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Kids learn about the Industrial Revolution including where it began, how long it lasted, the First and Second Industrial Revolution, cultural changes, transportation, working conditions, and interesting facts. Educational article for students, schools, and teachers.

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Most products people in the industrialized nations use today are turned out swiftly by the process of mass production, by people (and sometimes by robots) working on assembly lines using power-driven machines. People of ancient and medieval times had no such products. They had to spend long, tedious hours of hand labor even on simple objects. The energy, or power, they employed in work came almost wholly from their own and animals' muscles. The Industrial Revolution is the name given the movement in which machines changed people's way of life as well as their methods of manufacture.

About the time of the American Revolution, the people of England began to use machines to make cloth and steam engines to run the machines. A little later they invented locomotives. Productivity began a spectacular climb. By 1850 most Englishmen were laboring in industrial towns and Great Britain had become the workshop of the world. From Britain the Industrial Revolution spread gradually throughout Europe and to the United States.

The most important of the changes that brought about the Industrial Revolution were (1) the invention of machines to do the work of hand tools; (2) the use of steam, and later of other kinds of power, in place of the muscles of human beings and of animals; and (3) the adoption of the factory system.

It is almost impossible to imagine what the world would be like if the effects of the Industrial Revolution were swept away. Electric lights would go out. Automobiles and airplanes would vanish. Telephones, radios, and television would disappear. Most of the abundant stocks on the shelves of department stores would be gone. The children of the poor would have little or no schooling and would work from dawn to dark on the farm or in the home. Before machines were invented, work by children as well as by adults was needed in order to provide enough food, clothing, and shelter for all.

The Industrial Revolution came gradually. It happened in a short span of time, however, when measured against the centuries people had worked entirely by hand. Until John Kay invented the flying shuttle for looms in 1733 and James Hargreaves the spinning jenny 31 years later, the making of yarn and the weaving of cloth had been much the same for thousands of years. By 1800 a host of new and faster processes were in use in both manufacture and transportation.

This relatively sudden change in the way people live deserves to be called a revolution. It differs from a political revolution in its greater effects on the lives of people and in not coming to an end, as, for example, did the French Revolution.

Instead, the Industrial Revolution grew more powerful each year as new inventions and manufacturing processes added to the efficiency of machines and increased productivity. Indeed, since World War I the mechanization of industry increased so enormously that another revolution in production is taking place ( see industry; automation).

Commerce and industry have always been closely related. Sometimes one is ahead and sometimes the other, but the one behind is always trying to catch up. Beginning about 1400, world commerce grew and changed so greatly that writers sometimes use the term commercial revolution to describe the economic progress of the next three and a half centuries.

Many factors helped bring about this revolution in trade. The Crusades opened up the riches of the East to Western Europe. America was discovered, and European nations began to acquire rich colonies there and elsewhere. New trade routes were opened. The strong central governments which replaced the feudal system began to protect and help their merchants. Trading firms, such as the British East India Company, were chartered by governments. Larger ships were built, and flourishing cities grew up.

With the expansion of trade, more money was needed. Large-scale commerce could not be carried on by barter, as much of the earlier trade had been. Gold and silver from the New World helped meet this need. Banks and credit systems developed. By the end of the 17th century Europe had a large accumulation of capital. Money had to be available before machinery and steam engines could come into wide use for they were costly to manufacture and install.

By 1750 large quantities of goods were being exchanged among the European nations, and there was a demand for more goods than were being produced. England was the leading commercial nation, and the manufacture of cloth was its leading industry.

Several systems of making goods had grown up by the time of the Industrial Revolution. In country districts families produced most of the food, clothing, and other articles they used, as they had done for centuries. In the cities merchandise was made in shops much like those of the medieval craftsmen, and manufacturing was strictly regulated by the guilds and by the government. The goods made in these shops, though of high quality, were limited and costly. ( See also guild; Middle Ages.)

The merchants needed cheaper items, as well as larger quantities, for their growing trade. As early as the 15th century they already had begun to go outside the cities, beyond the reach of the hampering regulations, and to establish another system of producing goods.

Cloth merchants, for instance, would buy raw wool from the sheep owners, have it spun into yarn by farmers' wives, and take it to country weavers to be made into textiles. These country weavers could manufacture the cloth more cheaply than city craftsmen could because they got part of their living from their gardens or small farms.

The merchants would then collect the cloth and give it out again to finishers and dyers. Thus, they controlled cloth making from start to finish. Similar methods of organizing and controlling the process of manufacture came to prevail in other industries, such as the nail, cutlery, and leather goods.

Some writers call this the putting-out system. Others call it the domestic system because the work was done in the home ("domestic" comes from the Latin word for home). Another term is cottage industry, for most of the workers belonged to the class of farm laborers known as cotters and carried on the work in their cottages.

This system of industry had several advantages over older systems. It gave the merchant a large supply of manufactured articles at a low price. It also enabled him to order the particular kinds of items that he needed for his markets. It provided employment for every member of a craft worker's family and gave jobs to skilled workers who had no capital to start businesses for themselves. A few merchants who had enough capital had gone a step further. They brought workers together under one roof and supplied them with spinning wheels and looms or with the implements of other trades. These establishments were factories, though they bear slight resemblance to the factories of today.

English merchants were leaders in developing a commerce which increased the demand for more goods. The expansion in trade had made it possible to accumulate capital to use in industry. A cheaper system of production had grown up which was largely free from regulation.

There also were new ideas in England which aided the movement. One of these was the growing interest in scientific investigation and invention. Another was the doctrine of laissez-faire, or letting business alone. This doctrine had been growing in favor throughout the 18th century. It was especially popular after the British economist Adam Smith argued powerfully for it in his great work The Wealth of Nations (1776).

For centuries the craft guilds and the government had controlled commerce and industry down to the smallest detail. Now many Englishmen had come to believe that it was better to let business be regulated by the free play of supply and demand rather than by laws. Thus, the English government for the most part kept its hands off and left business free to adopt the new inventions and the methods of production which were best suited to them.

The most important of the machines that ushered in the Industrial Revolution were invented in the last third of the 18th century. Earlier in the century, however, three inventions had been made which opened the way for the later machines. One was the crude, slow-moving steam engine built by Thomas Newcomen (1712), which was used to pump water out of mines. The second was Kay's flying shuttle (1733). It enabled one person to handle a wide loom more rapidly than two persons could operate it before. The third was a frame for spinning cotton thread with rollers, first set up by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt (1741). Their invention was not commercially practical, but it was the first step toward solving the problem of machine spinning. ( See also spinning and weaving; invention.)

As the flying shuttle sped up weaving, the demand for cotton yarn increased. Many inventors set to work to improve the spinning wheel. James Hargreaves, a weaver who was also a carpenter, patented his spinning jenny in 1770. It enabled one worker to run eight spindles instead of one.

About the same time Richard Arkwright developed his water frame, a machine for spinning with rollers operated by water power. In 1779 Samuel Crompton, a spinner, combined Hargreaves' jenny and Arkwright's roller frame into a spinning machine, called a mule. It produced thread of greater fineness and strength than the jenny or the roller frame. Since the roller frame and the mule were large and heavy, it became the practice to install them in mills, where they could be run by water power. They were tended by women and children.

These improvements in spinning machinery called for further improvements in weaving. In 1785 Edmund Cartwright patented a power loom. In spite of the need for it, weaving machinery came into use very slowly. First, many improvements had to be made before the loom was satisfactory. Second, the hand weavers violently opposed its adoption because it threw many of them out of work. Those who got jobs in the factories were obliged to take the same pay as unskilled workers. Thus, some people rioted, smashed the machines, and tried to prevent their use. The power loom was only coming into wide operation in the cotton industry by 1813. It did not completely replace the hand loom in weaving cotton until 1850. It was not well adapted to the making of some woolens. As late as 1880 many hand looms were still in use for weaving woolen cloth.

