ABSTRACT
An industrial society sharpens the distinction between work and leisure. Timed work in a factory, for example, is a self-contained operation. Work in the fields or even in a workshop can incorporate elements both of work and leisure. The Inspector of Factories reported in 1859 that a greater clarity obtained 'between the worker's own time and his master's. Leisure, however, was a subject for concern as well as opportunity, and it is this aspect of the subject that has most interested scholars. Many traditional pastimes were successfully attacked between 1780 and 1850. Old leisure pursuits were deemed not only anachronistic but dangerous in an industrial society. Whatever its advantages, the Industrial Revolution had engendered in demographic terms a much bigger and in organisational terms a less controlled, society. Working men's clubs were established in the early 1860s to educate the lower orders to the higher ideals of improvement and social harmony.
