American Mills' One Big Family

Picture of children with severe injuries from the mills in England
From:  http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/
FacultyPages/PamMack/lec122sts/hobsbawm4.html

After industrialization in England and America, both were faced with some different conditions in their factories. In England,  many workers could develop physical deformities from a number of causes. Child workers were especially vulnerable due to the fact that their bones were still developing and were more flexible. They put a lot of pressure on them all day from standing for so long which could cause them to bend and it could also make them develop flat feet over time. The hard work could cause problems later in life like arthritis and misaligned spinal cords. Factory accidents were common and usually happened in the morning when the workers were tired. Almost half of the kids that worked ended up with injuries from something like getting stuck in a machine or even just falling. The loss of limbs was not rare among the children. The quality of the factory food also contributed to the poor healths of the workers. The only food they got was three meals a day and was always potatoes and oat cakes with milk and water. Often pieces of cotton were found in the food and lead to illness. If the workers did not do their job right, they were beaten by their overseers. They were punished for any mistake, even if it wasn't your own and you were just around to see it. There was not an abundant supply of cheap labor in America like in England, but this caused them to try to avoid the bad parts of the factories in England that could make them to lose workers. This was the reason that there were no serious attempts to change the conditions in England for a while, since they could just keep hiring new workers if others protested. America started what was known as the Lowell experiment. They used a 'paternal system' for their mills which had the corporation as the father figure and the boardinghouse keepers as the mother figures for young girls going to work at the mills. For most families, having their daughters going to work at the mills was seen as a great opportunity and they were treated well while also kept to a strict moral code. They made sure to protect the girls and the system used showed that they valued the workers more as human beings rather than cheap labor. Although conditions were not the best they could be, it seemed as though America's factories were in much better shape than those of England.