Industrial Revolution Dbq

710 Words2 Pages

Between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Europe’s Industrial Revolution diminished the quality of life for the common person; the common person being the working class, who made up most of the population. Work options were limited to factories or poorhouses, and the working class in the factories struggled through terrible, unsafe working conditions, low wages and work hours lasting over ten hours a day, for six days a week. Children of the working class often had to work to help provide income to the family and went through even lower conditions and wages. Not only that, the Industrial Revolution had terrible health effects on the children and on the common people, because of the factories and the urban overcrowding. …show more content…

There was no laws to regulate factories because they were so new, so they could set their own terms for the workers. Not only that, but the workers had no power to demand higher wages, fairer work hours or better working conditions when the Combinations Act was passed. It was made illegal for workers to unionize, or combine, as a group to ask for better working conditions. Most workers worked ten to fourteen hours a day, six days a week, without any paid vacation or holidays. During their work, according to a report commissioned by the British House of Commons in 1832, serious accidents happened often and when they did, the workers were often "abandoned from the moment that an accident occurs; their wages are stopped, no medical attendance is provided, and whatever the extent of the injury, no compensation is afforded" (Sadler). Not only was the job bad, but they were practically forced into the …show more content…

Those whose work in rural areas were put out were forced to move into the urban areas. Everyone trying to find work lead to urban overcrowding. As a result working-class neighborhoods became crowded, dirty, and polluted with poor sanitation and food, contaminated water sources, starvation, and an extremely high infant mortality rate, according to Modern World History’s Interactive Text Book. The factories also produced pollution that hurt the environment and made many people sick or in some cases, dead. Along with the pollution, the factories paid low wages and children were made to help sustain the family by working in a factory. Unfortunately, the children were treated even worse, with lower wages, long hours and terrible

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