The Industrial Revolution: Advantages and Consequences

Negative Aspects

However, the Industrial Revolution produced many negative consequences as well.  For one, factory life was miserable, with workers laboring long hours for low pay.  According to an 1832 edition of London’s The Morning Chronicle, factory workers had eleven-hour workdays with very little time allotted for breaks or rest.  Also, these long workdays in factories were coupled with unsanitary conditions and health hazards.  Said an 1800s German textile worker, “In the weaving sheds that girls work in an atmosphere which, on the third day of my work there, gave me bad lung catarrh; tiny flakes of the twisted wool fill the air, settle on dress and hair, and float into nose and mouth.”  Furthermore, child labor in dismal conditions was commonplace.  Of the female workers in New England Cotton mills, many were girls not over the age of ten.  Consequently, long hours, horrific working conditions and pitiless child labor were negative aspects of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution was a time of great change and innovation.  The entire world was affected by the way people lived and worked.  Entire economies and cultures changed, and results were both beneficial and harmful.  Today’s society continues to evolve and change, so we must be ready for whatever consequences will result from our actions.   

Sources Used For the Writing of This Article:

Ellis, Elizabath Gaynor, and Anthony Esler. Modern World History. Boston: Pearson Prentice      Hall, 2009

 Gatewood, Willard B. and Randall B. Woods. “The Industrial Revolution: The Railroads” from America Interpreted: A Concise History With Readings, Vol. II: Since 1865. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998

 Harriet Robinson, former mill worker, “Early Factory Labor in New England,” 1883

 Holmes, Colin and Sidney Pollard. “Working Conditions of a Female Textile Worker in Germany, 1880s and 1890s” from European Economic History, Vol. 2, Industrial Power and National Rivalry, ed. Sidney Pollard and Colin Holmes. St. Martin’s Press, 1972

 The Morning Chronicle (London, England), newspaper article, 1832