Population Growth During The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a time of tremendous expansion and incredible discoveries. People had been innovating, inventing, and exploring throughout the entirety of the existence of human-kind, but there was something substantially different about the rate of advancement and the magnitude of the new ideas, concepts, and even contraptions that set the Industrial Revolution apart and made it what it was. The resulting changes that occurred for almost a century are commonly regarded as positive advancements that paved the way for even more innovations in the future, but this was not completely true for every aspect of change. There were incredible new inventions and manufacturing processes that completely changed certain industries, but it …show more content…
That is not to say that there was not an increase in the general population, but that was due largely to an upsurge in the availability of food coupled with a distinct decline “in the number of deaths from famines, epidemics, and war.” Together, these things are largely believed to be the reason for the general growth in population, but the Industrial Revolution did have a part to play in the distribution of the population over the countryside. Since industrialization created a new, ever-increasing demand for more workers to fulfill the growing needs of different industries, people began to leave their homes behind to flock to where they could find work. This meant that an already growing population was beginning to congest itself within these specific areas, rather than giving themselves breathing room by spreading out throughout the land. So, despite the fact that industrialization cannot be attributed with giving rise to an increase in population, it did significantly impact how and where the bulk of the population was …show more content…
The reasoning behind this relationship between population and urbanization is that the increasing population and the subsequent distribution and congestion that resulted gave rise to towns becoming more urbanized. In years past, before large-scale industrialization entered the picture, “Cities had traditionally been centers for princely courts, government and military offices, churches, and commerce.” After the onset of the Industrial Revolution, however, the purpose served by the town itself, as well as its basic makeup, began to change significantly. Since change was happening one way or the other, these changes to the city scene were basically inevitable as well. Although the intentions were focused primarily on the progress and advancements of the day, the incredible congestion within cities tended to create terrible living conditions for the populace. As would be expected with an increasing population, one of the main problems that resulted was a lack of space for all of the people flooding into the cities. People were packed into tight quarters like sardines, and this in itself created even more problems, such as atrocious sanitary conditions. As cities were totally unprepared for the influx of people, “the city streets were often used as sewers and open drains.” Anything from human excrement to food waste was simply tossed outside, where it would sit and