Throughout this unit, our main goal is to learn about how the industrial changed the ways people lived and worked as well as how each person was able to get goods via the industrialization. To further investigate this, we were assigned a project that entitled us to be museum curators.
As a group of museum curators, our job is to help demonstrate the significant impact that child labor had throughout the industrial revolution. The title of our exhibit is "The Devastation of Child Labor", which is meant to show the amount of misery and terrible circumstances that occurred due to the age limits of this labor. The sources we had included 2 black and white pictures that showed the harsh working conditions of children in the mines, a chart of age distribution within the factories along with a factory act passed in 1833, as well as an accurate description of observations of bobbin girls within the era. The main theme of our exhibit is to show how although there were some positives with this industrialization, that the age limitations for working a job were far too low and caused severe suffering to many.
In addition to out exhibit, there were four other exhibits that had been produced. These included the topics of slavery, new job opportunities, the use of transportation, and the addition of pollution all thanks to this new industrialization. The exhibition on slavery was titled "The Product of a Dark Time" and made perfect sense when placed in conjunction with the invention of the cotton mills. The production of cotton mills enabled more areas, within the south especially, to force African American humans into labor so that the establishments themselves could earn more money. The second exhibit toured was about job opportunities and was called "Weaving a new world". It proceeded to explain how before the spinning wheel had been invented that it took a great deal of time to create needed products. But it soon enabled goods to be produced more frequently and increased population growth. The third exhibit toured explained the use of coal for transportation and was titled "From countrysides to the big city". Between the years of 1804 and 1853, railroads and canals opened up all over the country. This made coal within almost all areas a necessity. The final Exhibit was all about pollution and was rightfully called "Not-so-great Britain". Slums were the result of industrialization and cheap housing, and they were immensely crowded with thousands of people that all suffered from these dirty locations. Industry produced heavy pollution through coal and inventions that utilized it, therefore resulting in polluting what seemed like entire rivers.
