Manchester Dbq Analysis

With the creation of the large mechanized cotton mill, Manchester became a leading textile manufacturing center. With the growth of the Industrial Revolution, Manchester’s population and city size exploded. But with the growth of cities like Manchester, problems that had once not been an issue were starting to creep into everyday life. As Manchester grew to over 300,00 people, not only did it bring about wealth, but also led to problems with sanitation, home and family life, and a negligence of the working class. The first problem brought about by the growth of Manchester was that sanitation had taken a backseat to the cities priorities. Shown on the maps of Manchester in Document 1, within 100 years, much of the city was packed into a once
In document 5, Alexis de Tocqueville, a visitor from France, states that a person happily walking the streets of the city could not be found. Tocqueville goes on to say that the city is nothing more than a “filthy sewer. Since Alexis de Tocqueville is from France, his description of Manchester is valuable insight, because of their unbiased nature. The same document, document 5, says that the civilized man turns back to being savage in this environment, an observation that Tocqueville believes is brought about by the industrialization and expansion of Manchester. In Edwin Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, or document 6, he tells us that housing problems are affecting a large portion of the population of Manchester. The document tells us that diseases are caused by rotting animals and vegetables that are dwelling within the overcrowded city. Since Chadwick is a public health reformer, he knows how to clean up a city, and may have had a few reforms up his sleeve. He states that humans become reckless, intemperate, and with habits of sensual gratification from living in the conditions that the industrialization of Manchester has brought upon the working man. Chadwick would probably react to the quality of life that the working class lives in by trying to pass a social reform, one that would improve their lives. Document 8,
The newly industrialized Manchester forced employers to overwork and expose their workers to harmful and disgusting environments. In document 7, the words of the socialist and women’s rights advocate, Flora Tristan, show that working conditions in factories were disgusting and terrible. The document states that people must endure immensely long hours in rooms with low ceilings, laboring away, all day long. She also tells us about the particles that workers would often inhale while working for hours in the factories. Tristan says that “the welfare of the workers never entered the builder’s head”. In the excerpt from William Alexander Abram’s journal, document 10, Abram tells how one can see differences of conditions within factories in Manchester. The document tells how successful reforms that were passed and the improvements that were made by them. However, this document is not as reliable as the others because it was written well after most of the other documents had already been written, and by the time this document was written, several reforms had hopefully already taken place. It also only mentions one reform; the Hours of Labor in Factories Act of 1844, which itself was not a heavy reform, only reducing the amount of working hours to ten per day. Document 5, Journeys to England and Ireland, the author believes what is being created by the new industrial society is pure