World History Honors
Industrial Revolution Document Portfolio
135 points total
While the revolution in France was opening a new political era, another revolution was beginning to transform economic
and social life. This was the Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain around the 1780’s and started to
influence continental Europe after 1815. The Industrial Revolution profoundly modified much of the human experience. It
changed patterns of work, transformed the social class structure and the way people thought about class. The industrial
age fostered new attitudes about child labor, encouraged protective factory legislation, and called forth a new sense of
collective responsibility aimed at helping the weakest among us.
You will complete a document portfolio examining primary sources pertaining to the causes and effects of the Industrial
Revolution. All documents are available via my website and google drive.
Required Documents: (65 points total)
_____ Guided Reading – The Industrial Revolution in Britain (20 points)
_____ Guided Reading – Capital & Labor (20 points)
_____ The Children Who Built Victorian Britain Film Questions (5 points) – will be completed in class.
_____ Turn Back Time Episode Questions – The Edwardian Era (5 points) – will be completed in class.
_____ Life in Manchester (5 points)
_____ The Communist Manifesto (10 points) – this should be the last document you read.
Choice Documents: (70 points total – 5 points each)
Technological Advancements: (Choose 2)
Opening of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway
The First Radio Signal across the Atlantic
In Praise of Mechanization
Mill Times (watch video)
Child Labor: (Choose 2)
The Life of a Sweatshop Girl
Death of a Climbing Boy
The Testimony of Young Mine Workers
Perspectives on Child Labor (Choose 1)
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream
Rethinking Child Labor
City Life: (Choose 4)
Cholera in Manchester
Charles Dickens Hard Times
An Engineer Describes Smoke Pollution
Jacob Riis Photographs New York Tenements
Jacob Riis Describes the Tenement Problem
Mary Antin Praises America
Factory Experiences: (Choose 3)
Life in a Southern Mill
A Working Day in a Manchester Cotton Mill
Factory Conditions
A Tailor Testifies
Life of a Working Girl
Upton Sinclair Describes the Chicago Stockyards
Capital versus Labor
Perspectives on Child Labor (Choose 2)
Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices (watch video)
Everywhere on Earth
Child Labor: Pain & Resistance
Child Labor is Cheap & Deadly
Declaration of the Rights of the Child
Guided Reading: The Industrial Revolution in Britain
Directions: Read the attached selection, then fully answer the two guided reading questions below based on what you have
learned.
1. What were the origins of the Industrial Revolution in Britain? What made Britain special?
2. How did the Industrial Revolution develop between 1780 and 1850? Discuss the first industrial industries,
technological developments, and the impact of population.
Guided Reading: Capital & Labor
Directions: Read the attached selection, then fully answer the two guided reading questions below based on what you have
learned.
1. How did the Industrial Revolution affect social classes, the standard of living and patterns of work?
2. What measures were taken to improve the conditions of workers?
Life in Manchester
1. How were the working classes isolated from the middle and upper classes?
2. Who are the inhabitants of Old Manchester? What happened to the original inhabitants?
3. Describe an average working man’s house in Old Manchester.
4. How has the increase in industry affected Old Manchester?
5. Describe the sanitation situation in Old Manchester.
The Communist Manifesto
1. All history is the history of what?
2. What has the modern bourgeois society done to class relations?
3. What are the two groups that everyone in society can be divided into?
4. As modern industrial society developed, what did the bourgeoisie gain?
5. As a result of the bourgeoisie what has happened to familial relations?
6. What has happened to the proletariat?
7. What does Marx mean when he says that the proletariat have become “daily and hourly enslaved by the machine,
by the overlooker and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself?”
8. What do the communists suggest should be done about the problems facing the proletariat?
Opening of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway
1. What was the reaction of the crowd to the train as it traveled between Liverpool and Manchester?
2. Why was Mr. Huskisson unable to avoid the oncoming train?
3. How did Fanny Kemble feel about traveling by train? How did her mother feel?
The First Radio Signal across the Atlantic
1. When was this source written?
2. Who is Guglielmo Marconi (you may need to look this up)? Why is it important that he is the author of the
source?
3. What was the first sound heard by radio signal?
4. Why do you think Sir Oliver Lodge said that this moment was “epoch in history?”
In Praise of Mechanization
1. Who is the author of this source? Is the source biased? Why or why not?
2. How does the author appraise the overall impact of mechanization?
3. Is the author convincing? Why or why not?
4. What differences does the author see between work conditions in Europe and those in the United States?
5. What does he identify as the principal complaints of US workers?
6. Does the author consider these complaints justified? Why or why not?
Mill Times (watch video)
Directions: Go to youtube.com and search for “Mill Times.” The second video that comes up is titled “Industrial
Revolution – Spinning Mills.” This is the video you’ll watch. As you watch the video, “Mill Times” answer the
questions below.
