was not required, made them more desirable to employers, and in
many families the men clung to hand work while the women and children
went into the factories.

The early mills were small, hot, damp, dusty, and unhealthy. They were
not more so perhaps than the cottages where domestic industry had been
carried on; but now the hours were more regular, continuous, and
prolonged in which men, women, and children were subjected to such
labor. All had to conform alike to the regular hours, and these were
in the early days excessive. Twelve, thirteen, and even fourteen hours
a day were not unusual. Regular hours of work, when they are moderate
in length, and a systematized life, when it is not all labor, are
probably wholesome, physically and morally; but when the summons to
cease from work and that to begin it again are separated by such a
short interval, the factory bell or whistle represents mere tyranny.

Wages were sometimes higher than under the old conditions, but they
were even more irregular. Greater ups and downs occurred. Periods of
very active production and of restriction of production alternated
more decidedly than before, and introduced more irregularity into
industry for both employers and employees. The town laborer engaged in
a large establishment was, like the rural laborer on a large farm,
completely separated from the land, from capital, from any active
connection with the administration of industry, from any probable
opportunity of rising out of the laboring class. His prospects were,
therefore, as limited as his position was laborious and precarious.

The rapid growth of the manufacturing towns, especially in the north,
drawing the scattered population of other parts of the country into
their narrow limits, caused a general breakdown in the old
arrangements for providing water, drainage, and fresh air; and made
rents high, and consequently living in crowded rooms necessary. The
factory towns in the early part of the century were filthy, crowded,
and demoralizing, compared alike with their earlier and their present
condition.

[Illustration: Cotton Factories in Manchester. (Baines: _History of
Cotton Manufacture_.)]

In the higher grades of economic society the advantages of the recent
changes were more distinct, the disadvantages less so. The rise of
capital and business enterprise into greater importance, and the
extension of the field of competition, gave greater opportunity to
employing farmers,