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The Industrial Revolution. Homemade. Prior to the Industrial Revolution most products that people bought were made in people’s homes. This was called the “cottage industry” the “boss” would pay people to make a product (yarn, cloth, butter) in their homes and he would collect it for sale.
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Homemade • Prior to the Industrial Revolution most products that people bought were made in people’s homes. This was called the “cottage industry” • the “boss” would pay people to make a product (yarn, cloth, butter) in their homes and he would collect it for sale. • the cottage industry was important because people could earn extra money in their spare time. Farmers would farm and their wives could earn supplemental income while still caring for the house and children. • the pay wasn’t great for cottage industries because anyone could do it.
The Factory Age • All the new inventions began to make the cottage industry obsolete • For example in the textile industry, the new Water Frame was too large for in a cottage. Plus it needed water or steam to run it. This meant that the new inventions required factories to accommodate their need for space and power • This switch to factories instead of cottage industries affected thousands.
Factory Age • The farmers that moved to the cities with their families were a ready labor force for the factories to use. • Factories became larger and larger and all the parts of cloth production become centralized under one roof. • The factories created large, crowded cities where people even lived in housing developments near the factory.
Hard Times • The factories made England a wealthy country but they were brutal to the people who worked in them. • Factory owners had little regard for the people their factory employed. Hours were incredibly long, buildings were dark, noisy, dirty and unsafe. And wages were incredibly low. • There was always someone who needed a job that would take even the meager wage that the factory owners paid, so people didn’t complain.
Child Labor • Some of the workers who suffered the worst were children. Children often began working around age 5. Families were so poor that they needed all the money they could get to survive. Besides no one could afford to stay home looking after children. • Children were employed to run in and out of the machines like power looms to pick out tangles and loose threads. • Boys were employed to crawl down chimneys and clean out the soot.
