Part Two has just been uploaded guys! We explore the living conditions of poor industrial workers and rich industrialists 🏭 ua-cam.com/video/1p6ltR49zQU/v-deo.html
Awesome! Will go check it out! Also - Guys AND Gals -- as the world continues to roll back women's rights, let's not call everyone guys. Time to address this.
@@mgb5170 that ain't necessarily so - from my dictionary: used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex. Them there's Guys as in what they burn on the bonfires on Guy Fawkes night.....
Not here in the USA. More & more red states are stripping protections for kids in the work force. They are starting to fix it so kids as young as 14 get to work in slaughter houses & other factories. ARKANSAS & IOWA are 2 of those states! Kids are gonna die. And they don't care. And yes, it's REPUGS that are insisting on this. 🤬
thats why it bothers me that now british people are accused of stealing trilions in wealth from colonies and expected to apologise and pay reparations. they worked very hard to create their wealth.
@@ERG173 yes, and now their descendants are drawing on public funds, benefitting from "climate reparation" and various ESG iniiatives and other wealth transfers to former colonies.
When people romantize the Victorian Era and wish they could have lived during that period always assume they would be part of the aristocracy class when in reality this would be their life.
Yes, it's amazing how when you point out to such people that if they were whatever class, education or earning level they are in the 21st century, they would be working 14 hours a day and living in poverty, they still somehow can't quite accept that they would be cold, dirty, stinking, underfed and with no hope of ever getting out of their situation. Somehow they imagine that higher education and desk jobs were open to everyone in the past, or that people could just somehow become a success and move into a higher class with a bit of hustle.
As someone who works in one of the few textile based factories left in the US, it’s absolutely astonishing to see the machinery and layout of the factory floors. Now, we work with wool as opposed to cotton, but the carding machines look identical to what we work with. It’s a nice touch to talk about the humidity level being essential to the fabric performing as needed. I can tell you, even with all the regulations and workers rights that are in place now, it’s a tough job. Enormous respect to the folks who worked there and did the job. They walked so we could run.
Boott Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell Massachusetts is quite amazing at telling the stories of the industry as well. It's quite similar to what we see in this video. Although since it ceased operations in 1958, they also provide a lot of voices and videos from a more 'modern' perspective. A great museum in my opinion.
Truth be told, often times we can’t afford to be bored lol. The job I do in particular involves super heated steam and electrically heated metal blocks that are hovering around 340 degrees Fahrenheit. Plenty of interesting ways to hurt yourself if you’re not paying attention. The machines are also completely analog in terms of the set up for different styles of product. Much like the folks portrayed here… slide rules and wooden rulers are the order of the day for measurements and a series of cranks are used to adjust the machines for width and depth.
I have had 15 years in a knitting mill in Utica NY, started as a doffer. The spools, bobbins, and mills were very similar to the older equipment still in use when I worked there.
All I did was operating an elastic sealing machine for covid masks. Plus putting bandage rolls in a bag. But I was one of the fastest! Its not about resisting its about eliminating competition and making the owners profit. It was so satisfying understanding why working is psychologically harsh in latin america, because of real demanding work like this, not because of a cultural reason. But its very disciplinatory. Plus I think the new york skyscraper builders were much more brave, heights are prone to harm since we were smaller primates, come on youre all being too dramatic.
This is exactly why it's so important for workers to unionise and stick up for themselves. Business owners would have no problem continuing to treat workers like this today, if they could get away with it.
@Marcus it's different today only *because* workers learnt to stick up for themselves and unionise. Big companies see workers as nothing more than a disposable resource, same as they did then. The only difference is that workers these days have more bargaining power, because of their many hard won victories over the last 150+ years. The companies would absolutely love to get things back to the days where they could completely exploit workers (and their children) because they only care about profit and pleasing their shareholders. Unions aren't perfect these days but the main reason they have a bad reputation is because big companies are willing to literally spend billions of dollars on tricking people like you into thinking they're a bad idea using all sorts of dirty tactics.
@Marcus ugh sorry I'm not reading all that... capitalism revolves around those with capital exploiting those without - (and they'll do it as much or as little as they can get away with) nothing has fundamentally changed. If you disagree, it's pointless for us to discuss it further.
Well, you also have to look at it like this this was unskilled labor. So it’s sort of the same as today. Obviously way worse but I mean anyone that had some sort of Skillset wouldn’t be stuck doing a crappy job like that. For instance, take people who work at call centers nowadays it’s one of the worst jobs anyone could have. Or you could do what I did join the local police force get some field experience and test for your own private investigator license and nearly make $100 an hour when you’re not even 30 yet. Of course, back in those days there wasn’t near as many opportunities, but there were plenty of different job phillips to go into besides working at the mill.
@@Faceplay2there's always going to be a need for people to do "crappy" jobs, so instead of demeaning them for not getting out of a job that they might not be able to get out of (for various reasons), why not make sure that everyone (yes, even them. Yes, even those other people.) can live a life that is, if not comfortable, at least financially stable and worthy. Also, a lot of what is called "unskilled labour" is far from that, just because it doesn't require any sort of official education doesn't mean it can't be hard to learn.
Victorian Industrial life is actually big improvement when compared with Georgian agricultural life so why should anyone want to stop the business practices in the video?
All unions do is reduce competition and drive up prices, effectively eliminating entrepreneurs and innovation in those fields, and putting those services out of reach of the lower class.
@@daringdare5078 of course, how silly of me. I forgot to consider that working 14 hours a day from cradle to grave and losing ones arm to a loom is far more luxurious than working 14 hours a day from cradle to grave and losing ones arm to a thresher. Whilst being paid fuck all. And whilst the factory owner gets stinking rich.
@@kevintemple245 by "reduce competition" and "drive up prices" do you mean "prevent exploitation of the labour force"? And by "eliminating entrepreneurs" do you mean "limit the profits extracted from underpaying them for their labour." Because I'm almost certain Elon Musk didnt actually design andd build every part of every tesla now did he? Without workers there is nothing, and unions keep the capitalist from exploiting them.
I visited the mill on school trips multiple times as a child, I've never forgotten the experience days I had there even as a 26 year old man who has kids himself now. As a child, I remember the depressing and unpleasant feelings those machine halls had. Now, being a father myself, I can't imagine the desperation parents of the time must have had to force their children into work. Makes me feel very lucky to live in the 21st century, and I have great respect for all of our ancestors who worked in the Mills.
My grandfather had 6 kids. He started working in the mills as a child. My Mom started working in mills at 16. I lasted maybe 4 hours. Nope, not me! I imagine that cycle had been going on in America since prior to 1824.
very lucky to live in the UK in the 21st century you mean? Cause you know that where your clothes are produced today, conditions are still as described in this video right?
@Me Here listen Karen I'm well aware of the horrific conditions many people still live in today. My comment was regarding the mill and the disparity in working conditions from then till now.
I never met my great-grandmother, (my mom's grandma). I was told that in the Victorian era she worked in a hat factory, cutting strings off the hat's that were already finished, to be sent to the shops, or she would cut the ribbon to put onto the hats. She was only 5. She was so tiny that she had to stand on top of an apple box. Though we are still going through a lot of tough things today, we have to remember that we have come a long way from the times of my great grandmother, and what these people went through. sometimes we forget on how lucky we are in many ways today.
The people that literally fought and died for us to not live like that wouldn’t want to use this as an excuse. Half the comments are going on about how unions are “needed to a point” as though wages and quality of life haven’t plummeted without unions while inequality and poverty have grown.
People look back at eras like this through rose tinted glasses a bit too much. Life was tough for 90 percent of people, in many cases worse than tough.
@@MichaelSmith-qc7nk 10 percent of the people lived well they were part of the aristocracy or the emerging bourgeois middle class of the time. The other 90 percent did not enjoy such lifestyles, and lived in various degrees of poverty. And i'm speaking of the population of Victorian Britain here, not other countries and parts of the world where things could be better or worse, often even worse.
North and South (the BBC adaption) is a wonderful drama that doesn't shy away from depicting the difficulties Mill workers suffered during this time and their fight to change it. It's a fantastic series.
