The Industrial Revolution and the Working Class

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how the Industrial Revolution in Europe, more specifically, in Britain, was a curse for the working man. It focuses on living, working, and other poor conditions encountered by peasants. It looks at how it paid the least possible wages and how workers were required to pay for their own food and homes, how child labor was abused, and how the invention of machines led to the depersonalization of companies and families.

From the Paper:

"One way, in which the Industrial Revolution negatively affected the working class, was the abuse of children for labor. One instance of extreme abuse of children was in the mines. The mines preferred child workers rather than adults because children were smaller and therefore the mine's owner didn't have to pay for constructing large tunnels and extra timbering. Cramped into dark, filthy and damp tunnels with only rags for clothes, hundreds of children actually died due to the conditions that they worked in. Children were often paid less than adults and put in other horrible conditions that some adult workers didn't even have to face."

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