The Negative Effects Of The Industrial Revolution

Advancements in society will always have flaws, but the important thing is that the improvements outweigh the negative side effects. The Industrial Revolution was a time of major change that improved many aspects of life while also bringing along some negative effects. It began with improvements to the newly invented steam engine and involved the steam engine becoming a major source of most power. It was then used to power the new factories of the time leading to a new way of manufacturing that took advantage of these factories, allowing goods to be made faster, on a mass scale, while also lowering prices. This led to a major breakthrough in jobs as factories became more and more popular making jobs more available to the people. Within time, …show more content…
They were the source of all manufactured goods, as well as the main source of money as they drove the economy by fueling the market, and the birthplace of mass production. Factories were workplaces that employed the majority of the population at the time, they required many workers and were very large, with up to 300 employees: “Before very long, this factory employed over 300 people. Nothing had ever been seen like this before…” (historylearningsite.co.uk). This was both groundbreaking and a major breakthrough as it caused a boom in the economy due to the marketing of the goods being produced, increased the quality of life as goods were cheaper and more available, and because the rate of work increased significantly. Factories began the shift from hand to hand work to more of a repetitive work style in order to speed up production which was referred to as the Factory system. This shift is what helped society transition to a more industrialized way of life: “The dynamism of the economy shifted firmly from agriculture to industry and trade. Some regions, notably coalfield areas, rapidly industrialized…” (bbc.co.uk) This quote also discusses the economic change brought by the factories of the Industrial Revolution, as the markets adjusted. Another result of these factories was the creation of urbanization in major cities which refers …show more content…
The factories created work, which created urbanization, and the abundance of workers in the cities, along with the use of mass production, created more goods at a faster rate, resulting in lower prices. These goods were then sold, generating new markets and increasing trade. Without this, the Industrial Revolution would have neither thrived the way it did or happened in the first place, and without it we would still be living in the past with older technologies waiting for something to further technology and society, considering that that was what the Industrial Revolution essentially did. The important thing is that the advancements of the Revolution of Industry created positives that outweigh the negatives accompanying it, eventually resulting in the world that now