Industrial Revolution in England
In this excerpt from The Spectator, the author highlights the high human cost of extracting mineral fuel in England during the 19th century.
The mineral fuel which constitutes so great a source of our national wealth is not extracted from the earth without a fearful sacrifice of life; either cut off suddenly, or slowly, but as surely, destroyed by inhaling the poisonous gases of the mines. Scarcely a week passes without fatal explosions, of which little notice is taken beyond the immediate scenes of the calamities; nor is it till some thirty or forty human beings have been killed at one flash that public attention is aroused ; whilst the thousands who are sent to premature graves by the daily operating effects of the insidious atmospheric poison are altogether unminded.
English publication, The Spectator, 3 November 1849
Question 1
Identify one reason for England leading the Industrial Revolution described in the excerpt.
Question 2
Describe one way coal mining affected workers described in the excerpt.
Question 3
Explain how the conditions described in the excerpt influenced the 19th-century English labor movement.
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