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Industrial Revolution Dbq Essay

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The Industrial Revolution had both positive and negative consequences on society. Many say that the Industrial Revolution would have never happened if the Agricultural Revolution didn’t occur. The Agricultural Revolution began with the creation of new labor saving inventions and techniques to help increase farm productivity and efficiency. The British Parliament then enacted The Enclosure Act which fenced off many small, peasant owned farms, and transformed them into one big farm. This drastically increased farm output. However, this threw many small farmers out of work and it was these farmers who became the major workforce for the textile factories. In the factories, the workers would make .While some might argue that Industrialization had primarily positive consequences for society because of economic growth and the higher standard of living, it was actually a negative thing for society. Industrialization’s …show more content…

A regular shift for any factory worker was 12-16 hours a day, six days a week. The poem “My Boy” written by a working mother during the Industrial Revolution says that her “labor drives [her] forth…” (Document 2) until “…night when [she is] free.” (Document 2) She is “a stranger… to [her] child and [her child] one to [her].” (Document 2). This was not unheard of during this time. Parents and their children being driven away from each other to provide for the family. However, the mother working at the factory provided better financial opportunities for her family and in turn a higher standard of living. Elizabeth Bentley, a woman who testified on the child labor in Britain, when asked “what time [she] began work at the factory” (Documents 7) responded “when I was six years old” (Document 7). She worked in the mill “for about a year” (Document 7). Long hours and separation of family weren’t the only problem when it came to the Industrial Revolution. The use of child labor was also a significant

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