Rapid Changes in Society - The Industrial Revolution: 3D Gallery

In the 19th century, the Enclosure Act was passed allowing for rich landowners to have large areas of land dedicated to farming as part of the Agricultural Revolution.

On top of the Enclosure Act, new inventions such as Jethro Tull’s seed drill and Dutch farming techniques were used by British farmers that increased the production of crops. As a result of the increased crop production, the population of Europe increased greatly.

From the 18th to 19th century Great Britain had a surplus of coal which led to such things as higher quality iron.

This surplus of coal was used for fuel in steam engines that were used to produce purer iron that created higher quality tools. These higher quality tools, in turn, were used to mine more coal and the steam engine was used to pump water out of those mines.

By 1764, James Watt improved the steam engine to be more fuel-efficient and was used to power new machines.

While this new innovative steam engine used less coal it still produced incredible amounts of smoke. This smoke caused many diseases among the population. On the other hand, this steam engine allowed for an increase in manufactured goods through the mechanization of the production process.

In 1764 the Spinning Jenny was invented that increased the speed of textile productions in factories.

The Spinning Jenny was able to speed up the production of textiles as it was able to spin multiple strings at the same time. Along with the Spinning Jenny, another invention called the Flying Shuttle was used to pull a string across the others. Thanks to the increased production the factories were able to meet the growing demand for textiles that grew with the population.

Women hired into factories during the Industrial Revolution often worked in bad and had poor wages.

According to Document D which tells us about the Courtauld Silk Mill Workforce, female workers had a pay range of 2-11 shillings while male workers had a pay range from 2-32 shillings. This shows that women were paid significantly less than men even though there were 899 women hired compared to the 114 men.

Orphaned children were often used as laborers as they had small bodies, were easily exploited for small wages but were often hurt by factory machinery.

Children were the 2nd most hired group of people right under women as proven by the Ages and Numbers of Women employed in selected Lancashire England cotton mills, by age, 1834 graph. The age group of 11-16 made up of around 1100 people following 1200 between the ages 16-21 and this doesn’t even include 100+ below the age of 11. There were also many cases of injury with child laborers. Dr.Ward a doctor that worked in Manchester for 30 years had an account of 47 out of 106 children laborers injured at a school. These injuries included muscle and skin stripped down to the bone and even missing fingers.

Men often struggled with finding jobs and many male miners were afraid of losing their jobs to women who were paid less than them.

Many of these male miners feared their jobs being taken as the business owners wanted cheap labor and were able to find it through women. In many industries, men were outnumbered greatly by women. For example, in the Distribution of Male and Female Workers in Shanghai’s Industries, 1929 chart there are 84,786 men hired in industries compared to 173,432 women. Although they were hired less they could often get higher-paying jobs, move up the ladder in a career or get hired into non-textile industries.

Laborers went on strikes to try and achieve better work conditions and better wages or in women’s cases equal wages.

Strikes were one of the ways that laborers rebelled against factories. Some other ways included violating their contracts, sending letters to newspapers, and even sabotaging factory equipment. In the Courtauld Silk Mill Workforce, while workers pay ranged from 2-32 shillings the factory manager was receiving 1000 pounds per year. With this unequal amount of pay, laborers strived to be paid more.

Bands of laborers emerged that created Unions to create laws that protected workers’ rights, children’s rights and more.

Many of these Unions wrote bills trying to protect the rights of workers. Many of these Unions were able to pass laws that gave compensations for on the job injuries, limiting work hours of children, and restricting younger children from working.

The circumstances of the Industrial Revolution led to political parties to form such as Socialism.

While Socialism was a political party favored by many laborers as it was the idea of a more equal society with welfare through cooperation there were other political parties such as Capitalism. Capitalism was the idea that competition would improve society and social classes would be created by wealth.

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Rapid Changes in Society - The Industrial Revolution