Industrial Revolution Primary Sources | Andrew Ure

Excerpt from The Philosophy of Manufactures; or,
an Exposition of the Scientific, Moral, and Commercial
Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain

Published in 1835

"The grand object … of the modern manufacturer is, through the union of capital and science, to reduce the task of his work-people to the exercise of vigilance and dexterity."

By 1835 the Industrial Revolution—the process of introducing machines into manufacturing and of building new factories—was well established in Britain. Three years earlier, in 1832, a member of Parliament, Michael Sadler (see entry), had published a report documenting the abuse of children working in factories. Many factory workers had joined the Chartist movement, an effort to persuade Parliament to give more people the right to vote (at the time, only men with a minimum amount of property were allowed to vote) and to pass...