Industrial Revolution Dbq

774 Words4 Pages

The Industrial Revolution came like a rock smashing into a great pond. It appeared suddenly, and caused many ripples to spread soon after. Those ripples represent the problems that the Industrial Revolution inflicted on society. Starting in Britain around the 1700s, the Industrial Revolution resulted in many changes that spread throughout Europe and the Americas. Its negative impact on society led to unnecessary stress and disorder to certain groups of people. While there were dreadful effects of the Revolution, the three main results were overpopulated cities, women's struggles, and child labor. Overpopulation was one of the many problems due to the Industrial Revolution. As the number of people increased, there were less and less …show more content…

Women during this time period had to juggle around their job and home life. Each duty in itself entrails many responsibilities. Despite the insanely low income that they received and the way they were treated by others, women had to maintain a steady balance between working many hours of the day and taking care of their family at home. In some cases, the only source of income in a family was a woman. Oftentimes, those burdens were incredibly detrimental to their health and mind. However, women received half the amount of pay than that of men. All because they were seen as working for “pin money” which is extra money to spend on unnecessary things. The stereotypical ideal of women also affected their jobs. Men not only received a higher payroll, but also took supervisory roles from women. There was less of a chance for women to have power in the workplace due to stereotypes. Each piece of evidence leads to women’s struggles being a great consequence of the Industrial …show more content…

During the “Cottage Industry”, children often worked on their parent’s farm or in a family business. However, once all factories were built in, children were encouraged to join the workforce in the cities. The unfortunate truth was that children were a lot easier to take advantage of. In other words, they would be mistreated, paid a lot less, and work in unsafe environments. No matter how much they worked, they never fought back. They did not have common sense of income or fairness. They just followed the orders with no questions asked. Another poor factor of this laboring system was the lack of education. Since children spent all day in factories and little time at home, schooling was out of the question. As the children grew up, they had no concept of anything other than working. All they knew was to work. Lastly, the working conditions were horrifying. The machines were bound to dysfunction and each time a child would have to go in and fix it. There was no saying what would happen to that child if the machine started working all of the sudden. Losing body parts was not unheard of as it was most common among those who either worked in the factories or mining areas. The workspace was always dirty and there was little room to even work in the first place. Thus, child labor was the most cruel form of work caused by the Industrial