I enjoyed North and South. Seems like ages since it was on TV. One of my ancestors going back several generations owned a water mill but not in the North. I like to think he was a kind and fair owner.
whether you can survive working in an Amazon warehouse is already a hot subject in 2023. They deliberately keep them in countries with lose labour laws or pointless fines, where they can butter up officials to look the other way, or just get fined so little they have no incentive to improve their working conditions. Little over a decade ago (believe it was before Sweden joined the EU) there were some rumours that Amazon wanted to open a warehouse in Sweden to better serve northern Europe. They assumed they could dodge the labour laws because they would provide jobs. They weren't prepared for how strict labour laws are here, which meant they couldn't even get a construction permit for their warehouse because the layout didn't comply with the minimum requirements for a workplace - Denmark and Sweden both have laws about how far workers must walk to get to a toilet, how isolated a break room must be from the job site, shower facilities, and a bunch of other stuff. These laws are actually very lenient, but because Amazon couldn't care less about their workers' convenience, things like that are merely an afterthought they'd rather avoid including. In Germany the labour laws specify how much daylight workers must have access to in any given workday, and if you've ever seen an Amazon warehouse you'll know that windows are non-existent. For these reasons Amazon still don't exist in Scandinavia, instead we have other stores that are cheaper, have better service, far better quality, and more often than not they use robots because they don't want to expose humans to the amount of shelving required for that type of store - and the robots incidentally is why they're cheaper than Amazon and can deliver faster
@@thesteelrodent1796 I wasn't referring to ones outside of side the USA because I know people that work at one and it is a world away from a Victorian factory.
@@thesteelrodent1796man that’s what robots should be for and were initially conceived of. Wish it was more widespread. Taking up labor in a more efficient manner and for longer than a human can, freeing them for more leisure time and working only as needed/wanted (on things humans are better suited for). Instead were getting AI trying to do art for us, and self driving green cars when trains are right there.
@@thesteelrodent1796 Well we have them Here in Germany and a friend of mine works there... Yes you are right they even track their movement to Count how often they are in toilet
"Could you survive the Victorian industrial revolution" Mate I'm American. I've been working 12-15 hour days 6-7 days a week since I was 16. Poor people STILL have to work like this.
@@weltvonalex I wasn't being proud. I was making a joke that people act like we've made improvements since the industrial revolution. We haven't. The human life is still seen as a means to generate revenue.
I work similar hours and I’m loving life. It’s the only way I can get the things I want and still support my kids and pay my mortgage. It’s hard work but we never struggle or go without
I would argue that rudimentary hunter/gatherer life was leaps and bounds better than so called "civilization" in its early days... I simply cannot comprehend what was the purpose of life for these workers...
Unless you have engaged in subsistence life in Northern latitudes, with other humans competing with you, measure your romantic notions of the idea. I've plowed a subsistence sized garden with a mule for a few seasons; it is hard work with no guarantee of success. 10 or 12 hours a day with guaranteed pay would be alluring.
@diggernash1 I saw somewhere that hunter gathers only worked 140 days of the year. I don't know how true it is. But surely some lucious lands were easier to live on than a farmland
@@NegativeAccelerate South Pacific islanders can live a subsistence lifestyle by working around 2 hours per day. I think that area is estimated to require the least time.
Reminds me of a documentary I watched about Amazon warehouse employees. The inability to go to the toilet, being monitored constantly, the high pay, the dangerous conditions, people losing their lives in accidents. And the extreme wealth of the owners. History repeats itself even in things like this.
The conditions in the coal mines of England were even worse for children. Some as young as 3 years old, according to the Yorkshire section of the 1842 Commission
The under tens were usually the little boys who sat in the dark and minded the 'trap' doors to let the ponies and carts through. These doors were essential to control airflow in the mines so they would usually be kept closed, then when the boy heard the pony approaching he would open the wooden door, then close it again after they'd passed by. Candles cost money so these little children sat there in the dark...
About 20 years ago I worked in a mattress factory from the 1920s or so using open drive belt driven cotton batting machines. The air full of dust as the sunlight steamed in. I am currently a manager in a sweatshop style clothing store. No chairs or stools for workers. Clothing packed in with almost no room for the workers or customers. No windows. 6 days a week. Denver Colorado USA.
This sounds exactly like the job I left 2 months ago. These practices are still common in the UK. Coolcool coolcoolcool. Less risk of bodily harm, same financial labour extortion.
Amazing how the British empire literally had the world of its own and amazin £ from it but the homegrown conditions for 90+% of population was just a terribly depressing and shit life to be frank
And it’s why when people moan at people from the UK about colonialism the general population haven’t time for that. They didn’t benefit, they struggled through daily life and as many do now (ok not in these conditions!). We don’t condone what happened but the majority of the population back then as now, is just trying to make a living and have a decent life.
@@kimberleysmith818 the majority population still supported their government, the majority of the population made up most of the soldiers that raped and pillaged their lands
@@kimberleysmith818i think that is the case for every horrible dictatorship that did questionable things, same goes for the soviet union, china, north korea or other countries.
the irony is that the descendants of those subsistence factory workers are supposed to pay reparations for slavery, when slave owners were 2-3000 out of a UK population counting about 24 million in 1830. Strangely enough, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait never seem to meet demands for reparations for slavery from NGOs.
The idea is that the state profited immensely as well. So the state would have to pay. But you make a solid point. I wish they would take a percentage of profits of companies now that have profited from both slavery and indentured servitude and put them to good use.
That's because apparently working in these conditions was white privilege! Makes me mad, somehow our daily poverty and working lives how been forgotten.
Imagine if luke was snapping that belt for real and your six years old, today in infant school learning how to read and write play games socalise, imagine the terror and pain inflected possibly in front of your own parents, nowhere to run or hide or cry
No-one ever believes this but my first job after leaving school in 1966 was as a framework knitter. Hand operated iron machinery mounted on a 17th century oak support stand with foot levers to drag the yarn one way or the other across the needles. Broken needles had to be cast ‘in-situ’ by pouring molten lead into a mould before replacing them. Mohair reels would be soaked overnight before use, causing a spray as the thread ran off. A guide at the Wollaton Hall Industrial Museum was explaining that the ‘knowledge of how to operate these was lost unfortunately.’ When I tried to politely enlighten her she sneered and turned her back on me.🤷🏻♂️
With todays twelve hour shifts and zero hours contracts along with forty five minute breaks after four and a half hour work spells we seem to be sliding back to those days.
I see that you useLewis Hine’s pictures to illustrate your documentaries, the impact of his images giving dignity to the children that worked in this inhuman conditions has always amazed me.
I love this! I found out that some of my family moved up from Suffolk. They left their farming jobs & got jobs as weavers in the Leeds area. So many of them were weavers. Scoot forwards a few generations I was born in Sheffield where members of my family were coal miners & steel workers. So basically we came from farming in the South to become industrial workers in the North ☺
Around that time there was failed crops and famine, most people never left thier village so outsiders from the South of England came in droves looking for work in the mills. They were discriminated against and given the worse jobs.
@again5162 The last major famine in England was I believe in 1805 IIRC. Before that, the 1795/6 famine was even worse. Yes, many rural English would be forced into towns and cities, particularly during industrialisation. Also due to Enclosure Acts & the onset of farm mechanisation
In the 1970s I was a nurse in a New Zealand woollen mill. One of the worker's daughter's often came to visit me after school - she had lots of questions - two of my favorites were: 1. Do they need to know the alphabet to work at the mill? (I told her they did.) 2. (After noticing that everyone sat at the same tables in the cafeteria during the breaks.) What would happen if someone sat at a different table? (I told her it might cause a strike.) My favorite sound was (and still is) the rhythm of the old weaving looms. Gordon Lightfoot wrote a memorable verse in "Hangdog Hotel": I believe in magic, A little monkeyshines But the kind of row I can really hoe Is playin' in tune on time With rhythms all around us We're like weavers at the loom ... To this day I have a great love and appreciation for all mill (factory) workers - it's a hard life being a slave to the mill whistle. One worker told me, when I asked what he was doing looking in the hedge at the mill gate, that he had put his brain there at 7am and he couldn't find it at 5pm😊
@@stefsomful Not sure which one as she worked evenings, so I was mostly in bed when dad picked her up, though I did get to see the inside of a woollen mill when I was Stationmaster at Milton and got taken through the Bruce woollen mill. I was born in Mosgiel.
@@kiwihib - ah your mother was one of the "Twilight shift workers" then who worked from 6 - 10 or 11pm raising their family during the day or working elsewhere then off to the mill to earn that bit extra to make ends meet, pay off the mortgage, or make sure their daughter's got a decent wedding! Sad old Bruce Woollen Mill - now a shell of it's former self as are the Roslyn and Mosgiel building - I used to know Rod Beattie who was the manager there in the eighties - before that he was at Mosgiel. It's been a while since a train went through Milton has it not?
I was a weaver for 8 years. It isn't hard work. The only struggle being a weaver is not losing your mind from boredom. I appreciate and love all the folks I worked with at the mills I worked at, and it takes a special and wonderful person to dedicate their life to that kind of work. There is immense value in it. But lets not act like that value is driven by the fact that the work is so very hard.
