Mill workers endured very long hours. One cotton spinner wrote:

'The English spinner... [is] Locked up in factories... he has no relaxation till the ponderous engine stops, and then... no time for sweet association with his family; they are all... fatigued and exhausted... I ask again, would the mechanics in the South of England submit to this?'

Conditions were certainly bad for cotton workers among others, especially early in the 1800s. But did things change?