ABSTRACT
In fact, over seventy-five percent of the workers in the cotton, flax, worsted and silk manufactories were still children. Clearly, child labor had not disappeared from the textile industries of Great Britain by 1870. Several explanations for the diminishing role of child labor as industrialization proceeded have been put forth by historians and economic historians. Social historians argue that the rise of the domestic ideology of the "breadwinner homemaker household" meant a reduction in the employment of women and children. In particular, the new methods of hauling coal underground and dressing the metal ores on the surface reduced the demand for child labor and female labor. The job of the hewer was lightened with the invention of the machine drill in 1910, but the process of extraction even to this day remains labor intensive. Some innovations applied to the production processes made it feasible to employ child labor in the cotton industry, the metal trades, calico printing and button making.
