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The Industrial Revolution put the clock in charge of the working day. Before factories, most people worked by daylight, the seasons and the task in hand; from the 1770s, mills such as Richard Arkwright's at Cromford in Derbyshire ran day and night in twelve-hour shifts.

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The historian E. P. Thompson traced this change in a famous essay of 1967, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism”. Farm and craft work, he argued, had been measured by tasks: milking, harvesting, finishing a piece. Factory work was measured in hours. Cromford Mill, opened in 1771, was the world's first water-powered cotton-spinning mill. It started with about 200 workers, most of them women and children, the youngest only seven. Bells rang at 5 in the morning and 5 in the evening, the gates were shut at exactly 6, and anyone late lost that day's pay and was fined another. In industrial towns, where alarm clocks were not yet cheap or reliable, “knocker-ups” were paid a few pence a week to tap on upstairs windows with long poles.

Türkçe oku
Sanayi Devrimi'yle birlikte iş gününü artık saat belirlemeye başladı. Fabrikalardan önce insanların çoğu gün ışığına, mevsimlere ve eldeki işe göre çalışırdı. 1770'lerden itibaren ise Richard Arkwright'ın Derbyshire'daki Cromford tesisi gibi iplikhaneler, on iki saatlik vardiyalarla gece gündüz işliyordu.

Tarihçi E. P. Thompson bu değişimi 1967'de yayımlanan ünlü makalesi “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism”de (Zaman, İş Disiplini ve Sanayi Kapitalizmi) inceledi. Ona göre tarlada ve zanaatta iş, yapılacak görevle ölçülürdü: inek sağmak, hasadı kaldırmak, eldeki parçayı bitirmek. Fabrikada ise iş saatle ölçülmeye başladı. 1771'de açılan Cromford, dünyanın su gücüyle çalışan ilk pamuk ipliği fabrikasıydı. Yaklaşık 200 işçiyle işe başladı; bunların çoğu kadın ve çocuktu, en küçüğü yalnızca yedi yaşındaydı. Çanlar sabah ve akşam 5'te çalar, kapılar tam 6'da kapanırdı; geç kalan o günün ücretini kaybeder, üstüne bir günlük ücret kadar da ceza öderdi. Sanayi kentlerinde çalar saat henüz ne ucuz ne de güvenilirdi. Bu yüzden haftada birkaç peni karşılığında çalışan “uyandırıcılar” (knocker-up) vardı: Uzun sopalarla üst kat pencerelerini tıklatarak insanları vaktinde uyandırırlardı.

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Background reading: Industrial Revolution
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