I hear ya. Especially the ones who took advantage of the young girls. That's just sick. I'd toss the bugger into the most gruesome piece of equipment I could find.
It should be mentioned that the factory workers had no choice but to move to the stinking, unwholesome cities. The "entrepeneurs" had built the factory system to undercut local production in the villages and small towns and drive them out of business. Usurers had grabbed as much of the land as they could. And the common lands, that peasant farmers depended on to graze their cattle, had been stolen from them, fenced, and given to the king's favorites. They were driven off the land, and being desperate, their labor became available to the vulture capitalists very cheap.
Time to drop the neo-feudal romanticism and realise individuals wealth and lives markedly improve over the Industrial Revolution. How would the average Edwardian be richer than the average Georgian if the industrial Revolution made people poorer?
King's favourites? Often the enclosures were done by the owners of the land, don't over egg it this was plain greed more often than corruption and nepotism.
@@amh9494 Rubbish ! Thats no 'over egging' mate, of course it was corruption, nepotism and the 'King's favourites' ! You have little understanding of how the English class system worked back then don't you.
@@jackb8682 there may have been nepotism or as they used to say 'influence' involved in their application for enclosure of the common land but like I say the matter of who it went to wasn't about that. Look into the process of application to enclose common land and you'll see. I am well aware of the class system, I look forward to a more substantive reply from you.
@@amh9494 Fair enough, I'm happy to yield to you on that point, but what say you about the Rest of Howard King's assertions ? Are you in general agreeance ? because there is no doubt that vast tracts of common land were taken from the peasant farmers, who without out it had no way of sustaining their relatively healthy, independant lifestyles. The mill owners, who lived ridiculously extravagant lifestyles in their huge country mansions were very happy with this arrangement because it forced these newly dispossesed people into working for them in slave-like conditions in stinking, noisy factories only to go home exhausted to tiny unsanitary slum hovels. The class of people (that for some reason many of you English still fawn over) that delivered this cruelty apon so many of their fellow citizens are the same ghastly human beings that inflicted so much cruelty, for so long, to native peoples right across the "Glorious" British Empire.
I recommend a brilliant Polish movie "The Promised Land" ("Ziemia Obiecana"), which portrays a booming cotton city in Poland, with all of its strata - from the factory owners living like royalty, to up and comers who want to start their businesses and make their fortunes, to regular factory workers. The movie is absolutely spectacular. The movie is based on a novel of the same title, by the literary Nobel prize laureate Władysław Reymont. The novel is great too.
Some of the talk about conditions I find genuinely funny. I know people today who work 12 hr shifts 6 days a week (6 nights, 6 days with one day break to adjust) in an enourmous factory which is freezing in winter and baking in summer, doing really tough work for not much pay.
This isn’t something to celebrate, this sort of thing should be illegal, the bosses / managers would be in prison in a sane society. Fines aren’t a punishment to the rich, just a businesses expense
They moved to the cities because they were forced off the countryside by game and enclosure laws written to force them into the cities to work at mills, factories, etc.
My grandmother worked in a cotton mill from the 1940s onwards in the North of England, as a refugee to the UK she had little choice and went half deaf from the noise of the machines 😢
I work in a one of the largest textile mills o no the planet. Sadly the working conditions haven't changed that much. Hot, dangerous and don't even think about sitting down. Thankfully I work maintenance now and can tell them to get bent. They know I would have another job before I got to the car.
What mill do you work in? Every mill I've ever been in/heard of nowadays has massive condensers to control the temperature and humidity because not only is it better for the workers, looms actually run better when these are controlled. But yea weaving was awful when the condensers were out mid July in Georgia. Also why is it so dangerous? Whats dangerous, weaving? Warping? I weaved 8 years without a single serious injury. We went years as a plant without a recordable. The average recordable in the industry is like 2 a year and most of those are cuts or trips and falls which are the types of injuries that happen in every single industry.
Also fuck any mill that doesn't let you sit down. If my looms were running and clean and my filling was up, I'm sitting down. I got fired because I was written up for sitting down and I told them I was going to keep sitting when it didn't effect the quality or efficiency of my work one bit.
I'm genuinely shocked there was only 4 deaths here in all the years it ran, of course that's not including deaths from infection from dismemberment, which probably happened to at least hundreds of people.
My grandparents didn’t work in mills but on farms, one day, my grandmothers waters broke when picking potatoes, she went to a nearby barn and had my uncle, all in a days work I guess….
My great grandmother was the same. Born on the dirt floor of a peach packing shed. It was harvest time and her mother was sorting and packing fruit while in full labor, because if they didn't get their fruit to market, they starved. Life was brutal back then.
My ancestor's leg was amputated on the kitchen table when he was a child. Details of why it was needed have been lost to history, only the details of the kitchen table survived (and that he wasn't able to carry on the family farming tradition, due to the missing leg)
You have picked a rather tame mill to use as an example. If you visit, you will find that Quarry Bank was one of the better mills to work at, which is almost unbelievable. Still a great example of a preserved mill, and bringing attention to the toil of our ancestors is very valuable.
And so they should with the people who harvested this cotton in the 1st place! Methinks the slaves had a far worse time then any of these British mill workers! 😕
@@rachelkristine4669 I agree, it is so sad to think that the profit was used to buy slaves to transport to the Caribbean and other areas to grow even more cotton, so the circle ontinued. I totally disagree with the use of children as slaves, it was a very cruel time in history.
3:51 this Water Wheel was 60 feet in diameter and built in 1826, in the village of Egerton in Bolton another huge textile town, just a bit further north than Manchester it required over 4 million gallons of water a day to turn and produced around 120hp. It was so large it became a tourist attraction in of itself. Interestingly enough it was designed by George Bodmer a Zurich born engineer who wanted to introduce his techniques pinoneered in France and Germany to the UK however he wasn't really listened to as he wasn't British. So he teamed up with a Italian born merchant man called Philip Novelli, to build a mill, using the new techniques. The mill was a success and Bodmer's techniques were accepted in other Mills and Novelli moved onto other venture. The mill wss sold and then moved to steam power later on and therefore the wheel was unfortunately lost.
Well that is fascinating...t"wud get you thinking about renewable energy-nature's power. Is that Wheel in Bolton still a tourist attraction I'd love to go and see it. P.S(*an Italian)
The people were migrating not in search of a better life, but just to live. They had been living rather well in their earlier occupations. No wonder there was a violent response to the greater violence of the capitalist. A similar thing happened in France centered in Lyon. They were the Canuts. The government had to send troops to suppress their movement.
What you talking about we went up to quarry bank and built a bloody water wheel when we were 4th years at senior school we had to build it from scratch And we even had to build a metal melting furnace From scratch before we even started the bloody wheel And that was 20 years ago. It is the alternative curriculum that some schools Had as a programme, Ehh Bloody up ! Things have moved on since you were at school in the 19 Hundred & 20s
Love that these guys fail to mention the enclosure acts when they start talking about how much more reliable industrial work was in comparison to agricultural work. Also fails to mention wages could often be months or even years in arrears.
It wasn't that reliable . If you had a bad day there where ten people who could take your place . You could be dismissed for being unwell etc People dropped dead from exhaustion .
I find it amazing that just recently I went on two or three walks around this waterfall, and I didn't have a clue what it was all about!So happy to have found your channel!
Manufacturing will never be a high paying job for one simple reason. Consumers like me refuse to pay 20-50% more for a product just because you think you deserve $85k a year for running a press machine when we can get it cheaper from someone who pays their workers $34k a year.
Until you learn that if you pay less than half the price, you get less than half the quality,i guess chinese good are so worth it so why don't you hoard them then ? You could sell them at a mark up after all its the same thing just cheaper isn't ?
I really don't think so, but then... I don't think they had much choice really so you'd just get on with it. Let's just say, I'm very grateful to be alive nowadays.
I work four on four off 12 hr shifts in a factory so I feel for those poor souls. I get two half hour breaks and one fifteen min break. It's still tough but at least I get four days off. We can't sit down except on breaks. We do hand signs for things because the noise is overwhelming, even shouting isn't always heard. The ache in feet and legs is constant. But I need the wages.
@@beatrixbrennan1545 Thank you Beatrix for your kind words.I'm 2.5 yrs off retirement but not sure I'll last. I have 2 adult dependants to look after so can't leave.
I hear ya, mandatory overtime for us as well, 6 days a week. Worked 13 hour shifts plenty of times. Minimum we ever did was 10 hours and the pay is crap. There are many realities like this. Not much has changed for many factory workers
A fantastic enlightening and educational video of the early textile industrial era. Wonderfully detailed and the costumed interpretation adds a nice touch to the visual feel of the atmosphere of that era.
