Industrial Revolution Essay

798 Words2 Pages

In today’s society, to be even considered as cool, one must learn how to become modern and contemporary. By the day, the elderly pursue the quality of being young again. One disastrous method of doing so is through technology, which leads to arguments and frustration. In the 1800s, the use of modernization played an important role in the possession of power. The first country to start the race to modernization was Great Britain. This period of time was called the industrial revolution. Not only did the industrial revolution bring vital advancements to Great Britain, but also fatal diseases. Therefore, the industrial revolution positively and negatively affected Great Britain and its people. Before the 1800s, about 90% of civilians lived in rural areas and were farmers. To make a living, civilians traded raw goods and foods to neighboring people or local towns (Bellis). To improve the efficiency of farming, new tools were invented and made. This started a chain reaction of inventions. Farmers demanded on new and improved methods of increasing the work efficiency even more. This caused civilians to think more on quantity rather than quality. This idea caused factories to be built. Before the industrial revolution, transportation played a huge role in daily life. The only way to make money was to trade goods, but the only method of transportation was the wagon and horse. It took ages to transport from one place to another. Improved technology brought railroads and canals. These made transportation cheaper and 100 times more efficient. This not only made more money but brought jobs when trying to build the railroads. The canals were overcrowded so the government made laws to improve them (“Industrial Revolution” 1). Overall the in... ... middle of paper ... ...urt, Houghton, Larry S. Krieger, and Linda Black). Typhus, typhoid fever, and cholera were the three main diseases that ended thousands of lives. The major cause for these diseases was the method of ridding waste. Due to the lack of running, waste could not get easily destroyed. A solution for this problem was cess pools. The cess pools that civilians used would sometimes sit for more than two years. The longer the cess pools were used and not cleaned, the more disease spreading bacteria would collect in them. When there were no cess pools available, people had to do it on the streets or sometimes do it in buckets and dump it out on the streets. Also, there were no laws or organized trash system to prevent sanitation, so the city life eventually became the filthy life. In conclusion, the industrial revolution affected Great Britain beneficially and negatively.

Open Document