Industrial Revolution Affected The Culture And Lifestyle Of Great Britain

Many mark the development of the modern world with the industrial revolution in Britain, however the industrial revolution brought with it new problems that were never part of the world before. The rise of the consumer class coincided with low quality and poor design of the manufactured goods produced in factories. The Arts and Crafts movement was a group of designers and critics who believed that the decline of Britain’s social and moral standards were linked to the decline of it’s artistic standards. One of the leaders of the movement, William Morris, proclaimed, "I do not want art for a few, any more than I want freedom for a few" (Dempsey). The idea of good design was linked with their ideas of a good society, a society where workers were not brutalized by the conditions in the …show more content…
During the industrial revolution of Britain, many people lost their sense of self importance and their sense of communities (MacTaggart). The factories of the industrial made workers part of the impersonal machine, repeating the same one task over and over. The goods that are created in this way were of such low quality, that it not only was hurting the workers in their production, but hurt the consumer as well (Triggs). There was anxiety about how industrialism affected the both cultural values and lifestyle of Great Britain. This concern fueled the re-evaluation of “handcraftsmanship and precapitalist forms of culture and society” (Obniski). By the early 1800s there was concern in Britain that the British-manufactured goods were lacking quality compared to the goods that were being exported by France, Germany, and the United States. There was an economic argument for better design and in an 1836 report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Art and Manufactures, they were concerned that England was losing the “export race”