During the Industrial Revolution, factories required large amounts of cheap labor to produce goods through mass production and earn a profit. This led farmers, women, and children as young as 3 years old to work under dangerous conditions in factories. This created a new social class called the proletariat, made up of industrial workers like miners, mill workers, and machine operators. Child labor was especially exploitative, with children facing the same risks as adults but working long hours without breaks, often resulting in health issues or death. The growing middle class occupied new skilled jobs like merchants and factory owners. Overall, the difficult working conditions and exploitation of labor led to demands for reforms and riots over living standards.

1. Labor
During the Industrial Revolution

2. Types of Labor
• Displaced farmers (from the enclosure) looking for
work
• Women now had to work in factories to help support
the family
• Children (as young as 3 years old)
Industrial Revolution required cheap labor to produce
mass production at a profit. Only the poor worked in
factories

3. Result of all This work
• Creation of a working class = Proletariat
• The unemployed and underemployed come to the
cities for factory jobs and become a new social class
– the proletariat – the industrial working class.
• Miners
• Mill Workers
• Machine Operators
• They were the heart of the working force behind the
Industrial Revolution

4. Child Labor
• Children as young as 3 years
old worked in factories
• They faced the same
dangerous conditions that
adults did in the work place.
• Many stood for long hours
without a break.
• They suffered from height
disorders, toxin inhalation, lost
limbs, or worse….death

5. Result of all this work
• Growing Middle Class = Bourgeois
• New jobs came about during the Industrial
Revolution that required more skill
• Merchants
• Factory Owners
• Shippers
• Land Owners
• Middle Class Women now stayed at home vs.
working. They became the new consumer (they
were the one’s purchasing all the mass produced
goods)

6. Result of all this work
Time Clock
The clock becomes important:
• Factory work required you to be on TIME; if
you were not on time you were physically
punished.
• People now lived their lives based on clock
time and not by the rising or setting of the sun
• *Think of 5 places that demand you be on
time

7. Working Conditions
• 14 hour work days, 6 days a week (everyone had
Sundays off)
• If you had a break it was very short (most people ate as
they worked)
• Workers had to keep up with the machines
• Dangers in the workplace:
• Factories seldom well-lit or clean
• No Safety Regulations – Machines injured workers
• No government program to provide aid in case of injury or
unemployment
• Coal mines

8. What happened next
• Demand for reform
• Riots and Mobs broke out over living and working
conditions
• Child labor became unbearable for society

9. Let’s take a closer look

10. Video clip to be viewed after reading
primary sources