Social Effect

The Industrial Revolution brought profound changes to society.  More and more peolple migrated from the countryside to the cities, causing urban populations to soar.  These cities were little kingdoms of their own.  The rich lived in spacious, luxurious houses in affluent areas of the city. They had oppurtunities to visit beautiful parks, watch ballet and listen to the opera, and simply relax with a cup of tea and the daily paper.  They worried little about their workers or about the poor in general, believing them to be responsible for their own predicament and unable to get ahead because of ignorance and laziness. 

For the working classes, life was almost living death.  As a rule, they got up at four or six in the morning.  A fourteen, sixteen, or eighteen hour day was common, broken only by three half- hour breaks for breakfast, lunch, and supper. Bosses often forced workers, especially women and children, to work straight through the night and into the next day, paying them no more for the extra time.  When they did return home, the workers had no better prospects to look forward to.  They lived in poorly built tenement houses, crowded into tiny apartments which, more often than not, had a single bed to serve an entire family.  There was no running water, no electricity, only a single pump in the common square which pumped water contaminated with the garbage that rotted in the streets, the human waste that was thrown into the gutters, and the other filth in the river from which it was taken. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, and smallpox decimated the slum populations.  In London's notorious East End slum, the death toll was one half higher than those in the affluent West End, where the rich lived. 

To escape from their abysmal and hopeless existence, many workers turned to drink and drugs.  Some London workers drank themselves literally to death, their bodies being thrown out to rot in the streets or the river.  Mothers gave squalling babies opium to quiet them, and children were turned out of the house to fend for themselves in the dangerous streets.  There, as Dicken's Oliver Twist shows, they became victims of crime, being hired to commit theft or murder.  In Paris, "beggarly children, laughing ferociously" watched a young man beaten to death by a mob as "the crowd, like a circus audience... feasted its eyes on the butchery without the slightest evidence of revulsion" (Burchell 75). 

Conditions in the factories of the Industrial Revolution were also dangerous and difficult.  Besides long hours, workers operated the same machine day after day in an iron routine that caused boredom and fatigue and thus increased the chance of injury.  This was already high, since machines were not equipped with safety devices because they cost extra money.  Workers lost fingers and toes, limbs, and sometimes their lives to the merciless cogs of the machines they operated.  Factory bosses were also merciless. If a worker was hurt and unable to work, he was fired and another hired to take his place.  Bosses had little contact with their workers, viewing them more as parts of machines than human beings, to be altered and changed on their whim.  Mine and mill owners and factory bosses made few appearances in their mines or on their factory floors, preferring rather to collect their money in stocks and bonds away from the bustle and dirt of the workplace.  The workers lives off the job, they felt, were the worker's own responsibility and thus worker's compensation and job security were nonexistent. 

Besides abysmal living standards and dangerous working conditions, the Industrial Revolution brought other challenges as well.  The separation between employer and employee, boss and worker, capital and labor, "faced each other over acraoss and impassable chasm" (Burchell 75).  The great British politician and prime minister Benjamin Disraeli remarked that Europe had two nations, "the Rich and the Poor.  We must prepare for the coming hour.  The claims of the future are represented by suffering millions" (Burchell 76).  This great difference in wealth and power would prompt workers to band together to force bosses and politicians to make changes, to make the lot of the poor more liveable, and to give them a voice in society and government.  Thus were born the labor unions which have plagued industry to this day.  The concept of wealth distribution and elimination of class distinction would be taken up by Karl Marx and other radicals who not only would question the whole capitalist system, but whose views would lead to the great revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that would sound the death knell for the empires and monarchies of Europe and would seek to establish "nations of the people."

All this having been said, the Industrial Revolution also brought great improvements to people's lives.  More farmers were able to leave the copuntryside for the cities where there job oppurtunities and chances for success increased.  As need for greater numbers of mass produced goods heightened due to the rising population, new factories opened.  Reformers voices gained workers the right to vote, better living conditions, higher wages, and safer working environments in factories.  As wages rose and the cost of railroad travel fell, many workers had many left over to enjoy a night at the ballet or opera, priveleges formerly reserved solely for their employers, and to visit relatives in other towns.  Workers horizons spread beyond the narrow scope of their town or factory, and opened new roads of oppurtunity.  Thus, though it began with great suffering and hardship, 

social injustice and corruption of every sort, the Industrial Revolution brought great improvement and more material benefits for more people.  This process continues to our present day.

Bibliography:

For Images:

1. Photo of Karl Marx: Burke, Barry.  <www. infed.org/images/people/marx.samuels-coll>

2. Engraving: Hogarth, William. Gin Lane. 1751. Guildhall Library, London. <www. telegraph.co.uk/...2003/06/11/babrit11.jpg> 

For Text:

1. Burchell, S.C. Age of Progress. Time, Inc, New York, 1966.

2. "Hardships of Early Industrial Life." World History: The Modern Era. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.