Many other machines contributed to the progress of the textile industry. In 1785 Thomas Bell of Glasgow, Scotland, invented cylinder printing of cotton goods. This was a great improvement on block printing. It made successive impressions of a design "join up" and did the work more rapidly and more cheaply. In 1793 the available supply of cotton was increased by American Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. In 1804 J.M. Jacquard, a Frenchman, perfected a loom on which patterns might be woven in fabrics by mechanical means. This loom was later adapted to the making of lace, which became available to everyone.

While textile machinery was developing, progress was being made in other directions. In 1763 James Watt, a Scottish mechanic, was asked to repair a model of a Newcomen steam engine. He saw how crude and inefficient it was and by a series of improvements made it a practical device for running machinery.

Wheels turned by running water had been the chief source of power for the early factories. These were necessarily situated on swift-running streams. When the steam engine became efficient, it was possible to locate factories in more convenient places.

The first users of steam engines were the coal and iron industries. They were destined to be basic industries in the new age of machinery. As early as 1720 many steam engines were in operation. In coal mines they pumped out the water which usually flooded the deep shafts. In the iron industry they pumped water to create the draft in blast furnaces.

The iron industry benefited also from other early inventions of the 18th century. Iron was scarce and costly, and production was falling off because England's forests could not supply enough charcoal for smelting the ore. Ironmasters had long been experimenting with coal as a fuel for smelting. Finally the Darby family, after three generations of effort, succeeded with coal that had been transformed into coke. This created a new demand for coal and laid the foundation for the British coal industry. The next great steps were taken in the 1780s, when Henry Cort developed the processes of puddling and rolling. Puddling produced nearly pure malleable iron. Hand in hand with the adoption of the new inventions went the rapid development of the factory system of manufacture.

The new methods increased the amount of goods produced and decreased the cost. The worker at a machine with 100 spindles on it could spin 100 threads of cotton more rapidly than 100 workers could on the old spinning wheels. Southern planters in the United States were able to meet the increased demand for raw cotton because they were using the cotton gin. This machine could do the job of 50 men in cleaning cotton. Similar improvements were being made in other lines of industry. British merchants no longer found it a problem to obtain enough goods to supply their markets. On the contrary, at times the markets were glutted with more goods than could be sold. Then mills were closed and workers were thrown out of employment.

With English factories calling for supplies, such as American cotton, and sending goods to all parts of the world, better transportation was needed. The roads of England were wretchedly poor and often impassable. Packhorses and wagons crawled along them, carrying small loads. Such slow and inadequate transportation kept the cost of goods high. Here again the need produced the invention. Thomas Telford and John MacAdam each developed a method of road construction better than any that had been known since the ancient Romans built their famous roads.

Many canals were dug. They connected the main rivers and so furnished a network of waterways for transporting coal and other heavy goods. A canalboat held much more than a wagon. It moved smoothly if slowly over the water, with a single horse hitched to the towline. In some places, where it was impossible to dig canals and where heavy loads of coal had to be hauled, mine owners laid down wooden or iron rails. On these early railroads one horse could haul as much coal as 20 horses could on ordinary roads.

Early in the 19th century came George Stephenson's locomotive and Robert Fulton's steamboat, an American invention. These inventions marked the beginning of modern transportation on land and sea. Railroads called for the production of more goods, for they put factory-made products within reach of many more people at prices they could afford to pay.

As conditions in industry changed, social and political conditions changed with them. Farm laborers and artisans flocked to the manufacturing centers and became industrial workers. Cities grew rapidly. Factory centers such as Manchester, England, grew from villages into cities of hundreds of thousands in a few short decades. The percentage of the total population located in cities expanded steadily, and big cities tended to displace more scattered centers in western Europe's urban map. Rapid city growth produced new hardships, for housing stock and sanitary facilities could not keep pace, though innovation slowly responded. Gas lighting improved street conditions in the better city neighborhoods from the 1830s onward, and sanitary reformers pressed for underground sewage systems at about this time. For those who were better-off, rapid suburban growth allowed some escape from the worst urban miseries.

Rural life also changed. As cities grew, the percentage of farmers in the total population declined. Although a full-scale technological revolution in the countryside occurred only after the 1850s, factory-made tools spread widely even before this time. Scythes replaced sickles for harvesting, allowing a substantial improvement in productivity. Larger estates began to introduce newer equipment, such as grain drills for planting. Crop rotation, involving the use of nitrogen-fixing plants, displaced the age-old practice of leaving some land fallow, while better seeds and livestock and-from the 1830s-chemical fertilizers improved crop yields as well. Rising agricultural production and market specialization were central to the growth of cities and factories.

Far-reaching changes were gradually brought about in the life of industrial workers. For one thing, machines took a great burden of physical work from the muscles of human beings. Some of the other changes, however, were not so welcome.

The change from domestic industry to the factory system meant a loss of independence to the worker. Home laborers could work whenever they pleased. Although the need for money often drove them to toil long hours at home, they could vary the monotony of the task by digging or planting a garden patch. When they became factory employees, however, they not only had to work long hours but had to leave the farm. Workers lived near the factory, often in a crowded slum district, and were forced to work continuously at the pace set by the machine. The long hours and the monotonous toil were an especially great hardship for the women and children. The vast majority of the jobs were held by them by 1816.

The change to industrialization was particularly hard on the weavers and the other skilled workers who sank to the position of factory workers. They had been independent masters-capitalists in a small way-and managers of their own businesses. They had pride in their skills. When they saw themselves being forced into factories to do other men's bidding for the same pay as unskilled workers, it is no wonder that they rioted and broke up looms.

A person had to have a lot of capital to buy machines and open a factory. Those who were successful made huge profits with which to buy more machines, put up larger buildings, and purchase supplies in greater quantities at enormous savings. Thus, capital increased far more rapidly than it ever had before. Much of it was invested in building canals, railroads, and steamships and in developing foreign trade. The men who controlled these enterprises formed a powerful new class in England-the industrial capitalists.

The capitalists had a struggle to obtain a voice in the government. They needed a better system of banking, currency, and credit. They had to find and hold markets for their products. They had many difficulties in organizing their factories to run efficiently. They also had to make a profit on their investments in the face of intense competition.

Laissez-faire was the rule in England. This meant that the government had accepted the doctrine that it should keep hands off business. Factory owners could therefore arrange working conditions in whatever way they pleased. Grave problems arose for the workers-problems of long working hours, low wages, unemployment, accidents, employment of women and children, and poor housing conditions.

The rapid development of large-scale manufacturing, especially during the early years of the Industrial Revolution, made possible the exploitation of young children in many factories. In England, as well as in other countries, there existed considerable demand for child labor during the 1800s. Children could tend many of the machines as well as older persons could, and they could be hired for less pay. Great numbers of children were worked from 12 to 14 hours a day under terrible conditions. Many were apprenticed to the factory owners and housed in miserable dormitories. Ill-fed and ill-clothed, they were sometimes driven under the lash of an overseer.

The high death rate of these child slaves eventually roused efforts to pass laws limiting the daily toil for apprentices. The first law, in 1802, which was aimed at controlling the apprenticeship of poor children to cotton-mill owners, was ineffective because it did not provide for enforcement. Several decades later, stronger reform laws began to emerge. Legislation in England, France, and Prussia during the 1830s, for instance, restricted the employment of young children in the factories and encouraged school attendance. ( See also child labor.)

Along with the dramatic economic changes of the period, new antagonisms emerged among the urban social classes of England and other European countries. The key division lay between the members of the middle class, who owned businesses or acquired professional education, and those of the working class, who depended on the sale of their labor for a wage. Neither group was homogeneous. Many middle-class people criticized the profit-seeking behavior of the new factory owners. Some skilled workers, earning good wages, emulated middle-class people, seeking education and acquiring domestic trappings such as pianos.

