Rachel said 1/22...

In class today (Friday, January 22nd) we discussed three major aspects as the Industrialization. The first was the was the working and living conditions the workers endured. Firstly, the factories began to dominate the slums of the cities and poor housing and tenement homes surrounded them. The factories gave way to air and water population (since the factories needed to be station on the rivers to fuel them.) These factories had cramped quarters and terrible conditions which sometimes resulted in injuries, and the factory owners would not compensate you with money if you did get harmed. During this time, women began to leave their role as a domestic worker in the home where they cared for the household and children. The factories hired the women because they were only required to pay them half as much as they would pay men. Both the husband and wife being at work instead of home hurt the family structure drastically. However, if the workers tried to fight against the conditions and the low wages they would just be replaced with other willing workers. The workers were not willing to lose pay entirely so they kept the jobs anyways. The next topic was the effects of the revolution outside Great Britain and the West. There were major increases in energy and technology over a 15-20 year time period. World trade drastically increased as new means on communication and travel developed. The economy increased in the industrialized nations as they exported manufactured goods to non industrialized nations to make a profit. This is why Great Britain eventually takes over India in order to obtain their cotton and other natural resources. By doing so, they don't have to pay money to import the cotton and they're able to make a larger profit when they sell it in a manufactured form. Eventually, the Britain government wants to establish railroad systems in India in order to further the transportation of cotton and other goods. Around the 1870's, the governments of Great Britain and Germany begin to give more rights to their workers by establishing set wages and allowing unions to form. The unions pressured the government to clean up the cities and make them more safe.


We also went back and looked at the drawing we created and focused in on the Enclosure Movement. In this act, all the land was required to be enclosed. This didn't allow for poor farmers to use the Commons, an area of farm land divided off for the poor farmers so they could make a living and support their families. The poor farmers, and even some middle class farmers with unenclosed land, were unable to keep up with the wealthy landowners production. Since they were rich, these landowners could afford new machinery that was used to make farm production easier and faster. This increase in production put the other farmers out of business. The new farming techniques helped to speed up industrialization.


...next up, Hsiesh.