SOURCE D: Image of Factory workers during the Industrial Revolution in the 1880s. Flashcards
Determine what kind of source it is?
photograph
Find out when the source was created?
1880s
Find out who created the source?
ADAM SMITH INSTITUTE
Determine the context in which the source was created?
It’s a primary source, as the photographer took the photo first hand, of the scene in front of him. Someone took a photograph of the source in which workers were exerting themselves in a factory which looks like they are doing something with wool because of all the fabric.
Which history subtopic does this relate to?
Inventions of the Industrial Revolution, and Working conditions during the Industrial Revolution
How many slaves had to work together to successfully complete the task?
Working-class and immigrant families often needed to have many family members, including women and children, work in factories to survive in America.
What were the working conditions like?
The working conditions in factories were often harsh. Hours were long, typically ten to twelve hours a day in America.
Even though many 18th-century industrial workers took jobs in factories to try to improve their lives and move up in the world, they were soon disillusioned by long hours, low wages, and exhausting environments. Women and children also toiled in factories under the same harsh conditions. Home life was no better for these workers. They faced poverty, overcrowding, filth, and disease wherever they turned. Life expectancies were shockingly low amongst most city dwellers.
Long hours of work (12-16 hour shifts), low wages that barely covered the cost of living, dangerous and dirty conditions and workplaces with little or no worker rights.
What kind of living did poor workers go through?
Poor workers were often housed in cramped, grossly inadequate quarters.
What were the risks and dangers of these working conditions?
Working conditions were difficult and exposed employees to many risks and dangers, including cramped work areas with poor ventilation, trauma from machinery, toxic exposures to heavy metals, dust, and solvents.
What were slaves’ general lives like?
Most worked on the land, rose at dawn, retired at dusk, and did hard physical labour. Starvation was an ever-present threat, and subsistence depended on adequate harvests. Life expectancy was low, diets were poor and disease was rampant.
They earned wages. They lived in housing that is today thought squalid, but was in fact an improvement on the pitiful country hovels they had lived in previously. Their food was better and life expectancy began to rise. They began to be able to afford luxuries such as pottery, metal utensils and tea.
What brought wealth to slaves?
It was the Industrial Revolution that generated the wealth that paid for advances in public health and sanitation. It led to the conquest not only of extreme poverty, but of curable and preventable diseases. Far from bringing poverty and misery to the masses, it did the opposite, lifting their material conditions at a rate and to a level never before witnessed in human history. It was one of the most benign events that people have brought about, and it set the world on an upward course which still benefits millions of people today.