Nevertheless, the social divide was considerable. It increasingly affected residential patterns, as wealthier classes moved away from the crowded slums of the poor, in contrast to the greater mixture in the quarters of preindustrial cities. City governments often enacted harsh measures against beggars, while new national laws attempted to make charity harder to obtain. The British Poor Law Reform of 1834, in particular, tightened the limits on relief in hopes of forcing able-bodied workers to fend for themselves.

Class divisions manifested themselves in protest movements. Middle-class people joined political protests hoping to win new rights against aristocratic monopoly. Workers increasingly organized on their own. Some workers attacked the reliance on machinery in the name of older, more humane traditions of work. Others formed incipient labor unions. These unions often started as "friendly societies" that collected dues from workers and extended aid during illness or unemployment. Soon, however, they became organizations for winning improvements by collective bargaining and strikes. ( See also labor.)

Industrial workers also sought to benefit themselves by political action. They fought such legislation as the English laws of 1799 and 1800 forbidding labor organizations. They campaigned to secure laws that would help them. National union movements arose in England during the 1820s, though they ultimately failed. Huge strikes in the silk industry around Lyon, France, in 1831 and 1834 sought a living minimum wage for all workers. The most ambitious worker movements tended to emphasize a desire to turn back the clock to older work systems where there was greater equality and a greater commitment to craft skill, but most failed. Smaller, local unions did achieve some success in preserving the conditions of traditional systems. The struggle by workers to extend their political power was one of the major factors in the spread of democracy during the 19th century. ( See also labor and industrial law; labor movements.)

Until 1815 France was busy with the Napoleonic wars. It had little opportunity to introduce machinery. When peace came France began to follow England. It followed slowly, however, and has never devoted itself as exclusively to manufacturing as England has. Belgium was ahead of France in adopting the new methods. The other European countries made little progress until the second half of the 19th century.

The United States too was slow in adopting machine methods of manufacture. Farming and trading were its chief interests until the Civil War. The new nation had little capital with which to buy the machinery and put up the buildings required. Such capital as existed was largely invested in shipping and commerce. Labor was scarce because men continued to push westward, clearing the forests and establishing themselves on the land.

From Samuel Slater and the Early Development of the Cotton Manufacture in the United States by William R. Bagnall, 1890

A start in manufacturing, however, was made in New England in 1790 by Samuel Slater. An employee of Arkwright's spinning mills, Slater came to the United States in 1789. He was hired by Moses Brown of Providence, R.I., to build a mill on the Pawtucket, or Seekonk, River. English laws forbade export of either the new machinery or plans for making it. Slater designed the machine from memory and built a mill which started operation in 1790. When the Napoleonic wars and the War of 1812 upset commerce and made English products difficult to obtain, more American investors began to build factories.

New England soon developed an important textile industry. It had swift streams for power and a humid climate, which kept cotton and wool fibers in condition for spinning and weaving. In Pennsylvania iron for machines, tools, and guns was smelted in stone furnaces. They burned charcoal, plentiful in this forested land. Spinning machines driven by steam were operating in New York by 1810. The first practical power loom was installed at Waltham, Mass., by Francis Cabot Lowell in 1814. Shoemaking was organized into a factory system of production in Massachusetts in the early 19th century. New England was the first area in the United States to industrialize.

American inventors produced many new machines that could be applied to industry as well as to agriculture. Oliver Evans designed a steam engine more powerful than that of James Watt. Engineers quickly adopted the new engine and used it to power locomotives and steamboats.

Cyrus McCormick invented several machines used to mechanize farming. His mechanical reaper, patented in 1834, revolutionized harvesting, making it quicker and easier. Elias Howe's sewing machine eased the life of the housewife and made the manufacture of clothing less expensive.

Techniques of factory production were refined in American workshops. Eli Whitney, who had invented the cotton gin, a machine for cleaning the seeds out of cotton, also built a firearms factory. There he led the movement to standardize parts used in manufacture. They became interchangeable, enabling unskilled workers to assemble products from boxes of parts quickly. American factories used machine tools to make parts. These machines were arranged in lines for more efficient production. This was called the "American system of manufacturing," and it was admired by all other industrial nations. After being first applied to the manufacture of muskets, the system was later used in other industries such as clock and lock making.

The machines of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and early 19th centuries were simple, mechanical devices compared with the industrial technology that followed. Many new products were devised, and important advances were made in the system of mass production. Changes in industry were so great that the period after 1860 has been called the Second Industrial Revolution. New scientific knowledge was applied to industry as scientists and engineers unlocked the secrets of physics and chemistry. Great new industries were founded on this scientific advance: steel, chemicals, and petroleum benefited from new understandings of chemistry; breakthroughs in the study of electricity and magnetism provided the basis for a large electrical industry. These new industries were larger and more productive than any industries existing before. Germany and the United States became the leaders, and by the end of the 19th century they were challenging Great Britain in the world market for industrial goods.

The age of electricity began in 1882 when Thomas A. Edison introduced a system of electric lighting in New York City. Electricity was later applied to driving all kinds of machinery as well as powering locomotives and streetcars. Electric lighting quickly spread across the United States and was soon adopted in Europe. The electrical industry was dominated by large companies that developed new products and then manufactured and marketed them. These companies were based in Germany and the United States but sold their goods all over the world. They were the first multinational companies. Companies like Westinghouse and General Electric helped to electrify cities in Europe, Africa, and South America.

The steel and chemical industries used new technology that greatly increased production. The size of factories increased rapidly, employing more workers and using more machinery. These industries integrated all stages of production under a single corporate structure. They bought out competitors and acquired sources of raw materials and retail outlets. Corporations such as U.S. Steel and Standard Oil controlled all stages of manufacturing the product, from mining and drilling to delivering it to the customer. This gave them great economic power, and the United States government took measures to limit their monopolies in steel and petroleum.

The larger size of business presented great challenges to managers who administered enormous organizations with many branches and subsidiaries. Advances in communications and transportation helped decision makers to maintain control. The electric telegraph was invented by Samuel Morse in 1844 and was used to relay commercial information about prices and markets. It was used in the stock exchanges and on the railway systems. Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone in 1876, and networks of telephone lines were built quickly across the United States.

The telephone became a useful tool for managers to keep in contact with the widely dispersed parts of their businesses. New methods of management were devised that stressed central control, planning, and efficient production methods. One of the leading advocates of "scientific management" was Frederick Winslow Taylor.

The Second Industrial Revolution marked great progress in the methods of mass production. More and more industries used interchangeable parts and machine tools. Electric power replaced steam power in factories; it was cheaper, faster, and more flexible. It allowed machine tools to be arranged more efficiently. Human power was replaced by machine power. In 1913 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line in the manufacture of his Model T Ford. Parts were assembled on a moving conveyor belt, and the Model T took shape as it moved from one work station to the next. The assembly line greatly increased the speed of manufacture and soon was used in many industries.

By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, only a small number of industries in the most developed nations of the world had adopted advanced production methods and organization. Much of the world had not yet begun a first industrial revolution. Russia, Canada, Italy, and Japan were just beginning to industrialize. Only Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, and some parts of the Scandinavian countries had successfully completed an industrial revolution. China, India, and Spain did not begin to industrialize until well into the 20th century. (For bibliography, see industry.)

Andre Millard

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Most products people in the industrialized nations use today are turned out swiftly by the process of mass production, by people (and sometimes by robots) working on assembly lines using power-driven machines. People of ancient and medieval times had no such products. They had to spend long, tedious hours of hand labor even on simple objects.

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Industrialization ushered much of the world into the modern era, revamping patterns of human settlement, labor, and family life.

