Chapter 7 opens with preliminary considerations on new views concerning the Industrial Revolution and their implications for child labour in industry. There follows a substantial section on child labour in the factories, with particular attention to the children employed in the cotton mills (including pauper apprentices), and the role of child workers in industrialisation. There is also discussion of child employment in the smaller workshops, and of the first signs of the decline of child labour in industry. The chapter then moves on to debates over the influence of organised religion, and challenges to the general assumption of dechristianisation. Finally, it examines working-class attitudes to education during the early stages of industrialisation, and efforts to encourage mass education.