Question 6: What basic assumptions can be made based on the document?

Similar to what I mentioned in our discussion last week, the major assumption of this text, and of industrialists as a whole, is that Industrialization is a good thing for society. While other sources disagree on its present effects on the worker (Marx in the Communist Manifesto), It’s the view of Andrew Ure that Industrialization is a wholly positive endeavor. That the old system of physical labor is right to be done away with is also an assumption made by Ure. He backs that belief up by saying “Whereas the non-factory weaver, having everything to execute by muscular exertion, finds the labor irksome, makes in consequence innumerable short pauses.” In this approach the reader is led to believe that it is actually humanitarian to replace this type of back-breaking work with that of a machine. There is a secondary assumption in this description though, that human labor is inherently inefficient when compared to mechanized muscles. This is a self-evident assumption it seems, since it was also cited by the Cotton Workers of Leeds as a major cause of their impending unemployment.

That earlier assumption of the moral good of Industrialization runs through the entire document, mainly to counteract the presumption that machines will push people into destitution. One massive assumption I think Ure makes is one of his ending remarks on future labor. He states “Steam-engines furnish the means not only of their support but of their multiplication- they call into employment multitudes of miners, engineers, shipbuilders, and sailors.” This is a massive leap to say that a reduction of low-skill work will not only increase the demand for highly skilled workers, but also that those previously low-skilled workers can find a job in that new market with any prior experience. If this post was about the validity of the statements made in a document, I’d have a lot more to say on this point.

An interesting note I caught was the idea that further creation of factories would actually free up crops otherwise used on the previous strongest machinery, horses. Extrapolating that idea, it’s presumed that those newly freed crops would stimulate a population rise and further importance of the nation. Similar to the Cloth Merchants of Leeds letter, there’s a sentiment that the nation of England is at competition not with itself, but the world. The first sentence describes a “Jealous admiration by foreign powers” for the fruits of England’s factories, which a later sentence says earns the country many “Comforts of life produced in foreign lands.” There does seem to be quite a lot of presumption that factories are capable of producing items not only faster, and for the betterment of those they unemployed, but also unique goods that would otherwise be unavailable. Still I believe the largest assumption and throughline in this document is the good of Industrialization. That it’s an unparalleled positive good for workers and nations was an unproven idea then, as it is now.