A digital simulation of early industrial capitalism, followed by primary source analysis on the health of English factory workers.
It is the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Manchester, where raw cotton pours in from slave plantations in America, is becoming the factory capital of the world. New machines — the spinning mule, the steam engine — produce cloth at speeds no human can match.
You are about to enter this world. You will play one of four roles in a factory economy, make decisions, earn or lose money, and experience firsthand the logic — and the brutality — of early industrial capitalism.
The setting. Factories multiply. Workers flood in from the countryside. Some grow wealthy; most barely survive.
4 rounds. Each round you produce goods, sell at the Market, pay expenses, and repay loans. The rules can change at any moment. Goal: make as much money as you can.
The raw material feeding Manchester's mills came overwhelmingly from slave plantations in the American South. You could not grow cotton in England. Every yard of cloth produced in a Manchester factory depended on enslaved labor an ocean away.
By the mid-19th century, Cuba was the world's leading sugar producer. Facing a dwindling labor force, planters imported tens of thousands of Chinese workers under fixed contracts — "coolies" — and laid thousands of miles of railroad track using that labor to connect plantations to ports. British and American investment flowed in; the profits flowed out.
A German biochemist invented a beef extract to feed Europe's malnourished factory workers. He couldn't afford European cattle. A German engineer working on railroad construction in Uruguay had seen thousands of cattle carcasses abandoned on the grasslands — slaughtered only for their hides. Belgian investors financed a factory; British corporations marketed the product. German science, Uruguayan cattle, Belgian capital, British markets: one product, four continents.
After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Japanese government deliberately industrialized the silk industry to compete globally. Girls as young as ten were recruited from impoverished farming villages — often with false promises — to work 14-hour days in factory dormitories, their wages sent home to support their families. By the end of the century, women dominated Japan's factory workforce. They were paid far less than men.
In Latin America, railroad lines built by British and American companies were, as historian Peter Winn put it, "tools of empire" — designed not to connect cities but to extract raw materials: timber, coal, rubber, cotton, sugar, wheat. The railroad that opened up the interior of Mexico linked directly to U.S. trunk lines at the border.
Select your assigned role. Each begins with different resources, goals, and risks.
You have borrowed 30 coins from the Bank of England. You must repay 12 coins per round for the first three rounds (36 total, including interest). Use your loan to buy paper (5 coins / 50 sheets) and pencils (1 coin each), then hire workers to produce drawings.
Risk: Miss a loan payment and your factory closes. Advantage: You may fire any worker at any time, for any reason. You control who eats and who doesn't.
You begin with 0 coins. Each round you earn wages — if your owner can afford them and chooses to keep you. Each round you must also pay 2 coins for food and lodging. If you can't pay, you begin to starve. Three rounds without paying: you are out.
Risk: You can be fired at any moment. There are always unemployed workers ready to take your place. Options: Organize, offer services, find other work if fired.
No job. No income. This is not a mistake. You represent Manchester's vast surplus labor force — the crowds of hundreds who showed up each morning at factory gates hoping for a job opening. You begin with 0 coins and still owe 2 coins per round for survival.
Options: Offer services to factory owners or merchants. Attempt to organize workers. Earn money through any means you can. Think creatively — this is a desperate situation.
You begin with 160 coins. Each round you may purchase up to 30 drawings total from all factories at 1 coin each. Buy only the neatest, most accurate, most consistent drawings — reject messy or creative interpretations.
Power: You decide which factories survive. Every factory depends entirely on your purchasing decisions. Goal: Maximize the quality of what you buy; maintain your capital.
Laissez-faire capitalism is ascendant. New markets demand manufactured goods. For each round, record what happens in your ledger, then answer the event questions before continuing.
| Round | Income / Earnings | Loan / Purchases | Food & Rent (2) | Other Costs | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | — | — | — | — | — |
| Round 1 | — | ||||
| Round 2 | — | ||||
| Round 3 | — | ||||
| Round 4 | — | ||||
| Final | — | ||||
Between Rounds 2 and 3, the instructor offers a stamp kit to the leading factory. It produces drawings of far higher quality and quantity — with far fewer workers. The factory that acquires it may now fire most of its workforce and still dominate the Market.
This represents the arrival of real industrial machinery — the spinning mule, the power loom, the steam engine. Technology that made factories vastly more productive while making human labor cheaper and more dispensable.
The simulation is over. Step back and analyze what you experienced — connecting it to the actual history of the Industrial Revolution.
You will now analyze four primary source documents from 19th-century England, all addressing: Were textile factories bad for the health of English workers?
For each document, practice sourcing (analyze before you read) and corroboration (compare documents to each other).
Question: Will you have the goodness to state what has been the effect of long hours of labour upon the health and morals of the children in cotton factories, from your own observation?
Answer: I have seen a great many children who have worked in the factories; I have generally found that those who have worked long hours are shorter in stature than other children of the same age, and frequently have distorted limbs, particularly those children who work at the spinning mule. I have also seen many cases of curvature of the spine, and other deformities, in children who have worked in cotton factories; and I attribute these deformities to the long hours of labour, and the constrained position in which they are obliged to work.
I have also observed that the children who work in factories are generally pale, and have an unhealthy appearance; their eyes are frequently affected with inflammation, which I attribute to the dust and bad air of the factories; and I think that the health of these children is materially injured by their long hours of labour in the factories.
Document B also comes from a House of Lords investigation — one year earlier, in 1818. The author is also being interviewed about factory conditions. But the account is strikingly different.
Question: In your opinion, does the labour in factories affect the health of the children employed in them?
Answer: In my opinion, taking all the circumstances into consideration, it does not; I think the children in factories are as healthy, and have as good an appearance, as children of the same age employed in other occupations. Their work is not laborious; it requires attention, but the exertion is trifling.
I have seen many children employed in factories, and I have generally found them to be in good health; I have not observed that their growth is stunted, or that they have any deformity attributable to their work in the factory. I think that the air of the factories, though not so pure as that of the open fields, is not injurious to the children, and that, in general, the children in factories are as healthy as children of the same age in other employments.
I commenced work in a factory when I was about nine years old. I worked there for many years, and I can speak from experience of the hardships which the factory children had to endure. We were obliged to work from five in the morning till eight at night, with only half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner. The rooms were hot, the air was full of dust and fluff, and the noise of the machinery was so great that it was impossible to hear what was said unless you shouted. The overlookers were sometimes very cruel, and beat the children if they did not work fast enough, or if they fell asleep at their work. I have seen children come home at night so tired that they could not eat their supper, and have fallen asleep over it. I have also seen them come home with their hands and arms bleeding from the cuts they had received from the machinery.
The cotton manufacture has been the main source of the prodigious increase of wealth and population in the manufacturing districts of England; and whilst this manufacture has brought with it many evils of a social and moral nature, it has been the source of immense and unmixed benefits in a national point of view.
The factories are well ventilated, and the health of the operatives is, in general, not worse than that of other classes of the working population. It is true that the work is sedentary and confined, but it is not laborious, and the wages are good. The children employed in factories are, in many instances, better fed, better clothed, and better educated than the children of agricultural labourers. The factory system, whatever may be its imperfections, has done more than any other cause to raise the general standard of living of the working classes of this country.
You've completed the Manchester 1800 simulation and source analysis. Download a PDF copy for your records, then submit your work to Prof. Hauselmann.