You guys are complimenting HH on their good work. But all I can think about is how I would love to go back in time and beat the ever loving Christ out of these psychopaths who owned these operations. I guess that does mean HH did a good job telling the story! 😆
British upperclass had zero moral fabric… exploiting the vulnerable, exploiting the colonies and zero humanity. Today isnt a paradise but certainly better than the past
In 1955, I was born in Rochdale Lancashire. All my family was employed in the cotton industry. The mill was called Brights Mill. My father used to drive down to Pembroke South Wales to pick up bales of raw cotton from the Pembroke docks and return home with his fully loaded wagon. This trip took him two to three days. There wasn't any motorway on his route back then, and the weather also played its part. My mother and grandma both worked in the weaving shed, and they each looked after four looms each. The noise in the weaving shed was deafening. This was caused by the looms clattering up and down and the shuttles being hit from one side of the loom to the other. It was so loud in there that the weavers couldn't be heard when they spoke, so they used sign language to communicate with each other or they learned to lip read. My grandad worked in the card room. In this room, I was led to believe that some sort of gauge cardboard was used, which had thousands of holes punched into it, and this basically told the looms which pattern was being woven for specific orders. During their lunch breaks, they would come and collect me from Greenbank school, and we would sit on the common which was situated between the factory and the school, this was weather permitting. When the family moved out of town, my mother always had splits in her fingers. This was caused apparently because the cotton took oils from her hand so her fingers would slit open. My grandma had lung damage from inhaling the dust from the cotton. Hard work for little pay, but they did at least have a job that put a roof over our heads and food on the table.
Great job guys, not normally interested in a video like this but you guys actually being there in a period appropriate building and seeing all the machines really drew me in. Thanks!
Farming at the time was seriously affected by the weather, luckily the warm period we live in today got going in the 1700's. I come from a family of Northern mill workers, that started when my great Grandma landed at Liverpool from Ireland, at the age of 14 on her own. All say it was the worst time of their life, but all have lived into their 90's.
Many of my ancestors moved from farming in the countryside to the mills in Lancashire around 1900, very fascinating to see how they would have experienced this life after the big move
In 1832, Greg was attacked by a stag in the grounds of Quarry Bank Mill. The injury led to his retirement. By this time, it had become the largest spinning and weaving business in the United Kingdom. Greg never recovered from the attack and died two years later. lol
Surely they could've provided those young children with some sort of long-handled broom to sweep up the excess cotton in order to save them crawling around on all fours, risking getting maimed by the machinery...?
I'm not very sure what part of the family he was, but some memebwr of my family lost his arm as a child in a factory. I saw pictures of him. Just imagine you arm getting cut off in a factory as a child. Just wow.
I live in Manchester NH, at the turn of the centeruy it was the largest textile mill complex in the world... child labor was avaible and many a child disappered whilst working in these very mills... horriable.
I've known of this poem all my life: The Golf Links by Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play.
4:46 "An ear-splitting noise"?? You've only got a handful of those machines working, mate! When ALL are going, like they would have been, it's DEAFENING. Talk about a health and safety violation.
@@benjones3748 Today's 'wage slavery' would be the dream of any ordinary person over the last 10,000 years. The problem is that the elite is determined to drag us back to conditions little better than real slavery - the brief interlude of 'democracy' and individual rights is an unfortunate anomaly they are in the process of erasing.
there wasn't really much alternative. for many people, this was their best way to make money and get ahead. before subsistence wage, it was subsistence farming. one bad year could mean starvation.
@@amh9494 on the contrary, the renaissance and the start of the industrial revolution were marked by an astounding drop in life expectancy when compared to the medieval period. But it got better along the XIX century
33:20 The printed image of the captured African slaves crammed onto the deck of a boat took my breath from me 💔 That is beyond savage treatment. I can't imagine how they survived those journeys physically, and mentally.
Part Two has just been uploaded guys! We explore the living conditions of poor industrial workers and rich industrialists 🏭 ua-cam.com/video/1p6ltR49zQU/v-deo.html
Awesome! Will go check it out! Also - Guys AND Gals -- as the world continues to roll back women's rights, let's not call everyone guys. Time to address this.
@@mgb5170 that ain't necessarily so - from my dictionary: used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex.
Them there's Guys as in what they burn on the bonfires on Guy Fawkes night.....
*Hydro Electric Power*
Kudos to you from Denmark 👌🏾
This was really a good watch and learning 😉
@@mgb5170😊h and ofpo ppgu
This makes me appreciate all the labour protection laws we have today
All because of the labour unions the people in factories like these joined
Enjoy them while you can.
Not here in the USA. More & more red states are stripping protections for kids in the work force. They are starting to fix it so kids as young as 14 get to work in slaughter houses & other factories. ARKANSAS & IOWA are 2 of those states! Kids are gonna die. And they don't care. And yes, it's REPUGS that are insisting on this. 🤬
Wait until AI makes you unnecessary...
That Brexit is trying to dismantle
My great grandmother was a mill worker in Yorkshire and she said. "Death was improper in the mill as the cotton would need to be cleaned or discarded"
thats why it bothers me that now british people are accused of stealing trilions in wealth from colonies and expected to apologise and pay reparations. they worked very hard to create their wealth.
And the cost of cleaning would come out of child's pay I suspect!
@@bigbarry8343 ..... its always the few that make the money.
@@ERG173 yes, and now their descendants are drawing on public funds, benefitting from "climate reparation" and various ESG iniiatives and other wealth transfers to former colonies.
That suggests that there were probably frequent deaths. The video hasn’t unfolded the whole truth.
When people romantize the Victorian Era and wish they could have lived during that period always assume they would be part of the aristocracy class when in reality this would be their life.
Blue jay made a great video on people who think like this actually ending up in Victorian London you should watch
Yes, it's amazing how when you point out to such people that if they were whatever class, education or earning level they are in the 21st century, they would be working 14 hours a day and living in poverty, they still somehow can't quite accept that they would be cold, dirty, stinking, underfed and with no hope of ever getting out of their situation. Somehow they imagine that higher education and desk jobs were open to everyone in the past, or that people could just somehow become a success and move into a higher class with a bit of hustle.
That sucks. I have to be tortured to make what Im doing seem dumb.
For the UK citizens maybe yeah
Depends if they know there family history well could have gone down the military route
As someone who works in one of the few textile based factories left in the US, it’s absolutely astonishing to see the machinery and layout of the factory floors. Now, we work with wool as opposed to cotton, but the carding machines look identical to what we work with. It’s a nice touch to talk about the humidity level being essential to the fabric performing as needed. I can tell you, even with all the regulations and workers rights that are in place now, it’s a tough job. Enormous respect to the folks who worked there and did the job. They walked so we could run.
Boott Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell Massachusetts is quite amazing at telling the stories of the industry as well.
It's quite similar to what we see in this video.
Although since it ceased operations in 1958, they also provide a lot of voices and videos from a more 'modern' perspective.
A great museum in my opinion.
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Truth be told, often times we can’t afford to be bored lol. The job I do in particular involves super heated steam and electrically heated metal blocks that are hovering around 340 degrees Fahrenheit. Plenty of interesting ways to hurt yourself if you’re not paying attention. The machines are also completely analog in terms of the set up for different styles of product. Much like the folks portrayed here… slide rules and wooden rulers are the order of the day for measurements and a series of cranks are used to adjust the machines for width and depth.
I have had 15 years in a knitting mill in Utica NY, started as a doffer. The spools, bobbins, and mills were very similar to the older equipment still in use when I worked there.
All I did was operating an elastic sealing machine for covid masks.
Plus putting bandage rolls in a bag.
But I was one of the fastest!
Its not about resisting its about eliminating competition and making the owners profit.
It was so satisfying understanding why working is psychologically harsh in latin america, because of real demanding work like this, not because of a cultural reason. But its very disciplinatory.
Plus I think the new york skyscraper builders were much more brave, heights are prone to harm since we were smaller primates, come on youre all being too dramatic.
This is exactly why it's so important for workers to unionise and stick up for themselves. Business owners would have no problem continuing to treat workers like this today, if they could get away with it.
@Marcus it's different today only *because* workers learnt to stick up for themselves and unionise. Big companies see workers as nothing more than a disposable resource, same as they did then. The only difference is that workers these days have more bargaining power, because of their many hard won victories over the last 150+ years. The companies would absolutely love to get things back to the days where they could completely exploit workers (and their children) because they only care about profit and pleasing their shareholders.
Unions aren't perfect these days but the main reason they have a bad reputation is because big companies are willing to literally spend billions of dollars on tricking people like you into thinking they're a bad idea using all sorts of dirty tactics.
