What were working conditions like during the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 1

There was more than one, but the distinctions may not matter much from our perspective.

The late seventeenth to early eighteenth century in England, France and northern German/Netherlands areas saw a lot of new technologies and labor specialization, with many people working from home and selling to "factors" who collected their products and sold them elsewhere. This happened alongside increased urbanization, and supported it, and also alongside the Atlantic slave trade, from which it benefited - especially in terms of having new raw materials to process and new foodstuffs like sugar and coffee to reward and/or distract workers. Their conditions were hard, by our standards, but they generally worked on their own time, and at or near home.

There were some water-powered mills and the like, but they had to be located in hilly areas where streams moved with enough force to turn heavy water wheels. These were not very big, and the machines were often grinding machines where few people assembled to work, saw mills or small textile mills, and I know little about them.

Later, by around the middle of the nineteenth century, steam power changed life in those same areas, and soon thereafter in urban North America. One of the changes was that mills and factories could be located at coastal docks, where coal and raw materials could be carried easily, and where products could be shipped easily, and where populations often already lived, ready to work.

Their conditions were awful from the start. Long hours, bad food, light and air, dangerous machines, and a preference for nimble, easily dominated younger people - often girls rather than boys - made these especially exploitative environments.

This was a phase of development, and it took until the 1920s for factories to improve much from a workers' standpoint. It took decades of union activity - especially in England and America, for conditions to improve.

The phase was repeated beginning in the late 1800s in Japan, which industrialized in about 30 years, compared to Europe's 50-70 years. Japan had had some internal industrial development similar to Europe and North America's "first" industrial revolutions. The interesting point is that the conditions - down to employing mainly young girls - was repeated, even under Japanese owners.

Answer 2

Horrid. Provisions we take for granted today weren't even imagined then. For example: the 8 hour work day was nonexistent, the workers worked as much as 12-16 hr/day. No paid holidays, no sick leave, no work safety (machines had no guards on them, factories were firetraps). There was no provisions against child labor. There was no pay equity: women got paid less than half for the same job as men.The pay was so low, it defines "starvation wages."

Answer 3

this idea is like todays sweatshops.Unions rose out of this age. people worked 100 hour weeks in unsafe conditions next to open fires, huge churning machines, no breaks, overcrowding, not allowed to sit. no ventilation no heat on cold days no holidays...think of everything that is not allowed today-that's what you had back then.