Working Conditions During The Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution is a process which began in Britain in the 18th century and later spread to many other countries and nations. It drastically changed the economy, originally from being one applying hand production methods to the sudden domination of machinery and industry. It masked mankind's many great technological advancements which al have a heavy amount of influence on the way we live today. The technological changes were a major turning point in human history, this mainly included the use of new energy sources such as electricity and coal; new iron and steel production processes; new useful innovations and inventions; the introduction of the factory system- a new organization of work; and booming developments
The working conditions during the Industrial Revolution were simply horrible to say the least, factory workers only had the sunlight which shone through the windows. There were also numerous amounts of machines which did not include much safety precautions and the consequence of that was frequent accidents. The wages were taken advantage by the employers, as already mentioned, people needed every bit of money they could get in order to survive. Child labour was also present during those days and the children often got physical deformities as a result of the lack of exercise and sunlight, as they were also put to work for half the day entirely. As you can see in 'primary source 1', the working area was overcrowded, it lacked proficient amount of sunlight and the whole workplace was covered in filth. As well as children working alongside with the adults and dealing with potentially dangerous machinery. In spite of the cruel working conditions during the time that the Industrial Revolution took place, these efforts were not wasted for nothing. As you can see our now wealthy economy was built upon this and without it things might have turned out much differently and the process
Countless of people moved to the cities mainly in search for jobs, this contributed to the labour side of the Industrial Revolution that has already been discussed, but it also had many negative effects in and of itself. Due to the fact that cities were extremely overcrowded, the sanitation was absolutely terrible. At that time of period, sewage systems were not of common use, diseases spread like wildfire which caused epidemics, water was contaminated and there was not a proper way to purify it yet, furthermore there were also dense smoke and smog emitted by the factories which only worsened the situation. 'Primary source 2' shows it all, as you can clearly see, garbage and human waste were merely just dumped onto the streets. It is also present that houses shared many residents and in fact too much, additionally the sky cannot be viewed clearly due to the pollution caused by smoke and smog. As already mentioned, urbanisation caused the cities to be riddled with problems and issues, and the only benefit that came of that was the boost of labour, which in terms built our current