United States and Great Britain Comparison Post

                During the industrial revolution, industrialists in the United States (US) had some success, but industrialists were more successful in Great Britain.  There were plentiful laborers in Great Britain, many whom used to be farmers and who could no longer make a living farming, as opposed to the US where there was not a lot of labor available.  Many of the laborers in Great Britain were children who worked long hours.  Many children, especially girls, were “Shut up from morning till night, except when they are sent home for their meals”.  Industrialists had children working for long periods of time for low wages to make a maximum amount of money.  However, in the United States, eventually “a ten­hour law was passed” meaning children could not work for longer than ten hours in a day and industrialists got less labor from children.  Also, industrialists in Great Britain had plentiful amounts of iron ore and coal.  They received raw materials from their colonies, and all of these resources allowed them to manufacture lots of different goods.  In the US, the only plentiful resource was wood and land.  Using their iron, coal, and other various resources, Great Britain developed extremely successful transportation, including canals, longer-lasting roads, and steam-powered locomotives and railroads.  The US had railroads and canals as well, but they did not have very good roads, so Great Britain had better transportation than the US.  These different types of transportation helped industrialists in Great Britain become and stay successful, because they were able to move and sell their goods to different areas.  In Great Britain, besides the inventions in transportation there were also lots of other inventions that helped industrialists succeed.  There were inventions like the seed-drill, water-powered loom, and flying shuttle.  These all helped speed up the manufacturing of products and thus increase the quantity that they were able to be manufacture.  Because of their additional resources, including labor, industrialists in Great Britain were more successful than industrialists in the United States.

                In the United States, however, workers had a more positive experience than they did in Great Britain.  Girls working in Great Britain were abused at times.  It was said that “In the eyes of her overseer she [a girl working in the factories] was but a brute, a slave, to be beaten, pinched and pushed about”.  In the United States, girls were not physically abused and “such high wages had been offered to women that they might be induced to become mill­girls”.  Though young girls never made a lot of money, they were able to make more money in the United States than in Great Britain.  Also, in Great Britain, “the whole maintenance of the family devolves on the father”.  This was due to mothers and their children no longer being able to make money at home since “the establishment of the Spinning Machines in many Counties where I was last Summer, no Hand Work could be had”. The family was dependent of the father to survive and the father had the responsibility to support the family entirely on his own unless other members of the family went to work in the factories.  And, in Great Britain, when girls did go to work in factories, they were not able to learn how to take care of a family and perform the domestic duties expected of a woman when she married.  It was said that, “these girls are ignorant of, and unhandy at every domestic employment, whereas if at her wheel in her mother’s cottage, the girl assists in every occupation of the family”.  The girls would be ignorant of how to perform these tasks because they would be “Shut up from morning till night” in the factories.  In the United States though, this was not as much of a concern because “Those of the mill­girls who had homes generally worked from eight to ten months in the year; the rest of the time was spent with parents or friends” which would allow girls to be social and learn some of these important duties from their mothers.  While workers in the United States did not have a perfect experience, they had a more positive experience than in Great Britain.