1750-1750 Research Paper

Words: 664
Pages: 3

Most people in Europe and North America before 1750 worked as either farmers or artisans who were both producing and selling their own created and cultivated goods to make a living. These workers often lived fairly separated and were never crowded together. Most of these people and their families worked nearly every day. When the industrial revolution was starting and urbanization was beginning, these people's lives changed dramatically, transforming their living conditions completely. Even though urbanization made more housing in towns and led to a larger production of goods, it made life much more difficult for those living and working in the towns. Most people who were accustomed to living spread out were forced to live extremely close to …show more content…
Although so many were racing to get a position at one of these mass-produced factories, they were extremely dangerous places to be. First of all, some of the processes used to produce these factories release very toxic fumes. This, in addition to very poor ventilation, causes a great deal of illnesses and symptoms such as: spitting up blood, chest pains, coughs, as well as chest diseases. Secondly, occasionally the machines will inflict some type of injury on a worker due to malfunction, zero safety precautions, or human error. Many workers would be burned, have amputated limbs, or even die. This mainly applied to factory workers only, coal miners had even worse dangers to worry about. In coal mines, it wasn’t uncommon for floods or toxic chemicals to be released, as well as explosions. Black lung, a disease contracted by inhaling coal dust that causes scarring of the lung and difficulty breathing, was a pretty big problem during this time. Finally, the working hours were horrific. Hours could get as high as 10-16 hours a day, 6 days a week, with every minute going by doing hard labor and operating dangerous