Social Consequences
One of the most significant social consequences during the Industrial Revolution was child labor. During the late 1700s up until the Factory Act of 1833, children as young as six were working on average 12-14 hours a day in factories for little to no pay. The conditions in factories were deplorable, and the child workers were frequently forced to work with dangerous, heavy equipment. There were many accidents in these factories that resulted in children being seriously injured and even killed at work. Orphans were often taken advantage of and used as slave labor. The young children who were not old enough to work with the machines, often worked as assistants to adult workers in the factory, who would beat them. Punishments like weighting, where a heavy weight was tied to the child 's neck while he walked up and down the hallway to serve as an example for the other children, were often used when children showed up to work late or did not reach their quotas (Child Labor).
Another consequence of the Industrial Revolution was the result of pollution from all of the new factories. Smog was created by the burning of coal to run the factories, causing many people to develop respiratory issues. The smog …show more content…
Adam Smith, in his book The Wealth of Nations, wrote about the idea that production of wealth would increase if people pursued their self-interest in 1776, just before the Industrial Revolution took off. He went on to describe the division of labor, that is breaking the manufacturing of a product into several easier tasks to be done by separate people, commonly called an assembly line. The Industrial Revolution brought to life Smith 's ideas of division of labor and economic individualism with unrestrained competition, essentially birthing capitalism