Effects of The Industrial

Revolution
Urban Growth, Social Class, Life in
the Factory and the Role of Women
Industrial Revolution… Defined
• During the later stages of the
18th century, European
manufacturing processes
shifted from small-scale
production by hand at home to
large-scale production by
machine in a factory setting.
• The results have been
wondrous and devastating at
the same time.
•This Revolution has never
ended… Handwritten, printing
press, typed, digital, etc
Water Power, Steam, Coal, Oil
and Nuclear, Wind, Solar
Geothermal, etc
Romanticism….NOT Romantic
 The Industrial
Revolution was
centered on human
reason.
 Artists, Philosophers
and writers felt
displaced by the
movement.
 Romanticism is
about emotion
Concerns of Romanticism
 Romantic artists
were concerned
about themselves
 Emotions
 Reactions to their
world
 Own individuality
Characteristics of Romanticism
 Rejected 18th
century
predecessors
emphasis on reason
 Explored power of
dreams and the
subconscious
 New vision of nature
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and
quiet breathing. 

-John Keats
Population Explosion
1685 1760 1881 1980
Liverpool 4,000 35,000 555,425 541,900
Manchester 6,000 45,000 393,676 465,000
Birmingham 4,000 30,000 400,757 1,013, 431
New York 3,900 18,000 1,206, 299 7,071,639
Philadelphia 4,800 23,800 847,170 1,688,210
Boston 4,500 15,631 362,839 562,994

How do you think the tremendous growth of population

could change environmental and living conditions in the
18th and 19th Centuries?
At the Expense of Workers
 The shift meant mass
production of high quality
products at competitive prices,
but often at the expense of
workers. For example, the raw
wool and cotton that fed the
British textile mills came from:
 Lands converted from farming to
sheep raising, leaving farm
workers without jobs
 The southern plantations of the
United States, which were
dependent upon slave labor
 Romantic View of Worker
•The Romantics asserted the importance of the individual,
freedom from rules, a solitary life, the belief that imagination is
superior to reason, and a love of nature.
•They believed that the common
person was just as capable of
producing beautiful literature as
were the noble and the wealthy.
•Simplicity and nature was valued;
these were thought to flow most
clearly from the "spontaneous"
thoughts of the common people
•Romanticism was a reaction against
the interpretations handed down by
the church or tradition
Soulless Automatons
•Traditional philosophies of the Enlightenment had turned man
into a soulless, thinking machine -- a robot…if man was a
soulless robot, then men especially who worked in the factories
were seen, not as individuals with thoughts and feelings, but as a
means of mass producing products
•The Romantics concentrated their
attack on the heartlessness of
middle class liberalism, as well as
the nature of urban industrial
society.
•Industrial society brought new
problems: soulless individualism,
economic selfishness,
utilitarianism, materialism and the
cash connection.
“The Solitary
Reaper”
---William
Wordsworth
The Plight of the Cities
 The sheer number of human beings
put pressure on city resources:

 Housing, water, sewers, food

supplies, and lighting were
completely inadequate.
 Slums grew and disease,
especially cholera, ravaged the
population.
 Crime increased and became a
way of life for those who could
make a living in no other way.
The Plight of the Cities…
•No development plans,
sanitary codes or
building codes
•Lacked adequate
housing, education, and
police protection
•Unpaved streets, no
drains!!!
•Dark, dirty shelters.
Families living in 1
bedroom
•Sickness widespread
(cholera)
•
The Tenements and Slums…
Industrial Staffordshire
 Pollution…
During the Industrial Revolution factories, mills and terraced hovels grew
up along the river banks. Local industry dumped toxic chemicals such as
gas-tar, gas-lime and ammonia water into the river…

