A New Look at the Early Factory Labor Force

were supplemented with the annual reports of the factory inspectors, beginning in 1834, and the reports of later committees and commissions. The investigations were conducted at a time when the transition to factories in cotton was nearly complete. Although direct evidence from before 1830 is sparse, there were two important early Parliamentary investigations. The Report of the Select Committee on the State of the Children Employed in the Manufactories of the United Kingdom (P.P., 1816, III) provided some useful evidence, though limited and unsystematic. The minutes of evidence from the report have been used again and again by historians of the early industrial revolution. The other-and neglected-report from the 1780-1830 period was the Report on the State and Conditions of the Children Employed in the Cotton Manufactories of the United Kingdom (L.P., 1819, CX). The evidence on which the report was based was collected in 1818 and 1819 by investigators appointed by a committee of the House of Lords. It has been alleged that the Lords' committee was appointed to delay the passing of factory legislation then under consideration. ' The report nevertheless produced much useful evidence. Indeed, the data contained in the 1819 report are more detailed than that of most reports even of the 1830s. Yet no histories of the industrial revolution or of the early industrial labor force have made use of the full report, especially its Appendix. The only references are occasional mentions of the minutes of evidence.2 The investigators collected two types of data. One type is 11 tables listing persons employed in various cotton mills, primarily in Stockport and Manchester. Here the data refer to the conditions of health as collected by medical doctors and surgeons, recording