Subjects

Social Studies, Economics, U.S. History, World History

Image

Power Looms

Women and children were often employed in the textile industry during the first century of industrialization. Their smaller fingers were often better at threading the machinery. Despite routinely working 16 hours, or longer, a day they were paid little.

Photograph by Nancy Carter

The Industrial Revolution deserves the name with which historians have tagged it. It brought about thorough and lasting transformations, not just in business and economics but in the basic structures of society. Before industrialization, when the most significant economic activities in most European countries were small-scale farming and artisan handicrafts, social structures remained essentially as they had been during the Middle Ages. The advent of industrial development revamped patterns of human settlement, labor, and family life. The changes set in motion by industrialization ushered Europe, the United States of America, and much of the world into the modern era.

Most historians place the origin of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain in the middle decades of the 18th century. In the British Isles and most of Europe at this time, most social activity took place in small and medium-sized villages. People rarely traveled far beyond their home village. During the 18th century, the population of Britain and other European countries began rising significantly. Among the first signs of economic transformation was an increase in agricultural productivity, making it possible to feed this rising population. The combination of these factors led to profound changes in how rural people lived. Gradually, large-scale mechanized agriculture to serve the market began to overtake the kinds of subsistence farming most peasants had practiced for generations. The enclosure movement, which converted commonly held grazing lands into fenced-off private property, added to the new pressures facing the poor, rural majority.

The population increase added to the number of people facing difficulties making a living on the land. Many left their agrarian lives behind and headed for towns and cities to find employment. Advances in industry and the growth of factory production accelerated the trend toward urbanization in Britain. Industrial cities like Manchester and Leeds grew dramatically over the course of a few short decades. In 1800, about 20 percent of the British population lived in urban areas. By the middle of the nineteenth century, that proportion had risen to 50 percent. Other Western European lands such as France, the Netherlands, and Germany also experienced an increase in urban populations, albeit, more slowly. These changes thoroughly disrupted longstanding patterns in social relationships that dated back to medieval times.

The nature of work in the new urban industries also had significant social impact. Before the Industrial Revolution, artisans with specialized skills produced most of Europe's manufactured goods. Their work was governed by the traditions of their craft and the limits of available resources. Human and animal muscle and the waterwheel were the era's main energy sources. With the coming of factory-based industry, the coal-fired steam engine and other machinery set a new, faster pace for labor. In the factories, coal mines, and other workplaces, the hours were very long, and the conditions, generally, dismal and dangerous. The size and scope of manufacturing enterprises continued to increase throughout the 19th century as Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world industrialized. Larger firms that could achieve economies of scale held an advantage in the competitive sphere of international trade. In the industrializing world, the new means of production meant the demise of earlier, slower modes of labor and life.

The most insidious consequences of the new conditions may have been those affecting the most basic social unit: the family. The preindustrial family was fundamentally both a social and an economic unit. Married couples and their children often worked side by side on a family farm or in a shop, or otherwise divided their labor for the family's overall benefit. It was also common in 18th-century Great Britain for women and men to work in their rural homes doing jobs such as textile spinning and weaving on a piecework basis for merchant owners. This decentralized form of employment was called the "putting-out" or domestic system. However, the rise of factory production and industrial cities meant a separation of the home from the workplace for most male workers. Very often, the need for income motivated men to leave their families behind for jobs in the city. Even without geographic separation, many types of industrial jobs were so demanding that they left little downtime for workers to spend preserving the relational bonds we associate with family life.

Women also worked outside the home. Unmarried women, in particular, often worked as domestic servants. Many British women, including mothers, were employed in the textile mills to help their families make ends meet. Child labor was also rampant in the textile industry during the first century of industrialization. Factory owners appreciated having workers whose fingers were small enough to manipulate delicately threaded machinery. Despite their importance to the industry's output, these women and children were paid very little and were routinely compelled to work 16 hours per day or longer. Their jobs were perceived as less skilled than those of their male co-workers, although the working conditions were sometimes equally dangerous.

The United States underwent many of the same social transformations arising from industrialization. U.S. manufacturing began in earnest after the nation broke from England in the 1770s. An embargo on foreign imports during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, and a British blockade of the Atlantic seaboard during the War of 1812, spurred domestic production. The United States became one of the world's leading economic powers by the 1830s.

In the first half century after U.S. independence, a major proportion of the nation's labor force shifted from the agricultural to the manufacturing sector. As in Great Britain, the textile industry led the way toward mechanization. In many industries, though, home-based production and artisan craft traditions gave way to wage labor in larger, machine-powered operations. Industrialization, along with great strides in transportation, drove the growth of U.S. cities and a rapidly expanding market economy. It also shaped the development of a large working class in U.S. society, leading eventually to labor struggles and strikes led by working men and women.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Britain, the United States, and other industrialized nations were debating and enacting reform laws to limit some of the worst abuses of the factory system. However, similarly oppressive labor conditions arose in many parts of the world as their economies industrialized in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reorganization of daily life wrought by industrialization had effects that weakened the material basis for the institutions of the family and the community. These effects were so lasting that they can still be felt in the present day-even as developed societies have shifted into an era that scholars describe as "postindustrial."

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Last Updated

October 19, 2023

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Industrialization ushered much of the world into the modern era, revamping patterns of human settlement, labor, and family life.

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Take a look around the room you're in right now...

Do you see many things that you or a family member made with their own hands? Maybe you have a special baby blanket that someone knitted for you, or a few art projects hanging on the wall, but I'm guessing that most of the things in the room were made far away in factories.

250 years ago, things would have been very different. Most of the items in your house would have been made by someone you knew. Either you or a family member would make them, or you would have traded or bought them from someone in your community who made them. Other things might have been handed down from your grandparents.

Back then, people had to know how to do many things to survive and keep themselves comfortable. A man would have a trade, but would also be able to grow food, chop wood, and build and fix things in his house. Women knew how to cook, sew, spin, and weave cloth, keep a garden, and churn butter. A few might have traded too. Children would also do a variety of jobs and chores to keep the household or farm going. A boy would become an apprentice to learn a trade around 13. Most labor was done by people, not machines. The machines that did exist were powered by livestock, like horses and oxen.

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Industrial Revolution

All this would change with the Industrial Revolution. No single invention or person set off the industrial revolution. In fact, the industrial revolution was happening for about 100 years. It's also important to know that in this time period, these changes started in England, and then spread to the United States and Europe, so that is where we'll focus in this episode. There were several important inventions and ideas that would change the world and make it look a lot more like it does now. These innovations would drastically change how people worked, and how they bought and made things. Three big types of things happened:

1. New machines were invented.

2. People figured out how to power those machines. At first, they used steam power, then later electricity, oil, and gas.

3. People started building factories, where they could make large quantities of products in one place, instead of having individuals make things in small workshops

But why did people suddenly start inventing all these new machines and ways of doing things? One reason was a population explosion in Britain in the 18th century. All the new babies being born meant that people needed more clothing, and they didn't want to pay too much. The tradespeople who made cloth and clothing couldn't keep up. So some of these tradespeople started to invent ways to make more thread and cloth in less time and with less work. They invented machines for spinning thread and weaving cloth.

Water Power

At first, the factories that did this spinning and weaving were located next to rivers. The river's current would turn a giant wheel, which would power the moving parts of the machinery inside. As you can imagine, this could be inconvenient if you wanted to set up a factory but didn't live near a river. It wouldn't be long before people began to invent new ways of powering machines, so they wouldn't need to be near rivers anymore. You've probably heard of engines, like the ones in cars and planes. But did you know that an engine is any machine that generates energy? Engines were about to change how people made things once more.

