ABSTRACT
This chapter sheds some light on the relationship of women and children in the production processes of making textile cloth and extracting coal and metal. In these two industries, there were as many differences as there were similarities in the types of work women and children performed during the industrial revolution. Unlike the children, however, very few women worked underground in metal mines while the majority were occupied on the surface. Women were employed in most of the metal mines in Cornwall and within a given metal mine there was a higher percentage of women working than in coal mines. In the textile factories, women workers outnumbered men workers while in the coal and metal mines the opposite was true. In particular, the fastest growing the textile industry, cotton, relied heavily upon the work of the women and the children.
