The Middle Class Life During the Industrial Revolution

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The Middle Class Life during

The Industrial Revolution began in England around the 1780’s. It was mainly based on the cotton industry and subsequently many of the inventions that came out of this period were mainly for producing and manufacturing cotton. Another stage of the Industrial Revolution was based on inventions. This is when most of the luxury goods were produced for the public. The Industrial Revolution is seen by scholars, as noted in A History of Western Society, as basically moderate and evolutionary. Even though the Industrial Revolution was almost inevitable many people took advantage of the new developments that came about and raised their standards of living because of the goods that were previously unavailable.

The Industrial Revolution began in many stages; the first country to experience the dramatic change was England. England was a mercantilist country and the expanding Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century served England well. The rise in the production of canals served England very well since they were about 20 miles from navigatable water. Because of the increase in canals and rivers England was able to easily move big shiploads of iron and coal that were critical raw materials in Europe’s early industrial age.

Agriculture also played an important role in bringing about the Industrial Revolution in England. The English farmers produced a lot of crops; they were only second in productivity to the Dutch. Because of this the food prices were able to stay relatively low and the ordinary English family did not have to spend all of their income on food and they could afford to spend it on manufactured goods. According to A History of Western Society, “The average purch...

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...started there was no looking back. The revolution shaped modern society to what it is today.

Works Cited

- Beebe, Lucius. The Big Spenders. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1965.

- Cowan, Ruth. More Work for Mother. New York: Basic Books, Inc, 1983.

- DuVall, Nell. Domestic Technology, A Chronology of Developments. Boston, Mass.

G.K. Hall & Co, 1988.

- Hollandsworth, James. The Louisiana Native Guards. Louisiana: LSU Press, 1995

- Pursell, Carroll. The Machine in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1995.

- McKay, John. A History of Western Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1995.

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