Development of the Factory System

Lecture 1

Implications of Factory Production

Administrative

• Quiz Reminder

• Essay Reminder

• Reading for next class

Review

• Importance of Unfree Labor in the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

• Resistance of all forms of labor, free and unfree, to abuse by employers

• Power of employers over even free employees extensive. Included– Power to prevent them from leaving their work– Power to use corporal punishment

• Workers and Political Parties

Today

I. Factory ProductionII. Challenges factory production

presented to employers and workersIII. Early factories in the United StatesIV. Opposition to factory productionV. Massachusetts shoe strike of 1860VI. Issues of Concern to Workers 1800-60

I. Factory Production

• What is a factory?

• Is factory production different from other kinds of wage labor? Other kinds of unfree labor?

• In what ways?

Factory Production

• How is factory production different from handicraft production?

• How is factory production different from farm production or common labor?

• What challenges does it create for the employer?

• What challenges does it create for the workers?

II. Challenges for the employer

• Assembly of a work force

• Training and discipline of the work force

Challenges for the workers

• Work life?

• Home life?

III. The Early Factory System

• Where and when was the first factory built in the United States?

• What were the principal early factory industries in the United States?

• What was a “panic” and how did it affect factory employment?

• When were there panics before the Civil War?

IV. Opposition to the Factory System

• Who was opposed?

• What forms did opposition take?

V. Massachusetts Shoe Strike 1860

• Which goal did the strikers achieve (at least in part) and which goal did they completely fail to achieve?

• Achieved an increase in wages from many of the manufacturers

• Failed to get manufacturers to sign the “bill of wages”

VI. Issues of Concern to Workers: 1800-1860

• Mechanics’ Lien Laws

• Closed Shop

• Ten-hour day

• Managerial Physical Abuse

• Others– Voting rights for unpropertied male citizens– Free public education– Debt imprisonment

Next Time

• Spread of the factory system

• Rising resistance to employers

Development of the Factory System

Lecture 2

The Spread of the Factory System

Administrative

• Reading for next class – Genovese Essay in B&L

Review

• Factory production began only in 1790

• Challenges of factory production for both the employers and the workers

Today

I. How Did Workers View Their Situation?

II. Employer Responses

III. The Lowell System

I. How Did Workers View Their Situation?

• Comparisons to abused workers of Europe

• Comparisons to slaves– White slaves– Wage slaves

• Existence of chattel slavery may have deflected attention from the abuses suffered by wage earners

II. Responses of Employers

• The need to compete with British manufacturers

• The need to compete with slave labor in the south

Employers Today: Analogies

• Issues– Unionization– Health Insurance– Paid family leave

• Arguments– Prevents the flexibility needed in today’s

global market place– Increases costs damaging our ability to

compete

Validity of Employer Arguments?

• Our unionization already among the lowest in the developed world

• Others already have national health insurance

• Others already have paid family leave– What family leave do we have? – Do we have a shorter work year than our

competitors?

III. The Lowell System

• Method of organizing textile factories

• Based in Lowell Massachusetts

• Staffing – mostly young unmarried women– Worked 12-hour days six days a week– Lived in dormitories operated by the

employers– Not allowed out unchaperoned– Only had Sunday off if went to church

Rationale for the Lowell System

• Workers inherently lazy and require close supervision and coercion

• The working class is inherently immoral• Young women need to help their families until

the are married but also need their virtue protected

• Employers get labor in return for protecting young women and keeping them employed

Next Time

• Begin detailed discussion of slave labor in the United States

• Role of slavery and role of race and racism