Tories contra Chicago
Thomas Carlyle:
If the cotton industry is founded on the bodies of rickety children, it must go; if the devil gets in you cotton-mill, shut the mill.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the market from 8d to 6d. But suppose in doing so you have rendered your cvountry weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after all.
2 comments:
"If the cotton industry is founded on the bodies of rickety children, it must go"
The implicit assumption seems to be that there were no rickety children, or at least a lot fewer, prior to the Industrial Revolution.
I would not be surprised if rickets did increase with the rise of child labor in the factory system. The lack of sunlight had to have some effect.
Carlyle's ire, I think, was directed at those who claimed that British industry required unlimited and unregulated child labor to survive.
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