@Marcus ugh sorry I'm not reading all that... capitalism revolves around those with capital exploiting those without - (and they'll do it as much or as little as they can get away with) nothing has fundamentally changed. If you disagree, it's pointless for us to discuss it further.
@J.P. Menger They got you trained to really like that boot.
@@neoc03 With a name like "J.P" he probably IS the boot 😆
Nope
We can all agree that although the victorian london aesthetic is nice, actually living in that period fucking sucks.
Well, you also have to look at it like this this was unskilled labor. So it’s sort of the same as today.
Obviously way worse but I mean anyone that had some sort of Skillset wouldn’t be stuck doing a crappy job like that.
For instance, take people who work at call centers nowadays it’s one of the worst jobs anyone could have. Or you could do what I did join the local police force get some field experience and test for your own private investigator license and nearly make $100 an hour when you’re not even 30 yet. Of course, back in those days there wasn’t near as many opportunities, but there were plenty of different job phillips to go into besides working at the mill.
A good quote coming from the historical costuming community "Historical fashion, not historical values."
@@Faceplay2there's always going to be a need for people to do "crappy" jobs, so instead of demeaning them for not getting out of a job that they might not be able to get out of (for various reasons), why not make sure that everyone (yes, even them. Yes, even those other people.) can live a life that is, if not comfortable, at least financially stable and worthy.
Also, a lot of what is called "unskilled labour" is far from that, just because it doesn't require any sort of official education doesn't mean it can't be hard to learn.
For every point in human history life sucks for some people. Depends a lot on how lucky you are.
This was the north of England not London
HistoryHit, making a solid advert for Trade Unions here...
Victorian Industrial life is actually big improvement when compared with Georgian agricultural life so why should anyone want to stop the business practices in the video?
All unions do is reduce competition and drive up prices, effectively eliminating entrepreneurs and innovation in those fields, and putting those services out of reach of the lower class.
@@kevintemple245 Rubbish, they protect to workers from exploitation!!!
@@daringdare5078 of course, how silly of me. I forgot to consider that working 14 hours a day from cradle to grave and losing ones arm to a loom is far more luxurious than working 14 hours a day from cradle to grave and losing ones arm to a thresher.
Whilst being paid fuck all. And whilst the factory owner gets stinking rich.
@@kevintemple245 by "reduce competition" and "drive up prices" do you mean "prevent exploitation of the labour force"? And by "eliminating entrepreneurs" do you mean "limit the profits extracted from underpaying them for their labour."
Because I'm almost certain Elon Musk didnt actually design andd build every part of every tesla now did he? Without workers there is nothing, and unions keep the capitalist from exploiting them.
I visited the mill on school trips multiple times as a child, I've never forgotten the experience days I had there even as a 26 year old man who has kids himself now. As a child, I remember the depressing and unpleasant feelings those machine halls had. Now, being a father myself, I can't imagine the desperation parents of the time must have had to force their children into work. Makes me feel very lucky to live in the 21st century, and I have great respect for all of our ancestors who worked in the Mills.
My grandfather had 6 kids. He started working in the mills as a child. My Mom started working in mills at 16. I lasted maybe 4 hours. Nope, not me! I imagine that cycle had been going on in America since prior to 1824.
Nah, they were obviously better than any other alternative, otherwise people wouldn't flee the countryside to work there
very lucky to live in the UK in the 21st century you mean? Cause you know that where your clothes are produced today, conditions are still as described in this video right?
@Me Here listen Karen I'm well aware of the horrific conditions many people still live in today. My comment was regarding the mill and the disparity in working conditions from then till now.
@@jamesnoonan7450 There is no difference in cotton making conditions today vs then! They're identical!
Our forefathers paid in blood for the right of collective negotiations. Don’t throw it away.
💘💘💘
I never met my great-grandmother, (my mom's grandma). I was told that in the Victorian era she worked in a hat factory, cutting strings off the hat's that were already finished, to be sent to the shops, or she would cut the ribbon to put onto the hats. She was only 5. She was so tiny that she had to stand on top of an apple box. Though we are still going through a lot of tough things today, we have to remember that we have come a long way from the times of my great grandmother, and what these people went through. sometimes we forget on how lucky we are in many ways today.
The people that literally fought and died for us to not live like that wouldn’t want to use this as an excuse. Half the comments are going on about how unions are “needed to a point” as though wages and quality of life haven’t plummeted without unions while inequality and poverty have grown.
@@jtt8237Well you're right on that well said And let's also make it quick children weren't stabbing and killing other children
And I hate to say this but married and pregnant by the age of 10
YEP The good old days
People look back at eras like this through rose tinted glasses a bit too much. Life was tough for 90 percent of people, in many cases worse than tough.
I say people like the simplicity of it.
Not the hard work.
Have you also considered the poor country who also live tougher then tough
It's similar now
90%? Slavery was not *(tough).
@@MichaelSmith-qc7nk 10 percent of the people lived well they were part of the aristocracy or the emerging bourgeois middle class of the time. The other 90 percent did not enjoy such lifestyles, and lived in various degrees of poverty. And i'm speaking of the population of Victorian Britain here, not other countries and parts of the world where things could be better or worse, often even worse.
I worked at a place just a few years ago that operated exactly like this. No joke. The only difference is that they didn’t employ children.
North and South (the BBC adaption) is a wonderful drama that doesn't shy away from depicting the difficulties Mill workers suffered during this time and their fight to change it. It's a fantastic series.
I love that series! Very well done.
It is based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. Amazing.
I enjoyed North and South. Seems like ages since it was on TV. One of my ancestors going back several generations owned a water mill but not in the North. I like to think he was a kind and fair owner.
In the year 2123, the title of this video will be can you survive working a day working in a 21st century Starbucks/Amazon warehouse/WalMart?
whether you can survive working in an Amazon warehouse is already a hot subject in 2023. They deliberately keep them in countries with lose labour laws or pointless fines, where they can butter up officials to look the other way, or just get fined so little they have no incentive to improve their working conditions.
Little over a decade ago (believe it was before Sweden joined the EU) there were some rumours that Amazon wanted to open a warehouse in Sweden to better serve northern Europe. They assumed they could dodge the labour laws because they would provide jobs. They weren't prepared for how strict labour laws are here, which meant they couldn't even get a construction permit for their warehouse because the layout didn't comply with the minimum requirements for a workplace - Denmark and Sweden both have laws about how far workers must walk to get to a toilet, how isolated a break room must be from the job site, shower facilities, and a bunch of other stuff. These laws are actually very lenient, but because Amazon couldn't care less about their workers' convenience, things like that are merely an afterthought they'd rather avoid including. In Germany the labour laws specify how much daylight workers must have access to in any given workday, and if you've ever seen an Amazon warehouse you'll know that windows are non-existent. For these reasons Amazon still don't exist in Scandinavia, instead we have other stores that are cheaper, have better service, far better quality, and more often than not they use robots because they don't want to expose humans to the amount of shelving required for that type of store - and the robots incidentally is why they're cheaper than Amazon and can deliver faster
@@thesteelrodent1796 I wasn't referring to ones outside of side the USA because I know people that work at one and it is a world away from a Victorian factory.
@@thesteelrodent1796man that’s what robots should be for and were initially conceived of. Wish it was more widespread. Taking up labor in a more efficient manner and for longer than a human can, freeing them for more leisure time and working only as needed/wanted (on things humans are better suited for).
Instead were getting AI trying to do art for us, and self driving green cars when trains are right there.
@@thesteelrodent1796 Well we have them Here in Germany and a friend of mine works there... Yes you are right they even track their movement to Count how often they are in toilet
@Steven Burrell no, that's much more likely to appear in a documentary called "before the collapse, a time of luxury"
"Could you survive the Victorian industrial revolution"
Mate I'm American. I've been working 12-15 hour days 6-7 days a week since I was 16. Poor people STILL have to work like this.
It's not so bad, it's usually a temporary situation. I couldn't do it if I had no light at the end of the tunnel and I always did
Nothing to be proud off, you are getting abuse and your life shortened for what?
@@weltvonalex I wasn't being proud. I was making a joke that people act like we've made improvements since the industrial revolution. We haven't. The human life is still seen as a means to generate revenue.
classic capitalism
I work similar hours and I’m loving life. It’s the only way I can get the things I want and still support my kids and pay my mortgage.
It’s hard work but we never struggle or go without
I would argue that rudimentary hunter/gatherer life was leaps and bounds better than so called "civilization" in its early days... I simply cannot comprehend what was the purpose of life for these workers...
