British and American Factories

       In the early to mid nineteenth century, both Britain and the United States were experiencing an overwhelming amount of change through an era later to be titled as the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization itself is a process in which a society or country shifts from a primarily agricultural society to one based on manufacturing goods. This process would bring upon the production of several factories and organizations in order to ensure that the society could be dependent upon the creation of all these goods. However, with the invention of these hard-working facilities and job oppertunities came several downsides to the Industrial Revolution.
       One of the major flaws in the Industrial Revolution was the pitiful working conditions by which the workers of factories had gotten put through. According to Charles Dickens in one of his works called American Notes, Dickens describes the factories within England as "great haunts of desperate misery" and states that many of the incredibly young laborers worked for small wages and without even shoes to protect them. Despite his specific observations being about Britain, it's safe to say that the industries in the United States weren't something to be proud of either. The working ages of the U.S. were significantly better than that of Britain though, which can be partially due to the fact that some sort of real education was required before the indivual was legally allowed to work. On the other hand, the United States were worse in that they contained adult supervision over all of their workers in the form of a cruel and oppressive overseer. In combination with all of the things previously mentioned and the pollution created in Great Britain, it would seem the overall condition of the Lowell mills found in Britain are significantly worse when put side by side with the U.S.
       Although both Great Britain and the U.S have developed a bad reputation for this time in terms of the treatment of workers, the Industrial Revolution still holds today as one of the most important time periods within history. It provided a time period of new inventions and several improvements for things such as transportation and manufacturing. These terrible conditions of laborers may of not been inevitable, but when looking at the entire era as a whole these facts are overshadowed by the greatness of the Revolution.