The Role of Artwork and Primary Documents
Initially, students will be presented with artwork and encouraged to ask questions, make inferences and draw conclusions using the methods, activities and strategies listed below. Students will learn how to analyze detail, draw meaningful connections between visual representations and be expected to articulate their thoughts around pieces of artwork through the framework of the unit's essential question.
Students will be given contextual information around the artwork such as the artist's name and background, the year and location in which it was painted and more detail surrounding the unique subjects or topic of each paintings. In doing so, students will have the opportunity to corroborate their own assumptions and inferences. Students will draw parallels and find contrast between pieces of artwork, identify trends and patterns around the worker's experience during the Industrial Revolution and most important, determine the significance and dynamics surrounding gender and class in America and Britain during the 19 th century.
Concurrently, students will be introduced to a wide array of primary documents in order to help students further understand the struggle of the worker. Students will make meaningful connections between artwork and primary sources, and learn how these two vehicles of understanding history can work in conjunction, compliment one another or sometimes conflict. Nevertheless, students will be given the opportunity to examine a defining benchmark of world history by combining evocative imagery and rich text into a unit that is intellectually stimulating and accessible to the varying types of learners in the classroom.
Primary Documents with Annotation
The following six documents are compiled by Fordham University in a collection titled Internet History Sourcebook. Specifically, for the purposes of this unit, I will be utilizing the Section included in the Internet History Sourcebook titled "Social and Political Effects of the Industrial Revolution." The address to this source is referenced in the section of this unit titled "Resources." Below each title is a short synopsis of the document's context as well as its utility and significance in relation to better understanding the social ramifications surrounding the Industrial Revolution.
The Life of the Industrial Worker in Nineteenth-Century England
This primary source is a collection of interviews done by Michael Sadler, chairman to the parliamentary investigation into working conditions in the textile factories in Britain in 1832 that resulted in passage of the Act of 1833 which limited hours of employment for women and children in textile factories.
In this document students will learn how women and children were overworked, beaten and deprived of sleep and food in order meet production quotas. The document contains interviews by a number of workers, all of whom illustrate the dehumanizing aspects of life in the factory, while offering criticism about the necessity of working to survive. Essentially, this piece offers an accessible way students can grasp the terrors surrounding industry work for women and children.
Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions
This primary source is a summary taken from Edwin Chadwick, a social reformer in Britain, who was commissioned to investigate the living conditions and sanitary conditions during the 1840's. This source is a small, but representative, excerpt from the original 400 page report titled Report from the Poor Law Commissioners on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain. The outcome of this report lead to the Poor Law which in 1834 created a more accessible relief apparatus for the working class people of Great Britain.
This document can be used to illustrate the social aspects around the pressures of population in newly developed cities. For example, the contamination of water, the inadequacies surrounding drainage and infrastructure and how these problems contribute to the degradation of health and average life expectancy. Interestingly, Chadwick contributed some of these problems to the moral deficiencies and unhygienic habits of the worker.
The Physical Deterioration of the Textile Workers
This collection of primary documents includes a wide range of accounts from doctors to politicians regarding the nature of industry work and its physical effects on the body. Students will find how mundane repetition of tasks often lead to disfigurement and injury in laborers. Secondly, the quality of air, improper ventilation and overall disregard for safe working conditions eventually caused a general pattern of physical deterioration in the working class that could be quantified through the mid 20 th century.
The additional utility that comes from this source are its points on legislation in that workers challenged the working environment and policies, or lack thereof, during the Industrial Revolution. Although the social responses to the degradation of the worker are not the focal point of this document, students will understand how the social and labor problems stemming from poor conditions in the factories prompted some degree of dialogue within the working class. It is important that students are exposed to the ways and means by which laborers organized to and advocated for protections in their working environments.
Harriet Robinson: Lowell Mill Girls
This primary source is an autobiographical account of Harriet Hanson Robinson's life as a female factory worker starting at age ten in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. This document illustrates the hardships women faced in the factories as well as the gender restrictions that were enforced by their male overseers. However, Robinson also highlights the rising degree of agency women held as conditions and treatment eventually warranted the organization and politicization of female workers.
This document can be used to help students understand how women were manipulated into believing life in the factory was promising, financially liberating and socially relaxing. In that, all too often women were forced to forfeit their earnings to the men in their family, usually resulting in a level of subservience that paralleled life before the transition to industrial work. Lastly, students will see how the arrangement and structure of the women's living situation along with their working schedules helped to facilitate organization and political action which eventually lead to a strike in Lowell in 1836. Although this strike did not have a successful outcome, it did set a precedent for future labor movements and political representation for the working woman.
