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.
"If the cotton industry is founded on the bodies of rickety children, it must go"
ReplyDeleteThe 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.
ReplyDeleteCarlyle's ire, I think, was directed at those who claimed that British industry required unlimited and unregulated child labor to survive.