Dbq Industrial Revolution

From 1820 to 1870 the world was revolutionized by the aptly named Industrial Revolution. Beginning in Great Britain and crawling its way to the United States by the 1820s the change from hand and home production to machine and factory jump-started the country’s economic importance in the world. Though many great changes were happening one was the beginning of a different revolution, the economic independence and emerging workforce of women. With the idyllic factory communities and the lure of having a life other than one on the farm the system drew many girls and women into it, but eventually, with the Panic of 1837 coming around the corner and President Jackson’s horrible handling of the national economy, it turned sour. When proposed budget

Though in the beginning, manifest destiny began to grip capable, hardworking men and dragged them out west in search of cheap land and new opportunities. With this in mind factories like those in Lowell, Massachusetts began hiring women due to the lack of men, but also found that their feminine hands had the dexterity to perform the skills needed for machine work. There were many different reasons for the mill girl’s original attraction to the factory communities. Some were there to help pay for family needs, grab onto educational prospects, or to simply earn an income and gain some economic independence for the first time. Being mostly New England farm girls the attraction of a place that provided them with tolerable work, meals and boarding provided for, moral disciplines to reassure the family, and then academic and cultural opportunities. Even though they were already being paid half what men would’ve been paid it became an excuse to become free of the controlling families they were a part of and, challenge the stigma of womanly dependence. Even with thirteen-hour work days and six-day work weeks they found time to do an abundance of time to create groups and interests for themselves. Their self-sufficiency was riding on this system to work, along with their dignity, and for a while, it all worked

In the 1830s, the City of Spindles, as it was called, started to become a bustling, grimy, and bleak city and with textile prices and mill wages dropping, cutbacks on all aspects of life in the mills took a hit. The new crop of owners began to stress the need for profit margins to still ensure they were getting the money they had become used to. To do this, they made community values take a back seat to their avarice. Efficiency was also a priority and as new technology came about factories were in need of more skilled workers, displacing the old ones, to operate machinery needing technical expertise to operate. However, they still worked the female operators and machines at a more intense and faster pace. Relations between the employers and employees were already rocky as a result of the ambitious paternal supervision the girls were constantly under. Management dominated their lives working them in unfavorable conditions, working them to the bone with intense seventy-one-hour work weeks and hardly any free time. Even though most girls were used to laboring from sun up to sun down, it is important to realize that with no slow season this work easily shifted to a harder form for all. The biggest nail in the coffin though was the cut in wages. This was a slap in the face to