It is generally agreed that the impact of the industrial revolution was negative for children. In the industrial districts, children tended to enter the workforce at younger ages. Many of the new factory owners preferred to employ children as they viewed them more docile tractable than adults. Although most families channelled their children's earnings into providing a better diet for them, the physical toll of working in the factories was very great and led to detrimental outcomes for children.[1]
Children were preferred workers in textile mills because they worked for lower wages. Child labourers tended to be orphans, children of widows, or from the poorest families. Children were needed for low pay, and nimble fingers. Child labor was not an invention of the industrial revolution, they were first exploited by their parents on the farm.The impact of the industrial revolution on adults is more complex and has been the subject of extensive debate amongst historians for the past one hundred years. Optimists have argued that industrialisation brought higher wages and better living standards to most people. Pessimists have argued that these gains have been over-exaggerated. They argue that wages did not rise significantly during this period, and furthermore, that whatever economic gains were actually made - these must be offset against the worsening health and housing of the new urban sectors.[3] Since the 1990s, many contributions to the standard of living debate has tilted towards the pessimist interpretation. Most of the work has been within the economic history framework. There have been attempts to measure variables such as real wages, mortality, and heights. More recently the historian Emma Griffin has marked a departure from this approach by using a large number of working-class autobiographies to consider how working people themselves conceived of these changes. She has argued that some working men did see improvements in their lives at this time, through higher wages and a greater degree of autonomy and self-determination.
[4]Safety was very poor in early industrial factories and mines and there was no injury compensation for the workers as well. The injuries from machinery would cause whole finger to be cut off, mild burns, severe arms and legs injuries, amputation of limbs and death. However, diseases and cancer were the most common health issues that had long-term effects to the workers. Cotton mills, coal mines, iron-works, and brick factories all had bad air, which caused chest diseases, coughs, blood-spitting, hard breathing, pains in chest, and sleepless nights for the workers.Housing for the workers were overcrowded and unclean, making it suitable for the hazards of typhoid, cholera, and smallpox. Workers during these times did not have sick days, and forced themselves to work to provide money to support the family. Traditionally women and girls were always in charge of cleaning the house, but since the women were spending just as much time working as the men, they had no time to clean the house. The housing was tiny, dirty, and sickly for the working laboring class during the Industrial Revolution, and the workers had no personal time to clean or change their own atmosphere even if they wished to
