Textiles: From domestic to factory production

The images of factory buildings show a very different world and an entirely different scale - with extensive machinery and large numbers of workers. The images themselves tend to show regulated and perhaps contented scenes that may have been far from the brutality that often existed in the factory.

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Our main concern is with the contrast between domestic and factory production. Notice the scale and numbers of machines and imagine the large sources of power needed to drive them. Man-power or woman-power would not be enough.

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Look at all the pictures of the machinery and notice how they are being powered by belts attached to shafts that ran the length or breadth of the factory. These shafts were turned by the main source of power for the factory, whether steam or water.

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Read more about how steam became the key source of factory power in this scene.

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Now look at the activity below, which compares some visual examples of sources of factory power.

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