1. What was the first step in making clothes?
2. What is a sliver?
3. What does a water frame do?
4. What did England do to protect their spinning machines?
5. What is a Power Loom?
6. What were some of the dangers of the power loom?
7. What was the biggest problem for the mills?
8. Who were the Lowell girls?
9. Describe life for the Lowell girls at the mill. What were some of the rules?
10. Why was the change to steam power revolutionary?
Cholera in Manchester
1. What is cholera? (you may need to look this up)
2. What was the author’s purpose for investigating cholera in Manchester?
3. Describe the scene in the Irishman’s house?
4. What class in society do you think the people in the article belong? What evidence supports this?
5. How might industrialization have caused the cholera in Manchester?
Charles Dickens Hard Times
1. What does Dickens describe in this selection?
2. What was his purpose in writing this book?
3. Why does Dickens refer to the factory workers as “hands”?
4. What seems to be Dickens’ attitude toward the workers?
5. What seems to be Dickens’ general attitude towards the industrial revolution? How do you know?
An Engineer Describes Smoke Pollution
1. What are the worst kinds of damage inflicted from burning coal?
2. How was the burning of coal an economic issue?
3. How was the burning of coal an environmental issue?
4. How was the burning of coal a medical issue?
5. What would it have been like to live in a city perpetually enshrouded by coal smoke and dust?
6. What problems associated with burning fossil fuels persist today?
Jacob Riis Photographs New York Tenements
1. Who was Jacob Riis?
2. View the images. What emotions are the images meant to evoke?
3. What might Riis’ audiences have found the most appalling about the conditions captured in the photos?
4. What do you think was Riis’ motivation for taking and publishing these photos?
5. Riis published a book of images called How the Other Half Lives. What was the impact of the book? (You may
need to look this up)
Jacob Riis Describes the Tenement Problem
1. What is a tenement? (You may need to look this up)
2. Analyze the statistics. What conclusions can be drawn from the population statistics?
3. What conclusions can be drawn from the police statistics?
4. What do the police statistics tell you about 19th century New York City?
5. Divide the total population living in tenements by the number of tenements. How many people, on average, lived
in each tenement? Is this surprising to you?
6. Based on the statistics here, what solutions could the government offer to alleviate some of these problems?
Mary Antin Praises America
1. Who was Mary Antin?
2. What was her motivation for leaving Russia?
3. What did Jewish immigrants find most gratifying about living in America?
4. Why do you think education was such a selling point for immigrants?
5. How does Antin’s account differ from some of the other accounts of city life you’ve read? How is it different and
why?
The Life of a Sweatshop Girl
1. What series of events brought Sadie to the United States?
2. What are the greatest differences between Sadie’s life in Poland and her life in the United States?
3. What are the best and worst parts of her job in the garment factory?
4. What is her attitude towards her job?
5. What is a labor union? (you may need to look this up)
6. What is Sadie’s attitude towards her labor union?
Death of a Climbing Boy
1. When was this document written?
2. What is a “climbing boy?”
3. How did Thomas Pitt die?
4. What evidence is presented in the document that proves that being a climbing boy was known to be a dangerous
job?
Life in a Southern Mill
1. What were the hardest conditions of life in the southern textile mills?
2. How were workers exploited?
3. What were some of the problems caused by long work hours?
4. How was the labor of children employed in the mills?
5. Why do you think entire families worked in the mills together?
A Working Day in a Manchester Cotton Mill
1. What does peripatetic mean? (you may need to look this up)
2. How were the workers punished for being late?
3. Why do many people eat their meals in the mill?
4. What did the correspondent think of the workers’ personal hygiene habits?
5. Do the factory workers seem happy? What evidence is presented that supports your opinion?
6. What similarities and differences are there between the life of the Manchester mill workers and the life of workers
in a modern factory in the United States?
Factory Conditions
1. At what age did the author begin working at the mill?
2. What is a doffer?
3. What happened to employees that were late to work?
4. What injuries did the author sustain as a result of working in the factory?
5. Why do you think the author was unable to answer the final question?
A Tailor Testifies
1. What type of document is this?
2. What changes in work conditions has the tailor seen in his lifetime?
3. Were they for the better? What evidence supports your opinion?
4. What did the changes in work conditions mean for his family life?
5. How did working conditions impact the relationship between the worker and the employer?
Life of a Working Girl
1. Who is Dorothy Richardson? What brought her to sweatshop work?
2. What is her attitude towards the immigrant working class girls who became her companions and workmates?
3. Why did these young women work?
4. How were their working conditions different from those of today?
5. Elsewhere in her book, Richardson quoted one of her fellow workers who spoke of “long ago, when they used to
treat the girls so bad. This is ever so much better now.” How might the conditions described here have been worse
in an earlier time?
