Testimony for Factory Act of 1833: Working Conditions in England
Primary source shares three testimonies from three different perspectives on working conditions of the working class. The genre is a testimony. Starting with the Testimony of John Wright, Wright is an employee at a silk-mill for thirty years according to the statement. His testimony contains of a series of questions required to identify the problems and his response to each question. His testimony also has a detailed description of the unlivable conditions the workers are living.
Many of them incapacitated or sick, including his own two sisters “The degradation of the workplace baffles all description: frequently have two of my sisters been obliged to be assisted to the factory and home again, until by-and-by they could no longer, being totally crippled in their legs” He later mentions the condition of the other employees and blames their injuries on the inhumane working hours and environment “Are these crippled made in the silk factories? –– Yes, they are, I believe…”
This source was very biased towards the workers as it was only from a worker’s perspective. The writer of this source targeted mainly the middle-class people, the owners of the factories. Wright talks about the working conditions in his testimony, the small rooms over-packed with workers sometimes reaching up to 100 workers in one room, the merciless and unfair treatment to everyone, from children to elderly. Wright wants to shed light on the lives of those workers in hope of change.
On the other hand, there is William Harter’s testimony, Harter is a silk-mill owner. He stated that if labor hours were any less it would devaluate his company. As he said that "In my mill, and silk-mills in general, the work requires the least imaginable labour; therefore, it is entirely impossible that the machines could produce as much work in ten hours as in twelve."(Sherman2010).
Harter’s testimony was significantly shorter of Wright’s testimony although it followed its unchanged format, how all what factory owners care about is their products and machinery. His testimony proves that factory owners would do anything to make the workers heed. They couldn’t care less about gender, class, age, pay, or anything else that may influence an employee, as long as they’re getting what they want.
The third testimony is the commission of medical examiners’ testimony. This testimony may arguably be the most reliable since the medical professionals were just asked to examine the health of the working class they hold no personal stake in the matter, therefore, there is no reason to lie. The testimony appears to confirm that the working class's health conditions are to what they should be but also exposing the inaccurate rumors. For instance, one line of the testimony said "The representations that these effects are so common and universal as to enable some persons invariably to distinguish factory children from other children is, I have no hesitation in saying, an exaggerated and unfaithful picture of their general condition; at the same time, it must be said, that the individual instances in which sums one or other of those effects of severe labor are discernable are rather frequent than rare..." (Sherman 2010).
Other primary sources that support the effect factories had on the working class would be The Conditions of the Working Class by the Friedrich Engels. Engels was the son of a factory owner and took it upon himself to see the conditions factory workers had to live in. (Sherman 2010) Engels view is exceptional and different because it is not another factory worker saying their living conditions is not acceptable but he is saying it’s unacceptable although he is a member of the upper class that is causing the oppression and profiting from it.
Another source that supports The Testimony for the Factory Act of 1833 would be Sybil, or Two Nations which is a novel by Benjamin Disraeli. This novel portrays the harsh conditions the children and mine workers are undergoing. In the novel, Disraeli wrote “Naked at to the waist, an iron chain fastened to belts of leather runs between their legs clad in canvas trousers… circumstances that seem to have escaped the notice the Society for the Abolition of Negro Slavery” (Sherman 2010) shows us the cruel conditions of the mine workers but continuing reading it also says “See, too, these emerge from the bowels of the earth! Infants of four and five years of age” (Sherman 2010). You can see there is some exaggeration in the text due to some personal bias since Disraeli is a politician and might have wanted to influence the votes of the working class.
I don't believe there are any reasons to doubt the authorship of these documents because they are government records. The authors of all three testimonies were written for the government officials at the time looking at the case. The three authors have a different background which I think also help us look into the past through various viewpoints. These testimonies were key to see if the government start developing regulations for factories. It is supported by the other primary sources I have presented in the essay.
