Working Conditions in Mills and Factories: Were They Better Across the Ocean?

Throughout our unit about the Industrial Revolution, a point that has reappeared frequently was the severity of working conditions in mills and factories in England and the United States. It was clear that in both nations, working conditions were universally poor. While this is a widely accepted fact, the treatment of the workers, their punishments, and their payments suggests that working conditions were better in the United States than the mills in England.

The workers, specifically young workers, were generally treated better in the United States. They received education, had shorter hours, and they were fed better than their English counterparts. The documents in the DBQ show that workers in the United States had an average work day that was 2-4 hours shorter than the English workers. They also received three months off out of the year for education. Along with better food, the ways that workers were treated by their companies is better in the United States than it was in England.

Factory and mill workers in England also faced what some think to be harsher punishments. In England, they would punish their workers with physical beatings. The overseers did not show much respect for the health of the child workers, and often broke their bones, or in the most extreme cases, accidentally killed them. In the United States, workers were not physically beaten, but they faced a different kind of punishment. Should the workers disobey the rules of the factory or mill, they would be placed on a blacklist, essentially banning them from working in any of the other mills. While this preserved the health of the workers, this prevented their families from earning money. It is of my opinion that this is less severe than the English punishment system. While it inhibits them from making money at the mills, it keeps the worker alive and allows them to farm or work in another trade for money.

Workers in England were finally paid much less than ones in the United States. In the United States, there were not as many workers to occupy the factories and mills, so the companies were forced to make the mills more attractive for workers, to persuade them against traveling west to become sustenance farmers. One side effect of this was the raising of wages for employees. In England, however, there was a surplus of children that were either orphans or too poor to decide against working at the mills. This led them to be paid little to no money at all, essentially making them child slaves.

These three characteristics of factory and mill working conditions show that the United States had better conditions than England. Workers were treated better by the corporations, were paid more, and were punished less than the workers in England.