Effects of the Industrial Revolution
The living conditions during the Industrial Revolution changed for many people. For example, “for skilled workers, the quality of life decreased a great deal in the first 60 years of the Industrial Revolution”. Skilled workers tended to “their own gardens, worked on textiles in their homes or small shops, and raised farm animals”. They became their own bosses. The men each had a “watch in their pockets” while the “women dressed in their own fancy”. “After the Industrial Revolution, the living conditions for skilled weavers significantly deteriorated”. They could not live at their own pace or make money from “gardening, spinning, or even communal harvesting”. Skilled workers lives started to get worse and worse. The working-class citizens of the Industrial Revolution, spent most of the day working and did not have very much “energy, space, or light to play sports or games”. For the poorest of poor people the living conditions were far worse. “The Poor Law of 1834 created workhouses for the destitute”. Families separated entering the ground. They lived as if they were “inmates in a prison”. They also had to work every day. Even though the conditions were very bad the population of inmates increased which was viewed as a “sign of desperation amongst the poorest of the poor”.
livingconditions.docx |
Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living
The real wages had a drastic change during the Industrial Revolution. The real wages increased. Two men, Charles Feinstein and Lindert-Williamsons, produced two series of the real wages. “Charles Feinstein produced an alternative series of real wages based on a different price index”. In his series, “the real wages rose much more slowly than in Lindert-Williamsons”. During the Industrial Revolution, “wages were higher in English cities than in the countryside, but rents were higher and the quality of life was lower”. Some people found that the “rise in real wages in the factory districts could be explained as compensation for poor working and living conditions”. Also “the impossibility of measuring happiness forces them to equate the standard of living with monetary measures such as real wages or real income”. Real income is adjusted money income for the cost of living. The British income for each person rose from $400 to $800 between 1760 and 1860. People “not to have made the lowest-income people better off, the share of income going to the lowest 65 percent of the population would have had to fall by half for them to be worse off”.
industrialrevolutionandthestandardofliving.docx |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The quality of life decreased for rapidly for the poor during the Industrial Revolution. For example, “Wages for those who labored in factories were low and working conditions could be dangerous and monotonous”. Workers with little skill were easily replaced and had very little job security. Another example is, “Children were part of the labor force and often worked long hours and were used for such highly hazardous tasks as cleaning the machinery”. The children worked all day but did not get paid as much as the adults. In the early 1860s, one-fifth f the employees were under the age of 15. “Industrialization also meant that some craftspeople were replaced by machines”. Disease starting to become common. The living conditions were very unsanitary. Many new people arrived causing the living areas to be inadequate, overcrowded, and polluted. “Britain’s working-class began to gradually improve by the later part of the 19th century, as the government instituted various labor reforms and workers gained the right to form trade unions”.
workingcondition.docx |