Upton Sinclair Describes the Chicago Stockyards
1. What type of source is this?
2. Who is Upton Sinclair? (you may need to look this up)
3. What was the author’s purpose in writing this source? (you may need to look this up)
4. What were the most noxious environmental effects of the meatpacking industry?
5. Why did the city of Chicago tolerate these effects?
6. How did the particular technologies of the era contribute to this environmental catastrophe?
Capital Versus Labor
1. How were both labor and capitalists praised and blamed?
2. Why does Thomas Nast (the illustrator) choose to depict the laborer with his family and the capitalist alone at the
office?
3. In what ways was organized labor oppressive?
4. Who had more at risk: the laborer or the capitalist?
5. Which side does Nast favor? Why?
Everywhere on Earth
1. What types of jobs are typically done by child laborers?
2. What are some of the workplace hazards?
3. Look at the list of places where child laborers are employed. What do you notice about these locales?
4. How might the use of child labor impact us in the developed world?
Rethinking Child Labor
1. What is the goal of the International Labor Organization?
2. Why does the Save the Children Fund argue that child labor is a more complex issue than originally believed?
3. According to Vigil, who/what is responsible for child labor in the world today?
4. How is the push to end child labor an example of Western cultural arrogance?
5. How has moving children out of traditional family laboring and into schools impacted the people of Ladakh?
6. How is work in the “informal sector” different from what is typically shown about child labor?
7. How has the global economic system encouraged child labor (ex: Nicaragua)?
8. How is the issue of child labor an issue of “questioning Western assumptions about value systems and lifestyles
of other societies”?
Child Labor: Pain & Resistance
1. Describe life in a Nepalese carpet factory.
2. What happened when the child labor of Nepal’s carpet factories was exposed to the public?
3. What is the United Nations definition of child labor?
4. How is child labor both caused by and a cause of poverty?
5. What was the Fair Labor Standards Act?
6. What are some of the groups that have joined together to put an end to child labor?
7. What has to end before child labor will end?
Declaration of the Rights of the Child &
The Rights of the Child: From Declaration to Convention
1. According to the article, what is the purpose of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child?
2. What agency authored this document?
3. Read over the Declaration. Which three inclusions do you think are the most important? Why?
4. Are there any inclusions that you think aren’t necessary? If you were made to choose one (or more) that aren’t
necessary, which would you choose?
5. Does the Declaration reflect western values? How or how not?
Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices
Directions: Go to www.youtube.com and search for “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices.” Watch the
documentary & answer the questions below.
1. Why do you think Lee Scott, President & CEO of Wal-Mart says that Wal-Mart has “generated fear, if not envy
in some circles?”
2. Why can’t small businesses compete with Wal-Mart?
3. What advantages do small businesses have over Wal-Mart?
4. What incentives do local governments provide Wal-Mart to encourage the company to come to their
communities?
5. What effects does Wal-Mart have on the following aspects of communities?
a. Property Values:
b. Local Businesses:
c. Town Centers:
d. Traditional Community Cohesiveness:
6. How does Wal-Mart keep labor expenses low?
a. Employees:
b. Wages:
c. Benefits:
d. Government Welfare Programs:
7. How does Wal-Mart discourage organized labor unions?
8. Do any unions exist at Wal-Mart?
9. How does Wal-Mart get more work out of its employees without adding to labor costs?
10. What do critics say about how Wal-Mart treats female and minority employees?
11. What problems are created when a large corporation such as Wal-Mart is supported with government revenue?
12. Why was Donna Lisenby, Catawba Riverkeeper, frustrated with Wal-Mart’s reaction to the environmental
concerns she raised about the storage of fertilizer on Wal-Mart parking lots?
13. How does the film describe conditions in Wal-Mart’s factories in China?
14. How do Wal-Mart’s business practices affect world business standards?
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream
1. What is an op-ed? Is it biased?
2. Where is Phnom Penh?
3. What is the intention of President Obama in favoring labor standards in trade agreements?
4. What is the main argument of this op-ed?
5. How is a sweatshop job “cherished dream” for some?
6. Why does the author argue that banning sweatshops might encourage world poverty?
7. What is a living wage? (You may need to look this up)
8. What is the author’s argument against labor standards and living wages?
9. Why does the author argue that developed nations should promote manufacturing in developing countries?