Andrew Ure: The Philosophy of the Manufactures, 1835
This primary document is a short essay written in 1835 by Andrew Ure, professor at the University of Glasgow. In this essay Ure articulates a common viewpoint held by himself along with other enthusiastic manufacturers and factory owners in that the Industrial Revolution was a divine blessing. This document is very useful in that it offers students a perspective on the industrial revolution that contrasts with that of the working class, and secondly, illustrates the rationalization for factory work as a necessity for the advancement of humanity.
Students will take interest to Ure's argument that industry makes life easier and more comfortable for everybody, especially in comparison to life for both men and women prior to the industrial revolution. He sees the advent of the machine as "providence" and the rise of industry as a "blessing," while making the case that work in the factories is neither exhausting nor painful. Although there is a large degree of truth to Ure argument regarding the boom of convenience that came with the Industrial Revolution, Ure seems to encompass a general disconnect from the experience of the worker in that he tends to discount arguments against industry work while expressing a zeal for industry as a means to improve the condition of all people living around the world who have the privilege to be part of this new age of industry.
Observations on the Loss of Woollen Spinning, 1794
This excerpt from a larger source with various authors paints a vivid picture of women's dichotomy stemming from the transition from work in the "Cottage Industry" to factory and textile work. This document is significant to students as it articulates the financial and domestic strain women experienced while being subject to the volatile and precarious wool spinning industry. The author talks about the burden of raising children while finding time to work for a low wage that hardly justifies the time and energy required to perform the tasks at hand. Nevertheless, the author recognizes the value in exposing young children to labor as a means to instill work ethic and a sense of "wholesomeness." Furthermore, the author argues the social and domestic ramifications that come with herding dozens of young boys and girls in working environments as detrimental; essentially, an approach to work that promotes fatigue, poverty and ultimately robs families from the opportunity to raise and develop decent young men and women. Lastly, students will be faced with the question posed by the author: to what degree is the sacrifice of one's happiness worth in exchange for one's livelihood. This question should resonate strongly as we are all still faced with this conundrum that some say was created and sustained by capitalism.
Artwork Annotations
In the following section I will chose two pieces of artwork to give a brief analysis of their content in an effort to help guide teachers' understanding of their utility in the classroom using the activities listed in the section below titled "Activities."
Joseph Wright of Derby, An Iron Forge, 1772, Tate Britain
In An Iron Forge we are introduced to a varying group of individuals contributing in some degree in the forging of iron. This scene takes place in a nighttime setting but is contrasted by the magnificent light that is glowing from the center of the iron forge- arguably representing the noble and virtuous work that industrialization may bring front and center to the lives of those who participate. We are shown the overseer who is dressed rather dandily, symbolizing his own lack of principal through his distance from any form of manual laborer. In contrast to the overseer we are give the faceless worker who is hunched over, and clearly exhausting himself for the sake of providing for his family, who stands uneasily next to the overseer, protecting the child from the heat of the forge. Despite the concerned looks, we are presented with a sort of heroism for the common man and the working class life. The proximity of the family to the forge suggests a degree of divine approval or blessing for the well-intentioned and honest work of the worker.
Thomas Allom, Powerloom Weaving, 1835
In Powerloom Weaving we are given a clear representation of the subservience of women in the factory setting during the Industrial Revolution. We are shown a textile factory full of obedient women sitting behind highly standardized machines that fill the factory from wall to wall. Front and center is a woman crouching near what seems to be a broken machine as her male overseer is using his hands to direct order and instruction. This scene can be interpreted as the domineering male demonstrating his power against a woman who is clearly being characterized as shameful, fearful, subservient and compliant, as indicated by her body language and position in relation to her male counterpart. What is also as symbolic as it is interesting is the group of women behind the overseer's back. This positioning of women could be interpreted as women plotting, organizing or simply passing information secretly when time permits. It should also be noted that the women who are "properly" doing their work while seated behind the powerloom seem to have no quarrel with the overseer. Rather, it is only when the woman falls out of line, or takes matters into her own hands, that she draws the attention of the male overseer and thus, is deemed insubordinate and requiring chastisement. Students will surely recognize the effectiveness in this print as an accurate reflection of the gender dynamic in the factory.
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