The industrial revolution in Great Britain was a surge of invention and entrepreneurship. Many factors, including their great agricultural revolution, extensive mineral resources, and government’s loose role, caused Great Britain to be the leader of the revolution. New inventions like the steam engine caused a great influx in certain markets, for example, the cotton industry went from producing 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton in 1760 to 366 million pounds in 1840. The effects of the industrial revolution on Great Britain were the expansion of cities due to the huge increase in factories, the mistreatment of the new social class of laborers, and the reform of the hygiene standards in factory cities.
The first effect …show more content…
A huge part of the growing workforce was child labor. The Sadler Committee, the audience of the testimony in document 2, was a parliamentary committee gathering information on the conditions of factories. In this particular testimony Joshua Drake explicitly states that if they must deduct pay from the children to pay other workers then he approves it. In document 3 the Factory Acts, which were part of a parliamentary push for reform after the investigations that led to shocking discoveries, states “no person under the age of eighteen shall be employed in any such mill more than twelve hours in one day”. These laws were the first to restrict the use of child labor, enacted in 1833, a mere 73 years since the beginning of the revolution in 1760. The emergence of the new social class came with its own complications. There was a growing divide amount the wealthy and the laborers, as shown in document 7, the illustration of a railroad line. This illustration shows the wealthy passengers in luxurious, covered cars, while the laboring classes rest in the opened passenger cars. This separation was a part of everyday life during the …show more content…
The growing filth and the fear of spreading diseases cause many to push for and support the reforms of the cities. These such reforms are shown in document 5, a work by Edwin Chadwick the secretary of the Poor Law Commission, who studied the conditions of factories and the parts of the cities inhabiting their workers. His research changed his point of view and inspired him to push for reform. As stated, “arrangements for the protection of public health” and “securities should be taken that all new local public works are devised and conducted by responsible officers qualified by the possession of the science and skill of civil engineering”, Chadwick was a serious reformer and pushed for piped water and underground sewers. The reasons for reforms were evident in document 6, a writing by Friedrich Engels. He discusses the place he calls the south bank of the Irk, “The whole side of the Irk is built in this way, a planless, knotted chaos of houses, more or less on the verge of uninhabitableness, whose unclean interiors fully correspond with their filthy external surroundings.” These words show the thoughts of British citizens regarding the state of these cities. They saw the filth, feared the spread of disease, and supported the