Life in the Industrial Revolution

1
Life in the Industrial Revolution

• 1800 - 1900

2
This age is often called the Victorian Time

• After Queen Victoria of England.
• Ruled 1837 1901
• Queen when she was 18 and England was still
  mostly agrarian.
• By the time she died, England was an industrial
  power and industrial barons ruled not the blue
  bloods.

3
The Cause of the Industrial Revolution

• Surplus Population
• There was a population boom in the early 1800s.
• More efficient agriculture meant more food, but
  less need for workers.
• Extra workers turned to cottage industries like
  weaving.
• That gave rise to the factories.

4
The Rise of the Industrial Revolution

• The invention of the steam engine.
• Powered equipment and transportation.
• James Watt
• Mining, chemicals, machine tools, textile
  manufacturing, and metalurgy all started because
  of the steam engine.

5
Social Effects?

• Money was now to be earned in industry not by
  land.
• Nobility and gentry became poor.
• The rise of the industrial barons and the middle
  class.
• Businessmen, bankers, industrialists.

6
The New Middle Class

• Supported the PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC
• Hard work and thrift is what got you ahead.
• Didnt particularly value higher education unless
  it created money.
• Little charity for those that didnt succeed.

7
Life in the Factories

• 14 hour shifts
• Children as young as 8 could work.
• But younger than 9 were restricted to 10 hour
  work days.
• Under 18 restricted to 12 hours a day.
• NO safety precautions for workers either.

8
The Rise of Poverty with Urbanization

• Huge shifts of population skilled and unskilled
  to urban areas.
• Housing was scarce and overcrowded.
• More workers than jobs meant that wages were
  SUBSISTENCE.

9
Child Labor

• Children were expected to contribute to family
  income.
• Young children had jobs like
• Chimney sweeps
• Scrambling under machinery to pick up dropped
  parts.
• Pulling coal through tunnels too tiny for adults.
• Making and selling matches, blacking, flowers.

10
The Worship of Money

• Almost everything was tolerated if it gained
  profit.
• Profit was the sign of success and Gods Grace
  on your life.
• CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION was encouraged!

11
If one couldnt make money?

• There was a moral fault with you.
• The Poor House might cure you.
• A prison for those who were in debt.
• You lived in slave conditions until you were
  ransomed out by your family / friends or you
  might work your way out.
• RARELY happened.
• SLAVERY.

12
Charles Dickens and Social Reform in Victorian
Times

• Writing novels and in the magazines serials
  he encouraged people to think that they have a
  duty to help those less fortunate than
  themselves.

13
A Christmas Carol

• Dickens loved to particularly attack three abuses
  he saw in his time
• Child abuse
• Lack of power of children.
• A bad education system
• Bankers and industrialists

14
A Christmas Carol A look at Victorian Morality

• For most Victorians they wouldve approved of
  Scrooges behavior.
• But three ghosts put a mirror up to Scrooge and
  he finds he doesnt measure up to people that
  were considered less than him.
• His clerk, Bob Cratchett
• His nephew, Fred