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Positive and Negative Effects of Industrial Revolution Essay

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DBQ- Positive and Negative Effects of Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution began in England in the late 1700’s. The Industrial Revolution was a time of new inventions, products, and methods of work. The results of the Industrial Revolution led to many short and long-term positive and negative effects. These results have been assessed from many viewpoints such as the factory workers, the factory owners, the government, and other people who observed the conditions in industrial cities. One negative effect of the Industrial Revolution was the poor working conditions in factories which were a big problem during the Industrial Revolution. Many people worked in factories, which had very tight spaces and poor lighting. Many …show more content…

Another negative effect of the Industrial Revolution was the poor sanitary conditions in cities. When Friedrich Engels visited an English industrial city he stated in “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” that the streets are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse due to the lack of gutters or drains. This caused the main river of Manchester to look coal black and be packed with stinking filth. The factories also led to pollution and poor air quality due to the open air vents and chimneys which released the pollution from the factory into the air. Many people who lived in these poor cities or slums were either the working class or the poor that had to struggle through these unsanitary conditions. A positive effect of the Industrial Revolution was the decrease in prices. Before the Industrial Revolution people had worked at home on farms or in small workshops. Making cloth was done entirely by hand which caused clothes to be more expensive. This meant that most people had 1 shirt and 1 pant. In the 1700s people began buying more and more goods, so textile traders began to look for faster and cheaper ways of producing clothes. The decrease in prices came from the introduction of machines such as the spinning jenny which spun 8 threads at a time, the flying shuttle which increased the speed of weaving, and the water frame which was a large spinning machine driven by

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