Industrial Revolution Positive Effects

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The Industrial Revolution was a massive change for society and has many positive and negative effects. Some of these negative effects include bad living conditions, dangerous workplaces, and child labor. One negative is poor living conditions for the working class. A vast number of poor struggle to survive in foul smelling slums. They packed into tiny rooms in tenements, or multistory buildings divided into apartments. These tenements had no running water, only community pumps. There were no sewage or sanitation systems (chapter 19 p 618). With this booming Revolution there was a need for natural resources like never before, because of the high demand many coal and iron mines increase production, this resulted in explosions, flooding, and collapsing tunnels due to the lack of safety precautions taken (chapter 19 p 619). Another problem and negative was child labor, with jobs taking less strength and skill children would get a job to start providing for their families. Some kids only 8 or 9 years old would work shifts up to 12 hours long. nimble fingered and quick moving, they changed spools in the hot and humid textiles mills where sometimes they could not see because of all the dust. They also crawled under machinery to repair …show more content…

A big positive was more job opportunities, with a growing demand for mass goods, new factories open, which in turn created more jobs (chapter 19 p 620). Along with more jobs came better wages as companies competed for skilled workers, salaries increased. Working class people now had enough money left over after paying rent to buy food, newspapers or even go to the music Hall (chapter 19 p 620). Lastly, a positive was improved transportation, with a new job that paid well and the cost of railroad travel falling in price meant now people could visit family and friends in other towns(chapter 19 p