Primary Sources
Primary Sources
Primary Sources
Was life better or worse for people during the Industrial Revolution?
DOCUMENT A: Statistics on Industrial Growth.
The Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s transformed humanitys age-old
struggle with material scarcity by using capital, technology, resources, and
management to expand the production of goods and services dramatically.
Steam engines furnish the means not only of their support but of their
multiplication. They create a vast demand for fuel; and, while they lend their
powerful arms to drain the pits and to raise the coals, they call into employment
multitudes of miners, engineers, ship-builders, and sailors, and cause the
construction of canals and railways. And while they enable these rich fields of
industry to be cultivated to the utmost, they leave thousands of fine
arable[farmable] fields free for the production of food to man, which must have
been otherwise allotted to the food of horses. Steam engines, moreover, by the
cheapness and steadiness of their action, fabricate [produce] cheap goods, and
produce [acquire] in their exchange a liberal supply of the necessaries and
comforts of life, produced in foreign lands.