Ugliness of FactoriesA Theory of Settlement Study

Shijo Jose Ujjal Hafila Venna Sriharikanth Sem VI

18th CenturyTHE SCENE:

Industries were generally small scale and relatively unsophisticated.Most textile production, for example, was centred on small workshops or in the homes of spinners, weavers and dyers: a literal ‘cottage industry’ that involved thousands of individual manufacturers.

New techniques and technologies in agriculture paved the wave for change.

Increasing amounts of food were produced over the century Surplus of cheap agricultural labour led to severe

unemployment and rising poverty People left the countryside to find work in towns and cities. The scene was set for a large-scale, labour intensive factory

system.Source: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/georgians/industrial/industrialisation.html

Early 18th century small-scale textile production

Manufactories (factory) The base of Industrialization

Began with the invention of a water (mill) powered thread spinner, which then lead to a steam based adaptation of the same.

By 1812, one spinner could produce as much yarn in a given time as 200 spinners could have produced using hand spindles

Factories excited people. Initially. More produce in less time Less labor Employment opportunities

Then, factories threw the skilled hand laborers out of competition. People were forced to leave their trade and work in factories

Source: http://www.netplaces.com/understanding-socialism/chapter-2/the-birth-of-the-factory-system.htm

Early industrialisation in textile production, 1783

Rise of Factory Towns Establishment of factories intensified the local

population as people converged to work in the factories. Factories were the center piece of the town. Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1835 found Manchester, then a city of

300,000 people, growing 'at a prodigious rate'. 'Thirty or forty factories rise on the tops of the hills', he wrote; 'Their six stories tower up; their huge enclosures give notice from afar of the centralisation of industry'! The footsteps of a busy crowd, the crunching wheels of machinery, the shriek of steam from boilers, the regular beat of the looms, the heavy rumble of carts, those are the noises from which you can never escape in the sombre half-light of these streets. Crowds are ever hurrying this way and that in the Manchester streets, but their footsteps are brisk, their looks preoccupied, and their appearance sombre and harsh. From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilise the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish; here civilization works its miracles, and civilized man is turned back almost into a savage.'

Sources: http://www.grimshaworigin.org/ManchesterIndustrialCity.htm; http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_industrial.html

https://www.philau.edu/library/speccoll/factory.gif

By the time of de Tocqueville's visit, Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world. In that same year, 1835, Andrew Ore estimated that Lancashire, Manchester had by far the largest number of 'Manufacturing Labourers', 97,517, out of a total of 314,106 for England, or 404,317 for all of Great Britain; Middlesex, representing London, had a mere 11,064!

The number of cotton mills in Manchester itself reached a peak of 108 in 1853. In 1913, 65% of the world's cotton was processed in Manchester.

At that time, it seemed a place in which anything could happen—new industrial processes, new ways of thinking. A saying capturing this sense of innovation survives today: “What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow.”

Manchester, 1850: the first industrial metropolis at its apogee, in full blast.

Ancoats, Manchester. McConnel & Company's mills, about 1820. From an old water-colour drawing of the period.Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester#Industrial_Revolution

Conditions in Factories Lifeless, production centric work houses Though not all factories were bad places to work, many were

dismal and highly dangerous. Some factories were likened to prisons or barracks, where workers encountered harsh discipline enforced by factory owners.

Many children were sent there from workhouses or orphanages to work long hours in hot, dusty conditions, and were forced to crawl through narrow spaces between fast-moving machinery.

Agricultural work was varied and seasonal and independent weavers controlled their own schedules. In the factories, the same 14 hours included few breaks plus a long walk to and from home at each end of the day.

Supervisors discouraged workers from song or chatter Either of which were anyway hard to hear over the noise

Source: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/georgians/industrial/industrialisation.html

The Ugliness Soon, Manchester evolved beyond being just a factory

town. The city started breathing on its own. And it had gotten tired of the heavy, smoke heaving factories.

Although the Industrial Revolution brought wealth to the city, it also brought poverty and squalor to a large part of the population. Historian Simon Schama noted that "Manchester was the very best

and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes, a new kind of city in the world; the chimneys of industrial suburbs greeting you with columns of smoke".

An American visitor taken to Manchester’s blackspots (industrial area) saw "wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying and bleeding fragments".

Oxford Road, Manchester in 1910

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester#Industrial_Revolution

Factories Are Eye SoresA poem by Baldoon DingraThe factories are referred to as eyesores because the black smoke emanating from the chimneys blackens the greenery of the landscape. The poet says that the factories make “iron lines against the sky standing in the east”. “ The iron lines” is suggestive of the grim black smoke which the factories emit intermittently disfiguring the greenness of the landscape. The grim tall factories with their devilish appearance send out large amounts of smoke or flames marring the beauty of the landscape. The poet draws a graphic picture of the weary and desperate factory workers toiling amidst the deadly and lethal atmosphere. The workers are desperate with their monotonous toil in the unpleasant atmosphere of the factory. Every now and then they turn their face away from the grim smoke and soil to seek relief. The poet reveals how beauty could be created out of the ugliness generated by technical advancement. He pictures how the chimney shaft a thing of ugliness grows bright with light when the mountain tops bright with the sun flush down a spark of light

City Shift The city grew Westward, away from the factories. Heavy industry suffered a downturn from the 1960s and was

greatly reduced under the economic policies followed by Margaret Thatcher's Government after 1979.

Large sections of the city dating from the 1960s have been either demolished and re-developed or modernised with the use of glass and steel. Old mills have been converted into modern apartments.

In fact, the city and the identity of Manchester shifted. Now regarded as being the second city of the UK, it is a teeming metropolis, detached from the old industrial area.

Lancashire is now a small county, with the factory town turned cities of Liverpool and Manchester disjoint from it through boundary reforms in 1974.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire

MANCHESTER.A beautiful city devoid of the ugliness of factories.

The End