America vs. Britain: Which Workers had it Worse?

In both England and the United States there was horrible factory conditions, that effected the workers in dramatic ways. From having to eat the same terrible food everyday to getting little to no pay and the worst of all many horrific deaths caused by the dangerous machinery run by young children. While both countries were home to these horrors the question still remains, which country had worse factory conditions?

In the country of Britain the working conditions were horrific. To start of many of the children who were employed in these factories were orphans, which the government saw as a good place to put these children instead of leaving them in the overcrowded orphanages. The working conditions in the factories were terrible at best. The children would work from five in the morning until eight or nine at night and had no breaks other than eating dinner standing up. The food they got for breakfast and dinner consisted of water porridge, oatcakes with onions, milk and in someplaces potato cake with boiled bacon. They received little to no time to eat dinner or breakfast and they never had tea time or anything of that sort. While the food was bad enough the conditions only got worse from there. The overlooked of the workers were brutal to the children, they would beat them for not working fast enough or not doing their work correctly, sometimes to near death or until they were seriously maimed. On top of all of this theses factories were death traps. The machinery was extremely dangerous and was run by young children who weren't suited to run these machines. These machines could cause damage to people from losing a finger to being cut up into pieces or mangled and mutilated. Even though the machines posed a huge threat of injury, people also got deformed from constant abuse to the body through long hours of hard labor. People's bones could get extremely deformed from the abuse to them and the extremely long hours of working could cause people to have deteriorations of body parts and bones over time due the hard labor.


In the United States working conditions were not too bad to start off and then deteriorated over time. At first working conditions weren't horrible because the mill owners were trying to get farmers to let their daughter go work at the mills.During the beginning of this time period farming was doing well and there had to be a big reason as to why a father would give up an extra hand to help with the farm. So factory workers would go out and recruit girls from farms by claiming that their factories offered a place with no worry as well as giving the young girls a place to live and a place to make money. The factories weren't as good as advertised but they still weren't too horrible. But as time went by the factory's quality started to deteriorate. The young women who worked at these factories still had to live in harsh working conditions as well as having to work for long hours with not a lot of breaks. Most of the time workers would start working at five in the morning until seven at night. They would receive a break for breakfast at seven in the morning and a dinner time at seven at night. These workers received decent wages for their work and also had time to go to class as well as a mandatory 3 months of schooling if they were under a certain age. Although these conditions seem not that horrible they in fact had just as many issues as the ones that were in Britain. The factories were still a death trap with many people being killed by horrible machines and working conditions. The workers were also hurt and deformed by hours of hard working and their was many revolts by factory workers because of lowering of wages.

While both of these work places had their fair share of horrible conditions the working conditions in Britain were worse then those found in America. One of the main reasons that the working conditions in America was better was due to the factory's needing to recruit workers. Both of these conditions were bad but they both could of been safer and better had their been better restrictions and regulations on what went on in the factories.