Factory system

The factory system is a mode of production that concentrates workers and machinery in a centralized workplace, coordinating labor under an employer’s control.

Division of labor: The separation of a production process into specialized tasks performed by different workers. Factories increased output by assigning workers narrow, coordinated tasks.
Industrial Revolution: The major transformation of production, technology, and society that began in Britain in the eighteenth century. The factory system became a defining institution of this wider transformation.
Robert Owen: A Welsh industrialist and social reformer who promoted improved working and living conditions for factory workers. His New Lanark mills became a prominent experiment in reforming factory communities.
Cotton industry in the Industrial Revolution: The rapidly expanding British industry that mechanized cotton spinning and weaving during the Industrial Revolution. Cotton textiles provided the factory system’s earliest major industrial setting.
Urbanization: The growth of towns and cities as people move into urban areas and economic activity becomes concentrated there. Factory employment drew workers toward industrial towns and rapidly expanding cities.
Mechanization: The use of machines to perform tasks previously done by people or animals. Factory production depends on coordinating workers with powered machinery.
Richard Arkwright: An English industrialist who developed and commercialized water-powered cotton-spinning factories in the eighteenth century. His mills helped establish large-scale factory organization in the British cotton industry.
Friedrich Engels: A German philosopher and political theorist who analyzed industrial capitalism and working-class life. His account of Manchester documented the social conditions surrounding factory production.
Ironworks: Industrial plants where iron is smelted, refined, or shaped using furnaces and heavy machinery. Iron production adopted concentrated labor and machinery beyond the textile mills.
Working class: A social class whose members generally depend on wages earned through labor for their livelihood. Factories expanded the population of workers dependent on industrial wages.

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