Why couldn’t they immediately unite to demand better conditions or stop working otherwise and return to traditional jobs from the pre-industrial era if conditions were supposedly better then?
In: 5
1) The idea of unionizing was still very new (bordering on unheard of) in that era.
2) The traditional jobs were profoundly uncompetitive in comparison to industrialized labor, and as a result there was nothing to go back to. The choice wasn’t between traditional labor and industrial labor, the choice was between industrial labor and nothing.
I.e. better working conditions don’t mean much if there’s no money in it.
Part of the Industrial Revolution was also an agricultural one. Machines were developed that cut the labor force needed significantly so people flocked to cities because they had no options rurally. Because so many people were in the city, there was a labor surplus that disgusting factory owners exploited. There wasn’t a trick in the book too dirty to screw their workers. Look up the Triangle shirt factory fire or the tactics Henry Ford and Henry Bennet used.
Seasonal farm laborer or a pre-mechanized manufacture laborer were pretty miserable jobs already, but mechanizing those jobs greatly reduced labor requirements for the same production and so drove down the wages. Workers had to take bad conditions or lose the job(and starve, unemployment benefits weren’t a thing)
Traditional production methods just couldn’t compete in the production volume and cost to the new ones, so returning to them wasn’t going to return workers to the good conditions, just bankrupt the business that’s clinging to them.
This is a big question and not one with an easy answer. I’m not familiar with the current state of research on the question, but I can fill in some information.
I’ll speak specifically about *England*. The process of industrialisation and its effects was obviously different in different countries.
To start with, let’s talk about “labourers”.
Generally this term is used for a particular group of people, those doing unskilled physical labour. Now before “the industrial revolution” there was “the agricultural revolution”. This generally made conditions worse for agricultural labourers. In particular the amount of “common land” was massively reduced. These were areas where labourers without their own land could do a little farming and help support themselves. Even before the industrial revolution really kicked off the systems of support for the poor in England were struggling.
But that’s perhaps not the class of people you’re actually talking about – maybe you’re talking about workers more generally.
Either way, there’s a great deal of variation. There are both “pull” and “push” factors moving people into industrial work.
On the pull side it could offer higher incomes. A negative was that this tended to come with much stricter work discipline, less independence, more danger, more illness, and less time with family. (It’s not that children working was anything new, but they generally worked in the home and with their family.) That said, sometimes it offered opportunities for more independence – for those who wanted to get away from families.
On the push side, many smaller farmers and agricultural labourers were being squeezed out by changes in agriculture. Small craft workers – most importantly weavers – and all the small industries associated with them were being outcompeted by the factories. Regardless of the actual statistics, which are hard to figure out, there was a general *perception* that industrialisation made conditions worse, especially (unsurprisingly?) for the better off and more skilled workers.
That also gives you an answer to why people didn’t go back to their old jobs: they weren’t viable any more. The cotton that the rural textile industry needed was being bought by factories, which were then producing textiles at lower prices than they could offer.
As to why people didn’t unite to demand better conditions. In large part this is because it was illegal. The “combination laws” banned unions and similar organisations, enforced by government informants and violence. So there were attempts to challenge industrialisation or force concessions from factory owners – the Luddites being the most famous example. The government in the first thirty or forty years of the 19th century was very worried about unrest and revolution. The process of industrialisation and urbanisation also disrupted existing communities and social organisations, making it harder for workers to organise and fight.
This did steadily change through the middle of the century. There’s a general view that a second phase of the industrial revolution saw more attention to the conditions of working people – eg. the novels of Charles Dickens – more effective pressure from working people themselves, and action by governments and owners to improve things. So by the second half of the century, conditions do generally start to improve.
Early efforts at forming unions to demand safer conditions/better pay were met with violence. Corporations, police, and even military forces were historically used to beat and kill workers in an effort to break the union/force them back to work. Eventually these methods were seen as too extreme so other methods were used and continue to be used to this day to legally and illegally fight unionization and keep workers compliant. Higher safety standards and better compensation for workers means less profit for corporations, so you can understand their motivation.
They didn’t just accept it. They DID unite. Many fought very hard for better conditions. But it took time and they were resisted. And in the meantime, they had to work or starve.
Eeehh…. while early industrial cramped cities and poor factory conditions were quite visibly bad in comparison to modern times, the comparison to prior living and working conditions is not quite so obvious. In preindustrial Europe famines were quite a regular thing, life as a peasant was not fun at all. Urbanization and industrialization was in many ways an upgrade already back then.
You can for example compare a Bangladeshi sweatshop to poor rural Indian village. It’s not so obvious which ones are worse off, but in general the urbanized and industrialized are at least not very likely to starve to death even if their working conditions are a horror show in general. Hunger is still a serious hazard in poorest and more rural regions of the world even to this day.
The evidence is fairly clear (remember we are talking before routine data collection except for taxes). The first wave of industrialisation led workers to be poorer, less well-nourished and much more exposed to disease and industrial accidents. This tapered off and then things started to improve – after 50 years or so. The evidence is from Poor Law reports, army recruit standards, church records, tax records and Parliamentary inquiries.
Factories took in surplus agricultural labour, by displacing the handicraft and ‘putting-out’ systems (contracting small-scale production across the countryside) that provided a large part of rural livelihoods. They also made sure to tap labour sources that were less likely to organise (younger people, young women) or protest. Older, more resistant workers were left out (agricultural labour conditions worsened too).
Towns grew rapidly without regulation,. so sewerage, water and pollution all impacted health. Demand and larger-scale production meant no feedback from consumer to producer (so instead of the village baker getting a bad name you ate what was available in your slum – even if it contained stone dust, straw and rat faeces).
Labour organising, political pressure and government realisation that a large proportion of the population were not fit to serve in the armed forces at a time of increasing international competition all forced changes – Factory Acts, Public Health Acts and so on.
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