The Industrial World

The Industrial Revolution in Europe changed everything from family and social structure to human labor and consumption of goods. The Industrial Revolution was lead by the changes from a mostly agricultural and rural economy to a capitalist urban economy. Once family based economies were changed to industry based economies which led to new ways of thinking about the family structure. After reading the Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions I was able to see a lot of these social and family structure problems that were addressed later on in the document.

I was really shocked when reading the two documents about just how filthy the living conditions were for the working class citizens. I had heard in previous history classes about how along with industrialization in Europe had come some overcrowdedness and unsanitary conditions, but I never imagined it to be this bad! The second document "Industrial Manchester" really went into the detail of the filth the inhabitants lived in. My views of industrial Europe i would say have changed after reading these articles and doing a little more research on the living conditions at the time. In history class I just learned about the industrialization aspect and it's contributions to capitalism. After these two readings I get a sense that the factory workers working in these grotesque conditions were and how they were in a way discriminated against or cast off because they were poor working class. They were discriminated and cast off by the higher classes and what must have been the officials of the town for they were left to deal on their own with their unsanitary living conditions. You would think the government or officials of the towns would have stepped in to take control or at least help attempt to improve the conditions.

In my opinion I believe these excerpts because they were written by secertary of a commission investigating sanitary conditions and a means to improve them(Chadwick's Report) and by the son of a manufacturer. They both seam to have extensive first hand knowledge of the situation going on at the time which leads me to believe that these selections are trustworthy sources of information on early industrial life and the urban poor. Especially the Industrial Manchester excerpt with all of the authors knowledge of the town he shares with us.

I believe the Chadwick's Report does have some bias and is a bit sensationalized at times. I feel like this report while being a report on sanitation includes a lot of moral aspect and issues of the people. He states in the document how the unsanitary conditions and lower life expectancy because of these unsanitary adverse conditions was leading people to live recklessly with "habitual avidity to sexual gratiffication." At the very end of the document he talks about how the cleaning up of the city and regaining personal cleanliness "are necessary to the improvement of the moral condition of the population." I believe Chadwick was using his report in addition to a sanitation report as an expression of the moral decline of the town due to the industrialization taking place. I think the claimed moral decline was due to more then the unsanitary conditions but to the whole changing of the society and family structure due to the industrialization. With all these changes going on it must have been hard on the people to understand all the change that was taking place.

I feel there are certain condition of modern industrialization that were shared by the urban poor and industrial workers a century earlier. I think this is due to the fact that when people are poor and living in very bad conditions that some of the simplest things to manage like sanitation are overlooked because of the idea that there are more important pressing issues to be dealt with at that particular time when in reality some of the simplest measures need to be made sure accounted for before they become problematic like the sanitation issue.