The Industrial Revolution was a time of great prosperity. During this period, factories were popularized, new inventions poured into the market, and we saw the introduction of the middle working class. This all came at a price as the conditions were rough for the workers, and countless other problems arose. The Industrial Revolution brought about great innovations, but doing so had negative effects on the environment and people.
The Industrial Revolution had many positive effects, such as new inventions that were much more efficient than humans at what they do.The sheer amount of innovation from 1846-1896 was incredible. This included people using telegraphs to telephones within 30 years, Bessemer converter for steel to the first automobiles …show more content…
Factory owners often did horrible things to their workers. They would get strapped, which was getting whipped with a belt, and hours were very long. They would get little to no meals, got there as early as four in the morning and sometimes worked until the sun set. (Doc. 4) Child labor was practiced a lot amongst factories as a cheap and plentiful workforce. They were treated like adults. One factory worker, Elizabeth Bentley, reported being strapped every day when working as a child. (Doc. 5) Life outside the factory wasn’t much better, the streets were narrow, the houses were old and rotting, and people often raised pigs right in the town square, and they would produce a terrible stench as well as biological waste. (Doc. 3) Since the factory houses and the community was essentially controlled by the factory owners, they would often exploit the workers, making them high prices in the shops, and had control of their personal lives and affairs. There was even a “factory credit” system, where your wage was paid in these. “Factory Credits” could only be used in the factory store, which the owner had complete control over. (Doc. 2) The factory environment was horrid, and because of that people didn’t live very long, and the constantly suffered whilst working. The houses posed safety hazards, and the factories produced massive amounts of pollution, all which caused many people to become ill and develop new diseases, which are negative