Steam Power

The first new source of power was the steam engine. When you think of a steam engine, you probably imagine a big train with smoke pouring out of its stack. That is one type of steam engine, but the first steam engines didn't power trains. They were used in mines. Miners have to dig deep into the earth to find minerals or metals, and often, the mines would flood. The first steam engines were used to pump water out of mines, but they weren't very powerful.

A man named James Watt would change that. In 1765, he redesigned the steam engine to be much more powerful and efficient. This made it better at pumping water, but also made it useful for running machinery in factories. And of course, it paved the way for the train steam engine, which would make travel easier and faster!

Steam engines required wood or coal to operate. I won't go into the details, but wood or coal would be burned in order to heat water to create steam, which in turn powered the machinery. Burning wood and coal, of course, creates a lot of smoke, and this caused a lot of air pollution. In areas with many factories, such as around Birmingham, England, tree trunks even turned black from the smoke!

Eli Whitney

So far, all the inventions we've talked about were created in England, but inventiveness was spreading! In 1793, a tinkerer named Eli Whitney would invent the machine that would bring the industrial revolution to America. Whitney had traveled to South Carolina to work as a tutor. But, while he was visiting a friend's plantation, he learned about a big problem that southern farmers had with their cotton crops: the white fluff was full of sticky seeds that had to be picked out by hand. It took one person a full day to pick the seeds out of one pound of cotton!

In about 10 days, Whitney invented the cotton gin. The "gin" part is short for "engine." It used a system of combs, rollers, and wire sieves to pull the seeds out of the fluff. One person operated the machine with a simple crank. The cotton gin made the work much faster, which meant farmers could make more money by growing cotton.

Unfortunately, many cotton growers decided to buy more slaves in order to process even more cotton using the new machine. Whitney didn't expect this. He thought his machine would actually reduce slavery, since it did the same job that enslaved people had been doing. But instead, growers just decided to grow even more cotton. That meant more enslaved humans picking the cotton and operating the gins.

The industrial revolution had some other unexpected results when it came to workers. Many tradespeople didn't want things to change. They thought that the new machines would take away their work, and then they wouldn't be able to support themselves. Some got so angry that they attacked the new factories and mills, smashing machinery and even burning some factories to the ground!

Child Labor

Children working in a factory

Once it became clear that the factories weren't going away, many of these skilled workers didn't want to work in them. So, instead of hiring grown-ups, some factory owners began to hire children instead. Children, some as young as five years old, went to work in factories for long, exhausting days. Factory owners paid them only a fraction of what they paid adults for dangerous, difficult work. It would be a long time before countries made laws saying that children need to be allowed to go to school and play, instead of working in factories for very little pay.

Some people, though, welcomed the opportunity to work in a factory. The factories also hired women. In the old system, most women didn't learn a trade. They got married and did household and farm work to support the family. Working in factories allowed young women in some areas to earn and control their own money, instead of having to get married at a young age and rely on their husbands.

Before the industrial revolution, most people lived in rural areas or small towns, where they could grow food for themselves. As more and more products were made in factories, instead of small workshops, many more people moved from rural areas and farms into the cities where they could work in factories. Cities became crowded and dirty, with many people living in poverty.

What were working conditions like during the Industrial Revolution?

The factories themselves were also crowded and dirty. On top of that, they were often poorly lit and stuffy. Some were so loud that workers went deaf. Workers were often exposed to materials that could make them sick, and machines that could injure them. Unlike independent tradespeople, factory workers did the same task over and over again, and they didn't have much say in how or when they worked. Workdays were long-often 12 hours-and many bosses were very strict. They would only allow workers a few short breaks throughout the day. Many would take away pay if a worker made a mistake or didn't work fast enough.

The industrial revolution changed just about everything about how people lived and worked. People went from being skilled craftspeople who had a lot of control over their work, to factory laborers forced to endure harsh, unfair conditions. It changed where people live, as they moved from rural areas to cities. This trend has continued all the way until today, as cities are still growing.

But even though it resulted in pollution, bad working conditions, and child labor, the industrial revolution also made many other innovations possible. We've only had time to talk about a few of the innovations of the early industrial revolution, but it wasn't all about steam power and cloth manufacturing. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, we had cars, airplanes, and refrigeration.

People also started to work together in new ways. Workers began to talk to each other. They formed labor unions and insisted that their bosses make factories safer. The idea of the weekend was born, and laws were passed to require better working conditions. Child labor was eventually outlawed.

Conclusion

It's important to remember that events in history often have good and bad consequences. We have to look at both in order to understand the full impact they had on the world. Knowing about the unintended consequences of past events can help us avoid similar results in the future. When we see things in the world today that might cause people, animals, or the planet to suffer, we can ask what we can do to help make things better. That way, we can keep building a better future, bit by bit.

Sources
https://www.britannica.com/summary/Industrial-Revolution-Key-Facts https://www.eliwhitney.org/7/museum/about-eli-whitney/inventor https://www.loc.gov/collections/america-at-work-and-leisure-1894-to-1915/articles-and-essays/america-at-work/
March 14: Eli Whitney Patents the Machine He Thought Would Help End Slavery. Office of the State Historian, Connecticut. https://todayincthistory.com/2020/03/14/march-14-eli-whitney-patents-the-cotton-gin-2/

Major, Kenneth (1980) Pre-industrial Sources of Power: Muscle Power. History Today, 30:3.
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/a/1299/files/2019/07/sti2014_the-pre-industrial-sources-of-power_-muscle-power-_-history-today.pdf
Mooney, Carla (2011) The Industrial Revolution: Investigate How Science and Technology Changed the World. Nomad Press, Vermont.

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History of the Industrial Revolution for Kids | Bedtime History | Homework Help

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Take a look around the room you're in right now... Do you see many things that you or a family member made with their own hands?

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Industrial Revolution Facts for Kids | What, Figures, Inventions & Effects

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18th and the 19th century characterized by new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States is known as the Industrial Revolution.

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Putting young children to work is called child labor. The work is usually considered unsafe or unhealthy for children to do. The worst forms of child labor can resemble...

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The British Empire- Queen Victoria and Industrialization

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The Industrial Revolution - Introduction

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The Industrial Revolution - Introduction

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The Industrial Revolution - Introduction 

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Kids learn about child labor during the Industrial Revolution including types of jobs, earnings, long hours, dangerous working conditions, reform, and interesting facts. Educational article for students, schools, and teachers.

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Child labour means that children are forced to work like adults and take part in an economic activity. According to the ILO International Labour Organization this is applied to people up to age fifteen, or seventeen in case of dangerous work. Even though only about a fourth of the ILO members have ratified the respective convention, this age limit is generally accepted.

Child labour refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful.

Child labour is fundamentally different from casual work done by children, like guarding other children, or helping here and there. Child labour is forbidden in most countries. These days we see many minor boys and girls working in tea stalls, restaurants, hotels and other small shops. Some work in huge factories like brick factories. This is caused due to child labour, and the main reason why child labour occurs is poverty.

There are two kinds of work that minors can do:

1. Some work they do is acceptable, as it is only light, or easy to do. Children can also do it while they are well-integrated into the family. This kind of work can be done in addition to an education the children are getting.

2. The other kind of work is difficult to do, or it is physically exhausting. It may be dangerous, the children may be required to work for long hours and in humiliating clothing.

There are many prejudices against child labor in the Western world: Very often such cases are known through scandals made by the mass media: In that manner, a working child is often seen as a slave, working in a sweat shop in a third world country, producing textiles, or as one of the street children in South America. The reality is different though: Such shops exist all over the world, also in countries like the United States or Italy. The fact that child labour is involved is often hidden: More than three quarters of this work is done in the sector of agriculture, or it has to do with activities done at home, in the context of the family. If child-slaves exist, they are only a minority. This form of work done by children also existed before industrialisation and globalisation, the two phenomena have made it more visible, at best.

