DBQ Responses to Industrialism 1750-1900

DBQ Industrial Revolution  1750 - 1900  

Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying Documents 1 - 7. (The  documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.)  

Question: Evaluate the extent to which the industrial revolution impacted the condition of  laborers in between the 18th and 20th centuries. 

Document 1 
The following excerpt is from a British industrial worker named William Cooper who  testified before the Sadler Committee in 1832. The Sadler Committee was  investigating the working conditions in British factories. 

Sadler: What is your age? 
Cooper: I am eight and twenty. 
Sadler: When did you first begin to work in the mills? 
Cooper: When I was ten years of age. 
Sadler: What were your usual hours of working? 
Cooper: We began at five in the morning and stopped at nine at night. 
Sadler: What time did you have for meals? 
Cooper: We had just one period of forty minutes in the sixteen hours. That was at noon. Sadler: What means were taken to keep you awake? 
Cooper: At times we were frequently strapped [whipped]. 
Sadler: When your hours were so long, did you have any time to attend a day school? 
Cooper: We had no time to go to day school. 
Sadler: Can you read and write? 
Cooper: I can read, but I cannot write.

Document 2 
The following is an excerpt from Andrew Ure’s book The Philosophy of Manufactures published in 1835. 

I have visited many factories, both in Manchester and in surrounding districts, and I never saw  a single instance of corporal chastisement [beating] inflicted on a child. They seemed to be  always cheerful and alert, taking pleasure in the light play of their muscles … as to exhaustion,  they showed no trace of it on emerging from the mill in the evening; for they began to skip  about … it is moreover my firm conviction that children would thrive better when employed in  our modern factories, than if left home in apartments too often ill-aired, damp and cold. 

Document 3 
From Charles Knight’s The Working Man’s Companion subtitled The Results of Machinery,  Namely Cheap Production and Increased Employment published in 1831. The book was  intended to instruct workers about the benefits of industrialization after failed political  riots in Bristol, England. 

You are surrounded, as we have constantly shown you throughout this book, with an infinite  number of comforts and conveniences which had no existence two or three centuries ago and  those comforts are not used by a few, but are within reach of almost all men. Every day is adding something to your comforts. Your houses are better built, your clothes are cheaper, you have an  infinite number of domestic utensils. You can travel cheaply from place to place and not only  travel at less expense, but travel ten times quicker than almost two hundred years age. 

Document 4
The following description is from a pamphlet, published in 1797, by the Society for  Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor. 

The village contains about 1500 inhabitants, of whom all are capable of the work are employed in  and about the mills. Of these there are 500 children who are entirely fed, clothed, and educated by  Mr. Dale. The others live with their parents in the village and have a weekly allowance for their  work. The healthy appearance of these children has frequently attracted the attention of the  traveler. Special regulations, adopted by Mr. Dale, have made this factory very different from the  others in this kingdom. Out of the nearly 3000 children employed in the mills from 1785 to 1797,  only fourteen have died. 

Document 5
The following excerpt is from the French politician and economist Leon Faucher. Faucher  visited several English cities in 1843 examining their social system and recorded his  observations in a book entitled Manchester in 1844. 

The little town of Hyde was, at the beginning of the century, a little hamlet of only 800 people, on  the summit of a barren hill, the soil of which did not yield sufficient food for the inhabitants. The  brothers Ashton have peopled and enriched the desert … Mr. T. Ashton employs 1500 workers [in  his factories]. The young women are well and decently clothed … the houses inhabited by the  work people form long and large streets. Mr. Ashton has built 300 of them, which he lets [rents]  for 75 cents per week and … everywhere is to be observed a cleanliness which indicates order and  comfort. 

Document 6
The Conditions of the Working Class in England by the German socialist Friedrich Engels,  published in 1844.  

Every great town has one or more slum areas where workers struggle through life as best they can  out of sight of the more fortunate classes of society. The slums … are generally an unplanned  wilderness of one – or two – storied houses. Wherever possible these have cellars which are also  used as dwellings. The streets are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse.  Since they have neither gutters nor drains, the refuse accumulates in stagnant, stinking puddles.  The view of Manchester is quite typical. The main river is narrow, coal-black and full of stinking  filth and rubbish which deposits on the bank … one walks along a very rough path on the river  bank to reach a chaotic group of little one-storey, one room cabins … in front of the doors, filth  and garbage abound … 

Document 7
Letter from the Leeds Cloth Merchants, 1791, was issued by the Cloth Merchants of the English city of Leeds. The merchants were replying to a letter criticizing the use of  machines published by the Leeds Woolen Workers. 

… the Cloth Merchants of Leeds, who depend chiefly on a foreign demand, where they have for  competitors the manufactures of other nations, whose taxes are few, and whose manual labour is  only half the price it bears here, should have occasion to defend … the advantages derived to every  flourishing manufacture from the application of machinery; they instance that of cotton in  particular, which in its internal and foreign demand is nearly alike to our own, and has in a few  years by the means of machinery advanced to its present importance … in the manufacture of  woolens, the scribbling mill, the spinning frame, and the flying shuttle, have reduced manual labour  nearly one third, and each of them has at its first introduction carried an alarm to the work people,  yet each has contributed to the advance of wages and to increase the trade so that if an attempt was  now made to deprive us of the use of them, there is no doubt, but every person engaged in business  would exert himself to defend them.