text: The early textile factories employed a large share of children, but the share declined over time.  In England and Scotland in 1788, two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills were described as children. Sir Robert Peel, a mill owner turned reformer, promoted the 1802 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, which was intended to prevent pauper children from working more than 12 hours a day in mills. Children had started in the mills at around the age of four, working as mule scavengers under the working machinery until they were eight, they progressed to working as little piecers which they did until they were 15. During this time they worked 14 to 16 hours a day, being beaten if they fell asleep. The children were sent to the mills of Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire from the workhouses in London and other towns in the south of England. A well-documented example was that of Litton Mill.  Further legislation followed. By 1835, the share of the workforce under 18 years of age in cotton mills in England and Scotland had fallen to 43%.  About half of workers in Manchester and Stockport cotton factories surveyed in 1818 and 1819 had begun work at under ten years of age.   Most of the adult workers in cotton factories in mid-19th-century Britain were workers who had begun work as child labourers.  The growth of this experienced adult factory workforce helps to account for the shift away from child labour in textile factories.
  A representative early spinning mill 1771
  Cromford Mill was an early Arkwright mill and was the model for future mills. The site at Cromford had year-round supply of warm water from the sough which drained water from nearby lead mines, together with another brook. It was a five-storey mill. Starting in 1772, the mills ran day and night with two 12-hour shifts.
  It started with 200 workers, more than the locality could provide so Arkwright built housing for them nearby, one of the first manufacturers to do so. Most of the employees were women and children, the youngest being only 7 years old. Later, the minimum age was raised to 10 and the children were given 6 hours of education a week, so that they could do the record keeping their illiterate parents could not.