The Politics of Cognitive Rest

In 1833, the British Parliament passed the Factory Act, which restricted the working hours of children in textile mills. Children aged nine to thirteen were limited to eight hours per day; children aged thirteen to eighteen to twelve; children under nine were prohibited from factory work entirely. These numbers, appalling by contemporary standards, represented a radical intervention in the temporal regime of early industrial capitalism. Factory owners resisted with the full force of economic argument: restriction of hours meant restriction of output, which meant restriction of profit, which meant restriction of growth. The argument was logically sound. It was also profoundly incomplete — because it measured only what was produced and ignored what was consumed in the producing.