Impact of industrialization on child labour: An analysis of Caroline Norton's A Voice from the Factories.

The Victorian Age was a period of economic progress for England, driven by technological advancements and the expansion of power. During this era, the British Empire dominated much of the world, and the imperialists bragged that the Sun never sets on the vast empire. The main factor behind this rapid economic progress was industrialization, which was marked by the establishment of various industries across the nation. But the industrialization of Great Britain was not without its consequences; the advent of the Industrial Revolution brought with it an increased demand for cheap industrial labour. It was the poor working-class families that were brought in to supply this cheap labour to meet the increasing demands of the fast-progressing nation. Many children from such families were also hired to keep the nation's economic graph pointing upward. Child labour, thus, became a by-product of industrialization in England. While the mighty nation revelled in the glorious result of the Industrial Revolution, the poor children toiled hard, hidden away in dark, gloomy factories. This paper aims at exploring the issue of child labour during this period through the poem A Voice from the Factories: In Serious Verse by Caroline Norton, a prominent Victorian poet and activist. It examines the sufferings and depravity of child labourers in Industrial England as addressed by Norton and many of her contemporaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]