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Middle Class Life During The Industrial Revolution

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The Middle Class Life during

The Industrial Revolution began in England around the 1780’s. It was mainly based on the cotton industry and subsequently many of the inventions that came out of this period were mainly for producing and manufacturing cotton. Another stage of the Industrial Revolution was based on inventions. This is when most of the luxury goods were produced for the public. The Industrial Revolution is seen by scholars, as noted in A History of Western Society, as basically moderate and evolutionary. Even though the Industrial Revolution was almost inevitable many people took advantage of the new developments that came about and raised their standards of living because of the goods that were previously …show more content…

Thus demand for goods within the country complemented the demand from the colonies.” This was very important because this raised the standard of living for the average families. It was like giving a cookie to a child, the child would always want another one. As soon as the families experienced the better life they will always strive to achieve that same quality of life.

There were many important developments to the cotton industry that came about due to the Industrial Revolution. The problem the cotton industry had was due to inadequate machinery or the lack of machinery. Clothes and other things that came from the cotton industry were being produced way too slowly and the price of the material was way too expensive for the average family. The first problem was that yarn was not being fed fast enough to the weaver, but in 1769, two new inventions solved the problem, the spinning jenny and the water-powered frame, both of which provided yarn faster. Edmund Cartwright, who invented the power loom, combined the machine’s characteristics and purposes into one machine in 1800. Cleaning cotton was also a tedious and time-consuming job, so in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which could clean cotton 50 times faster than the previous outdated methods. Many people would actually walk around in filthy garments all of their lives but because of the new inventions they could afford to buy undergarments.

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