ABSTRACT
The working class was keenly disappointed in the Whigs for their hostile attitude towards labor legislation. It was the ultra Tories, Richard Oastler, Michael Thomas Sadler and Lord Ashley who led the campaign against the evils of the factory system and demanded the amelioration of workmen’s conditions. The discontent of the laborers, crude and sporadic in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, assumed all aspects of social war which stratified the population of Great Britain with marvelous rapidity. Even Francis Place, champion political wire-puller and labor lobbyist, for a long time could hardly secure a hearing in Parliament. The employers stopped short of nothing until they had succeeded in defeating and crushing the labor organizations. Trade unionism became the battle-cry of the friends of the laborers, and the employers were thrown into a state of extreme apprehension. New hopes were infused into the hearts of the lowly, and a new creed was given them by Robert Owen and his followers.