I still think gatherers (for the most part) had it better than even now 😅
Unless you have engaged in subsistence life in Northern latitudes, with other humans competing with you, measure your romantic notions of the idea. I've plowed a subsistence sized garden with a mule for a few seasons; it is hard work with no guarantee of success. 10 or 12 hours a day with guaranteed pay would be alluring.
@diggernash1 I saw somewhere that hunter gathers only worked 140 days of the year. I don't know how true it is. But surely some lucious lands were easier to live on than a farmland
then why did hunter/gatherers build cities and live there instead?
@@NegativeAccelerate South Pacific islanders can live a subsistence lifestyle by working around 2 hours per day. I think that area is estimated to require the least time.
Reminds me of a documentary I watched about Amazon warehouse employees. The inability to go to the toilet, being monitored constantly, the high pay, the dangerous conditions, people losing their lives in accidents. And the extreme wealth of the owners. History repeats itself even in things like this.
The conditions in the coal mines of England were even worse for children. Some as young as 3 years old, according to the Yorkshire section of the 1842 Commission
Oh dear word! Poor little ones!😢
Sorta undermines the historical illiteracy that peddles 'white privilege'!
The under tens were usually the little boys who sat in the dark and minded the 'trap' doors to let the ponies and carts through. These doors were essential to control airflow in the mines so they would usually be kept closed, then when the boy heard the pony approaching he would open the wooden door, then close it again after they'd passed by. Candles cost money so these little children sat there in the dark...
Good bit of character building!
About 20 years ago I worked in a mattress factory from the 1920s or so using open drive belt driven cotton batting machines. The air full of dust as the sunlight steamed in. I am currently a manager in a sweatshop style clothing store. No chairs or stools for workers. Clothing packed in with almost no room for the workers or customers. No windows. 6 days a week. Denver Colorado USA.
that should not be legal even for the us.
💔💔💔
😮😢
AHHH The American dream 🤗
They would exploit people like this today if they could!
This sounds exactly like the job I left 2 months ago. These practices are still common in the UK. Coolcool coolcoolcool. Less risk of bodily harm, same financial labour extortion.
Amazing how the British empire literally had the world of its own and amazin £ from it but the homegrown conditions for 90+% of population was just a terribly depressing and shit life to be frank
And it’s why when people moan at people from the UK about colonialism the general population haven’t time for that. They didn’t benefit, they struggled through daily life and as many do now (ok not in these conditions!).
We don’t condone what happened but the majority of the population back then as now, is just trying to make a living and have a decent life.
@@kimberleysmith818 the majority population still supported their government, the majority of the population made up most of the soldiers that raped and pillaged their lands
Goes for every empire
@@kimberleysmith818i think that is the case for every horrible dictatorship that did questionable things, same goes for the soviet union, china, north korea or other countries.
Who's empire was it? Not the British people, but the capital owning class.
the way we are headed, this isn't far off from coming back
I'm genuinely extremely curious as to why you think this
Take the wage for example @@joejoebeefcraftthey're on what equates to £12-13 an hour, not many on that these days
@@joejoebeefcraft Try being disabled and/or having no employability skills
@@joejoebeefcraftmodern day china
@@shredder_mang3211 China has always been like that
the irony is that the descendants of those subsistence factory workers are supposed to pay reparations for slavery, when slave owners were 2-3000 out of a UK population counting about 24 million in 1830. Strangely enough, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait never seem to meet demands for reparations for slavery from NGOs.
The idea is that the state profited immensely as well. So the state would have to pay. But you make a solid point. I wish they would take a percentage of profits of companies now that have profited from both slavery and indentured servitude and put them to good use.
We've thrown away everything these people gave their blood sweat and tears for. These party politicians need to go now
That's because apparently working in these conditions was white privilege! Makes me mad, somehow our daily poverty and working lives how been forgotten.
@@mchlle94'State' doesn't pay, taxpayers pay, that's us.
Slaves, most of the worlds population didn't have them, but you can bet those that didn't will pay for it.
Imagine if luke was snapping that belt for real and your six years old, today in infant school learning how to read and write play games socalise, imagine the terror and pain inflected possibly in front of your own parents, nowhere to run or hide or cry
I love how the thumbnail says "you'll work til you drop" I do that every day at my current job.
I had ancestors on both sides of my family that worked in cotton mills, I don't know how they coped! thanks for sharing.
He didnt know exactly what portions of their body the metals/other filler was being used to replace.
No-one ever believes this but my first job after leaving school in 1966 was as a framework knitter. Hand operated iron machinery mounted on a 17th century oak support stand with foot levers to drag the yarn one way or the other across the needles. Broken needles had to be cast ‘in-situ’ by pouring molten lead into a mould before replacing them. Mohair reels would be soaked overnight before use, causing a spray as the thread ran off. A guide at the Wollaton Hall Industrial Museum was explaining that the ‘knowledge of how to operate these was lost unfortunately.’ When I tried to politely enlighten her she sneered and turned her back on me.🤷🏻♂️
are those the frames for knitting stockings, that were invented in the 1500s?
Stop lying
With todays twelve hour shifts and zero hours contracts along with forty five minute breaks after four and a half hour work spells we seem to be sliding back to those days.
Not in my country. It's against the law what you just described. Maybe you should get busy and get some laws on the books where you live. Sorry bub..
We don't get 45mins break after 4.5 hours work. We get 30mins after 6hrs, that's the NHS!
@@magpie1492What the hell is NHS? Don't use short forms for everything idiot
The blonde man playing the factory owner is having the time of his life. I actually got a bit scared when he was brandishing that belt.
😂😂😂
I see that you useLewis Hine’s pictures to illustrate your documentaries, the impact of his images giving dignity to the children that worked in this inhuman conditions has always amazed me.
I love this! I found out that some of my family moved up from Suffolk. They left their farming jobs & got jobs as weavers in the Leeds area. So many of them were weavers. Scoot forwards a few generations I was born in Sheffield where members of my family were coal miners & steel workers. So basically we came from farming in the South to become industrial workers in the North ☺
Agricultural labourers?
Around that time there was failed crops and famine, most people never left thier village so outsiders from the South of England came in droves looking for work in the mills. They were discriminated against and given the worse jobs.
@again5162 The last major famine in England was I believe in 1805 IIRC. Before that, the 1795/6 famine was even worse. Yes, many rural English would be forced into towns and cities, particularly during industrialisation. Also due to Enclosure Acts & the onset of farm mechanisation
they probably didn't leave their jobs they probably lost their land
Now if you do that today you are referred to as a county liner
In the 1970s I was a nurse in a New Zealand woollen mill. One of the worker's daughter's often came to visit me after school - she had lots of questions - two of my favorites were:
1. Do they need to know the alphabet to work at the mill? (I told her they did.)
2. (After noticing that everyone sat at the same tables in the cafeteria during the breaks.) What would happen if someone sat at a different table? (I told her it might cause a strike.)
My favorite sound was (and still is) the rhythm of the old weaving looms. Gordon Lightfoot wrote a memorable verse in "Hangdog Hotel":
I believe in magic,
A little monkeyshines
But the kind of row I can really hoe
Is playin' in tune on time
With rhythms all around us
We're like weavers at the loom ...
To this day I have a great love and appreciation for all mill (factory) workers - it's a hard life being a slave to the mill whistle. One worker told me, when I asked what he was doing looking in the hedge at the mill gate, that he had put his brain there at 7am and he couldn't find it at 5pm😊
Which mill my mother worked at, Roslyn Woollen Mill in the late 60s.
@@kiwihib Wow - what department - did you ever visit her at work? I was at the Mosgiel Mill.
@@stefsomful Not sure which one as she worked evenings, so I was mostly in bed when dad picked her up, though I did get to see the inside of a woollen mill when I was Stationmaster at Milton and got taken through the Bruce woollen mill. I was born in Mosgiel.
@@kiwihib - ah your mother was one of the "Twilight shift workers" then who worked from 6 - 10 or 11pm raising their family during the day or working elsewhere then off to the mill to earn that bit extra to make ends meet, pay off the mortgage, or make sure their daughter's got a decent wedding!
Sad old Bruce Woollen Mill - now a shell of it's former self as are the Roslyn and Mosgiel building - I used to know Rod Beattie who was the manager there in the eighties - before that he was at Mosgiel.
It's been a while since a train went through Milton has it not?
I was a weaver for 8 years. It isn't hard work. The only struggle being a weaver is not losing your mind from boredom. I appreciate and love all the folks I worked with at the mills I worked at, and it takes a special and wonderful person to dedicate their life to that kind of work. There is immense value in it. But lets not act like that value is driven by the fact that the work is so very hard.
I'm honestly surprised none of the floor supervisors or bosses had an " unfortunate industrial accident"
I hear ya. Especially the ones who took advantage of the young girls. That's just sick. I'd toss the bugger into the most gruesome piece of equipment I could find.
