Industrial Age DBQ

The United States of America was starting a new era, the Industrial Age. Along with this came many positives, but also many negatives. The industrial age brought new technology that made it possible to produce more goods, even faster than before. It helped increase the amount of resources in the U.S. and it helped form laws that impact today's society. However, it also brought the need for more workers. This caused children to be accepted as a source of labor, which was dangerous. Many negatives were brought to the table when the industrial age started in the late 1800s. With the need of workers increasing, factories turned to children, and child labor became very popular. The workplaces were very dangerous, many children had to do difficult …show more content…
Many factories were popping up in the U.S. making many cities Industrial cities. Document five, shows a picture of one of these cities. In the pictures, factories are releasing large amounts of smoke and pollution.The pollution mostly came from the machines that used coal to operate. The large amounts of pollution caused industrial cities to be very dirty, which was not good for the environment or people's health. The one picture also showed a graveyard next to the factory. This could be there to show that the pollution was having effects on the people in the city and causing them to die. Having these large factories was a major downfall of the industrial revolution since it hurt the surrounding people and areas. Coal was the main source of pollution because factories used it, and people in industrial cities used it for everyday purposes. Cities were crowded with people, and these people used coal for cooking and heating. They used coal because the U.S. had a large amount available and it was inexpensive (Andrews, n.d.). Another negative effect of the revolution, was the working conditions and treatment of workers. Workers had very strict rules to follow and disobedience could lead to being fined or fired. Employees worked long hours with little breaks, and in dirty factories. Factories were even called sweatshops because of how hot they became. In the Lowell Factories, which were textile …show more content…
Document two tells about Germantown, which was a town around factories. It was a little town that was clean, filled with houses, and occupied by 800 people. The houses in Germantown were rented for seventy five cents a week. The women in this town were well dressed and lived in comfort. This showed that the the areas around factories were prosperous and successful, which was a good thing because it proved that factories were doing good things for the country. The U.S. Steel document shows that over a span of 120 years, steel production increased by a total of more than eight billion tons. With steel production increasing and prices decreasing it was easier to make steel products and easier for the public to buy and use steel. In the 1970’s the U.S. was the second largest steel producer, behind Great Britain. By the early 1900’s the U.S. produced four times as much steel as Great Britain did (Civil War, 1999) With the increase of resources like steel, more factories were needed to make products out of them. Document 6 shows workers from a factory creating a labor union. Many factory workers formed unions that protested against the disgusting factories that they had to work in. With the protests and all the labor unions being formed , factories were forced to create better working conditions so their workers would