basically no education. I knew simple things like what 1+1 was but I never really got an education. My mother taught me how to cook and do things around the house but that was about it.