I'm sure some of them did.
Unfortunately the police were always (and still are) on the side of the capitalists
It should be mentioned that the factory workers had no choice but to move to the stinking, unwholesome cities. The "entrepeneurs" had built the factory system to undercut local production in the villages and small towns and drive them out of business. Usurers had grabbed as much of the land as they could. And the common lands, that peasant farmers depended on to graze their cattle, had been stolen from them, fenced, and given to the king's favorites. They were driven off the land, and being desperate, their labor became available to the vulture capitalists very cheap.
Time to drop the neo-feudal romanticism and realise individuals wealth and lives markedly improve over the Industrial Revolution. How would the average Edwardian be richer than the average Georgian if the industrial Revolution made people poorer?
King's favourites? Often the enclosures were done by the owners of the land, don't over egg it this was plain greed more often than corruption and nepotism.
@@amh9494 Rubbish ! Thats no 'over egging' mate, of course it was corruption, nepotism and the 'King's favourites' ! You have little understanding of how the English class system worked back then don't you.
@@jackb8682 there may have been nepotism or as they used to say 'influence' involved in their application for enclosure of the common land but like I say the matter of who it went to wasn't about that. Look into the process of application to enclose common land and you'll see.
I am well aware of the class system, I look forward to a more substantive reply from you.
@@amh9494 Fair enough, I'm happy to yield to you on that point, but what say you about the Rest of Howard King's assertions ?
Are you in general agreeance ? because there is no doubt that vast tracts of common land were taken from the peasant farmers, who without out it had no way of sustaining their relatively healthy, independant lifestyles. The mill owners, who lived ridiculously extravagant lifestyles in their huge country mansions were very happy with this arrangement because it forced these newly dispossesed people into working for them in slave-like conditions in stinking, noisy factories only to go home exhausted to tiny unsanitary slum hovels.
The class of people (that for some reason many of you English still fawn over) that delivered this cruelty apon so many of their fellow citizens are the same ghastly human beings that inflicted so much cruelty, for so long, to native peoples right across the "Glorious" British Empire.
I recommend a brilliant Polish movie "The Promised Land" ("Ziemia Obiecana"), which portrays a booming cotton city in Poland, with all of its strata - from the factory owners living like royalty, to up and comers who want to start their businesses and make their fortunes, to regular factory workers. The movie is absolutely spectacular.
The movie is based on a novel of the same title, by the literary Nobel prize laureate Władysław Reymont. The novel is great too.
Some of the talk about conditions I find genuinely funny. I know people today who work 12 hr shifts 6 days a week (6 nights, 6 days with one day break to adjust) in an enourmous factory which is freezing in winter and baking in summer, doing really tough work for not much pay.
No one should waste his life like that or be proud of being exploited
This isn’t something to celebrate, this sort of thing should be illegal, the bosses / managers would be in prison in a sane society. Fines aren’t a punishment to the rich, just a businesses expense
@@weltvonalex❤❤❤
They moved to the cities because they were forced off the countryside by game and enclosure laws written to force them into the cities to work at mills, factories, etc.
Interesting to see a comparison between cotton mill workers and cotton plantation workers working conditions and lifestyle..
A life in a log cabin picking cotton with family, or a short brutal life stuck in a dangerous factory.
@@mjanny6330 I think they each came with their own different hardships
Imagine a world where a wide broom or other simple tool was too much of an ask for worker safety…
or even a broom attached to the moving machine so you wont need anyone to clean the floor.
You ever have to ask management for equipment or anything else you needed? No need to imagine that world at all.
My grandmother worked in a cotton mill from the 1940s onwards in the North of England, as a refugee to the UK she had little choice and went half deaf from the noise of the machines 😢
I work in a one of the largest textile mills o no the planet. Sadly the working conditions haven't changed that much. Hot, dangerous and don't even think about sitting down. Thankfully I work maintenance now and can tell them to get bent. They know I would have another job before I got to the car.
What mill do you work in? Every mill I've ever been in/heard of nowadays has massive condensers to control the temperature and humidity because not only is it better for the workers, looms actually run better when these are controlled. But yea weaving was awful when the condensers were out mid July in Georgia.
Also why is it so dangerous? Whats dangerous, weaving? Warping? I weaved 8 years without a single serious injury. We went years as a plant without a recordable. The average recordable in the industry is like 2 a year and most of those are cuts or trips and falls which are the types of injuries that happen in every single industry.
Also fuck any mill that doesn't let you sit down. If my looms were running and clean and my filling was up, I'm sitting down. I got fired because I was written up for sitting down and I told them I was going to keep sitting when it didn't effect the quality or efficiency of my work one bit.
I'm genuinely shocked there was only 4 deaths here in all the years it ran, of course that's not including deaths from infection from dismemberment, which probably happened to at least hundreds of people.
My grandparents didn’t work in mills but on farms, one day, my grandmothers waters broke when picking potatoes, she went to a nearby barn and had my uncle, all in a days work I guess….
My great grandmother was the same. Born on the dirt floor of a peach packing shed. It was harvest time and her mother was sorting and packing fruit while in full labor, because if they didn't get their fruit to market, they starved. Life was brutal back then.
My ancestor's leg was amputated on the kitchen table when he was a child. Details of why it was needed have been lost to history, only the details of the kitchen table survived (and that he wasn't able to carry on the family farming tradition, due to the missing leg)
Victorian factory workers couldn't survive as Victorian factory workers so no I don't think I could do it.
🤣
You have picked a rather tame mill to use as an example. If you visit, you will find that Quarry Bank was one of the better mills to work at, which is almost unbelievable. Still a great example of a preserved mill, and bringing attention to the toil of our ancestors is very valuable.
Very interesting, this should still be taught at school as so many people would not believe it and it is so very important.
And so they should with the people who harvested this cotton in the 1st place! Methinks the slaves had a far worse time then any of these British mill workers! 😕
@@rachelkristine4669 I agree, it is so sad to think that the profit was used to buy slaves to transport to the Caribbean and other areas to grow even more cotton, so the circle ontinued. I totally disagree with the use of children as slaves, it was a very cruel time in history.
@@JJLewin1 I disagree with the use of children as slaves as well. It's very very bad!
@Rachel Kristine that's the only group they *do* talk about, often with overt emotional manipulation and exaggeration.
It is taught in school lmao you should've gone to school
3:51 this Water Wheel was 60 feet in diameter and built in 1826, in the village of Egerton in Bolton another huge textile town, just a bit further north than Manchester it required over 4 million gallons of water a day to turn and produced around 120hp. It was so large it became a tourist attraction in of itself. Interestingly enough it was designed by George Bodmer a Zurich born engineer who wanted to introduce his techniques pinoneered in France and Germany to the UK however he wasn't really listened to as he wasn't British. So he teamed up with a Italian born merchant man called Philip Novelli, to build a mill, using the new techniques. The mill was a success and Bodmer's techniques were accepted in other Mills and Novelli moved onto other venture. The mill wss sold and then moved to steam power later on and therefore the wheel was unfortunately lost.
Well that is fascinating...t"wud get you thinking about renewable energy-nature's power.
Is that Wheel in Bolton still a tourist attraction I'd love to go and see it.
P.S(*an Italian)
Yes, water wheels had been around for centuries, the big game changer for the Industrial revolution was the steam engine.
@@clioflano421 no unfortunately not, there is still the huge waterwheel in the Isle of Man but no Italian connection from my knowledge
@@dnstone1127 yes
@@Alex-cw3rz
A 1.5L 4 cylinder auto engine would replace that giant wheel. Then you could have lots more oppressed people.
The people were migrating not in search of a better life, but just to live. They had been living rather well in their earlier occupations. No wonder there was a violent response to the greater violence of the capitalist. A similar thing happened in France centered in Lyon. They were the Canuts. The government had to send troops to suppress their movement.
Exactly. It's interesting how we learn very little about these movements in our history books...
"Could You Survive as a Victorian Factory Worker?" I'm two minutes in and my answer is already no
The historical connections are mind blowing…I only wish the reality presented here was taught in schools years ago. We can’t hide from history.
What you talking about we went up to quarry bank and built a bloody water wheel when we were 4th years at senior school we had to build it from scratch And we even had to build a metal melting furnace From scratch before we even started the bloody wheel And that was 20 years ago. It is the alternative curriculum that some schools Had as a programme, Ehh Bloody up ! Things have moved on since you were at school in the 19 Hundred & 20s
Love that these guys fail to mention the enclosure acts when they start talking about how much more reliable industrial work was in comparison to agricultural work. Also fails to mention wages could often be months or even years in arrears.
