More handpicked essays just for you.
Impact of industrial revolution on urban life
Industrial revolution city life
Industrial revolution city life
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Impact of industrial revolution on urban life
Manchester is described as an ugly city that has no beauty and is so filthy and foul it can turn a good man into a savage[doc 2&5].One person questions if the progress was worth the physical suffering [doc 7]. Document 11 shows a painting from The Graphic of the horrible pollution in Manchester where the peasants live. Even though there were negative reactions there was also positive reactions. Many of the nobles agreed that the working conditions improved over the years[doc 10]. Some however, agreed that it should not matter how working conditions are because the peasants have always lived terrible lives[doc 3].Others who do not agree with the others agreed that Manchester was truly beautiful because of the tremendous growth of industry[doc 9].
Not only did their complaints raise wages and decrease working hours, they also eventually advanced medical care, increased literacy rates in the city, and made the city more sanitary. This resulted in healthier, happier people who lived longer and prospered. Not only did people become healthier, the children that they had were also healthier at birth, making it so parents didn’t need to have as many children in fear that some would die at a young age. Overall, Manchester vastly improved as a city throughout the 18th and 19th century; reforms were made, people became happier, and education spread throughout the city, but not before workers protested and died young because of their working and living conditions. The story of Manchester truly proves that in order to improved, you must first experience the lowest point; without the low point, you can never truly understand or experience
As explained in “Document 3”, the working class in England greatly expanded as many people migrated from rural areas seeking job opportunities and higher wages in urban centres. The increase in available workers was vital to England’s industrialisation, as it enabled factories to operate at a higher capacity, further producing more goods. Not to mention, the mass migration encouraged the development of industrial cities. Moreover, the worker’s innovative approach to production was a crucial aspect of industrialization, “I have seen a small manufacturer of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them performed two or three distinct operations. They could.make among them.upwards of 48,000 pins in a day.”
The Industrial Revolution began in England during the late 1700’s. This movement introduced improved agricultural methods, textile industries, and the export of machine-made goods. Because the agricultural business was finding more efficient ways to manage their products, the working class decreased in this field (Document 7). This extreme drop in numbers led to people whining for a steady, supportive job. Luckily for the thousands of unemployed, the demand for factory workers increased (Document 2).
It was filthy; chockful of human waste, smoke, and sickness. Robert Southey, an English Romantic poet, wrote after witnessing Manchester’s decline, that industrialization led Manchester to become a place where one only hears, “the everlasting din of machinery, and where; when the bell rings, it is to call the wretches to their work instead of their prayers” (Document #1). It is true that as people moved away from their home churches and to the cities, church attendance declined. The duty of work became constant and life was miserable for many of the working class. Southey, as a romantic, is expectedly biased against industrialization because of the romantic nostalgia and sentimentalism towards the past.
As industrialization swept through England and hit upon Manchester, the city experienced exponential growth as formerly rural workers flocked to the city to seek employment in the new factories. This brought significant growth of the city in terms of population, infrastructure, and economy. However, the expansion witnessed by Manchester was not without its issues. As a result of this period of heightened expansion, it may have been true that the economy and infrastructure grew, but what grew was of a poor nature, with the streets narrow and crowded, the buildings produced en masse, and the living conditions generally poor in terms of health, food, and at times, money. Furthermore, the city became greatly polluted, exacerbating issues of health.
The Industrial Revolution completely reinvented society in the 1800s. This change would not have arisen though without the outcome of the Agricultural Revolution in which new farming methods created greater farm output that decreased death rates. One of these methods was the enclosure, the fencing off of land by rich landowners for more efficient cultivation of the fields. The enclosure movement pushed farmers off of their land, thus forcing them to move to the cities in search of work. Urbanization supplied the work force for the new factories that generated industrialization.
The Civil War had concluded and America was on the path to rebuilding itself as a single nation. America experienced many changes such as large amounts of urbanization and industrialization, while also taking their own chance at imperialism. America’s urbanization and industrialization was a result of the Civil War. Many individuals began transitioning from rural areas to urban areas by the beginning of the twentieth century. These urban areas began to experience new inventions such as the automobile, highways, and entertainment such as sports and film.
The Gilded Age was an amazing time for innovation and growth for America technologically speaking. There were several new advancements that took place during this period such as; steel, kerosene, oil, AC electricity along with DC electricity. Steel was a humongous part of the Gilded Age, this invention allowed many other creations to happen. Steel helped cause the greater production of railroad tracks and the rise of skyscrapers in big cities. These two factors put Urbanization and moving west into play.
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’
During the 19th century in Great Britain, there was a sudden rise in machines and new inventions that would simplify many difficult jobs for humans. Many workers were forced off farms and into factories to help these machines work. Poor farmers were the only ones who were forced into working in the factories because they had no money. This sudden change in the way society functioned brought up many different arguments from people who had very radical opinions. Although industrialization improved society in many ways, for example, the increase in money and food, it also derailed most of society.
After the Civil War, the United States (U.S.) started industrializing in the early nineteenth century, bringing revolutionary revisions to America’s society and its industries. The abundance of natural resources, new inventions, and continuously immigrating workers, along with the creation of the free enterprise system and a spur of railroads, enabled the country to industrialize successfully. Soon America’s small towns were transformed into large cities filled with factories. In the late 1800s, a period known as the Gilded Age came about, suggesting that America’s industrialization and urbanization had two facets. On the surface, the U.S. showcased golden success and prosperity, while the interior aspect began to unveil the unsettling realities
In Robert Marks’ “The Industrial Revolution and Its Consequences, 1750-1850” Marks goes on to describe the end of the biological old regime and the beginning of Industrial Revolution that mechanized the world. In the old regime, people’s necessities all came exclusively from the land. However, in a revolution powered by coal, surplus goods could be manufactured in industries. This allowed the population capacity of the world to increase and a different set of challenges unseen in the old regime to arise.
Discipline of urban geography during 1940’s in United States and in Western Europe noted the gradual changes on the city fringes. This led to starting up a field of urban studies which started focusing on the processes that shaped peri urban fringes a transitional space that catered to the meeting of urban and rural spaces. The term urban fringe was used for the first time by American geographers describing changes in the population composition of Louisiana, and during the 1940s and 1950s it was widely adopted in the academic literature, under the meaning of an area where the suburban growth was taking place and where urban and rural uses of the land were mixed, forming together a transition zone between city and countryside.
Kingsley Davis, who is said to have pioneered the study of historical urban demography wrote his “The Urbanization of the Human population” in 1965. In his essay, he states that the history of the world is in fact the history of urbanization and then begins with description of how tiny European settlements grew slowly through the Middle Ages and the early modern period. According to him, urbanization occurred mainly because of rural-urban migration and not the other factors that people believe. He discusses how the production levels of this time period, due to the feudal system, used to favor an agrarian culture and then how the process of urbanization intensified during the 1900s, especially in Great Britain. He then clarifies the difference between urbanization, which he describes as the process of a society becoming more urban-focused, and the growth of cities i.e. the expansion of their boundaries.