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In Spanish: Explotación infantil para niños

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Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction in America

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Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction in America

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Learn Abraham Lincoln and slavery facts for kids

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Kids learn about the history of slavery during colonial America including indentured servants, the first enslaved people, how they lived, how the enslaved were treated, and the jobs they did.

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Discover how this remarkable woman helped change the lives of millions of African Americans and the history of her country in our Rosa Parks facts...
All people should be treated equally, right? Regardless of where you come from, what religion you follow, where you work, what language you speak or whether you're a boy or a girl. Well, sadly, this isn't always the case, and many groups of people around the world still suffer as a result of prejudices and discrimination.

Thankfully, there are some amazing people who have done incredible things to fight for equality. One such person was a civil rights activist called Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks facts

Who was Rosa Parks?

Full name: Rosa Louise McCauley Parks
Born: 4 February 1913
Hometown: Tuskegee, Alabama, USA
Occupation: Civil rights activist
Died: 24 October 2005
Best known for: The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa was born in the town of Tuskegee in Alabama, a state in southern USA. Her mother was a teacher and her father a carpenter, and she had a little brother called Sylvester. After her parents separated when she was just a little girl, Rosa and Sylvester moved with their mother to Alabama's capital city, Montgomery.

Rosa loved to learn and studied hard at high school. But, sadly, she had to leave school at 16 to care for her dying grandmother and, shortly after, her very sick mother. When she was 19 years old, Rosa married a barber called Raymond Parks, who encouraged her to return to high school to earn her diploma (an education certificate). And that's just what she did, before beginning work as a seamstress in Montgomery.

Racial segregation

Life for African Americans like Rosa was hard. At the time, the Southern United States operated under the ' Jim Crow laws' - a set of laws introduced in the late 19th century that claimed to give African Americans " separate but equal " status and treatment. But, in truth, there was no 'equality' whatsoever.

Created by white authorities who thought black people's lives didn't matter as much as theirs, these laws enforced racial segregation and allowed for discrimination against African Americans - referred to at that time as "colored" people.

The Jim Crow laws were introduced in different ways from state to state, but there was one common goal - to make sure black citizens and white citizens led very separate lives.

Among other things, they had separate schools, churches, libraries, restaurants, toilets, drinking fountains and waiting rooms. In some areas, there were laws banning black people from sports events and even forbidding them to work in the same office as a white person.

African Americans had far fewer rights, too. Racist laws known as ' Black Codes ' restricted them to low-paying jobs and made it incredibly difficult for them to vote. These laws also meant black people could be arrested for small things.

What did Rosa Parks do?

In the face of such racism, Rosa decided to make a stand for what was right. Together with her husband Raymond, she joined the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), working towards putting an end to discrimination and segregation.

But it was on the 1 December 1955 that Rosa truly sparked change. After a long day at work, Rosa boarded the bus home and took a seat. At that time in Montgomery, seats at the front of buses were reserved for white passengers, and the seats at the back for black passengers.

The bus quickly filled up and when a white man boarded, the driver told the African American passengers to give up their seats for him. Whilst the other black passengers obeyed, Rosa did not. The result? Rosa was arrested by the police and fined for breaking segregation laws! But Rosa refused to pay, and argued that it was the law that was wrong, not her behaviour.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

On news of Rosa's arrest, the black citizens of Montgomery came together and agreed to boycott the city's buses in protest. This meant that from 5 December 1955 (the date of Rosa's trial), African Americans refused to travel on buses. The boycott was managed by an organisation called the Montgomery Improvement Association, for which Dr Martin Luther King Jr was elected as leader.

The protest proved super effective, with more black people participating than had been expected. And since African Americans made up around 70% of bus users, the city's transport services made far less money and began to struggle. But it wasn't an easy protest for the black citizens. Many of them didn't own cars, and so they had to carpool together or walk long distances to get where they needed to go. What's more, the boycott was received with anger by members of the white population, who responded with aggressive and dangerous acts of violence.

Nevertheless, the protesters stuck together and fought for their cause - and on 13 November 1956 their efforts were finally rewarded. After 381 days of boycotting the buses, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's racial segregation laws were 'unconstitutional' - meaning they weren't valid and should not be recognised. In light of such a wonderful victory, Rosa became known as "the mother of the civil rights movement".

Rosa Parks' legacy

Sadly, despite the victory, life wasn't easy for Rosa and her fellow activists after the boycott. Faced with continued violence and threats by angry white groups, Rosa and Raymond moved to Detroit (a city in the northern US state of Michigan), to live with Rosa's brother.

There she continued to promote civil rights and help those suffering from discrimination and injustice. She continued to support the NAACP and many civil rights events, and in 1987 she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development to provide career training for young people in Detroit.

Rosa received numerous awards for her strength, courage and her incredible work for civil rights - including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

When did Rosa Parks die?

Rosa died of natural causes on 24 October 2005 at the age of 92. But she continues to be recognised all over the world as a symbol of freedom and equality. Today, commemorative statues stand (or 'sit' we should say!) in her honour, to remind us of her remarkable achievements that should never be forgotten.

What do you think of our Rosa Parks facts? Leave a comment below and let us know!

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Rosa Parks facts for kids | National Geographic Kids

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Learn all about the African American civil rights activist who fought for equality and freedom in the USA in our Rosa Parks facts...

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Racial segregation means separating people because of their races. Segregation was legal and normal in many countries across the world, for many years. For example, until 1964, it was still legal to separate white and African-American people in some states. In South Africa, from the 1940s until the 1990s, a system called apartheid kept white and black South Africans separate. Racial segregation has happened in many other countries, throughout history.

Anglo-Saxon England

Segregation may have existed in early Anglo-Saxon England. When the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England in the 4th century, they may have created an " apartheid-like society," according to some historians. They may have treated the native British people like slaves, and had rules against marrying them. Some historians say Anglo-Saxons were much richer and had a higher social status than Celtic Britons.

From the early 1800s to the late 1980s, the Australian government took many Aboriginal children away from their families. Their families had not agreed to let their children go. However, the government had decided to force Aboriginal children to " assimilate" into Australian society. The children were placed in white homes or on missions. There, they were forced to learn Christianity, leave behind their Aboriginal culture, become a part of white society, and marry white people. The goal of this program was to " breed out" Aboriginal traits so that they no longer existed in Australia. Later, in 1951, the United Nations would define this type of program as genocide.

From about 1900 to the 1970s, Australia followed what became known as the "White Australia Policy." This policy kept non-white people from immigrating to Australia by making immigration tests too hard to pass.

In the early- to mid- twentieth century, many Aborigines were forced to live on missions. The goal of this policy was to get the Aborigines off their lands, because white settlers wanted to use them.

In the 1960s, Australia changed its official policy to "integration." This meant that the Aborigines had to be able to live in Australian society or on missions. However, many Aborigines refused to follow these orders and kept living far away from cities. In these areas, they were segregated from the rest of Australian society, and were also poorer. At the time, some people called the situation "apartheid," and even suggested that the Australian government's policies inspired the apartheid program in South Africa.

English settlers in Ireland

French Algeria

In 1830, France took control of Algeria from the Ottoman Empire. For over a hundred years, Algeria was a French colony. The French rulers kept an apartheid-like system in Algeria. For example, Arab and Berber Algerians were allowed to apply for French citizenship (which would give them the right to vote and other rights) only if they abandoned their Muslim religion and culture.