It wasn't that reliable . If you had a bad day there where ten people who could take your place . You could be dismissed for being unwell etc
People dropped dead from exhaustion .
I know that really annoyed me too, repeating the Establishment bollocks, these people were forced into slavery
"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!“
Amazing how little things have changed. 2023 and you work til you drop.
Truth. Two jobs just to pay rent and car.
You don't know you're born.
I find it amazing that just recently I went on two or three walks around this waterfall, and I didn't have a clue what it was all about!So happy to have found your channel!
I love reminding my 9 and 11 year olds that 200 years ago, they'd be working 80 hour weeks in a mill, so basic chores at home are nothing.
Haha I’m using this.
Manufacturing will never be a high paying job for one simple reason. Consumers like me refuse to pay 20-50% more for a product just because you think you deserve $85k a year for running a press machine when we can get it cheaper from someone who pays their workers $34k a year.
Until you learn that if you pay less than half the price, you get less than half the quality,i guess chinese good are so worth it so why don't you hoard them then ? You could sell them at a mark up after all its the same thing just cheaper isn't ?
You sound like you don't realize manufacturing workers also buy things
We are shocked by children having to work, but it's still the reality in poor countries like Bangladesh or even India...
It's even still a thing in the U.S.
Well done guys. Very enjoyable and informative as usual!!
Looks like Luke will survive but poor Louee may not!
What a great show gentleman! Love your interesting topics!!!
Thanks for watching!
My ancestors survived it because I'm here today.
I really don't think so, but then... I don't think they had much choice really so you'd just get on with it.
Let's just say, I'm very grateful to be alive nowadays.
1:46 that picture looks literally like an Amazon warehouse. lol
I work four on four off 12 hr shifts in a factory so I feel for those poor souls. I get two half hour breaks and one fifteen min break. It's still tough but at least I get four days off. We can't sit down except on breaks. We do hand signs for things because the noise is overwhelming, even shouting isn't always heard. The ache in feet and legs is constant. But I need the wages.
I'm so sorry hunny. I pray God blesses you with something better!
@@beatrixbrennan1545 Thank you Beatrix for your kind words.I'm 2.5 yrs off retirement but not sure I'll last. I have 2 adult dependants to look after so can't leave.
@@claireseyeviewonredbubble That must be so hard, I'm praying for you!
@@beatrixbrennan1545 Thank you😊
I love these videos keep them coming
Hate to say this I work at a plastics firm. We work 12 hrs shifts. There is mandatory overtime. This is pretty common in industry today.
I hear ya, mandatory overtime for us as well, 6 days a week. Worked 13 hour shifts plenty of times. Minimum we ever did was 10 hours and the pay is crap. There are many realities like this. Not much has changed for many factory workers
A fantastic enlightening and educational video of the early textile industrial era. Wonderfully detailed and the costumed interpretation adds a nice touch to the visual feel of the atmosphere of that era.
Yes, we could survive, though no one should have to.
Life is worth living; far more than the price of cotton.
You guys are complimenting HH on their good work. But all I can think about is how I would love to go back in time and beat the ever loving Christ out of these psychopaths who owned these operations.
I guess that does mean HH did a good job telling the story! 😆
British upperclass had zero moral fabric… exploiting the vulnerable, exploiting the colonies and zero humanity.
Today isnt a paradise but certainly better than the past
My great great grandfather was a factory worker..he passed down a strong back and mind.
The river was not only essential for energy it essential for working water (dyes etc.) and waste disposal
In 1955, I was born in Rochdale Lancashire. All my family was employed in the cotton industry. The mill was called Brights Mill. My father used to drive down to Pembroke South Wales to pick up bales of raw cotton from the Pembroke docks and return home with his fully loaded wagon. This trip took him two to three days. There wasn't any motorway on his route back then, and the weather also played its part. My mother and grandma both worked in the weaving shed, and they each looked after four looms each. The noise in the weaving shed was deafening. This was caused by the looms clattering up and down and the shuttles being hit from one side of the loom to the other. It was so loud in there that the weavers couldn't be heard when they spoke, so they used sign language to communicate with each other or they learned to lip read. My grandad worked in the card room. In this room, I was led to believe that some sort of gauge cardboard was used, which had thousands of holes punched into it, and this basically told the looms which pattern was being woven for specific orders. During their lunch breaks, they would come and collect me from Greenbank school, and we would sit on the common which was situated between the factory and the school, this was weather permitting. When the family moved out of town, my mother always had splits in her fingers. This was caused apparently because the cotton took oils from her hand so her fingers would slit open. My grandma had lung damage from inhaling the dust from the cotton. Hard work for little pay, but they did at least have a job that put a roof over our heads and food on the table.
Wooohooo we're devolving back to the victorian era!
Great job guys, not normally interested in a video like this but you guys actually being there in a period appropriate building and seeing all the machines really drew me in. Thanks!
Imagine you'd grown up on a farm, got chucked off by the landlord, and then came to this.
The short answer is 'No'.
😅
great content! learned a lot from this video and I can't wait for the next part
Glad you enjoyed it!
Greed and profit does not know empathy. We humans can be cruel.
That will never change. Humans are not perfect and never will be.
Farming at the time was seriously affected by the weather, luckily the warm period we live in today got going in the 1700's. I come from a family of Northern mill workers, that started when my great Grandma landed at Liverpool from Ireland, at the age of 14 on her own. All say it was the worst time of their life, but all have lived into their 90's.
Many of my ancestors moved from farming in the countryside to the mills in Lancashire around 1900, very fascinating to see how they would have experienced this life after the big move
In 1832, Greg was attacked by a stag in the grounds of Quarry Bank Mill. The injury led to his retirement. By this time, it had become the largest spinning and weaving business in the United Kingdom. Greg never recovered from the attack and died two years later. lol
Yea fuck em
Loser got killed by A cow basically
Animals always know what's up...
I can't get over the french cuffs and tie not being done correctly 😭 but no seriously, fantastic video!
Surely they could've provided those young children with some sort of long-handled broom to sweep up the excess cotton in order to save them crawling around on all fours, risking getting maimed by the machinery...?
Mill Owner: "Bjeeezus! Those brooms would cost more than the kids. Think of the profits."
@@GeneralChangFromDanang Lol, that's true..
I'm not very sure what part of the family he was, but some memebwr of my family lost his arm as a child in a factory. I saw pictures of him.
Just imagine you arm getting cut off in a factory as a child. Just wow.
First time watching History Hit, so glad i found this channel! I have got some catching up to do.😊
Incredible the amount of work that went on in 1800s britain. Truly changed the way the world worked
Nose to the grindstone tough.😮
I live in Manchester NH, at the turn of the centeruy it was the largest textile mill complex in the world... child labor was avaible and many a child disappered whilst working in these very mills... horriable.
I've known of this poem all my life:
The Golf Links by Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
The boys are back!
Thankfully we have the childhood labour laws. So many kids were maimed or killed working in these mills.
4:46 "An ear-splitting noise"?? You've only got a handful of those machines working, mate! When ALL are going, like they would have been, it's DEAFENING. Talk about a health and safety violation.
“You turn up 6 days a week for a grueling 12 hour shift, possibly more, and you can’t complain about it” - bro that’s called being a chef
When you go to them places you can almost feel the blood sweat and tears over the years and the ghosts that still believe they work there
And thaaaaats absolutely amazing! What a Great way to make documentaries
We really live life on easy mode in the current day compared to back then
SUPPORT YOUR UNION
It was tragic that Victorian workers were earning a subsistence wage, had little savings, and worked unimaginable hours.
It was fully intentional, and baked into the system. Just as wage slavery is today...
@@benjones3748
Today's 'wage slavery' would be the dream of any ordinary person over the last 10,000 years.
The problem is that the elite is determined to drag us back to conditions little better than real slavery - the brief interlude of 'democracy' and individual rights is an unfortunate anomaly they are in the process of erasing.
there wasn't really much alternative. for many people, this was their best way to make money and get ahead. before subsistence wage, it was subsistence farming. one bad year could mean starvation.
Certainly a hard life, however this time period saw the first rise in average lifespan since the Roman empire.
@@amh9494 on the contrary, the renaissance and the start of the industrial revolution were marked by an astounding drop in life expectancy when compared to the medieval period. But it got better along the XIX century
33:20 The printed image of the captured African slaves crammed onto the deck of a boat took my breath from me 💔
That is beyond savage treatment. I can't imagine how they survived those journeys physically, and mentally.
If the slave ship was being chased by anti slaver govt ship the slaves were tossed overboard
I'm the eldest female of an all female family, I'd had been put to work at an early age and have probably died pretty early.