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| Billie Silvey |
| Social Effects of INDUSTRIALIZATION |
| April 2007 |
| Workers’ houses usually were near the factories so people could walk to work. Hastily and cheaply constructed, most had two to four rooms--one or two downstairs and one or two upstairs. They had no running water or toilets for families with four to five children. The entire street would share an outside pump and a couple of outside toilets. Only gradually were laws passed to clean up the streets, put in proper sewers and drains, set standards for house construction, and pave and light streets. But often when slums were knocked down, the poor were forced to move to another one, making it worse. |
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| The technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution brought great changes in family and social life. Cities filled to overflowing. By the start of the 19th century, some one-fifth of Britain’s population lived in London, but by 1851 half the population lived there, with whole families or even several families crowded into a single room. |
| While industrialization led to greater prosperity and improved health for those in the upper and middle classes, the poor became poorer and their health risks, greater. Household rubbish was thrown out into the streets of the dirty and unhealthy towns, creating a perfect breeding ground for diseases like cholera, typhus, smallpox and dysentery. Industrialization brought increased pollution as smoke from chimneys and factories filled the air and settled to the streets like a dirty blanket. The steam to power the machines was made by burning coal, which produced a heavy, black smoke.. |
| Many of the factory workers were children, who worked long hours at hazardous jobs. Some started work as young as four or five. Thousands worked in coal mines, and thousands more in cotton mills. |
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