America v.s. Britain: Which Had Worse Conditions in the Industrial Revolution?

Being beaten, facing near death experiences, and working twelve hours each day are just a few of the awful conditions that factory workers went through during the Industrial Revolution.  Factories were set up in Great Britain and the United States.  Despite the presence of awful conditions in both countries, it was Great Britain that really proved not to be so “great” when it came to the treatment of factory workers.

If someone looks at this building from the outside, they would not think anything horrible goes on in there.  It is a well-kept building with nearby neighborhood and some nice gardens.  People were probably happy to send their children there during the Industrial Revolution.  The truth is that what is inside is a shocking, chaotic, and dangerous setting with ear bursting machines, unsafe working area which have caused multiple violent accidents, and hardworking young girls who are being treated very poorly.  The girls had to wake up at 4:00 a.m.  Work at the mills did not end until seven that night, so if current day students think that waking up at 6:00 a.m. is a challenge, imagine how these children felt!  This is a fifteen hour day, and with harsher conditions, too!  This building is a mill from Waltham, Massachusetts, meaning that the mill inside was part of the Lowell experiment.  The goal of the Lowell experiment was to create mills that had better working conditions than Great Britain did, and many historians believe that this goal was achieved.  So if any of these conditions mentioned earlier seem terrible, imagine what the mills in Britain were like!

The workers in Great Britain had it much worse than the workers in America in terms of conditions.  While still waking up at four, hours in most of the British factories did not conclude until anywhere between nine and eleven at night, making the day even longer.  Also, workers in the Lowell experiment had opportunities to take a lunch and dinner breaks.  However, in Great Britain, there was only one lunch break.  All other meals were either eaten on workers’ ways to the mills or at their working stations.  The workers were not paid either, as most of them were orphans who were basically enslaved.  If caught trying to escape, workers faced awful punishments, from losing all their hair, to being locked up in “punishment rooms” for a week with nothing but a little food.  Both cruel overseers and unsafe machines allowed children to be beaten, scalped, and crushed.  Many lives were lost in these factories.  So while American factories had their problems, British factories had much, much worse ones and many lives were negatively affected by the poor conditions, treatment, and safety precautions.