Working conditions in steam-driven cotton mills could be difficult. In 1818 a Manchester cotton spinner described how an eyewitness could visit:

'... a factory before five o'clock in the morning, and observe the squalid appearance of the... infants and their parents taken from their beds... in all kinds of weather; let him examine the... pittance of food, chiefly composed of water gruel and oatcake broken into it... would a London mechanic eat this?'

These workers endured other hardships. What were they?