Long-Term Effects Of The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution had negative immediate effects but positive long-term effects on the lives of the people. The Industrial Revolution was important because it changed how we produce material goods dramatically making the process faster without using manual labor. Although the Industrial Revolution had a positive effect on the economy the immediate effects of the revolution were the workers living in atrocious conditions, working in unsafe factories, and given unfair wages. The revolution was negative for the people at the time but in the long-term helped create labor unions, government regulations,

The immediate effects of the Industrial Revolution were negative for the workers at the time because the workers had to live in terrible

conditions, dangerous factories and were given low pay. The terrible living conditions are shown in Document 1 when Dickens states “It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long…” This shows that the cities were heavily polluted creating difficult conditions for the people to live in. The smoke and dirty water caused epidemics and made the workers in the city sick. The dangerous conditions are shown in Document 3, a poem by William Blake that depicts child labor. In the third stanza of this poem the narrator states “ That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.” Chimney sweeping was a dangerous job done by children during the industrial revolution that resulted in death and injury for most of the workers. This poem shows how many children had died because of how dangerous their job was. The low wages are shown in Document 5 when the author states “But until this balancing process has run it’s course, what do we do with the thousands who are starving? Will they endure their misery with patience because the statistical tables assure them that they will have bread in a few years?” This document shows the principle of laissez-faire, the idea that “everything will balance out in the end”. Although the workers during the Industrial Revolution more than 16-18 hours a day with few breaks this document shows that they still did not make enough money to buy food. All of these documents show the negative living conditions, hazardous working conditions and the unfair pay that workers had to experience during The Industrial Revolution.