The Industrial Revolution and Its Impact on Living Conditions
The views of factory owners can be drawn from documents such as factory rules and direct interviews with factory owners. One document entitled Factory Discipline in Berlin is a set of rules form a German factory in 1844. It talks about how if a worker is 2 minutes late to work, they will lose 30 minutes pay and if they are more then 2 minutes late, they lose pay for about 3 hours. This is not completely outrageous, because the factory owner wants his workers working on time, but the penalty from the wages is a little large for such a small infraction. It also states that workers must work until the finishing bell is rung, but this is not out of the ordinary even by today’s standards, after all, it is what a job is. The document says many times that for very small infractions like chatting with other workers or smoking, the workers can be fined 5 or 10 coins. It seems unfair for the workers to be fined for every infraction, without having a chance to explain his actions. Another unfair clause states “A free copy of these rules is handed to every workman, but whoever loses it and requires a new one, or cannot produce it on leaving, shall be fined 2Ã?½ silver groschen, payable to the sick fund.” This rule is mainly in place so that the workers cannot say “well, I did not know about that rule.” But it still seems a little unfair to be fined for not having a piece of paper. In the document “Excerpts from the Sadler Committee
“One of the interviewees is a former overseer in a factory, although not an owner, he worked with the owner to enforce punishment and maintain productivity. He talked about how the treatment of the workers was bad and that they were forced into overtime to meet the goal of production. The overall view of the factory owners is that the workers are a lower form of life.
The views of the factory workers can be taken from the interviews by the Sadler Committee, a group put together by the British parliament in the mid 1800’s to research the status of factory workers in Britain. The committee talked with people who worked when they were kids, teenagers and adults. In all of the interviews, the subject talked about how the working conditions were bad and dangerous. Many of the workers talked about being beaten. It seemed like there were horrible conditions, but many of the workers would have starved to death without their jobs at the factories, as miserable as they were, the jobs kept food on the table and a fire in the fireplace for the laborers.
To see the changes in the world caused by the industrial revolution, one can look at the article, “The Philosophy of Manufacturers” it talks about how mechanization changed both the way people thought and how people got their goods. It states that industrialization gave better quality goods, goods that before had been impossible to make, like steel, and more goods for the same amount of time. These changes were brought about manly because of three reasons, firstly, the use of coal allowed the diminishing stockpiles of wood to be replaced by a hotter burning and extremely abundant material. Secondly, iron was now able to be melted faster and in greater quantities, the chemistry of iron was evolving and new alloys were being invented. The third is the development of the steam engine, this allowed for large factories to be located in the middle of a city, not next to whatever streams could power the heavy machinery needed to create higher quality goods. These changes allowed more people to get more, better and newer goods.
The social change brought about can be derived from two documents, “Guild Regulations in the Prussian wool industry” a description of a guild in the mid 19th century, and “The Chimney Sweeper” a poem written by William Blake about a chimney sweep in 19th century England. The changes brought about were that workers felt a sense of unity and formed guilds to unify themselves against unfair employers and bad working conditions. We still have guilds and unions in our modern times. There was also some short-term negative social impact, for instance the chimney sweeps of England were small children who would sweep chimneys, be covered in and inhale large amounts of suit and often become sick. They were paid little for a lot of work; it was a horrible social situation for these children.
Although there were small, short term setbacks in the working condition and treatment of the factory workers, there was also radical improvement in technology and in business philosophy. The distribution of goods all around the world on a massive scale also improved the lives of millions of people, and the people positively affected far outweighed those who were hurt by the industrial revolution. In summation, although there were instances of mistreatment, there were also many positives, and the overall quality of the living condition for people on earth increased.
