¹ Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963), p. 349Google Scholar.

² Quoted in Driver, Cecil, Tory Radical: The Life of Richard Oastler (New York, 1946), p. 43Google Scholar. Author's italics and punctuation.

³ The most influential histories are ibid.; Hammond, J. L. and Hammond, Barbara, Lord Shaftesbury (London, 1923)Google Scholar; Hutchins, B. L. and Harrison, A., A History of Factory Legislation (Westminster, 1903)Google Scholar; Kydd, Samuel (“Alfred”), History of the Factory Movement (1857; New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Thomas, Maurice Walton, The Early Factory Legislation (Leigh-on-Sea, 1948)Google Scholar; and Ward, J. T., The Factory Movement, 1830–1855 (London, 1962)Google Scholar.

⁴ Hutt, W. H., “The Factory System of the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Capitalism and the Historians, ed. Hayek, F. A. (Chicago, 1954), p. 158Google Scholar.

⁵ See Driver, Tory Radical, pp. 168–70, for a description of the selection and advance coaching of the witnesses.

⁶ The only major indictment of the factory system that rejected Sadler's Report as overly biased was Engels, Friedrich, The Condition of the Working Class in England, trans, and ed. Henderson, W. O. and Chaloner, W. H. (1845; Stanford, 1968)Google ScholarPubMed.

⁷ Hammond, J. L. and Hammond, Barbara, The Town Labourer, 1760–1832 (1917; London, 1932), p. 143Google Scholar.

⁸ Ibid., p. 157.

⁹ Hutchins and Harrison, Factory Legislation, p. 140.

¹⁰ Ibid., pp. x-xi.

¹¹ Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London, 1920), p. 198Google ScholarPubMed.

¹² To understate the number of children employed would be to invite legislation, for only if children were a large, necessary part of the work force would legislators hesitate to place restrictions on their labor that would harm industry. For example, the textile industry with the largest proportion of children in its work force, silk, was exempt from most child labor provisions of the Factory Act.

¹³ Apparently, most children began factory work at age ten or older. I have been unable to determine why children did not begin work at an earlier age; it was always legal to employ nine year olds. One possibility is custom, and another is that children under ten had a comparative advantage in household production. At ten or older, comparative advantage may have shifted to market production.

¹⁴ Mitch, David, “The Spread of Literacy in Nineteenth Century England,”paper presented at the Economic History Workshop, Univ. of Chicago,1977 (mimeo.), p. 10Google Scholar.

¹⁵ See Parliamentary Papers, Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, 1834–1841.

¹⁶ Quoted in Ashton, T. S., The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (London, 1948), p. 79Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Lee, C. H., A Cotton Enterprise (Manchester, 1972), pp. 114–15Google Scholar.

¹⁸ The estimates in the text are from Ashton, Industrial Revolution, p. 81.

¹⁹ For a contrasting view, see Smelser, Neil J., Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (Chicago, 1959), pp. 193–204Google Scholar.

²⁰ Ashton, Industrial Revolution, p. 80.

²¹ No reliable aggregate data exist on the proportions employed in water- and steam-powered factories. Data from individual districts and factories imply that the proportion of children in waterpowered mills was 50% to 200% higher than in steam-powered mills in 1835. See Reports of Inspectors, 31 October 1836. Taking the lower bound of 50% gives estimates of 14% and 21% for the proportions of children employed in steam- and water-powered mills, respectively. This probably overstates the proportion of children in steam-powered factories; for example, in Manchester children accounted for 11% of the work force. The hypothetical reduction in the text thus understates the “true” hypothetical reduction.

²² On the advantages of the self-acting spinning mule, see Baines, Edward, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, 2nd ed. (1835; London, 1966), p. 207Google Scholar, and Blaug, Mark, “The Productivity of Capital in the Lanchashire Cotton Industry during the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 13 (April 1961), 365Google Scholar.

²³ Although the Factory Act was passed in 1833, the factory inspectors did not begin to enforce it until after the factory census of 1835. The 1833 and 1835 returns were therefore both taken before the enforcement of the Factory Acts.

²⁴ The rate of adoption is discussed in William Lazonick, “Division of Labor and Machinery: The Development of British and U.S. Cotton Spinning,” Discussion Paper No. 20, Harvard Institute of Economic Research, 1978 (mimeo.), p. 24. According to Catling, H., ”The Evolution of Cotton Spinning,” in The Wool Textile Industry in Great Britain, ed. Jenkins, J. Geraint (London, 1972), p. 111Google Scholar, the self-actors were spinning all counts by 1885.

²⁵ Anderson, Michael, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 75–76Google Scholar.

²⁶ The changing attitude toward children in nineteenth-century Britain is discussed in Pinchbeck, Ivy and Hewitt, Margaret, Children in English Society, Vol. 2 (Toronto, 1973)Google Scholar.

²⁷ The rise in children's employment in 1874 was especially large because of the Factory Act of that year. The act changed the legal age of child workers from 8–12 to 10–13 years, but did not apply to children who began work before 1875. Many children entered the labor market early in order to be able to work after the act became law.

²⁸ According to Mitch, David, “The Causes of the Spread of Literacy in Nineteenth Century England,”paper presented at the Economic History Workshop, University of Chicago,1977Google Scholar (mimeo.), most people acquired literacy through formal schooling.

²⁹ The result for Britain is similar to that for child labor and education acts in the United States. See Sanderson, Allen R., “Child Labor Legislation and the Labor Force Participation of Children,” this Journal, 34 (March 1974), 297–99Google Scholar, and Landes, William M. and Solmon, Lewis C., “Compulsory Schooling Legislation: An Economic Analysis of Law and Social Change in the Nineteenth Century,” this Journal, 32 (March 1972), 54–91Google Scholar.

³⁰ Mitch, “Spread of Literacy,” p. 10.

³¹ On the Employment of Children in Factories (London, 1840), p. 124Google ScholarPubMed.

³² Reports of Inspectors, 30 April 1876, p. 57.

³³ Thompson, English Working Class, p. 332.

³⁴ Pinchbeck and Hewitt, Children, “p. 410.

³⁵ The miserable conditions of children in non-textile employments were brought to the attention of Parliament and the public in the 1840s. See Parliamentary Papers, Reports of the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children, 1842–43.

³⁶ The only important exceptions were children in mines, who were regulated by the Mines Act of 1842—a measure far less restrictive than the Factory Acts with respect to children.

³⁷ See Report of the Census of Great Britain, 1851.

³⁸ By 1881 the activity rate for children 5 to 9 was negligible. See Reports and Tables of the Census of England and Wales, 1861–1911.

³⁹ In 1876, 66% of the workers in non-textile factories were adult males. See Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, 30 April 1872, p. 139.