Analyzation of Child Labor: Discipline in the Textile Mills

John Stuart Mills was a writer and activist who published his findings of conditions of society and its aspects, from treatment of women to chiold labor. We know for a fact that factory labor was horrendous, and that conditions were not always up to par. We also know that factory workers would suffer any condition for a wage to help support their family. So it comes as no surprise the examples given by Mills in his writing, however I cannot disregard the fact that he was probably overexagerrating certain points to horrify his audience. It was the early 19th century in England, right in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. His audience was probably well-to-do middle class and upper class men, along with politicians because he was trying to convince them that labor laws and regulation on the abuses practiced by the factories was needed. The main idea was that the working conditions in the factories needed reform and that all of the measures taken to insure quality work and full aware workers was not justified or even humane. This document, although highly biased, was very influential and not without truths. Its significance as a PSD in that it was a real opening to the social reform movement that many citizens in this country, and in other industrializing countries, realized was needed.