The industrial revolution had a negative impact on the lives of the working class. The workers were being fired and they were replaced with machinery and children. The children were cheaper in costs and the machinery had the power to produce things in large quantities. It also had a negative impact on today’s society with climate change. The industrial revolution was the start to a problem that is becoming harder to fix today.
Machinery had an impact because tool such as the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, stem boats, steam engines and steam powered trains were being invented. Less people were needed as it only took 1-2 people to operate some of this equipment. The steam powered equipment was created because the water power they used had a significant problem where there would be a drought, the rivers may also be too offset from the materials and the markets. There weren’t enough rivers and lakes for how fast Britain was growing, Due to the rise in deaths at this time there was a significant increase in birth rates. The world population had grown by 57% and it only grew from there.
As the population grew there became a higher need for transportation. They had to find new ways to transport the materials and all the people. They invented steam boats, steam trains and advancements in roads. They created macadamized roads. These roads were created using crushed granite and greenstone, and it was mixed with tar to prevent dust and to support all of the heavy loads that came along.
Majority of the machinery were held in factories where they could increase production rates, this made advances which may have made materialistic objects better, but it made the lives of the working class harder. The factories had set hours and became an only source of income for people living in more modern, urban, populated areas, where going to work on the farm became quite a distance as well, and the walk there was very exhausting for the children who walked it twice a day probably 6-7 days a week. Living in such an area where there wasn’t much extra space made farming and gardening difficult, so many people went to the markets instead.
The Children became hard workers at young ages, so they could help provide for their family. The youngest working children were only 4 years old, some even younger. They didn’t grow up going to school for education or having a childhood. They were also given some of the worst jobs with poor sanitary conditions. The jobs they were mostly given were working in the Gawber pits, breaking up coal and they were also chimney sweeps because they were smaller and fit into the chimneys better than most adults did. The sanitary conditions in these places became very poor as the workers worked in dampness and filth, through the heat. This sanitary problem caused disease. The children didn’t get paid very well for the work they did, they were helping to provide for their families.
The children who worked in the chimneys sometimes had it the worst as they were threatened to be beaten if they didn’t do their job properly. They typically used a brush and scraper to clean the chimneys. The chimneys were often dark and hard to breathe in, it was a quite difficult job to do as they used their elbows, knees, feet and back to climb up which left sores on them. Their lungs became filled with the dust and dirt. They typically used a brush and scraper to clean the chimneys. The boys and girls occasionally died in the chimney for various reasons. Some of these reasons are because the smaller chimneys were more complex and easier to get trapped in, if they had the tiniest slip they could fall resulting in death, they dies from burns and suffocation from the dust that fell from above them.
Climate change is something that effects our world currently and the industrial revolution is one of the main reasons it is so bad today. Our generation has to come up with solutions for the pasts actions. We have to figure out how to use and recycle renewable energy and try to find new ways to not use fossil fuel. By converting to solar power and wind power is a good start that we are starting to make but to keep our planet alive we have to find new ways to invest our time and money.
The industrial revolution has created a change in lives and it was the children who suffered the greatest with the hard labor. They worked long hard hours in poor sanitary condition through the heat and a lot of the children died because of it. The Revolution caused many negative effects and damage. The people who worked through the revolution might have thought of positive effects of the industrial revolution on the world, but they don’t realize the damage they cause that we have to fix now. The new generation of children are trying to find positive ways to fix the negative impact.
