Industrialists and Education

When we hear the tales of the Industrial Revolution, we picture the northern cities of England, in bleak, dirty, inhumane conditions. We tend to believe that there were a lot of technological advancements, but little human advancement. The story, as per usual, is a bit more nuanced.

Mandatory education was enacted during this period, but industrialists were already incentivizing their workforces to study, as it had a direct impact on their productivity. (Landowners, on the other hand, had very little incentive to have a more educated workforce.) In terms of child labor, its rate was already decreasing when the first laws against it went into effect. Why? Because technology was invented to replace what children were good at (mostly around fixing machines as they were small).

Technological advancements played an important role in phasing out child labour long before legislation did, partly because machines, like Richard Roberts's self-acting spinning mule, had already reduced the need for child labour in many sectors. And while the silk industry was exempted from the restrictive child labour legislation, due to its struggle to compete with foreign producers who had access to cheaper raw material, the proportion of child workers in silk factories still fell, from nearly 30 per cent in 1835 to 13 per cent by 1860. If this trend is representative, it is not inconceivable that, even without legislation, child labour would have diminished significantly in other sectors.

With these examples, I'm trying to make the point that sometimes we only see change happening in societies from big ideas, big visions of the future, but more often than not it comes from the ground up — with technology as the catalyst.

Source: Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality, Oded Galor

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A taxa de iliteracia em Portugal no início do século XX era de 70% (em Lisboa e Porto, era de 40%). Pode parecer que fosse normal na época, mas nos EUA era de 8% e em Inglaterra de 2%.