The Industrial Home

LIFE AND LABOR IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD HIST 1301 | History The Industrial Home Significant changes were brought about by industrialization in nations like the United States, Germany, France, and Britain. These and other western nations, who were already adept in producing iron rails and textiles, used machine technology to mass-produce consumer goods in the later part of the nineteenth century. The introduction of these items transformed people's lives. Professionals like physicians, attorneys, manufacturing managers, bank workers, salespeople, engineers, and scientists made up the affluent and middle class. The handcrafted goods created by talented jewellers, dressmakers, tailors, shoemakers, and cabinetmakers had traditionally been beyond of the grasp of common labourers and could thus be afforded by them. But these days, factories produced enough clothes, shoes, kitchenware, furniture, toys, soap, books, musical instruments, and costume jewellery to be marketed at costs within the reach of the working class. Working families could purchase tables, chairs, and bedsteads that mimicked middle class designs. They might use affordable reproductions of well-known artwork to adorn their dwellings. Because the necessary animal fat was not always accessible, making soap was difficult for city inhabitants. However, these days, soap was easily purchased and mass-produced. City people could easily maintain a clean appearance for themselves and their clothing, which enhanced their comfort and wellbeing. Real wages, or earnings based on the quantity of products and services an employee could afford, increased by the end of the nineteenth century in industrialised nations, enabling the majority of people to purchase the consumer goods produced by American and European manufacturers. Mass-produced agricultural gear was used on farms and ranches to create an abundance of food. People now have year-round access to canned meat, fish, fruits, and vegetables thanks to the food that was first brought to cities on refrigerated railcars and later processed in urban factories, slaughterhouses, and canneries. Sweets were commonly accessible and sugar from colonial territories was cheap and plentiful. This meal was a mixed blessing at times. It was occasionally discovered that canned meat had maggots, and the slaughterhouses where meat was prepared were frequently dirty. Dyes were added to vegetables to keep them vibrant and colourful in cans; green dye, which was infamously toxic, was created from arsenic. Alum or chalk dust may be used to urban bakeries' mass-produced bread as bulk ingredients. Fresh food would have been better and more delicious, without a question, but processed and packaged meals at least supplied the calories needed to survive, and many workers were able to eat more than just the basic minimum. A 1874 research on American labourers found that they consumed fresh meat on a daily basis. The German working class protested the rise in food costs in Berlin just prior to the outbreak of World War I (1914) because it jeopardised their regular eating of meat and wheat bread, which was seen as better than bread made with other grains. Scientific and technological developments helped people survive. The ability to diagnose illness and injuries was enhanced by the development of new medical devices and procedures like the x-ray and ophthalmoscope. Pharmaceuticals and anaesthetics, such aspirin for fever and pain relief and mass-produced quinine for malaria treatment, were introduced. Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur's discovery of the first disease-causing microbes, or "germs," resulted in the development of new vaccinations that shielded people and animals against cholera and diphtheria as well as anthrax and rabies. Because to Pasteur's findings, milk was pasteurised starting in the 1860s, making it safer to consume by heating it to the point of destroying microorganisms. Surgery was changed by Joseph Lister's invention of the antiseptic technique in the 1860s and the discovery of human blood types in 1901, which allowed for safe blood transfusions. People of all classes now enjoy better cleanliness, comfort, and health thanks to improvements in sanitation. Fresh water was transported by water pipes from the surrounding rural areas into the houses of the middle class and rich residents of the cities. The prevalence of illnesses like cholera and typhoid fever was significantly decreased by this access to clean water. Rich and middle-class people found it simpler to maintain their hygiene thanks to mass-produced bathroom fixtures, and houses, streets and towns became more hygienic with the introduction of flush toilets and sewage pipe. New lighting techniques were established during the Second Industrial Revolution. Gas lighting was still relatively new at the start of the century, and houses and businesses were lighted by candles and kerosene lamps. After London built its first gas lamps in 1807, other towns followed suit by the middle of the 19th century; by 1860, Berlin had 250. Indoor gas fittings were also present in a large number of middle-class and rich dwellings, as well as in some working-class homes. By the 1880s, gas was a common source of heat and light for most British families as well as food preparation. But there were a lot of disadvantages to petrol. It smelled and provided a somewhat faint light. Gas lines had a risky propensity to blow up, and whole houses may choke to death as they slept if someone extinguished the flames on their gas lamps without remembering to turn off the gas supply. Everything changed when electricity was introduced. Electric light was brilliant, clear, and generally secure. Individuals might read or study late into the night. The ability to live at night was established. Electric lamps were deployed in Mexico City in 1897, Berlin in 1882, and Paris in 1875. City people might enjoy enchanted urban pleasure gardens and brightly illuminated amusement parks. Many people's level of life increased with the availability of mass-produced items, running water, gas and electricity. Because indoor plumbing and better heating made bathing simpler, a new fetish of cleanliness emerged among the middle class. A growing number of middle-class residences featured bath rooms around the turn of the 20th century. The living at home was also altered by new and enhanced appliances. Cookstoves with ovens and surfaces that could be adjusted in temperature allowed for the simultaneous preparation of several dishes. Stoves with built-in reservoirs maintained hot water, while washing machines with upgraded features (such as mangles that employed rollers to extract water) made clothes washing simpler. Floor cleaning became simpler with the introduction of motor-powered hoover cleaners in the early 1900s. Unquestionably, these advancements enhanced middle-class comfort, but they also increased demands placed on middle-class women, whose primary responsibility was taking care of the house. The ability to cook sumptuous meals on a daily basis made them the standard, and the ease with which the family's clothes and house could be cleaned made it undesirable for them to be unclean. As a result of unhygienic living circumstances, low salaries, and infectious illness, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw a decrease in life expectancy and an increase in infant mortality rates. Nonetheless, life expectancies rose and infant mortality fell throughout the second half of the 1800s. For instance, infant mortality rates in Germany, which started to industrialise in the middle of the nineteenth century, first rose along with the country's industrialization before beginning to fall in the 1870s. The advantages of industrialization were also made evident by other developments. A German man's life expectancy increased from thirty-four to forty-five years between 1876 and 1901. While the average German woman born in 1901 lived to be fortyeight years old, a woman born in 1876 might expect to live until she was thirty-seven years old. When combined, greater medical care, dependable food access, and improved sanitation all decreased death rates and increased living standards in developed countries. While the working class profited as well, the rich and middle class were best positioned to prosper. Workers could afford cheap clothing and food, and free clinics in many areas offered health treatment to the underprivileged. Even though not all labourers had running water or flush toilets in their homes, by the end of the 1800s, the working class could enjoy clean water and more hygienic streets thanks to communal restrooms, shared hallway sinks, and water taps in the street or in apartment building basements. Electricity lit city streets and safeguarded the working class as they went home late from work or sold goods at night, even though it was often only accessible to the rich and middle class.