Changes in the Quality of Life in the Victorian Empire

Poverty and the effects of industrialization on it were another important issue discussed in the Victorian period. There were two opposite sides, which either support or oppose to Industrial Revolution. Some of them thought that poverty was decreased by industrialization, while some claimed that poverty was much worse after Industrial Revolution. Even it is claimed that the origin of modern poverty goes back to the act of industrialization. In the modern sense, it was thought that living standards were ameliorated. "Until the Industrial Revolution", Hartwell says, "most men, at most times, and in most places, have lived short and miserable lives with little hope of betterment and no concept of progress"(3: 4) by attracting our attention to very low level of productivity and uneven distribution of products.

Hanson also reinforces this idea by saying: "there has been little or no controversy about the standard of living in the second half of the century because the evidence is so clear that it was rising" (7: 113). In the long run, industrial revolution led to material affluence, but the condition of the first factory workers was miserable.

There were many underlying reasons for the revolution. Most important was the substitution of sophisticated machines with the development of technology in production for hand power. Although the replacement of steam for hand power played a great role in the revolution, the great improvements in internal and external trade were partly influential as well because "the expansion of internal trade was the effect of unparalleled improvements in the means of communication, the establishment of the canal system, the construction of new roads by Telford, and the introduction of railways" (8: 205), as Arnold Toynbee puts it. Many people were made redundant because of the efficiency of machines by creating conflicts between employers and employees.

However, on the other side, there was still need for people to work the machines and most of the work in the factories were based on physical power. Because of the unpopularity of agriculture because of urbanization, many emigrated from rural sides to towns and cities in which they had better job opportunities. However, the abuse of people's labour for low wages caused the proletariat. Working-class were forced to work as if they were like machines. According to Engels' vision, "the technical inventions of the Industrial Revolution, had created the proletariat; its factory hands were 'the eldest children of the Industrial Revolution', forming the nucleus of the workers' movement" (9: 5).

Their working and living conditions were unhealthy. Lots of people or families lived in a single room in slums and this caused deadly and contagious diseases, deaths, incest, vice and "life was as cheap at home as it was at work" (10: 45), as Richard D. Altick comments. J.C. Symons gives his observations about the condition of the hand-weavers like this: "in the lower lodging-houses ten, twelve, sometimes twenty persons of both sexes, all ages and various degrees of nakedness, sleep indiscriminately huddled together upon the floor. These dwellings are usually so damp, filthy, and ruinous" (11: 116).

Family life was almost impossible for the working-class who found the opportunity of meeting each other only night and morning. Social order necessitated this kind of lifestyle, devoid of any comfort or freedom. As Engels describes, "in a comfortless, filthy house, hardly good enough for mere nightly shelter, ill-furnished, often neither rain-tight nor warm, a foul atmosphere filling rooms overcrowded with human beings, no domestic comfort is possible" (12: 140). As the urban environment deteriorated, the conditions in the industrial towns started to threaten the health of people by spreading epidemics and contagious diseases.

Thompson denotes that "as the new industrial towns grew old, so problems of water-supply, sanitation, over-crowding, and of the use of homes for industrial occupations, multiplied, until we arrive at the appalling conditions revealed by the housing and sanitary inquiries of the 1840s" (13: 352) and in his book entitled Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City Tristram Hunt explains that "the noise and pollution, the danger from the machines, and the physical disfigurement from long hours of repetitive manual work were all blamed for the high mortality plaguing the working classes" (Hunt: 21). 

These offensive and unhealthy living conditions of employees moved some to take action for the betterment obligatorily. The capitalist employers were most worthy being the responsible for these inconvenient conditions of their employees, rather than they were the faults of workers' own. Industrialization had both dark and bright sides. While it brought wealth and economic progress to the country, it had to victimize or sacrifice some for the sake of a successful conclusion.

