Living and Working Conditions
Working Conditions
The working conditions during the Industrial Revolution were terrible! Since so many factories were being built and crowds of people were willing to work in these factories, no matter how low the wages were, many of the workers were unskilled. The pay for these jobs was not much. Unskilled workers made around eight dollars a week, skilled workers earned around ten dollars, and women earned around half the amount of what every man made.
Most people worked at factories, which were definitely one of the most dangerous and unsanitary places to work at. The machines in these factories spit out smoke everywhere causing it to get everywhere. Since the machines were in bad shape, many accidents happened. Most of these accidents happened to children. Children were used with more of the simpler jobs. Although the tasks at hand are simple, the children have to be very careful when actually using the machines because one wrong move could have their hand chopped off. This was very common to the children. There were not any lights in theses factories, so most work had to be done in the dark or whenever the sun would shine through the windows.
When factory workers got tired of working long hours with little to no pay, the Labor Unions were formed. All they wanted o do was get a job with better pay and demanded that children stop working in these dangerous places. Unfortunately, people from other countries came in and took the factory jobs leaving the ones in the Labor Union without a job.
Living Conditions
As businesses started getting more people employees, tons of people started moving Northeast to find a job. When people were staying in cheap apartments that were near the factories that they worked in they had to squeeze in six to nine people into one tiny room because the men did not feel a need to build their own homes. But the men who did build their owns homes did it poorly and with little consideration to sanitation. Toilets were made by holes in the ground. The waste material would just stay there in piles, which caused the germs from the waste to contaminate water causing the disease Chlolera.
As industrialization increased, the middle class also increased in number. The had money to move out of the small city and go live in more comfortable place.