Positive And Negative Effects Of The British Industrial Revolution

During the late 1700’s, Britain's villages were isolated. This was due to the poor condition of roads and inability to recover and spread news. Being so, everything was made handmade which did not produce that much income and wasted time. The British Industrial Revolution then began in the late 1700’s. The Industrial Revolution lead to various inventions. Such inventions aided people, like the railroad that allowed people to migrate to the cities. The Revolution brought about both negative and positive outcome towards the economy and society. Some may think that these positive effects outweighed the negative, yet, that is false. The Industrial Revolution brought more negative effects than positive. Three negative effects from the Industrial Revolution are child labor, harsh working conditions, and unhygienic living standards.
One negative effect of the
British Industrial Revolution is child labor. The Industrial Revolution brought about plenty of new jobs in places such as coalmines and factories. However, certain jobs required the use of small body/hands to help. In order for these jobs to work, children were brought in from ages as young as eight. These sorts of jobs were quite dangerous and unfair though. Document 1 states, “ Sadler: ‘When did you first begin to work in mills?’ Cooper: ‘When I was ten years of age.’ Sadler: ‘What were your usual hours of working?’ Cooper: ‘We began at five in the morning and stopped at a nine in the night.’ Sadler: ‘What time did you have for meals?’ Cooper: We had just one period of forty minutes in the sixteen hours. That was at noon’ sadler: ‘When your hours were so long, did you have any time to attend a day school?’ Cooper: ‘We had no time to go to day school.’” This conversation establishes the point that young children were given jobs that enforced long work hours with one short break. This job and it's long hours left no time for children to go to school leaving them with an inability to read and or write. The Industrial Revolution was overall more negative because child labor led to children with no education and forced to work long hours everyday.
Another negative result from the industrial revolution was barbarous working conditions. The factory/coalmines were very dangerous environments for adults and children who would work in these facilities. Besides the risks they would take, the workers had to deal with a fourteen to sixteen hour long work deal with one forty minute break for dinner. Document 2 states, “ Sadler: ‘A doctor has told you that you will die within the year, is that correct?’ Hebergam: ‘I have been told so.’ Sadler: ‘Did he tell you the cause of your death?’ Hebergam: ‘He told me that it was caused by the dust in the factories and from overwork and insufficient diet.’ Sadler: ‘To what was your brother’s death attributed?’ Hebergam: ‘He was cut by a machine and he died of infection.’” This quote is also another conversation taken from an interview. In the interview, Hebergam tells Sadler the tragic news of his expected death and the loss of his brother all due to the conditions they were put through while working in the factory. The industrial revolution is was altogether negative because the horrid conditions in the factories led to many serious illnesses and sometimes death. One last negative consequence of the industrial revolution was the unhygienic and cramped living standards.
Besides the serious circumstances in the factories, the workers had to deal with various issues involving their homes. There was very little housing, so workers would have to cramp five to six people into one room. Each floor also contained one bathroom for the four or five rooms on it. Besides the space issue, there were extreme issues with sanitation. Garbage and waste was strewn all among the streets and homes. Document seven states, “The streets are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse. … One walks along a very rough path on the river bank to reach a chaotic group of little, one-story, one-room cabins… In front of the doors, filth and garbage abounded.” This piece of evidence is describing the excessive amount of filth that surrounded the streets and homes of the workers. It also provides sense of how confined they were. The industrial revolution in general was a negative time because the unsanitary and crowded living conditions caused illnesses and even death for
workers.