Working conditions also decreased to a large extent. Children were employed at cheap rates in the factories and made to do dangerous and difficult jobs. Children who worked in the factories were often hurt by the machines or whipped for various things including being late for work or opening a window. The infant children mortality rate in the factories was also very high. The working hours of the normal people were also much longer. Many children worked for 12 hours a day and maybe even more. Working in the factory was very hard and exhausting. The factories were very hot, windows were never allowed to be open, and the factories also had a horrible stench. The children who worked in the mills were also exposed to many health problems and also had a risk of suffocation. The machines also produced a lot of noise and sound. These sounds could affect the children who worked in the mills hearing.
Another thing that made matters worse is that the factories destroyed many family businesses. Most people, before the Industrial Revolution, worked at home making products or growing crops. Now that factories were made the people who produced products were put out of business by the cheaper products which took less time to make.
Many people also lost money from investments they had made in the canals, although the canals had a short time of success, they were quickly overtaken by the invention of trains. Also people who worked in the canals found themselves unemployed and out of work when the trains came.
People were made to pay fees when they used certain roads, called tolls, by local people called Turnpike Trusts. Lots of people were very angry that they had to pay money to use roads that used been free. In some places there were violent protests about the roads and toll houses and toll gates (the place where the tolls were collected) were the target of angry mobs. These protests were called the Rebecca Riots.
The fact that in some places the open field system was demolished angered some farmers since they may have had rich and fertile land which had been taken away and instead they had been given worse land which they did not approve of.
Another factor was pollution- the steam engines that were used in the trains polluted and the use of factories also created pollution.
The Industrial Revolution was an Age of Progress in the following ways-
During the industrial revolution child education improved, people ,generally, had better jobs, medicine improved, the economy improved, average people were generally richer, school was free for certain children, unemployment decreased –80% of people were employed and death rate decreased.
Transport was improved significantly considerably – canals, trains and roads were invented. The invention of canals made transportation of goods a lot easier and quicker. Before the goods were transported using carts and rivers. When canals were invented a type of boat with a flat bottom, called a barge, was used in the canals. The barges were a lot quicker and larger than the carts and were very cheap to run and maintain. A barge only required two people to run it. The fact that barges were quicker, bigger and very cheap to run made them an alternative for carts. An average barge could carry 50 tonnes of coal while the largest cart could only carry 2 tonnes. Between 1791 and 1791 42 canals were made. They cost around £6 million. By the time of 1840 4000 miles of canals were accessible. Rivers were also difficult to use because none of the coal mines were close to the sea or any rivers. This was a massive difference. Barges could also transport a large amount of people very quickly and for a very good price.
Trains were developed after the invention of the steam engine. The trains were first used to transport goods for the factories faster, cheaper and in larger quantities than ever before. The trains were up to 6 times faster than canals at transporting goods, and the trains were not affected by weather, unlike the canals. The factories benefited substantially from this because they could the goods cheaper and faster and to different places which were much further they thought they could go. This created bigger markets and a greater profit margin for the factories. The ordinary people also used the trains. They could now get around the country much quicker and for the first time holidays out of the city were a possibility. Communications in general improved as well. Newspapers could now be sent from London and Manchester, were most of the national dailies are printed, to towns across the country; the postage system became much quicker. On the first year of opening the Liverpool to
Manchester line carried 400,000 passenger as well as many goods. The construction of the railways also brought many jobs to the people – from 1845-9, average employment on the railways was 172,000. The peak of this, in1847, was 256,509.
New roads where made and old roads were repaired by groups of local people called Turnpike Trusts. The new roads made transport a lot quicker and allowed larger carts, which couldn’t have been used before, to be used. It also allowed
fragile goods to be transported. Journey times were decreased a lot.
The old roads were in a very bad condition. They had a poor drainage system and where full holes which where full of stones or water. The roads where also very wet made of wet soil. The new roads where made of tarmac. By the time of 1836 22,000 miles of road had been built by 942 trusts.
The crop rotation scheme was a very important discovery which was made by a man named Charles “Turnip” Townshend. The Crop Rotation scheme allowed crops to be grown everyday of the year. Before this was discovered every field would lay with no crops and nothing would be planted there for a season. The discovery showed that with turnips the soil would become rich again and so every field could be used for every season of the year.
The invention of the seed drill by Jethro Tull also changed a lot in agriculture. The problem with hand sowing the seeds (broadcasting sowing) is that much of the seeds would be eaten by birds because they were exposed to the air. A lot of the seeds were sown in the same area and were not evenly spread. This meant that many of the seeds were wasted. The seed-drill changed this because it spread the seeds out evenly and buried them in the soil so that the birds were unable to eat the seeds.
The use of the enclosure system also changed British agriculture in a positive way. Before the use of the enclosure system farmers had strips of land which were spread out over large distances and which were far away from each other, this was called the open field system. When the enclosure system was put into use the farmers had small fields which contained the same amount of land they had once owned. These fields were surrounded by a fence or a hedge. The enclosure system was a big advantage because before it was used, the farmers’ strips’ were surrounded by other strips which were owned by other farmers. Some of these other farmers did not look after there strips and so the strips neighbouring these strips were sometimes ruined. The enclosure also allowed machinery to be used, unlike the open field system where there wasn’t enough space.
The use of factories revolutionised England and gave jobs to many children as well as adults. It also made the price of certain goods fall. The factories were much faster at making products than anything else as well as cheaper with less labour. Without the factory system the goods that were needed would not have been produced fast enough since the domestic system was far too slow and demand was growing since the rapid rise in population. It also changed England’s economy massively –
Inventions of machines such as the flying shuttle and the spinning jenny also played a part in the industrial revolution. These helped the domestic workers as well as the factories workers by speeding up the production of cotton and the quality and width of the cloth that was produced.
Steam power lead to the development of the train as well as replacing water as power in the factories. It was more efficient than water power as well as more convenient.
The invention of the water frame which changed the way factories where powered by replacing horses. The main advantage of water power over horse power was that it was cheaper. It was also more reliable as the horses would get tired, and would also die after a number of years.
The revolution also changed who was able to vote. Before the revolution only allowed certain people to vote but the qualities that the voters required to vote was relaxed and so many more people got the right to vote.
Personally I think that the Industrial Revolution WAS an Age of Progress since the effects it had on England were mainly more positive rather then negative. The period also paved the way to the British Empire.
