Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for the Industrial revolution, you wouldn’t be able to watch this
video. Inventions like "the spinning jenny" and the power loom revolutionized textile production
at the end of the eighteenth century. Technology advancement transcended across all industries
replacing workers who were manufacturing products by hand. The age of machines had begun!
But like any other important chapter of human history, the Industrial Revolution has a lot
of blood on its hands. It wasn’t just the death of the cottage industry and artisans.
What followed was the loss of morality, destruction in the name of creation,
and a lot of messed up practices that would make you wonder. Was the industrial
revolution worth the bloodshed to make that iPhone 11 in your hand possible?
Today workplace safety is a major concern for almost every single industry. Every employee, no
matter how risky the job, has the right to be safe at the workplace. But that wasn’t always the case.
Contrastingly, during the industrial revolution, a job in the factory meant wagering your life every
single shift. People got killed or injured on a regular basis and nobody gave a hoot about them.
One might have a better chance at winning the pot at the London Derby than surviving
a week in factories of London. Employers only cared enough to make sure the mess was cleaned
as soon as possible and the factory carried on production at all cost. The victims were
delivered to their family without any compassion or compensation. Deceased employees would be
replaced the very moment or perhaps the next day, as there was no lack of hungry, desperate souls
looking for jobs at that time. In fact, workers’ death was more common than you could imagine.
During the construction of the Panama Canal, two of every five workers died. The construction of
the transcontinental railroad claimed 2 of every 25 workers’ lives while the Erie canal’s death
claim stood at 1 out of 50. Working in Factories was literally like playing hot potato with a bomb.
All factories were equipped with boilers to generate steam that had no safety features. There
wasn’t even an off button to these giant pressure cookers so they would explode all the time,
sometimes, taking the whole factory with them! By one estimate, during the late 19th century there
was an average of one boiler explosion every four days, and about 50,000 people a year died as a
result. The factories in Early Industrial England were dependent on the lack of accountability
so that they could keep their profits high. Safety was way too expensive back then and human
resources were abundant, easily replaceable, and most important, dirt cheap. To be honest,
a volatile and risky work environment doesn’t seem so dangerous when one was living in a city
with a couple of hundred-thousand people and their cholera-infested chamber pots. And for
the industrialists, they had no care in the world for human life. As long as the public
didn't start asking questions, they could just keep replacing the dead employees with live
ones. They wouldn’t even flinch before sending laborers down in coal mines with burning candles.
Mining tunnels were cramped, prone to collapse, hot, and dark. Electricity and battery run
equipment was still a distant dream and the only way to navigate through these dangerous tunnels
was to hold a burning torch or candle in hand. These explicitly dangerous depths
were often filled with highly flammable natural gasses. Unfortunately, a source of light like a
torch or candle was not exactly the best option when trapped gasses were extremely combustible
and ready to explode if an open source flame was provided. On May 25, 1812, 121 miners were inside
the Felling Colliery mine on the northeast coast of England when there was an explosion. Ninety-two
people died, including several boys as young as 8 and 9 years old. Many of the bodies weren't
recovered for more than a month because it was still too dangerous to go into the mine to look
for them. This disaster inspired someone to think about inventing a non-flammable miner's lamp. What
makes the whole thing more emotional is that the government and the media rarely cared about the
plight of laborers in these factories. This apathy allowed industrialists to run their factories
without ensuring any kind of safety protocol or humane environment for their workers. It also
empowered industrialists to shift the blame of the high mortality rate in their workplace
on to their workers! For instance, the Boston Herald blamed a screw factory worker named Michael
Markham’s over-assurance of his capabilities when he was killed in a workplace accident while
operating machinery. It was pretty common for the newspapers to blame the workers for carelessness
and not taking their own safety seriously when in fact there was no safety provided.
The term American Dream may have been coined by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book Epic
of America but the concept was prevalent back at the beginning of the nineteenth century as well.
As the industrial revolution killed most of the cottage industries one by one, millions of rural
people uprooted their entire families in hopes of seeking a better livelihood. They migrated
to bigger cities so they could surrender their lives in servitude to the same machines that
had replaced them. As the media industry had not entirely caught up with others’ pace in
the 19th century, the news was still carried by people and paper instead of radios, telegrams,
or the internet. So, the news wasn’t exactly fresh when a man in a rural area heard of an employment
opportunity in the city. By the time he’d reached the metropolitan with his entire family,
the opportunity would already be over. This would leave many new uprooted families lost in the city.
