The Struggles and Inequality During the Industrial Revolution in England

A revolution is when a system revolves and changes into something new and hopefully improved. But when it is a society that is changing quickly people and places can get swept away and a lot of damage can be done. During the Industrial Revolution in England a huge part of the country that was affected were the workers. The industrial revolution worker was subject to child labor with no schooling, low wages (especially for women), and the horrible conditions with terribly long hours.

During the industrial revolution the children of the era were suffering greatly, not only did they get hurt physically, but the country as a whole lost many potential minds. At some factories not only were conditions and safety bad but the people who watched over the workers could be cruel as well. “if they are catched asleep they get the strap...” (doc 10) Even though the children should have been going to school and getting an education they had to work and help support their families.

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Working from childhood made it impossible for children to get a good education and get a better job to make more money so they had to endure bad working environment with no one to help them.

Wages were extremely low during the industrial revolution but if they wanted more then they would easily be replaced, and the women especially were treated very unequally. In some cases the children in the families were making more than their mothers and were the main source of income.

“I'd rather it continue as now. We have hard work to live as it is...” (doc 6) Even if the government decided to make the hours shorter it wouldn't help the poor families because they wouldn't be able to support themselves. So the families accepted the long hours and low wages as long as they were making enough to have a home and food.

People who had jobs as a factory workers during the industrial revolution had to work for long grueling hours with dangerous machines. Some people weren't even allowed breaks while they worked, they might only have two short meals a day and the rest of the time just relentless work. “On weekdays she began work in the factory at 5:30 a.m. and finished at 8 p.m. Including in this time period were a thirty-five minute break for breakfast and a thirty-five minute break for dinner.” (doc 5) Adults and children were all working all day with only a short amount of time in between to just eat and take a break. Now we have laws against this but the time those people had to put in nonstop were horrific, but any of them had tried to stop it they would have been immediately fired.

To conclude there were many things that were going on during this time period because so much was changing and so quickly. England's people simply didn't have enough knowledge and time to correct some of the hardships that the people were going through at the time. And because of that much of the populations factory workers had to live through their children working instead of learning, inequality for women and not enough money, and many jobs that were inconsiderate to the health of the workers. Finally knowledge did spread of these bad things, and the people of England were able to come up with a much better standard of living for their workers.