text: Working practices The nature of work changed during industrialisation from a craft production model to a factory-centric model. It was during the years 1761 to 1850 that these changes happened. Textile factories organized workers' lives much differently from craft production.  Handloom weavers worked at their own pace, with their own tools, and within their own cottages.  Factories set hours of work, and the machinery within them shaped the pace of work.  Factories brought workers together within one building to work on machinery that they did not own.  Factories also increased the division of labour.  They narrowed the number and scope of tasks. They included children and women within a common production process. As Manchester mill owner Friedrich Engels decried, the family structure itself was "turned upside down" as women's wages undercut men's, forcing men to "sit at home" and care for children while the wife worked long hours. Factories flourished over manual craftsmanship because they had more efficient production output per worker, keeping prices down for the public, and they had much more consistent quality of product.  The work-discipline was forcefully instilled upon the workforce by the factory owners, and he found that the working conditions were poor, and poverty levels were at an unprecedented high. Engels was appalled, and his research in Derby played a large role in his and Marx's book 'Das Kapital'.
  At times, the workers rebelled against poor wages. The first major industrial action in Scotland was that of the Calton weavers in Glasgow, who went on strike for higher wages in the summer of 1787. In the ensuing disturbances, troops were called in to keep the peace and three of the weavers were killed. There was continued unrest. In Manchester in May 1808, 15,000 protesters gathered on St George's Fields and were fired on by dragoons, with one man dying. A strike followed, but was eventually settled by a small wage increase.
  In the general strike of 1842, half a million workers demanded the Charter and an end to pay cuts. Again, troops were called in to keep the peace, and the strike leaders were arrested, but some of the worker demands were met.