Soon, cities were overcrowded with such desperate workers ready to work at any rate possible. Even
though there were lots of new factories popping up everywhere, there were still not enough jobs to
accommodate all unemployed migrants. People were eager to work but the disparity between demand
and supply of jobs created the opportunity for industrialists to hire labor below minimum wage.
Laborers were treated as commodities and once skilled craftsmen were now part of the mindless
hives where fast, cheap, identical production superseded talented, unique, and expensive work.
These factories were forced to work long, low wage, terrible hours in dark and unsafe factories.
To be honest much hasn’t changed over the years. Even though laborers have rights
and safety today in the USA, they are losing the competition to South and Southeast Asian workers.
They are still willing to work for dirt-cheap wages due to lack of better alternatives.
The nineteenth century saw a decline in mortality rates and a hike in life expectancy
despite the machines causing around thirty-five thousand deaths and five hundred thousand injuries
every year. However, procreating almost a full-strength soccer team was normal to western
parents. This coupled with the growing problem of households lacking work due to the rise of the
machines caused the lower class to become poorer as it got harder to raise multiple kids at once.
With so many mouths to feed and low wages not helping the situation, parents needed more helping
hands. Industrialization became the new challenge to childhood, replacing plagues and poxes.
Children as young as 3 years old were employed to work in the harshest conditions because parents
told them to. Workdays were as long as 10 to 14 hours with nominal breaks during the shift.
Factories would not make things easy for these kids as they were forced to work with dangerous
machines snapping at their tiny fingers. Toxic fumes filled up their lungs, and they were often
pushed to crawl under dangerous places to clean debris and dust. Such crevices were impossible for
adults to squeeze into but kids were qualified grease monkeys for their miniature build.
Additionally, as kids worked hard during daytime, there was no chance they would attend school.
This created the vicious cycle of them getting trapped in factory working jobs for they had no
other qualifications growing up. Fortunately, not everyone saw little kids as cheap labor.
Jane Adams, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize was among the first to
raise the issue of child labor after a few girls refused the candies she offered. Jane
exposed the conditions of these candy factories and the workload the girls were subject to.
Later at the beginning of the twentieth century, activists like Lewis Hine and Grace Abbott tried
to improve the system from within. Though the battle was uphill, thanks to these heroes,
today’s kids get to spend hours digging in Minecraft instead of actual coal mines.
Earlier we mentioned the Government had a very sorry stance about the labor affairs
in the factories, well, that was only half of the truth. The entirety was far more horrific! When
workers raised the concern of malpractices and abuse in the factories and demanded to
be treated like human beings, the British government saw this as a “dangerous trend”.
According to the British aristocracy, the mere thought of considering the low-class workers
as human beings was threatening to their power and they considered it as an act of rebellion.
Fearing for their precious tea crumpets and croquet, they lobbied for the Combination Acts
of 1799 and 1800. The acts made it illegal to form societies or clubs for the purpose
of "political reform". In simpler terms, they simply abolished the unionization of workers.
This hampered any demand of laborers for a wage equal to their cost of living and widened the
divide between the employers and the employees, plunging the low class lower. Moreover, this
also hurt the Luddites, no, no we are not talking about old people who are technologically impaired.
Luddites were a group of British weavers who were understandably annoyed about being outdated by
the invention of machines. They were trying to gain the government’s notice of their plight by
organizing and when the Government turned a blind eye, they protested the industrial revolution by
committing vandalism at nearby factories. The destruction of heavy machinery did the
job of seeking attention but not in a positive manner. The government passed laws in 1812 to
make the destruction of industrial machinery capital crime! And it wasn't just an idle
threat — in the latter part of that same year, 14 Luddites were hanged for "frame-breaking."
This caused the Luddite movement to die with them, along with weaving as a professional trade.
Tell us in the comments if you would like us to cover more harsh realities that were
normal during colonization times. And as always thanks for watching Nutty History.