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The title of this focal article (unashamedly paraphrased from Edwin Starr’s classic 1970 antiwar song) is only partly intended to be tongue in cheek; work is a strange thing with a very checkered history. For the most part, it is something we take for granted. Most able-bodied adults work. Working hard is taken as a sign of being an upstanding citizen. Right wing politicians even insist that “government handouts” only be made available in exchange for participation in “workfare” programs. Moreover, work is not just something we do; over the last 100 years or so, it has become a defining, constitutive feature of who we are as human beings. Our very sense of identity and well-being is tied up with our relationship to work. It is no accident, after all, that the first question we ask a stranger is, “What do you do?” (and we are not asking about their hobbies); we see this question as a way of taking the measure of that person.

This article offers a spatial examination of entrepreneurial philanthropy at Cromford, Quarry Bank, and Saltaire mills during the industrial revolution. It argues that entrepreneurial philanthropy at these mills, with its new social relations, was influenced by both market competition and philanthropy, to the extent that active welfare provision was dependent on profitable enterprise and creation of wealth. It demonstrates that the extent and nature of philanthropy intended, implemented, and experienced at each of these entrepreneurial projects was determined by site-specific factors with unique effects in space and time. The article builds on existing research into the socially transformative impact of the industrial revolution by developing the concept of philanthropic space to enable a fresh assessment of the relationship between capital and welfare. It suggests that, within these communities, the development of philanthropic space addressed some of the causes and effects of discontent of the working classes associated with the ‘condition-of-England question’. In particular, the discipline of education became an increasingly important component of both enhanced philanthropic development by owners and the experience of workers, offering opportunities for self-improvement. At the same time, discipline and control were ostensibly paradoxical within, yet established and essential features of, philanthropic space.

How Nature reported the barring of UK women from engineering in 1919, and a celebration of key advances from the industrial revolution. Discrimination against women and historic inventions.

In the area discussed in this essay, Arkwright's technological changes led to a cluster of mills trying to exploit the fresh opportunities in cotton spinning, before the locational disadvantages became very apparent and they turned away from full reliance on cotton and diversified into wool, finance or other interests.1 Richard Arkwright's two mills at Cromford were at the heart of late eighteenth century industrialization in the East Midlands. According to Edward Baines, the early historian of the cotton industry, he spoke of himself paying the national debt and also of 'buying up all the cotton in the world in order to make an enormous profit by the monopoly'.34 Yet he was a dynamic acquisitive figure, motivated by upward social mobility, building his huge mansion - Willersley Castle - and achieving the respect of his peers.