Were the wages paid to factory workers low? 

Not by the standards of the day!  Keep in mind that many of the men and women finding employment in the mills and factories had never worked for wages before.  To move from a position of zero wage to a position of any regular wage is a tremendous improvement.

Of course, when compared to factory wages paid today, the wages paid then WERE incredibly bad - but when one remembers the purchasing power of a penny in those days, it may not come as too much of a surprise to learn that the lowest wages known for a factory job was about three pence a week - more than enough to secure food, housing, and even clothing for a worker and his or her family.

More often, the wage paid was at least six pence a week, or a penny a day for a six-day week.  Wages continued to rise fairly constantly between 1760 and 1830, so that by the time a wage plateau was reached in the 1830's, it was not uncommon to find even unskilled workers receiving two shillings a week (twenty-four pence), with many skilled workers earning as much as twenty or thirty shillings a week for their efforts.

Nor were these steady increases the result of legislation or of any sort of union organizing activity.  Rather, they resulted in no small part due to the development of specialized skills in the factories and mills, and due to the competition between employers as they repeatedly sought to hire better and better workmen.

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