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Factories drew workers away from their countryside homes and into large cities where they could work. They housed them in the Slum's, and would not let them leave whilst they continued to work for them. Factory owners had massive amounts of power over the workers because they were desperate for money to support their families. In those days there was no government assistance or benefits to help people without jobs, so if you had no job, you didn't have any money and so you therefore had nothing. Factory workers were the lowest income workers. Their wage was so low that there was no opportunity to better themselves and move away from the Slum's. It was also a vicious cycle because their children had to start working from a very young age to further support the family and they missed out on an education to again, better themselves. So basically if you were born poor, you died poor. There was very little opportunity to change your circumstances in life.
Disease was so common along the rusty walls of the Slum's that it often got people sick. Sewerage ran freely through the streets as there was no sophisticated plumbing. This carried more disease and it contributed to many illnesses. Common Colds as we now find as nothing, could kill someone in those days because they were malnourished, had no medicine, were often cold and had to continue to work for money. They couldn't afford a day off to recuperate. And the really bad illnesses spread quickly since everybody was living so close together. |
Jacob Riis, a popular journalist in the late eighteenth century, described them as: " Look into any of these houses, everywhere the same...... Here is a "flat" or "parlor" and two pitch-dark coops called bedrooms... One, two, three beds are there, if the old boxes and heaps of foul straw can be called by that name; a broken stove with crazy pipe from which the smoke leaks at every joint, a table of rough boards propped up on boxes, piles of rubbish in the corner. The closeness and smell are appalling. "How many people sleep here?" The woman with the red bandanna shakes her head sullenly, but the bare-legged girl with a bright face counts on her fingers.... "Six, sir!" This was an extract from one of his many novels: The Industrial Age: The Industrial Revolution In Europe Even though he was an upperclass gentleman, his descriptions were firsthand accounts since he saw the ways of which these people had to live. |
By Emily