Algerian Muslims were not willing to go along with this "system of apartheid," and this system was one of the main causes of the Algerian War in 1954.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis made Jews wear yellow ribbons or stars of David with the word " Jude" ("Jew") on them. Racial laws discriminated against Jews and Roma people (Gypsies). For example, Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat Aryan patients; Jewish professors were not allowed to teach Aryan students. Jews were not allowed to use any public transportation, besides the ferry; ride bicycles; or ride in cars. They were allowed to shop only from 3:00pm to 5:00pm, and only in stores owned by Jews. They could not go to theaters, swimming pools, or any other places for entertainment.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis tried to kill all of the Jews and Roma in Europe. They also killed millions of Slavic people (including Ukrainian, Soviet, and Polish people), because they saw Slavs as an inferior race. First the Nazis forced Jews and Roma to live in ghettoes, apart from everyone else. Then they sent millions of Jews, Roma, and Slavs to concentration camps and death camps.{{efn|During the Holocaust, the Nazis also murdered many other people for reasons like political beliefs, religion, disability, and homosexuality. However, these groups are not discussed in this article, since this article is about segregation based on race.

Also, between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish people were deported to Nazi Germany for forced labour. Nazi Germany also used forced laborers from Western Europe. However, Polish people and other Eastern Europeans who the Nazis viewed as racially inferior were treated much worse. They were forced to wear a cloth tag on their clothing with the letter "P" on it, which showed that they were Polish. They had to follow a curfew and could not use public transportation. Usually, they had to work longer hours, for lower pay, than Western Europeans. In many cities, they had to live in segregated barracks, behind barbed wire. They were not allowed to talk to Germans outside of work.

Imperial China

Tang dynasty

The laws especially targeted Jews. For example, Jews could not:

Because of these laws, Italy lost some of its best scientists. Some were fired. For example, Rita Levi-Montalcini, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was told she could no longer work at her university. Others left Italy because of the laws. For example, Enrico Fermi, who worked on the first nuclear reactor and won the Nobel Prize for Physics, left the country. (His wife was Jewish.) Many other well-known scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and other scholars lost their jobs or left Italy because of the race laws.

Albert Einstein resigned from his honorary membership at the Accademia dei Lincei, an Italian science academy, to protest the race laws.

After 1943, when Northern Italy was occupied by the Nazis, Italian Jews were taken to Nazi concentration camps and death camps.

Jewish segregation

In Morocco, beginning in the 15th century, Jewish people were segregated in mellahs. In cities, a mellah was a separate area for Jews, surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway. Rural mellahs were separate villages where only Jews lived.

Latin America

When Spanish people came to the Americas and made Latin American countries into colonies, they created a caste system based on race. They came up with fifteen different categories of people based on their race mixtures, including categories like " mulatto" and " mestizo". People who were "whiter" or more " Spanish" had a higher social status than people who were "darker" or more Native American. People who were "darker" were treated as inferior and faced discrimination - for example, they had to pay higher taxes than "whiter" people.

Usually, when they won their independence from Spain, most Latin American countries made laws against caste systems. However, prejudice based on race remains.

South Africa

Background

Slavery existed in South Africa until 1833. However, two years later, the government passed a law that changed slaves into indentured servants. This system was not very different from slavery. Throughout the rest of the 1800s, the South African colonies passed laws that limited these worker's rights and freedoms.

In 1894 and 1905, the government passed laws saying that "Indians" and 'blacks" had no right to vote. Other laws discriminated against non-whites, but were not as bad as the apartheid laws that would come within the next 50 years.

Beginnings of apartheid

Apartheid in South Africa started in 1948. At that time, the National Party won control of the South African government. This political party was made up of Afrikaner people. Afrikaners are the descendants of Dutch settlers who came to South Africa in the 1600s and 1700s. The National Party believed in Afrikaner nationalism. Soon, they started a program of apartheid (which means "apart-hood" - 'being apart' or 'being separate' - in the Afrikaans language).

Apartheid laws

The National Party passed apartheid laws to make racial segregation the law in South Africa. Some of the most important laws included:

The Population Registration Act (1950), which put South Africans into four racial categories: "black," "white," "Colored" (mixed-race), and "Indian" (South Asians from the former British India).
People had to register with the government and get identification cards that said what racial group they were in.

The Group Areas Act (1950), which assigned a part of South Africa for each racial group to live in. People were forced to live in their assigned part of the country.
Going into another part of the country was illegal without a permit. Black people could not enter cities unless they had permission from a white employer.

The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953), which created separate public places, like hospitals, universities, and parks, for the different races

The Bantu Education Act (1953), which segregated education

Under these apartheid laws, between 1960 to 1983, 3.5 million non-white South Africans were forced to leave their homes and move into segregated neighborhoods. This is one of the largest mass removals in modern history.

Other laws made it illegal for a person to marry a person from a different race. Then, in 1969, the government took away "Coloured" people's right to vote. Since "Indians" and "blacks" had not been allowed to vote for decades, this meant that whites were the only people in South Africa who were allowed to vote.

In 1970, non-whites were banned from having representatives in the government. That same year, black people's South African citizenship was taken away.

Protests against apartheid started right after apartheid did. As early as 1949, the youth wing of the African National Congress (ANC) suggested fighting against racial segregation using many different strategies. Over the next 45 years, hundreds of anti-apartheid actions occurred. They included protests by the Black Consciousness Movement; student protests; labor strikes; and church group activism. In 1991, the Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act was passed, reversing laws about racial segregation, including the Group Areas Act. In 1990, President Frederik Willem de Klerk started trying to end apartheid. Nonwhites were given the right to vote in 1993. South Africa had its first multiracial elections (where non-whites were allowed to be candidates in 1994. Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress won.

United States

The United States has a long history of racial segregation, starting when the first European settlers came to North America. First through slavery, then through racist laws, and then through racist attitudes, African-American people in the United States have faced segregation for centuries. People of other races have been segregated too. For example, during World War II, the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, ordered almost the entire Japanese-American population to be segregated in internment camps.

Images for kids

White tenants seeking to prevent Blacks from moving into the housing project erected this sign. Detroit, 1942

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after being arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus to a white person.

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Racial segregation means separating people because of their races. Segregation was legal and normal in many countries across the world, for many years. For example, until 1964, it was still legal to separate white and African-American people in some states. In South Africa, from the 1940s until the 1990s, a system called apartheid kept white and black South Africans separate.

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Titanic - the iconic vessel that came to a very tragic end. But how much do you know about this world-famous ship? It's time to find out in our twenty top Titanic facts!
Titanic facts

1) Titanic was built by a company called White Star Line. She was completed and ready for the on 31 March 1912, after three years in construction in Belfast,.

3) On 10 April 1912, Titanic set out on her maiden voyage (first big journey), taking people from Southampton, England, to New York, USA. On route, she called by Cherbourg in France and Queenstown in Ireland to pick up more passengers.

DID YOU KNOW? Boats are traditionally referred to as 'she'. Historians think this may be the result of links in our language to Ancient English. Or perhaps it dates back to the idea of goddesses protecting ships on dangerous journeys!

4) Titanic's full title was RMS Titanic. Any idea what RMS means? It stands for ' Royal Mail Steamer'. As well as passengers, the ship carried nearly 3,500 sacks of letters, packages and documents.

5) There were over 2,200 people on board Titanic, 900 of which were crew members. The passengers included holiday makers, business men and people hoping to start a new life in America.

6) Life on board Titanic depended on who you were and how much money you had...

Third class: the third class facilities were much more basic, but they were still far better than those on other boats at that time. Located at the bottom of the ship, cabins slept up to ten people and each had a sink and mirror. There was also a dining room where food was served three times a day. But the big down side? All 700 third class passengers had to share two bathtubs!

8) Titanic was also known as the 'Ship of Dreams', and White Star Line claimed she was the safest ship of all time. To make sure she wouldn't sink, her hull was made up of 16 separate sections. If two, or even three sections were damaged and water got in, the ship would still have time to sail to safety. So all good, right? Wrong...

