GKE Task 4

A. Justify your choice of the two most significant social consequences of the First Industrial revolution.
The first social consequence of significance was the use of children as workers in both the farmlands and in the cities. It is amazing to me what some people will do to further development and their own wealth. Children were used as cheap labor and worked long hours. Factory owners took advantages of poor families by offering jobs to families, however with menial pay. Some families were forced to take what they could get. Often time children were just taken from their homes to work in the factories. Parents had little or no recourse against these kinds of tactics. The children themselves were forced to work in sub-standard, filthy and often dangerous conditions as this was also the time of machinery being introduced in factories. Beatings were commonplace for these children. Children worked out of fear. It is unbelievable that that in this day and age forms of child labor in other countries still exists.
The Second social consequence of significance was urbanization. People and families in need of work flocked and naturally gravitated to the cities that house the factories. Desperately looking for work these people would be happy with any job. Much like with child labor these people were that advantage of with minimal pay and deplorable conditions. Because of the amount of people looking for jobs, job security was almost non-existent, you could just be replaced. The living conditions at that time were also a problem. Because of the enormous amounts of people looking for work there was a shortage on housing. Cities had to expand upwards making more floors on existing buildings or redesign buildings and create smaller rooms. Another issue some of these cities would have would be with sanitation. The removal of garbage and human waste systems