How did daily life in England during the Industrial Revolution change?
In pre-Industrial Revolution Britain, most people simply worked on the land and lived in a rural setting in the countryside. Life on the land may have had it’s hardships but the routine of life was governed by the seasons and not by a need to get goods to a customer. Thus there was no ‘time limit’ put on any job given to a farm labourer. For example, if a landowner or farmer wanted a field poughed, he hired a ploughman and then asked him to do the job, but did not demand or expect it to be done in a given time slot. It might have taken the ploughman an entire week to plough the field. The fee for doing so was simply agreed in advance and paid when the job was done. From the beginning of the factory system, set up by the new Industrialists, it was necessary to control the flow of work and keep workers at their machines making product for as long as possible for the least amount of wages. Thus, factory workers clocked on at about 6am to the sound of the factory whistle and worked for six