9) Just before midnight on day five, in the freezing cold North Atlantic Ocean, an iceberg loomed out of the darkness. Too big to quickly change direction, Titanic scraped along the side of the ice, tearing holes in at least four sections of the hull. Uh oh...

10) The Captain of Titanic - Edward John Smith - and his crew knew that the collision meant disaster; Titanic would sink in just a few hours. Distress signals were sent out to nearby ships and passengers were ordered to get to the lifeboats, fast!

11) But there was one very big problem. Titanic only carried twenty lifeboats - only enough to hold around half of the people on board! What's worse, the first lifeboats were launched half-empty, wasting precious spaces. In panic, many people jumped into the ocean to escape the sinking ship!

12) As Titanic sank, the bow (the front) went down first, causing the stern (the back) to rise out of the water and into the air. At around 2am, this tilt caused the ship to break in two, sending all those still on board into the freezing cold ocean...

13) In the -2°C waters, most passengers who went into the sea would have died from the cold within 15 minutes. Some managed to survive a little longer by treading water or clinging onto bits of floating wreckage.

14) The first ship to respond to Titanic's distress signals was called the RMS Carpathia. But despite setting out immediately and travelling at top speed, she didn't arrive until around 3.30am - over an hour after the Titanic had sunk.

15) On arrival at the disaster, the RMS Carpathia rescued those who had made it into the lifeboats. There were around 705 survivors in total, and all were transported safely to New York, USA.

16) But tragically, more than 1,500 people lost their lives on the Titanic, most never to be seen again. In the days following the wreckage, ships headed out to the disaster area and recovered 300 bodies from the water. These were either buried at sea or taken to Halifax in Canada (the nearest major port) to be identified.

18) Since then, there have been many expeditions to Titanic - and over 6,000 interesting items have been salvaged from the wreckage. These can be seen today in museums around the world and include jewellery, perfumes, plates, clothes, furniture and even lunch menus!

19) The longest living survivor from Titanic was Millvina Dean, who lived to be 97 years old. She was just a baby when she, her mother and brother made it into one of the lifeboats. Millvina lived to tell the tragic tale until 2009, when she passed away.

20) There have been lots of documentaries and movies made about Titanic. The first was a silent movie called Saved from the Titanic, made just one month after the disaster. The most popular today is the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster Titanic, which became one of the highest-earning movies of all time!

Did you know that we have a FREE downloadable Titanic primary resource? Great for teachers, homeschoolers and parents alike!

Would you have survived Titanic?

So, now you know all about this incredible ship and its tragic tale. But here's the big question: if you had been on board, would you have survived? It all depends on who you were...

- YOU were a woman or child: Women and children were allowed to board the lifeboats first. However, some men did get a place when the first few lifeboats didn't fill up.

- YOU were rich: First-class passengers were lucky - they had cabins on the upper decks, closest to the lifeboats. Many poorer passengers, in 'steerage' class on the lower decks, didn't reach the lifeboat deck in time.

- YOU obeyed orders: If you had got into a lifeboat as soon as the crew told you to, you would probably have survived. Remember that, next time you're on a ship!

- YOU were brave: Many people were too scared to leave the big ship for the tiny lifeboats. Others stayed on board because they didn't want to lose sight of their friends or family. To survive, you needed the courage to go for it.

- YOU were willing to push: In the final struggle for lifeboat places, those who pushed, won!

- YOU had stamina: Some survivors were plucked from the icy water after hanging onto bits of floating wreckage for more than half an hour. They had clung on to life!

Photos and Illustrations: Getty Images UK

What did you think of our twenty Titanic facts? Leave a comment below and let us know!

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Titanic facts for kids | History | National Geographic Kids

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Learn about the most famous ship in history with our twenty Titanic facts. How big was the Titanic? Where did she sink? How many people died on the Titanic?

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Titanic was the biggest and most luxurious passenger ship of its time. It was 269 metres long, 28 metres wide and more than 53 meters tall, which is the same height as Nelson's Column in London and Belfast City Hall.

It had ten decks, three engines and its furnaces burnt through over 600 tonnes of coal. 175 'firemen' shovelled the coal by hand and worked in shifts 24 hours a day. Although Titanic had four funnels, only three were functional - the fourth one was just for show.

Titanic's full title was RMS Titanic as it was a Royal Mail ship carrying nearly 3500 sacks of mail including all sorts of letters and packages.

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Find out how Titanic was built in Belfast at the Harland and Wolff shipyard for the White Star Line.

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Titanic carried over 2,200 people on its maiden voyage, but it was only half full when it set sail. People were travelling for lots of different reasons. Businessmen needed to make important deals, holidaymakers travelled for leisure and some people just wanted to experience life on board the world's biggest and most luxurious ship. A lot of families were travelling to make a better life for themselves in America.
At the time of Titanic's maiden voyage, it was common for full passenger lists of transatlantic ships to be published in the local newspapers. Many of the passengers saw it as something to be proud of, a bit like looking for your photo in the paper these days.

Who travelled on Titanic?
First class passengers were some of the richest and most important people of the time. They included businessmen like John Jacob Astor IV and Benjamin Guggenheim, as well as members of the upper classes and even sportsmen.
Many of the second class passengers were tourists, made up of professions such as teachers and clergy. A team from Harland and Wolff travelled as second class passengers alongside some staff of the first class passengers, like chauffeurs or nannies.

The passengers in third class were mainly immigrants heading for a new life in America. They came from a variety of locations across Europe such as Ireland, England, Scandinavia and Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe. A significant number also came from Lebanon.

Passengers on Titanic came from many different backgrounds and had different reasons for travelling. Do you know who travelled in which class?

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Find out what life was like on board Titanic.

First class
First class on board Titanic was the ultimate in luxury. It included veranda cafes, a smoking room, restaurant, a dining saloon and a reading and writing room. The facilities on Titanic far surpassed those of rival ships of that time.
The first class passengers really dined in style. The dining room was the largest ever seen on a ship and a live orchestra played background music. The furniture and panelling was carved in fine detail in oak, mahogany and sycamore.

The more energetic passengers could play deck games, such as shuffleboard, and use the gym, squash courts and swimming pool on board. Games such as chess and backgammon could be played on the deck.

Titanic had 39 private suites located at the top of the ship. They had 2 large bedrooms, 2 walk-in wardrobes and a bathroom. There was also a spacious living with room for guests. Suites cost up to £870 which is the equivalent of £79,000 today!

Second class
Most of the second class accommodation on Titanic consisted of cabins with bunk-beds. Each cabin had either two beds or four and in total there was room for around 550 passengers. These cabins didn't have private bathrooms, but inside there were sinks and mirrors and the bed linen was changed every day.
Passengers in second class had facilities such as a spacious outdoor promenade, a smoking room, a library and dining room. Afternoon tea and coffee was served in the library.

The dining room could seat almost 2,400 people at one time and a pianist would entertain the diners. All of the furniture was mahogany with crimson red upholstery and pivoted lights to add to the atmosphere.

Third class
Third class was much more basic with very few facilities, but passengers still enjoyed a high level of luxury compared to other liners of the day.
The general room was where most passengers gathered, talked and socialised. There was a piano for passengers to make their own music in the evenings. There was also a male-only smoke room which was panelled and furnished in oak with teak furniture.

Third class passengers ate in their own dining room which could seat around 470 passengers in 3 sittings. The food was very simple but plentiful consisting of rice soup, biscuits, roast beef and fruit. On most other ships, third class passengers were expected to bring their own food which was supposed to last for the entire journey.

With over 1000 third class passengers on board, accommodation was basic. Cabins slept up to 10 people and were located at the noisy bottom part of the ship close to the engines. Single men and women were split up at the front and back with families in the middle. There were only two baths for everyone in third class!

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From First Class to steerage, find out the types of passengers who sailed on Titanic and what life was like on board.