Industrial Revolution Family

During the late nineteen century industrial revolution, middle and poor class families rigorously toiled long hours within factories and coal mines just to make means end. Rising housing and food costs deterred family planning and caused lower female fertility rates. Poverty forced young children to work in factories, textile mills, and coal mines which led to physical and emotional child abuse. Harsh working conditions with unregulated work hours gave rise to alcoholism and spousal abuse which ultimately led to the collapse of the family unit and community social networks. Although, the industrial revolution brought fantastic benefits for the upper middle class and the rich, the lower middle class and poor families, however, suffered immensely.
The lack of labor laws during the industrial era, exposed children to physical and emotional injury within the nineteenth-century factories thus weakening family unity. Anthracite coal was detrimental to the industrial revolution in United States, boys as young as ten commonly labored within anthracite and bituminous coal mining (Hindman, p. 466). Mother Jones also known as the ““Miner’s Angel,” observed, “The fingers of the little boys bled into the coal”” (Hindman, p.467). Cut, broken, crushed fingers, runaway cars, roof falls, and gas explosions posed dangers to all but the young boys were three times more likely to be injured than the adult men (Hindman, p.468). Bodily injury was not the only concern for children, fatigue was also a factor as some critics complained that young children would be on their feet for hours at a time and walked up to twenty miles in a single day’s work (Hindman, p. 469). Wherever adults labored, children could also be found, the previously mentioned grievances were not just discovered in coal mines or iron factories. Young adults also toiled in textile mills and glass industries. By 1900, the glass industry employed roughly 46,000 adults and more than 7,000 children (Hindman, p.469). That means fifteen perfect of all the factory laborers were young children who worked for mere fractions of adult payments without health compensation or safety concerns. Physical apprehensions aside, the emotional damage of the children is difficult to analyze given the lack of data and statistics from this harsh era on its youth. Children who were sent to work in factories needed to contribute to their families’ already low or poverty income. Children in locations associated with urbanization and industrialization often moved from house to house (Puschmann, p.9). Instability and lack of