Apush Dbq Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution refers to a time of greatly increased output of machine-made goods that emerged within the textile industry. The Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the late 1700’s, had a wide range of positive and negative effects on the economic and social life of the people of England. The results of the Industrial Revolution have been interpreted many ways through the various social classes of Britain; the peasants who suffered from the dangers of the factories and tenements and the upper class who benefited from capital and enterprises. Although the Industrial Revolution positively affected Britain’s iron production and added conveniences and comforts to daily life for the upper class, the dangers of the factories’

In William Cooper’s testimony before the Sadler Committee, he stated that the workers began working at a very early age with long hours, rare meals, punishments and beatings, and the workers had no time for day school, so most factory workers were uneducated. “[I began working in the mills] when I was ten years of age . . .we began at five in the morning and stopped at nine in the night . . .we had just one period of forty minutes [for meals] . . .we were frequently strapped,” (Document 1). The workers often became injured, losing arms and skin, because they got caught in the machines. The long hours with no nutrition in the dust and smoke-filled air of the factories led to many deaths and illnesses. Although some factories did not display poor working conditions, most did, and child labor was also a serious problem in the factories because the owners often took advantage of the children's’ small and skinny bodies to do harmful machine work. In The Philosophy of Manufacture, Andrew Ure wrote that he had never seen beatings inflicted on children and that the children were always cheerful and alert. This statement is opinionated and not entirely true because when a person visits a factory, the owners would usually

There were rats and garbage in apartments and each apartment housed an entire family. Sewage and garbage accumulated so much because there was no plumbing, so waste was dumped into streets and rivers. “The slums . . . [have] streets [that] are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse . . .they have neither gutters nor drains . . .the refuse accumulates in stagnant stinking puddles . . . [tenements are] a crowded . . . chaotic group of little one-story, one-room cabins,” (Engels). Engels wrote that each town had at least one slum area with overcrowded and chaotic three-story houses, garbage and sewage on the unpaved, filthy streets, and trash that polluted the air and caused it to smell foul. The working class struggled in the factories all day, and came home to poor living conditions. Also, the manufacturing of iron in the factories went from 17,350 tons in 1740 to 9 million tons by 1900. Iron production increased greatly during the Industrial Revolution, causing a rise in trade and shipping which in turn increased capital and enterprise, which made entrepreneurs and the British economy wealthy. Although this did increase the wealth of Britain’s economy, only the upper class was benefitting from the working class’ work to produce the iron. The upper class became wealthy and enjoyed many conveniences