The People's Mods - Redefined
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A People's Mod - Redefined
People as human beings need to adapt to fit their surroundings to accommodate to their needs, survival of the fittest as it were. We can look through the history books and see for ourselves the changes that occur in the different cultures as time has moved on. One of the most important changes that affected the human society and culture, which has affected the way we live today, was the Industrial Revolution, which first started in Britain. The essay in which I have based this one on states that the Industrial Revolution had no reason for starting, and this I couldn’t agree with less.
The Beginning
The Industrial Revolution was a movement of many people from the agricultural system to the manufacturing system. The Agricultural Revolution beginning in the 17th Century saw an increase in the population of the people to about 5.7 million, and these masses amount of people were able to stay alive and provide for themselves due to the onset of agricultural technology and this helped spur the growth and success of the Industrial Revolution. People lived in their villages which were surrounded by their farms and all farming of the land was done by hand, with the assitance of animals. During the time of the agricultural phase of farming, all land was farmed with the Open Field System which allocated strips of land to each family and then those strips would be divided and separated to the amount of children of the farmer. However this feudal system which started in the Medieval times was proved unsuccessful due to the strips of land becoming too small to work with. The land was also subjected to the three year Crop Rotation, where the farmers would plant barley and wheat in two of their fields with the third one lying fallow. He would alternate the crops in the fields and this allowed for the soil to regain nutrients and increase fertility of the soil. The Agricultural Revolution brought out a few contraptions to make sowing the land easier, however the processes used were slow, painful, and not always productive. The old system of farming was heavily reliant on the participation of the people who worked the fields and the animals for support. This system was around for about two centurys in Britain before a better, faster, more productive system took over, this system was started by the invention of machines, one in particular is the Steam Engine.
The Innovations
The Industrial Revolution began in the early 19th century in the United Kingdom and was the period in which people moved away from hand made products, and moved into mass production.. The cause for such a revolution was the beginning of the use of machines to help productivity in the workplace. There were a few key innovations that led to the expansion of the industrial workforce, and they lay in these three main developments; the texitile industry, mining, and iron industries. In the textile sector, there were machines that would produce yarns of wool and cotton, and spin them and then weave them. Later Richard Arkwright created the cottonmill which first used horse power and then water power and finally in the height of the Industrial Revolution was able to apply the processes to create fabrics to be conducted with steam power, which made cotton manufacture a mechanised industry. In the coal mining industry, which had been around for a while, the process of taking the coal out from the mines, was labourous and in shaft mining there was the problem with the removal of water, but this was fixed with the invention of the steam engine which led to a higher output at a cheaper cost. James Watt later improved the steam engine to make it even more cost efficient as it became capable of more productivity, it was the first with the strength to pressurise the steam to atmospheric levels. This device very quickly replaced the waterwheel for practical reasons.
What Happened
The Steam Engine created more opportunities for greater production levels, and was applied to many areas of work, including on the agricultural side, but this meant that with fewer jobs on the farms, people had to move to the cities where the new work was formed, in the factories. As there were more machines which helped to grow crops in the land, sow and fertilize it, there was no longer a need for people to do it by hand because machines were more time efficient and cost less in the long run. So people left the villages and the farms and moved into the cities, where the factories stood. There were a lot more jobs created as a result of the mechanisation of the industries, and from here people were able to support themselves. However there are books telling the stories about how during these times in the capitalist system, the factory owners were suppressing the workers and the conditions of the workers in the factories was appauling to say the least. Many children worked in the mines as they were small and could fit into the smaller spaces, however the mines are no place for children. Because there was no OHS back then, children would die everyday in the mines due to rock falling in and many other terrible fates. Also in the factories, children were exploited to work there too as they were nimble and small so they would be put into life threatening positions in order to fix a broken machine, as the value of the machine was regarding more important than the life of a worker. Plus there were many other people that could take over the position of an injured worker, because life in the factories was all about production for the business and not about quality of life for the workers.
Conclusion
The Industrial processes and technologies created during the 19th Century catered for a movement of people from the farming sector to the factories. The Steam Engine allowed for a minimum input and a maximum output production to take place with the automation in the industry processes. Today we live in a world that uses automation and machines all the time to create the world we live in, synergy is the key.
