Effects of the Industrial Revolution
During the Industrial Revolution, women and children’s lives were very rough. “Child labor was integral to the first factories, mines, and mills in England”. “In textile mills, as new power looms and spinning mules took the place of skilled workers, factory owners used cheap, unskilled labor to decrease the cost of production”. The cheapest labor was child labor. Some of the machines were very simple to use, so they had small child work the machines. They also had children squeeze into small, tight spaces. “In 1789, in Richard Arkwright’s new spinning factory, two-thirds of 1,150 factory workers were children”. The factory work had negative results on the children’s health. The older men were as tiny as the children. “Sadler sought to pass a bill through Parliament to decrease child labor and regulate all factories to have a 10-hour work day”. Woman would parent and produce food or goods for the household. Even though most factory workers were women, they were young women. The young women would find their to be husband at work. Once they get married the woman would quit her job and take care of the household. “In difficult circumstances, mothers struggled to make ends meet and keep the family out of the poorhouses. The history of her family shows the worries and stresses of a mother struggling to survive”.
womanandchildren.docx |
Life in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution
The impact of the Industrial Revolution was horrible for women and children. “Children tended to enter the workforce at younger ages”. Children were less expensive to hire and could do certain jobs easier than adults could. Parents would have their children work because whatever the child makes the parents can use to help with living. “Child labourers tended to be orphans, children of widows, or from the poorest families”. “Children were required to work under machines all day, in tight areas to clean and oil”. Some children were so tired they would fall asleep on the machines. “Cruelty and torture was enacted on children by master-manufacturers to maintain high output or to keep them awake”. They became very weak and could barely hold themselves up. Children started working at the age of 4 or 5. “A large proportion of children working in the mines were under 13 and a larger proportion from ages of 13-18”. The mines were not stable but the children were used to crawl in them. Children would get lost in the mines. The air was also “injuring to breathe and often cause painful and fatal diseases”. “The traditional marriage of the laboring class during the Georgian society, women would marry men of the same social status”. Women would marry a man from their job. “Factories put husbands, wives and child under the same conditions and authority of the manufacturer masters”. Mothers who worked in the factories and mills who also had children “would often use narcotics to put their small infants to sleep”. “Mothers would, use Godfrey/opium on their small infants as much as three times a day, one before work, one after in the afternoon tea time, and last one when they get home off work”.
lifeingreatbritainduringtheindustrialrevolution.docx |