Three Thinking Hats / Town Hall Circle

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: PRIMARY SOURCES

Directions: Please refer to the Three Thinking Hats handout for instructions of
how to analyze, annotate, and discuss the following primary sources. Bon Voyage!

Was life better or worse for people during the Industrial Revolution?
DOCUMENT A: Statistics on Industrial Growth.
The Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s transformed humanitys age-old
struggle with material scarcity by using capital, technology, resources, and
management to expand the production of goods and services dramatically.

DOCUMENT B: Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835.

Steam engines furnish the means not only of their support but of their
multiplication. They create a vast demand for fuel; and, while they lend their
powerful arms to drain the pits and to raise the coals, they call into employment
multitudes of miners, engineers, ship-builders, and sailors, and cause the
construction of canals and railways. And while they enable these rich fields of
industry to be cultivated to the utmost, they leave thousands of fine
arable[farmable] fields free for the production of food to man, which must have
been otherwise allotted to the food of horses. Steam engines, moreover, by the
cheapness and steadiness of their action, fabricate [produce] cheap goods, and
produce [acquire] in their exchange a liberal supply of the necessaries and
comforts of life, produced in foreign lands.

DOCUMENT C: Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835.

DOCUMENT D: The Conditions of the Working Class in England, Friedrich

Engels, 1844.
Every great town has one of more slum areas where workers struggle through
life as best they can out of sight of the more fortunate classes of society. The
slums are generally an unplanned wilderness of one or two stories houses.
Wherever possible these have cellars which are also used as dwellings [homes].
The streets are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn [scattered] with
refuse [trash]. Since they have neither gutters nor drains, the refuse accumulates
in stagnant, stinking puddles. The view of Manchester is quite typical. The main
river is narrow, coal-black and full of stinking filth and rubbish which deposits
on the bank. One walks along a very rough path on the river bank to reach a
chaotic group of little one story, one room cabins. In front of the doors, filth and
garbage abound.
DOCUMENT E: The following excerpt is from Adam Smiths The Wealth of
Nations, 1776.
The sole purpose of all production is to provide the best possible goods to the
consumer at the lowest possible price. Society should assist producers of goods
and services only to the extent that assisting them benefits the consumer he
intends his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible
hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention By pursuing his
own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society
DOCUMENT F: The following excerpt is from Ayn Rand (Russian born
American Writer and Novelist, 1905-1982)
Contrary to the vulgar belief that men are motivated primarily by materialistic
considerations, we now see the capitalist system being discredited and destroyed
all over the world, even though this system has given men the greatest material
comforts.

DOCUMENT G: Edwin Chadwick, Report on an Inquiry into the Sanitary

Condition of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, W. Clowes and Sons,
1842. Edwin Chadwick presented a report to Parliament as secretary to a
commission that investigated sanitary conditions and means of improving them.
First, as to the extent and operation of the evils which are the subject of the
inquiry [investigation]...The formation of all habits of cleanliness is obstructed
by defective supplies of water. The annual loss of life from filth and bad
ventilation is greater than the loss from death or wounds in any wars in which the
country has been engaged in modern times. That of the 43,000 cases of
widowhood and 112,000 cases of destitute orphanage relieved from the poors
rates of England and Wales alone, it appears that the greatest proportion of
deaths of the heads of families occurred from the above specified and other
preventable causes; that their ages were under 45 years, 13 years below the
natural probabilities of life.
DOCUMENT H: In the Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844,
Friedrich Engels criticizes capitalism.
People regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other, and the
end of it all is, that the stronger treads the weaker under foot, and that the
powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to the weak .
. . the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains.
DOCUMENT I: The following picture is of a typical working class neighborhood

in London, England ca. 1872.

DOCUMENT J: Here is an excerpt from the Communist Manifesto written by

Marx and Engels in 1848.
The Communists . . . openly declare that their ends can be attained [gained] only
by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes
tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but
their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!

DOCUMENT K: An excerpt from Andrew Carnegies Gospel of Wealth, 1889.