Population Growth and Urbanization During the Industrial Revolution By M. Beckham, A. O’Brien, and M. Mendes

Population Growth and Urbanization During the Industrial Revolution

          by M. Beckham, A. O’Brien, and M. Mendes

How were changes in population growth and urbanization related to the Industrial Revolution?

The changes in population and urbanization are related to the industrial revolution because more people came into factory areas seeking jobs, causing the areas to urbanize.

Primary Source 1:

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/census.html 

Summary of Primary Document 1:

        This census shows the number of employees for each job in 1851, 1861, and 1871. The occupation with the most employed during the 30 years was agricultural laborer/ farm servant/ shepherd. The numbers of employed in this occupation went down in the thirty years, which happened with many occupations. But other occupations had increased employment. Occupations like domestic servant, laborers, dressmaker, and tailor gained approximately 100,000 more employees in 1871 then 1851. Also, more occupations were created in 1861 and 1871 than in 1851. These increased jobs show how the population increased during the Industrial Revolution. With more employees in jobs like dressmaking and tailoring, it can be inferred that more clothes were needed because there were more people.

        This source comes from compiled Parliamentary papers from 1852-1853, 1863, and 1873. This source is valuable because it shows which jobs increased and which jobs decreased during the industrial revolution. This information can help historians infer whether jobs were focused in factories, around cities, or out in the country.  

“Occupations: Census returns for 1851, 1861, and 1871” The Victorian Web, July 2, 2002. Accessed May 13, 2015. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/census.html 

Graph:

This graph shows the population growth between 500 C.E and 2000 C.E and how the number have increased drastically from the industrial revolution to today.

Hill, Anne. “Urbanization Population Graphs.” Whsannehillhomework.12/6/14. Accessed 5/15/14.http://whsannehillhomework.blogspot.com/2012/12/urbanization-population-graphs.html.

 Primary Sources #1:

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/census.html 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO9rPmuMiaw 

Video Summary:

        This video gives a brief overview of urbanization during the industrial revolution. The video explains some causes and effects the migration of people into rural areas had, as well as the impacts on society.

         Batterson, Robert. “Urbanization in the Industrial Revolution.” Youtube. April 25, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO9rPmuMiaw 

Primary Source 2: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-class in London in 1844, 1892

Manchester proper lies on the left bank of the Irwell, between that stream and the two smaller ones, the Irk and the Medlock, which here empty into the Irwell. . . . The whole assemblage of buildings is commonly called Manchester, and contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more than less. The town itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in it for years, and go in and out daily without coming into contact with a working-people’s quarter or even with workers, that is, so long as he confines himself to his business or to pleasure walks. This arises chiefly from the fact, that by unconscious tacit agreement, as well as with outspoken conscious determination, the working people’s quarters are sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the middle-class; . . .
I may mention just here that the mills [factories] almost all adjoin the rivers or the different canals that ramify throughout the city, before I proceed at once to describe the labouring quarters. First of all, there is the old town of Manchester, which lies between the northern boundary of the commercial district and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones, are narrow and winding, as Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and Shude Hill, the houses dirty, old, and tumble-down, and the construction of the side streets utterly horrible. Going from the Old Church to Long Millgate, the stroller has at once a row of old-fashioned houses at the right, of which not one has kept its original level; these are remnants of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester, whose former inhabitants have removed with their descendants into better built districts, and have left the houses, which were not good enough for them, to a population strongly mixed with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised working-men’s quarter, for even the shops and beer houses hardly take the trouble to exhibit a trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is nothing in comparison with the courts and lanes which lie behind, to which access can be gained only through covered passages, in which no two human beings can pass at the same time. Of the irregular cramming together of dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan, of the tangle in which they are crowded literally one upon the other, it is impossible to convey an idea. And it is not the buildings surviving from the old times of Manchester which are to blame for this; the confusion has only recently reached its height when every scrap of space left by the old way of building has been filled up and patched over until not a foot of land is left to be further occupied.
Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from the main street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting grime, the equal of which is not to be found – especially in the courts which lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have yet beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. Below it on the river there are several tanneries which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge the only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as Allen’s Court, was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept, and disinfected with chloride of lime. . . . At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right bank.
In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green, slime pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet above the surface of the stream. But besides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge are tanneries, bone mills, and gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be easily imagined, therefore, what sort of residue the stream deposits. Below the bridge you look upon the piles of debris, the refuse, filth, and offal from the courts on the steep left bank; here each house is packed close behind its neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all black, smoky, crumbling, ancient, with broken panes and window frames. The background is furnished by old barrack-like factory buildings. On the lower right bank stands a long row of houses and mills; the second house being a ruin without a roof, piled with debris; the third stands so low that the lowest floor is uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors. Here the background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station of the Liverpool and Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this, the Workhouse, the “Poor-Law Bastille” of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks threateningly down from behind its high walls and parapets on the hilltop, upon the working-people’s quarter below.
Everywhere heaps of debris, refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which alone would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilised to live in such a district. . . . Passing along a rough bank, among stakes and washing-lines, one penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living and sleeping-room all in one. In such a hole, scarcely five feet long by six broad, I found two beds – and such bedsteads and beds! – which, with a staircase and chimney-place, exactly filled the room. In several others I found absolutely nothing, while the door stood open, and the inhabitants leaned against it. Everywhere before the doors refuse and offal; that any sort of pavement lay underneath could not be seen but only felt, here and there, with the feet. This whole collection of cattle-sheds for human beings was surrounded on two sides by houses and a factory, and on the third by the river, and besides the narrow stair up the bank, a narrow doorway alone led out into another almost equally ill-built, ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings….
Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air – and such air! – he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither. True, this is the Old Town, and the people of Manchester emphasise the fact whenever any one mentions to them the frightful condition of this Hell upon Earth; but what does that prove? Everything which here arouses horror and indignation is of recent origin, belongs to the industrial epoch.

Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892), pp. 45, 48-53.

http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevolution/PSEnglesManchester.html 

Summary of Primary Document #2:

        This document includes an excerpt of the writings of a German journalist, Friedrick Engels, in Manchester. Engels’ goal was to educate the public on the poor working conditions, and consequences of industrialization. In the document, he describes the city as having about 400,000 residents. Engels wrote that some areas were “crowded literally one upon the other,” which shows how the population was high and densely packed. Also, he mentions that factories line all of the rivers and canals in Manchester, which implies that the city was in the process of industrialization at the time. He ends his entry by describing the filth and poor conditions of Manchester; an effect of population growth, and how it is due to the “industrial epoch”, which directly shows how the population growth and urbanization in Manchester was a result of the Industrial Revolution.

 

http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevolution/PSLondon.html 

Source

http://www2.uncp.edu/home/rwb/manchester_19c.html

 

Photo:

Image: Smoke pollution in an English town in the 19th century with crowded buildings and dirty air. Another effect of population growth: pollution.

“The Industrial Age” Industrial revolution- Environmental history timeline. Accessed May        15, 2015.

http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_industrial.html

 

Synthesis:

        With these two primary sources, we can see that during the Industrial Revolution, more jobs from factories increased populations and expanded cities, causing urbanization. We see this also supported by the secondary source, “After 1800, the balance shifted toward cities. This shift was caused by the growth of the factory system, where the manufacturing of goods was concentrated in a central location.” The growth in factories brought more people to the cities looking for jobs, as we see in the job census. In the other primary source, population growth is shown in the effects on environment. As more people came seeking jobs in factories, the more air and water pollution there was. More housing was built to support the growing population, causing there to be more air pollution from heating systems that had no regulation codes. As Engels says in the primary source, “… the houses dirty, old, and tumble-down, and the construction of the side streets utterly horrible.” The housing conditions reflected off of the large numbers of people migrating to one place in a short amount of time.

        Population growth helped cause the Industrial Revolution, and urbanization was an after effect. With more factories being built, more people came seeking employment. This caused urban areas to expand around factories, creating larger cities and crowded areas.

Blue book:

Beck, Roger B. World History: Patterns of Interaction. Orlando: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012

Roger B. Beck, World History: Patterns of Interaction (Orlando: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 723.