“The hapless river—a pretty enough stream a few miles higher up, with
trees overhanging its banks, and fringes of green sedge set thick along its
edges—loses caste as it gets among the mills and the print works. There
are myriads of dirty things given it to wash, and whole wagon-loads of
poisons from dye-houses and bleach-yards thrown into it to carry away;
steam-boilers discharge into it their seething contents, and drains and
sewers their fetid impurities; till at length it rolls on—here between tall
dingy walls, there under precipices of red sandstone—considerably less a
river than a flood of liquid manure, in which all life dies, whether animal or
vegetable, and which resembles nothing in nature, except, perhaps, the
stream thrown out in eruption by some mud-volcano.” Hugh Miller, 1862
Class War…
 The “Haves”:
Bourgeois Life Thrived
on the Luxuries of the
Industrial Revolution
--------
Factory Owners,
Managers, Bankers,
Lawyers, etc.
The Home of the Bourgeois…
A
bedroom
 THE “Have Nots”:
The Poor, the
Overworked and the
Destitute
… the proletariat
-------
Factory Workers
Home of the Poor…
Haves and
Have Nots
Life in the Industrial Revolution…
“It is impossible to give proper representation of the wretched state of many of
the inhabitants of the indigent class, situated in the confined streets… where
each small, ill ventilated apartment of the house contained seldom more than two
beds for the whole. The lack of convenient privy offices in the neighborhood is
attended with many very unpleasant circumstances, as it induces many lazier
people to make use of chamber utensils, which are suffered to remain in the most
offensive state for several days and are then emptied outside of the windows.
The writer had occasion for a short time to visit a person ill of cholera, his
lodgings were in a room of a miserable house situated in the filthiest part of
Pipewellgagte, divided into six apartments and occupied by different families to
the number of twenty-six persons in all. His room contained three wretched beds
with two persons sleeping in each; it (the room) measured twelve feet in length
and 7 feet in breadth, and it received light from one small window, the sash of
which was broken. Two of the inhabitants lay ill of cholera and the rest
appeared afraid of the admission of pure air having carefully closed up the
broken panes of glass with pugs of old linen.”

-Report from the Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary

Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain. 1842, pg
21-22
The Condition of Labor
 All working people, however,
faced possible unemployment,
with little or no provision for
security.
 In addition, they were subject
to various kinds of discipline:
 The closing of factory gates to
late workers
 Fines for tardiness
 Dismissal for drunkenness
 Public censure for poor quality
workmanship
 Beatings for non-submissiveness
Conditions of Labor…
 Working Conditions
 Men, women, and
children worked 12-16
hours a day
 Working conditions
were very dangerous &
made little money
 Average lifespan in the
city was 17 while in the
countryside it was 38
(over double)
Labor…Very Dangerous, hard and for little pay
1870-1914 Realistic Period in
English Literature
 In the latter portion of the reign of Queen Victoria
and during the reign of Edward VII, the reaction to
Romanticism had reached its peek and Realism
took a hold of literature, theater and all the arts.
 Science: Darwin’s evolution, Newton’s mechanics,
Marx’s history, chipped away at the Romantic
notion of man.
 Ibsen, Yeats, Kipling, Swinburne shifted the view of
both man and his place in society, the world and
the universe.
 “London” by William Blake
I wander thro' each chartcr'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every fact I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
Realism Defined…
 Believes that you should concentrate solely on accurately
describing the physical, material details of life
 Realism assumes that reality inheres in the here and now,
in the everyday. It therefore emphasizes accurate
descriptions of specific setting, dress, and character
 Realism, which emphasizes the importance of the ordinary
(the ordinary person and the ordinary situation), tends to
reject the heroic and the noble and embrace the pedestrian,
the comic, and the middle class.
Realism…
 Accurately portrays life without filtering it
 Characters appear in the real complexity of
temperament and motive
 Vernacular direction
 Relies on insight and observation
 Close, observant detail
 Sought to explain why people behaved the
way they did
 Relations between people and society are
explored
Role of Women - Depends on Class
 Role of Women -
 Prior to the revolution, a woman's
place was originally at home
 Women in the working class left their
homes for factories and other
workplaces.
 Hard dangerous conditions, but
beginning of Women’s Rights
 (Present Day Role of Women)
 Bourgeois women had appliances
and nice home complete so life
became easier at home
 (1950’s America)