Industrial Revolution Dbq Research Paper

involved in it and should be accounted for. This was a prime example of an effect of the Industrial Revolution, children being exploited and horrid working conditions. In Document 6, Friedrich Engels describes a community and the pollution in it. Engels was a socialist therefore he advocated for the lower-class and was against capitalism. Due to Engels being a socialist, he published this book to reach the government.

Adolescents worked for long hours in textile mills, enduring physical mistreatment. At the age of ten, Cooper, a child laborer, worked for sixteen hours a day, starting at five o’clock in the morning and ending at nine o’clock at night (Document 1). During these sixteen hours, a single period of forty minutes was allowed for meals (Document 1). Higher officials often strapped Cooper in order to keep him awake and attentive during work hours (Document 1). Due to his long shifts, Cooper was unable to attend school, leaving him unable to write (Document 1).

“The slums ... are generally unplanned wildernesses of [small] houses,” (Document 7). These conditions were just as bad as the factory because it was filled with filth. Furthermore, the lack of sanitation created “stagnant, stinking puddles,” (Document 7). Because these were places of similar conditions to the factories, the workers would constantly be exposed to these pathogens, again risking their lives and their future. These tradeoffs were not fair to the workers seeing as they were throwing out their entire lives for the simple convenience of others.

The Industrial Revolution was an unpredicted technological and economical improvement period. It started in Great Britain in the 1830’s and continued into the 1930’s. The Industrial Revolution affected many different countries in an assortment of ways. I’ll be arguing what I believe to be the top four aspects of the Revolution. I’ll be starting with at the bottom of my list and make my way up.

The Sadler Report was the evidence on industrial conditions in England in early 19th century. Michael Sadler was the chairman of a Parliamentary committee considering a Bill about regulation on factory children working condition. The report was written as the collection of evidence given before the committee. The intended

The first downside to working in a factory in the 1800’s is the outrageous hours that men, women, and children have to work. They can work up to fifteen hours in a day, and many workers fought for a full day of work to be considered ten hours at most. This problem in the industry affected every worker physically, because if a worker got very few hours of sleep, then the next day his work ethic would not be at his full potential. That could then cause their boss to fire them, and hire another man who is stronger and more willing to work. An incident like that happened to Jurgis. He worked so hard to keep his family fed, then he had to take time off of work due to an injury. (Sinclair 116) When he tried to come back to work, they replaced him

The Lowell factory was an experiment into an alternative way of running a factory where both the workers and owners could benefit equally. One of the most major points to be made is that most, if not all, of the workers were female. The factory consisted of the manufacturing area, the dorms, and the facilities for the workers. The facilities included places such as lecture halls and schools for their education. This was all supposed to facilitate a place for a life of work as well as learning. However, for multiple reasons, this may not have been the case. Three different sources have provided different accounts of factory life.

John says he will die within a year as a result of the unsafe working conditions and an insufficient diet. Joseph had lost his brother because of the unsafe conditions and improper treatment of an infection. Joseph goes on and on about all the people who were hurt and injured of the years he had been there because of how unsafe it was. Both these documents have a clearly negative point of view and are not bias on the fact that they are interviews of workers who know the true extent of the factories. In 1844 Friedrich Engels wrote The Conditions of the Working Class in England.

With such a glut of labor on the market manufactures took advantage and lowered wages. Also with machinery doing most of the work the factory could be operational twenty-three hours a day. As early as the 18th century some of the English recognized the deleterious effects of unregulated factory work. One such person was a Dr. Percival, who on January 15th of 1796, presented a report to the Manchester Board of Health on the conditions of the mill workers. In his report he noted that all the workers, especially the children were prone to sickness. He noted that the night labor and long hours of the factories were "injurious" to the workers. They were not only more susceptible to disease but also in constant danger of being maimed and possibly killed by machinery. Cotton workers suffered from the inhalation of the fine dust particle produced during the processing of cotton. Steel factory workers suffered from asthma.

As a farmer or artisan, people would typically have land or a home which they owned, but during the Industrial Revolution, people would commonly live in nothing more than cellars or tiny apartments. Many of these apartments, flats, and hovels, which people lived in, were also commonly polluted. There were no clean areas. Imagine going from living on your family’s farm, with green grass and nature all around you, to a cramped polluted apartment. Poor working conditions ranged from workers dying early from the pollution in their lungs, to sexual harassment of girls and women in the workplace.

Based on the descriptions of working-class life provided by the first three sources (excerpts), the working conditions are accentuated as struggling, harsh and miserable in the mills and coal mines. For example, in the Testimony before Parliamentary Committees on Working Conditions in England, Elizabeth Bentley, a former worker of a flax-mill stated that her usual hours of labor are “From 6 in the morning till 7 at night” when not thronged. Considering that she works from a range of thirteen to sixteen hours per day, it conveys that Bentley, along with other adverse people, were dedicated into doing their job for a long epoch, knowing that in order to survive, they must earn the money they need. In addition to long hours, these factories

The employees had horrendous working conditions that they had to endure because their pay was needed to support their family. One example, “[Before] dawn my labor drives me forth, Tis night when I am free;” (Document 2). This parent works all day and night, thus never able to spend time with their son. Therefore, the son has been able to have a roof over his head due to his parent’s paycheck yet never get the affection that he desperately demands. In addition, Elizabeth Bentley testified, “C: You are considerably deformed in person as a consequence of this labour? B: Yes I am” (Document 7). Working conditions today are, luckily, much better with laws regulating associations from engaging people to do painstaking, fatal assignments and operations. Yet, they did not have sympathy for the people at this point because the public desired more money and cheaper goods. According to Lewis Hine’s photo, “the children stood on top of the machines near

Another negative effect of the Industrial Revolution was the poor sanitary conditions in cities. When Friedrich Engels visited an English industrial city he stated in “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” that the streets are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse due to the lack of gutters or drains. This caused the main river of Manchester to look coal black and be packed with stinking filth. The factories also led to pollution and poor air quality due to the open air vents and chimneys which released the pollution from the factory into the air. Many people who lived in these poor cities or slums were either the working class or the poor that had to struggle through these unsanitary conditions.

On the other end of the society scale, the working poor were working and living in unbearable conditions. There were no irrigation systems, running water or any way of preserving hygiene in the homes or the factories. The working poor lived in slums and tenements which were breeding grounds for diseases. In the book, “The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844” by Friedrich Engels, he states, “...at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement.” (page 78)1. This gives us a peek into the horrible unsanitary conditions that the working class were forced to endure while the business owners were living in beautiful mansions and summer houses.

The working conditions were awful for people to work in. People had to work long hour days in a hot, unhealthy environment that could potentially get them sick. On an average day, a worker worked at least ten hour days and six days a week. (Banner, 1) Every year in the 1920’s about 25,000 workers were killed on the job and 100,000 permanently disabled. (Zinn, 383) Even