Such exemplary cases of canteen and mess room provision were few and far between. It described the example of one Bristol-based firm which found that the sickness rate amongst workers halved after it provided restaurants in its factories 14. In 1913, the Inspectorate’s annual report claimed that employers increasingly ‘recognised that the physical fitness of the worker has an important bearing on the output of the factory’, and that as a consequence ‘dining-rooms and restaurants are slowly becoming more general’. The Inspector for Warwickshire observed that welfare provisions, included factory dining rooms, produced ‘a bond of sympathy and kindly feeling between employers and employed’ 13. However, Christian values continued to shape the provision of more systematic industrial welfare facilities in some companies, entwining philanthropy with the desire to enhance production and improve industrial relations 12. Admittedly, paternalism fell out of fashion by the early years of the twentieth century as firms expanded and personal contact between employers and employees receded. This tradition of industrial welfare built upon the ethos of earlier nineteenth-century paternalist employers, such as Robert Owen, for whom humanitarian considerations went hand in hand with a desire to enhance efficiency 11. Port Sunlight, for example, provided separate restaurants for its male and female workers as part of its extensive welfare provisions 10. Outwith the dangerous trades, a number of canteens and dining rooms were provided by employers with a reputation for philanthropy. These developments reflected growing government regulation of the dangerous trades industrial processes involving raw materials which were acknowledged to cause specific occupational illnesses 9. In 1893, the Departmental Committee on White Lead recommended that the rules regulating white lead processes be amended to incorporate the mandatory provision of a separate dining room 8. Inadequate dining facilities were a particular concern in industrial sectors where raw materials were known to pose a risk to health: in 1892, one Inspector complained that the dining room provided in a London arsenic works was ‘very dirty’, as a ‘good quantity of the refuse found its way into the room’ 7. In the absence of such provisions, the Inspectorate feared that workers imperilled their health by subsisting on inadequate food rations, heated in stoves used for manufacturing processes and hastily consumed amidst the debris of industrial production. Its annual reports advocated the establishment of canteens, in which workers were afforded the opportunity to purchase and consume food, and mess rooms, which provided workers with a space within work premises to eat food they had brought in from home. This statutory body, established under the 1833 Factory Act to ensure that employers complied with statutory regulations, displayed an interest in employers’ voluntary welfare initiatives.
We can gain some insight into the nature and extent of pre-war canteen provisions if we turn to the reports issued by the Factory Inspectorate 6. Indeed, war-time factory canteens, many of which were established in munitions factories, could be viewed simply as one aspect of the massive state investment in the infrastructure of armaments industries designed to facilitate military objectives 5.įactory canteens, and other industrial welfare provisions, existed prior to the First World War but were limited to a small handful of firms. In light of this evidence, it is tempting to interpret the establishment of industrial canteens as a facet of what John Pickstone has termed ‘productionist medicine’: a system of healthcare predominant in the first half of the twentieth century, characterised by its preoccupation with ‘the health and strength of work-forces and armed forces’ 4. Consequently, the number of factory canteens increased tenfold over the duration of the First World War 2, and multiplied again over the course of the Second World War 3. Seeking to maintain and enhance output in industrial sectors which were pivotal to the war effort, government agencies advocated industrial canteens as a means of preserving workers’ health, and by extension their productivity. In Britain, the establishment of canteens within factories can be linked to the exigencies of the two world wars.