Education policy and the question of child labour: the Lancashire cotton industry and R.D. Denman's Bill of 1914.

Abstract

A characteristic feature of the burgeoning industrial state in Victorian Britain was the widespread use of child labour. Regulated and seemingly safeguarded by factory legislation, especially after the introduction of the concept of the half-timer, the general acceptance of this type of labour re ̄ ected and reinforced the meaning of childhood which had prevailed at the beginning of the century in that it was ambiguous and certainly not universally recognized. As the population of England and Wales soared from 8.9 to 32.5 million during the century, and the cohort of under 15-year-olds grew, so too did the number of child labourers, reaching a peak between 1874 and 1876. Uncertainty reigned as far as total numbers involved were concerned but in 1875 the number of half-timers alone stood at around 200,000, with 67,000 employed in the Lancashire cotton industry. By the end of the century, however, the combined eŒects of the implementation of a national, compulsory elementary education system from 1870, changes made to the Factory Acts in 1874 and subsequently, plus the impact of technological changes upon production processes had produced a gradual reduction in the number of child labourers. In 1901 it was estimated that there were 300,000 children under the age of 14 being employed, a third of whom were half-timers. At the same time, the continued impact of a national economic depression which had started in the 1870s, coupled with Britain’s loss of its prime position in the international arena, resulted in employers adopting a more aggressive attitude towards wage costs and labour productivity. This had involved an increasing use of `boy labour’ but with mounting adult unemployment and underemployment concern grew about a possible causal link between these phenomena. One consequence was that the use of child labour became a matter of public debate, accompanied by the publication of a vast amount of material, and involved con ̄ icting concepts of the child: