Doherty and The Factory Reform Movement
It is whilst working as a publisher that Doherty’s interest in the factory reform movement peaked and following his release from prison due to slanderous comments made within the aforementioned journal, The Voice of the People, he became involved with fellow radical Robert Owen. Together they set about obtaining fairer working hours and conditions for factory workers and formed the Society for Promoting National Regeneration.
Doherty published The Poor Man’s Advocate and within this told the story of Robert Blincoe, a former child labourer. This led Doherty to turn his interest to the working conditions of women and children, particularly the exceptionally long days many were expected to work. Doherty set about campaigning for reduced working hours of no more than ten per day, known as the Ten Hours Bill. Parliament finally agreed to these requests as part of the 1847 Factory Acts and Doherty’s relentless work had paid off.
Read more about this topic: John Doherty (trade Unionist)
Famous quotes containing the words factory, reform and/or movement:
“I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized.”
—Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928)
“Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)