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While the industrial revolution created new opportunities and economic growth, it also brought pollution and severe difficulties to workers.

The Industrial Revolution, which began approximately in the second half of the 1700s and lasted until the early 1800s, was a period of great changes in Europe and the United States. The invention of new technologies, from mechanized weaving looms and steam-powered locomotives to improvements in ironmaking, changed the rural society, which was mainly composed of farmers and handicraftsmen. Many people move from the countryside to fast-growing cities and work in factories full of machines.

Although the industrial revolution created economic growth and provided new opportunities, this progress also brought major disadvantages, ranging from environmental and health and safety hazards to poor living conditions for workers and their families. Historians say that many of these problems persisted and aggravated during the Second Industrial Revolution, which was another period of rapid change that began in the late 1800s.

The following are some of the most significant negative effects of the Industrial Revolution.

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As the city developed during the Industrial Revolution, all new residents did not have enough housing, and as more and more wealthy residents fled to the suburbs, they were crowded into dirty downtown neighborhoods. In the 1830s, Dr. William Henry Duncan, a government health officer in Liverpool, England, conducted a survey of living conditions and found that one-third of the city's population lived in the basement of houses, which had earthen floors and no ventilation or sanitation facilities. Up to 16 people live in one room, sharing a private space. The lack of clean water and the overflow of sewage from the basement cesspit make workers and their families vulnerable to infectious diseases such as cholera.

In his 1832 study entitled "The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Class in Manchester Cotton Mills", doctor and social reformer James Phillips Kay described the meager diet of low-wage workers in British industrial cities. They depended on breakfast. maintain lifehood. Tea or coffee with a little bread. The lunch meal usually consists of boiled potatoes, melted lard and butter, sometimes mixed with a few pieces of fried fat. "And spirits" and a bit of bread, or eat oatmeal and potatoes again. Kay wrote that due to malnutrition, workers often have gastrointestinal problems, weight loss, and skin "pale, lead or yellow."

Workers who came to the city from the countryside had to adapt to a completely different rhythm of survival, with almost no personal autonomy. They must arrive when the factory whistle sounds, otherwise they will face imprisonment and loss of wages, or even be forced to pay fines.

Once they start working, they cannot move around freely or take a breath when needed, as this may require turning off the machine. Unlike artisans in rural towns, their days usually include having to perform repetitive tasks and constant pressure to keep up—"faster pace, more supervision, less pride," George Mason University History The scientist Peter N. Stearns explained. As Stearns described in the book "The Industrial Revolution in the History of the World" published in 2013, when the workday is finally over, they don't have much time or energy for any form of entertainment. To make matters worse, city officials often ban festivals and other activities they once enjoyed in the countryside. Instead, workers often spend their free time in nearby taverns, where drinking can free them from a boring life.

Without too much safety supervision, the factories of the Industrial Revolution could be very dangerous. As detailed in Peter Capuano's 2015 book "The Change of Hands: The Industry, Evolution, and Reconstruction of the Victorian Body", workers face the constant risk of losing their robotic hands. A contemporary newspaper report described the terrible injuries suffered by the mill worker Daniel Buckley in 1830, his left hand was "grabbed and torn, fingers crushed" before his colleague was able to stop the equipment. He eventually died of trauma.

The coal mines of that era were supplying the coal needed to keep steam-powered machines running, and terrible accidents also occurred. In the book "Disability in the Industrial Revolution" published in 2018 by David M. Turner and Daniel Blackie, they described the 36-year-old James Jackson's face, neck, chest, hands and arms as well as internal severe burns from a coal mine gas explosion. His physical condition is so bad that he needs opium to cope with extreme pain. It is worth noting that after six weeks of recuperation, a doctor thinks he can return to work, but may leave permanent scars due to hardship.

Although children worked before the Industrial Revolution, rapid growth factors created a demand that poor young people and orphans were selected from slums in London and lived in factory dormitories, and they were deprived of their long working hours. educate. Forced to perform dangerous adult jobs, children often suffer terrible fate.

John Brown's memoirs of revealing the orphan Robert Brinko, published in 1832, describe a 10-year-old girl named Mary Richards whose apron was clamped by a textile factory machine. Brown wrote: "In an instant, this poor girl was pulled to the floor by an irresistible force." "She uttered the most heartbreaking scream."

Beverly Lemire, a professor of history at the University of Alberta, regards the “exploitation of child labor in a systematic and sustained manner and the use of child labor to catalyze industrial production” as the most serious negative impact of the industrial revolution.

The Industrial Revolution helped establish a pattern of gender inequality in the workplace that persisted in the ensuing era. Laura L. Frader, a retired professor of history at Northeastern University and author of the book "Industrial Revolution: A History of Documents," pointed out that factory owners usually pay women only half of what men do for the same job. This is based on the false assumption that women do not need to support their families and only work for "pocket money", and their husbands may pay them for non-essential personal items. 

Discrimination and stereotypes against women workers continued until the second industrial revolution. "The myth that women have'flexible fingers' and they are more able to withstand repetitive and blind work than men have led to men being replaced by white-collar jobs, such as office work, and after the 1870s, this type of work was assigned to women. Typewriter," Fred said. 

Although office work is less dangerous and the pay is higher, "it locks women in another type of'female work' and it is difficult to get rid of it," Fred explained.

Pollution in the Cornwall Copper Factory, England, as depicted in a 1887 print.

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The industrial revolution was powered by coal, and large industrial cities began to emit large amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere. The concentration of suspended particulate matter in London rose sharply between 1760 and 1830, as shown in this chart in our data world. The pollution in Manchester is so terrible that the writer Hugh Miller noticed the "gloomy atmosphere of haze over it" and described "countless chimneys [high and dim in the dim haze] dark."

Air pollution continued to rise in the 1800s, leading to respiratory diseases and higher death rates in areas that burn more coal. To make matters worse, the burning of fossil fuels emits carbon into the atmosphere. A study published in the journal Nature in 2016 showed that climate change driven by human activities began as early as the 1830s.

Despite all these ills, the industrial revolution has had positive effects, such as creating economic growth and making goods more accessible. It also helped lead to the rise of a prosperous middle class, who seized part of the economic power once held by the nobility, and led to the rise of industrial professional jobs.

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