Economic and Social Changes That Occurred During The Industrial Revolution 

While economic and social changes have occurred throughout history, certain time periods have seen extraordinary developments. One such time was the Industrial Revolution in England. There were developments on the way of life mostly the economic and social ways of life. People completely switched from a way of working in their homes and farms to working under very harsh conditions in factories. As for the way it affected the people, these changes all affected women, children, and men, in ways that are impressively out of mind.

There were now social classes from those at the bottom who struggle to live to those who owned factories and such things that were wealthy enough to solve problems but never did. This new separation of classes obviously leads to the realization that there were now many economic changes brought by these other changes in ways of producing goods and ways of life. With all of these documents put together, we can clearly see how both major positive and negative, economic and social changes combined as one and led to the formation of the Industrial Revolution.

The way that people lived and worked during the Industrial Revolution changed very drastically, for the working class their way of living and working was completely unfair, dangerous, and unhealthy compared to the way that the wealthy would live at the time. The danger of working in these factories is exposed from the view of a worker who has seen it happen. (Doc. 3)“…Told me that it was caused by the dust in the factories and from overwork and insufficient diet.

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” “He was cut by a machine and died of infection.” These two pieces of evidence coming from the voice of a worker in the factory clearly show that the conditions that these workers worked under were very harsh. Most importantly this is significant because even though everyone was aware of the conditions that these people worked under, nobody that could do anything to try and prevent it. The living conditions of the working class are described as “disgraceful unhealthy slums” and “…disgusting conditions.”(Doc. 6B)

Just by reading these two pieces of the documents we can already see how horrendous the conditions that these workers lived in were. In this same document we can see that once again, the wealthy owners of these factories just cared about the money being made, not the well being of their workers. “And yet there is a great deal of money being made here.” This feeling of unfairness was very bad for the well being of the society overall because nobody except those who were at the top of the social order, we’re happy with their living conditions and eventually this could be the cause of revolt within the workers. Obviously, it can be noticed that the social changes caused a positive and negative affect towards this all. Machinery was a good social change during the Industrial Revolution. It changed many people’s lives by producing products much quicker with less money and greater accessibility. The mule is an example of the good use of machinery. It was powered by water and spins thread resulting that Edmund Cartwright’s automatic power loom weave thread into clothes represented by Document 4.

It affected their society a lot because it saved a big amount of time and money. For a matter of fact, Machinery was used for its good use but there were the bad also. It was life-threatening and cleaningness wasn’t really the number 1 priority, The assembly line was a good source of social change because the workers would get their jobs done quickly by having all different numbers of workers working on different tasks to be able to finish at the end of the day. Containing workers that do all variety of work at the same time is an increased productivity. Explaining the domestic system gives us the understanding of the assembly line with the illustrations of the sheep and the use of the words of all groups are working on the opposite thing then the other like it is demonstrated in Document 1. The assembly line affected their society in the ways as to not having to work for the day and night and can actually be with their families. It reduces the number of products for a day.

Due to machinery, productions are now cut to a short amount of time. As economic activities in many societies moved from agriculture to manufacturing, production shifted from its traditional locations in the home and the small workshop to factories. A large amount of the population relocated from the countryside to the towns and cities where manufacturing centers were found. The overall amount of goods and services produced expanded dramatically, and the proportion of capital invested per each worker grew. New groups of investors, business people, and managers took financial risks and reaped great rewards. The existing system could not keep up with the demand for goods. More consumers had sufficient income to afford exotic goods such as Cotton cloth and China. These were the rising “middle class”. Traders realized that if they could produce goods in greater quantity at a cheaper price, they could find more consumers and make a higher profit.

Overall, the Industrial Revolution was one of the many times of drastic changes and booming of ideas in history. Changes that would affect the most important areas of societies from the day-to-day life to the economic parts of England. As always, there are positive and negative effects on every cause. In this case, most of these effects were negative. That was because the majority of the population, like always, was composed of the lower class people, therefore most of the population lived under very disgusting and bad conditions. Also since this level in the social class was composed of the working class, they were under very harsh and forced working conditions, which affected both their mental and physical health. Unquestionably as for the small amount of the population at the top of the social class they would definitely see many positive changes coming their way, yet they still never paid attention to the conditions of those under them. At this point in time, the wealthy wanted everyone else to believe and follow the same mindset that they followed, this built up a sense of absolutism throughout the populations. This type of sensor is not right because everyone has different life experiences and nobody other than the people who are going through these things themselves, should be told to support a cause.