Effects of the Industrial Revolution

During the era of the Industrial Revolution many significant changes occurred in the lives and labor of most European citizens. These changes affected every aspect of their lifestyle and cultures and there was little they could do to prevent it. European nations were looking for more ways to expand in size and wealth. In the search for these ambitions the idea of using machinery to efficiently mass produce manufactured goods arose. This innovation completely altered the lives of many hardworking individuals and revolutionized the world they lived in. Laborers such as farmers, craftsmen, merchants and others lost their jobs due to new machinery, destroyed their families due to new difficult labor conditions and experienced corruption in their lifestyles and cultures because of the changes in social and economic standards. Documents such as The Work Year in Seventeenth-Century Lille, Labor Protest: Luddite Attack on a Water-Powered Textile Mill in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Weaving: A Sixteenth-Century German Weaver and His Loom, and Weaving: An English Cotton Mill are all primary sources published in the historical era of the Industrial Revolution and will be thoroughly analyzed to aid in the understanding of every aspect of this revolution and its effects.

In the early seventeenth century, dating back before the Industrial Revolution came about, the life of the average worker was very simple and ordinary. In a common marriage family the male would typically work on a farm or if he was lucky he would be trained by a member of a guild to create crafts and tools. The women and children would accompany the male in the pursuit of higher profits. Working conditions were tolerable and job locations were usually situated close to the residences of the workers. Life was hard, but it was acceptable for workers because they knew they were able to pace themselves around the difficult times of work and enjoy the competition of being the best craftsmen of all the guilds.

Times do change, in the case of the Industrial Revolution workers were forced to confront negative changes in the workplace, including harsher working conditions and lower salaries. Since the mills and plants put many small farms and shops out of business workers were getting desperate in finding replacement jobs. The mill owners knew how unimportant and easily exchangeable the individual workers were and they capitalized on the status quo in many different ways. A perfect example of the exploitation of workers is the painting, The Great Crane at Bruges. In Bayerisches Satsbibliothek's image of The Great Crane at Bruges, there are four male workers, ages unknown, running in a large wheel that generates energy to operate a crane. This painting is used as a primary source to give others an image of how workers were forced into lives of risk and hardship and resulted in the same if not less salaries. Workers were also facing harsh threatening treatments by their bosses. Mill owners knew that even a little kid could operate a machine, so they decided to change the relationship between employee and employer. Workers were being replaced everyday, and a strict working environment arose.

To help in understanding the new strict and risky conditions of the working environment two images of textile workers from before and after the Industrial Revolution were compared. Before the technological breakthrough of gears and steam powered engines the only way to produce clothing or other textile goods was to have a trained craftsman weave the item with a loom. This required a lot of skill and was recognized as a more prominent profession than farmers and others. In the image Weaving: A Sixteenth-Century German Weaver and His Loom the craftsmen seems to be pleased with his cozy little workspace and does not appear to be in any sort of strain. In the second image Weaving: An English Cotton Mill, 1833 a young woman