Question

How was the growth of factories a defining moment during this period, and how did the change from non-farming occupations to industrial occupations occur?

Answer 1

At the end of the 18th century, because the Industrial Revolution was so recent, there were originally no regulations to govern new technologies. No regulations, for instance, prohibited corporations from recruiting seven-year - old kids to work in coal mines or factories full time. There was no regulation regulating what factories could do with their waste from biohazards. Free-market capitalism meant that in overseeing emerging industries or planning facilities for new cities, the government had no role. And those who dominated the government preferred it that way. At this time, only a tiny handful of citizens, the richest, could vote in England. Thus, during the first wave of the Industrial Revolution, between 1790 and 1850, British society is the first example of what happens in a nation where there are no limits on free-market capitalism. You will hear about the influence of the Industrial Revolution on living and working conditions, urbanisation, child labour, public health , family life in the working class, the role of the women.

Since the population in Great Britain grew at the same time as landlords enclosed common village lands, people flocked to the towns and new factories from the countryside to get jobs. In the first stages of the Industrial Revolution, which culminated in a very high unemployment rate for workers. "In 1823, Henry Mayhew, by name of his title or position, researched the London poor, observing that" the daily employment of half of our workers is scarcely adequate, so that only 1,500,000 are entirely and constantly working, while 1,500,000 more are working only half their time and the remaining 1,500,000 are wholly unemployed. As a result, the working conditions could be set by the new factory owners and there were many more unqualified employees who had little qualifications who would take every job, than there were positions for them. And since at the end of the 18th century, the textile factories were so young, there were originally no rules to govern them.

The refugees to the new manufacturing cities, starving for jobs, had no bargaining power to claim decent pay, fairer hours of work or improved working conditions. Worse still, as only rich citizens were entitled to vote in Great Britain, workers were unable to use the representative electoral system to campaign for rights and improvements. The Mixture Acts were passed by the British Parliament in 1799 and 1800, which made it impossible for workers to unionise or combine as a collective and ask for fair working conditions.