The Industrial Revolution

Written by Davide A., 4H
Pictures research by Alice Z., 4H

It all started with the grown of the population; before this, the population used to craft every type of things by themselves in their own homes, but with this grow the amount of material needed for live well increase and the families needed to create tons of cloth to satisfy more people. This lead the population to sell more cloth outside their homes. This phenomenon caused the creation of the “domestic system”. This system wasn’t perfect though, it was pretty slow and so the cloth amount that was produced wasn’t enough for satisfy the growing population. The demand of this product was so big that three engineers, John Kay, James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright designed machines that could create a great amount of cloth in a minor time. These machines could be really helpful for the families, however they were too big for letting them stay in the homes; as a results, factories were built to host these machines. The machines weren't cheap so only wealthy people could afford them. The agricultural and industrial revolution gave bourgeoisie more money leading them to be more wealthy as so they were really willing to invest in these new factories. The new houses for the machines were located beside rivers, this because they were powered by water. Though the factories weren’t autonomous, they required a lot of workers. As a result the cities grew around them. With these massive producer the prices of the cloth decayed: this process took the name as “mass production”. At the beginning, the biggest problem was that the owners needed to figure out how to use those machines; another problem was the stream, when it would dry, the machines were forced to stop with the work too, so around 1780 an engineer called James Watt invented the steam engine to prevent this problem and use steam over water in these cases. While the time pass new machines were invented, made with iron and coal to run efficiently, making the demand for these two material increased.

Soon the machines conquered all the Britain, producing not only cloth but even furniture, machines and even iron railways. Talking about the workers, they were payed in wages, and because of this payment a lot of farmers move from the countryside to the town; this caused the building of many more houses and the growth of the towns. This process took the name as “urbanisation” and “overcrowding”, this lead the town do an unhealthy period, the sanitations of the cities were very low, and the people could get sick very often leading them even to a death. But it’s not all flowers and rainbows, because of the enormous amount of work search, the salaries of the current workers dropped a lot, and so the working conditions dropped too, they were really unhealthy and harsh. The workers weren’t only adults and parents, but even the children! These two categories were separated for finding more work because they could not afford a school contract for letting the sons go in them. The normal workday of these people was around 15 hours a day, with only Sunday as weekend. All began to change since the spread of cholera that killed both rich and poor people; the government started to worry. In 1848 the Parliament ordered to build pipes for improving the water conditions, and even the workers condition got improve due recent demand. Due the big increase of factories artisans protested against them because they were taking off their work leaving them without one, as a protest the smashed the new machines; the group who protested were known with the name “Luddites” and they got arrested.Other workers were named Chartists because of their demand to improve even more the worker’s condition in the factories. We remember: all men should have rights to vote;members of parliament should be payed so other people could run for offices,and there should be a secret ballot for elections. This movement did not lead at a fast changes, their demands were actually achieved at the end of the 19th century. Working class in this period struggled leading them to a new ideology well known as “communism”. Karl Max studied the exploitation of the proletariat and found capitalists;Marx and Engels wrote the ”Communist Manifesto” that outlined the theory of this revolution such as capitalism and their masters.

Sources:

Bianco, C.- Schmitt, J.M., CLIL. History in English, Pearson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution