# Richard Oastler — The Condition of the Working Class in England character guide

> Richard Oastler in The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Oastler

**First appearance:** 0011-labour-movements

## Snapshot

The factory reformer whose campaign for the ten-hour day made him a rallying name for workers demanding limits on industrial exploitation.

## Who they are

Oastler represents the reformist strand of the struggle, the fight to shorten the working day and check the worst abuses of the factory system. He is a reminder that the workers' cause attracted allies from outside their own ranks, and that the ten-hour agitation was one of the concrete fields in which their manhood found exercise. His campaign sits at the hinge between the book's documentation of suffering and its account of organized resistance.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_condition_of_the_working_class_in_england_se/characters/oastler
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_condition_of_the_working_class_in_england_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_condition_of_the_working_class_in_england_se/characters