The search for wealth by capitalist employers by ignoring the emotions and needs of their workmen, but pursuing for cheap labour destroyed all former intimacies and solidarity between them in the pre-revolution period when masters and workmen lived together and love each other. There was an expansion in the wealth of the country, but the problem was that people had little share in this wealth produced, and this naturally caused poverty and misery among them. As three reasons for this destitution and depravity among the working class, Arnold Toynbee puts forward "first the old Poor Law, which stimulated increase among a degraded population, and the Corn Laws, which made bread dear and difficult to get, secondly, the exhausting conditions of the new industrial methods; thirdly, the fact that many workmen were fighting with machinery for a miserable subsistence" (8: 207).

These oppressive working and living conditions induced people to look for more rights, freedom and independence. The miserable condition of working class required the reforms such as the Abolition of Combination Laws, the Reform Bill, the Great Factory Act, the New Poor Law, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, Trades-Unions Legalisation, the Abolition of Law of Conspiracy and the Chartist Movement. Moreover, "workers were first given the franchise in 1867 (men only), and in 1872 trade unions were allowed to operate as lawful associations" (14: 110). There was a chain of struggle for more rights and succeeding reforms for the sake of better social, political and economic conditions. Each following reform made up for the shortcomings of the former ones. "The chartist movement came into existence after the breakdown of earlier attempts by the labouring poor to improve their condition" (15: 128).

It aimed to obtain the right to vote for all men and the secret ballot system under more democratic electoral conditions and this movement showed its effect by the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 passed for the extension of voting system in the nineteenth century Britain. Economically there was also very positive and increasingly better developments in the living standards of some working-class people. "Between 1860 and 1914 real wages doubled. The years of particularly rapid growth were the boom years of 1868-74, and the period 1880-96; during the latter period real wages went up almost 45 per cent" (4: 87). 

Economic growth increased the wages by creating a great difference between the former, poorer and undeveloped early Victorian period and the latter, more prosperous, wealthy and comfortable late Victorian period as Hartwell explains in the following lines:

The Englishman before the industrial revolution, before 1750, was between a sixth and a seventh as well off in material wealth as the Englishman of 1950... By the mid-20th century, life expectancy had more than doubled, the infantile mortality rate was down to 33, and income inequality with a massively enlarged total income was much reduced (3: 16).

Economic progress after industrialization affected both the material wealth and life expectancy of the country positively. "Britain was, in the eighteen-fifties, by far the richest country in the world" (16: 21). The improvement in the condition of working-class stemmed from not only high wages, but also from shorter work hours, well-paid job opportunities and improved working environment. "The mid-Victorian years were to any great extent less hungry than the thirties and forties" (16: 144) and related to real wages from 1790 to 1850 it is thought that "industrialization paid off generally in higher real wages for all groups in society in the second half of the nineteenth century. The net national income (at constant prices) rose from about £550 million in 1851; doubling by the 1880s and reaching over £2000 million in the decade before 1914" (17: 343).

As seen, increasing wages, decreasing poverty rate and the general economic welfare were the herald of a gradually and rapidly developing living standards and everything was cooperating for the order of a better society though with some shameful or pitiful life scenes in helplessness at the beginning of this industrial age.

There were also protective reforms about the working-class children exposed to abuse under very heavy working conditions at very early ages. For instance, "the Mines Act of 1842 ended the employment of children under ten in the subterranean parts of coalmining operations. The Factory Act of 1844 cut the hours of work for children aged between eight and thirteen to six and a half a day, and initiated an inspection system" (18: 160) to guarantee the security of children and the maintenance of the law later. The reforms were aimed to be more reinforced, influential and permanent.

The passing of the New Poor Law was another amendment act which targeted to reform the old poor law and was based on the principle of "less eligibility" and workhouse test. This new poor law was better than the old one, but it did not work very well. As the content of this reform, Snell mentions "an insistence on self-help as the alternative to high rates, and the determination that the poor should remain dependent on and respectful to their social superiors" (19: 114), which were conflicting demands and had to be changed with the poor law in 1834 finally. 

The new poor law had a deterring feature that stipulates the neediest people to be taken into workhouses by making the conditions in workhouses worse than any other place outside; however, this situation caused the rural poor to immigrate to urban area where they can find work, which increased the urban poor rate. Therefore, this law did not become a solution to the poor relief system, in contrast to its principles and objectives.