The Dark Side of the Industrial Revolution

In the curating process of our exhibit, it was imperative that the information was presented in not only an interesting format, but an accurate one as well. The documents were all analyzed with care to make sure that the information in them was accuratley described in our plaques for each one. As curators, analyzing the sources was important so that we could arrange them in a way that connects the main ideas of each of the sources to one another.

Our exhibit contains six sources that all have a relation to a negative side effect of the Industrial Revolution. There is a map showing all the land that was industrialized, data on the income and living cost of 18th-19th century England, and many descriptions on the effects of pollution in the air and water. Our title "The Dark Side of the Industrial Revolution" was chosen to sum up the main ideas from these sources in an interesting manner. We hope that visitors will learn more about the consequences, specifically enviromental ones, that are often overlooked in favor of the shining positives of the Industrial Revolution.

The exhibit from Group B, Hot Stuff, described the effections of steam engines on production rate and efficency. I found it interesting that in the 19th century, there were many skeptics of how well the steam engine would work, but it was "for the people of the generation" and ended up working spectacularly.

Group A's exhibit, Spinning into the Future, went into detail about the boom of textile industry in the Industrial Revolution. It showed how more jobs were created, how people began to move into cities in order to work in factories, and how inventions such as the Spinning Jenny worked wonders for the efficency of cotton production.

The exhibit created by Group E, Cotton or Freedom?, showed the negative effects of a rapidly growing cotton industry. With cotton production increasing, slave labor was used in order to supplement a lack of workers to keep up with increasing demand for cotton. It was especally to associate how English factories stimulated cotton production and trade all accross the globe.

Finally, Group D's exhibit on child labor, described the harsh conditions that child workers faced while spending long hours working to provide their families for money. It was shocking to see how they were forced into slave-like conditions as they pulled coal carts through crawl spaces, worked for sometimes more than 12 hours a day, and were constantly in unhealthy and dangerous working conditions.