Industrial Revolution was powered by child slaves

The text is the result of Oxford's Professor Jane Humphries research about childhood and child labor in the British Industrial Revolution (next published by Cambridge University Press).

Child labor was a crucial ingredient which allowed Britain’s Industrial Revolution to  succeed.

Professor Humphries found that child labour was much more common and economically important than previously realised. Her estimates suggest that by the early 19^th century, England had more than a million child workers accounting for 15 per cent of the total labor force.

Early factory owners – located in the countryside so that they could exploit power from rivers – found that local labor was scarce and that those agricultural workers that were available were unsuitable for industrial production. They therefore decided to create a new work force composed of children, tailor-made for their factories.

Factory owners were looking for cheap, malleable and fast-learning work forces – and found them ready-made among the children of the urban workhouses. They weren’t paid – simply fed and given dormitory accommodation.

The exploitation of children massively increased as newly emerging factory began their operation in the late 18^th century.

The use of working-class children to provide much of the labor force for the Industrial Revolution was, however merely an expansion and extension of an already long-established practice of working-class children employed by farmers or artisans.

The research shows the extent to which Britain's Industrial Revolution – the first in the world – was initially dependent on what were, in effect, child slaves.

Her statistical analysis of vast quantities of data is also revealing how the Industrial Revolution helped change life and culture in other ways too.

Industrialisation removed rigid social control over young people's lives and allowed them therefore to get married much younger . This led to much larger families developing a great increase in population.

Together with the Industrial Revolution and the increase in family size, a range of other factors – wars, empire-building and labour mobility – strained fathers' links to their growing families, and single-parent households increased dramatically.

By the early 19th century, up to 18 per cent of families were being abandoned by fathers.

This process further increased pressure on mothers to send their young children out to work

Professor Humphries asserts that the newly collated evidence transforms our understanding of the causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution – especially the nature of the labour force and the relationship between the family and the economy.