As is my wont

I've found something which contradicts conventional wisdom; this time about the working conditions in factories during the Industrial Revolution. Actually it's part of a Future of Freedom Foundation biography of William H. Hutt.

They must archive these things somewhere, but I can't find it at their website. I'll just reproduce the relevant part of the email as I did before:

FREEDOM BIOGRAPHY:
W.H. HUTT

William Harold Hutt (1899-1988)
by John B. Egger
Ludwig von Mises Institute

William H. Hutt: A Centenary Appreciation
by Richard M. EbelingFoundation for Economic Education

The Achievement of William Harold Hutt
by Rafe Champion
The-Rathouse.com

Professor Hutt on Keynesianism
by Ludwig von MisesLudwig von Mises Institute

William Hutt and the Economics of Apartheid [PDF] - [It's only a 9 pager - ed.]
by Peter Lewin
University of Texas

The Factory System in the Early Nineteenth Century
by W.H. Hutt
The-Rathouse.com

The Factory System in the Early Nineteenth Century
by W.H. Hutt

After claiming, with support, that the best known account was a Tory document - which used the earlier, negative testimony at the Sadler Committee of 1832 to undermine the growth of the power of the Bourgeoisie - Hutt turns to the [later, positive] medical testimony:
...
The contribution of Gaskell [25] (also a medical man) is valuable for the same reason as that of Thackrah, namely, that he was an avowed antagonist of the factory system. [26] His work is well known, but it appears to have exercised so little influence on most discussions of this subject that some examination of his opinions seems desirable here.

He gave no support to the view that the coming of the factories had coincided with. the economic degradation of the workers. On the contrary, he was quite clear that, apart from the effect on the hand-loom weavers, it had resulted in abundant material progress and that the wages of cotton operatives, “with proper economy and forethought, would enable them to live comfortably, nay, in comparative luxury.” [27] It was the moral degradation of the worker that worried Gaskell. He condemned factories for the vice which he thought they had been instrumental in producing through causing the operatives to lose their “independence.” [28] Children were forced to spend their most impressionable years amid surroundings of the utmost immorality and degradation, and he painted a truly appalling picture.

It seems to the writer a fact of the deepest significance that, in spite of Gaskell holding these opinions, and in spite of his regarding factory labor in general as “singularly unfitted for children,” he could not bring himself to advocate the abolition of child labor. “The employment of children in manufactories,” he wrote, “ought not to be looked upon as an evil, till the present moral and domestic habits of the population are completely reorganised. So long as home education is not found for them, and they are left to live as savages, they are to some extent better situated when engaged in light labour, and the labour generally is light which falls to their share.” [29] It was the home life of children, prior to their factory days, which primarily led to such physical degeneracy as there was, and Gaskell emphasized this view. “This condition, it must be constantly borne in mind, has nothing to do with labour—as yet the child has undergone none.” [30]

The notes:

25. op. cit. [refers to the work cited in note 15. "There were speculations among some doctors as to the purifying qualities of smoke, gas, emanations, etc. (Philip Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of England [L]ondon, 1833], p. 265)."

26. It was thought desirable in an argument amounting to a defense of the early factory system to quote chiefly from the evidence of oppo. nents, but the most telling arguments in its favor are to be found in the writings of interested parties, Baines, Dr. Ure, and R. H. Greg. There is so voluminous a mass of material from the various commissions and committees that it would be possible to make out a case for almost any contention by a judicious selection of passages from them; but, read critically, they are enlightening.

27. Op. cit., p. 216.

28. “Loss of independence” is a vague, much-used, and much-abused phrase. One of the main social results of the factory regime seems to have been the evolution of the idea of a wage contract, replacing the former idea of servitude. In the Second. Report of the Factory Commission (1834) we notice the words “independence,” or “independent” used over and over again, by employer witnesses living in all parts of the country (over five hundred put in evidence), as being the most obvious ones to use in describing the attitude of the operatives. The words were generally used in reply to a question about intimidation by the masters.

29. Gaskell, op. cit., p. 209.

30. Ibid., p. 198. It is interesting to note that Gaskell did not share the common belief that factory life stunted the intellectual faculties; he believed it had the reverse effect. He also denied the frequently made charge that the temperature and the composition of the atmosphere in which children worked was injurious to their health.

It would seem that contemporary opinion about factory working conditions in the early 1800s was a bit more mixed than we've been led to believe. History is written by the victors. I notice that the same people who complain about the horrors of "path dependence" are the same people who claim that the political status quo is the result of salutary market choices.

Update: here's the FREEDOM BIOGRAPHY archive, though Hutt isn't in there yet.