Dbq: Factory Conditions

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AP History January 30th, 2012 DBQ: Factory Conditions DBQ: Factory Conditions During the Industrial Revolution, there were many hardships and unfair treatments of the laborers that worked there. They had women, children, even full-fledged families working, and for a low wage. And at the same time, there were always endangerment to their lives while working there. This was a very strenuous and rough time where families would do anything to get the money they needed. The main issues that prevailed during that time were working conditions, wages and hours, and child labor. Around this time, many families would do absolutely anything to get money to support their family, and knowing that, many factories took advantage of that aspect. With that being said, they could care less about how working conditions were inside of the factories. Majority of factories had no windows, so that meant no sunlight and no ventilation for factory workers. And in addition to the issue of heating and cooling, they had no heaters, so all of the workers were freezing in the winter. To continue with the list of detrimental things, health and safety were huge factors that were completely ignored. The textile workers in particular had to work in an environment where they had to breathe in fiber and dust all day long, for hours on end. And unfortunately, for many of the workers, this led to lung cancer. With the safety issue, they had poor lighting in the buildings and lack of safety devices on the machines, and as a result there were many hand and arm injuries that went as far as completely crushing the bone. Steel workers were always at risk for getting injuries because of the mere fact that they were always working are hot vats of steel. To make things worse, if the workers got injured in any way, they would get fired. And because of their low standards, none
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