The Pros And Cons Of The Industrial Revolution

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The industrial revolution ushered in a new economic system driven by technological progress. Has this economic system benefitted all? The industrial revolution began in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th century. Landes (1969: 1) refers to the industrial revolution as 'technological innovations which, by substituting machines for human skill and inanimate power for human and animal force, brings a shift from handicraft to manufacture.. and gives birth to modern economy'. Industrialisation occurs in a country where there is major and continuing changes in material technology such as the use of fossil fuels, especially coal which could be used to aid the development of steam engines. This results in the incomes per her beginning to rise…show more content…
These new classes replaced the previous landlords and peasants. Marx believed that business owners kept the wages of the workers' wages low and this enabled production costs to stay low which maximised profits for the factory owners. He thought that the landowners who owned the means of production, such as the factories were becoming rich on the exploitation of the worker, who received less money for more labour (Cates: 37) The divide of capitalism can be seen to be demonstrated in study of labour movement in the 19th century town of Oldham by John Foster in his book Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns. By looking at the perspective of industrial towns it helps to further our understanding of the development of capitalism during industrialisation and how this economic system does not benefit all. Oldham is a large town in Manchester which emerged in the 19th century and was central to textile manufacturing and soon became one of the first industrialised towns. Its growth was closely associated with the cotton industry which was where large factories expanded and to avoid guild regulations of the city the raw materials were sent to peasants in the countryside. These products were then given to the peasants who would manufacture them and sell them to the market for a cheaper price as they had avoided the city regulations
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