Arthur Young Essay

Documents 1-2: How do the grievances noted by Arthur Young compare to those expressed in the Cahiers? The grievances noted by Arthur Young are focused more on the humanitarian needs of the French people during the late 1780’s. When looking at the document of September 2, 1788 Young mentions that there is an uproar over the high price of bread. There are many obstacles that a society can overcome, but when they are being starved and treated unjustly over humanitarian needs such as food, then there is a high possibility that they will revolt at any cost. There are also many similarities in both Young’s observances and the Cahiers. Both Young’s observances and the Cahiers note that the people are discontent with the fact that the First Estate made up of the clergy, and Second Estate made up of the nobility, are treated so well compared to the Third estate which included everyone from banker to lawyer and even the peasants. Therefore even though France was more revolutionary than any other country at the time, the disparity in classes between the rich and the poor was extremely obvious. Why might these grievances be revolutionary? And, in what ways are they peculiar to the Third Estate only and not the First and Second Estates? The grievances proposed by the Cahiers are extremely revolutionary. In fact you can see that these ideas seem oddly familiar because they exist today in our own constitution of the United States. One of the most famous ideas is proposed in idea 14, which states that freedom should be granted to the press. This idea is revolutionary because it would allow the people of France to freely express their discontents with the government and spread information freely throughout the country without the fear of being punished. Another great idea proposed by the Cahiers was the fact that all taxes should be assessed on the same system throughout the nation. It was imperative that the Third estate made this clear because even though they were the poorest, they were the ones being charged with the heaviest taxes. It was also interesting that the Cahiers brought up the fact that certain positions in offices and ranks should be granted to anyone who was qualified for the job, not just the nobility or based on heredity. This was revolutionary because it must have compelled many more people in France to obtain an education and strive for a better life because they were being granted opportunities. Documents 3-4: Based on your reading of these excerpts, what were the worst abuses of factory labor and the causes of poor working and health conditions? Right away what captures the readers attention is that the medical examiner is claiming that children as young as five years old were being sent to work as long as eleven hours a day. This idea is just unimaginable to most people because a five year old is hardly old enough to take care of himself, let alone maintain a job that requires him to work for eleven hours a day. It is just painful to hear that these children spent their childhoods working in the factories and as a result their growth was stunted, their bone development was compromised, and their health was so poor compared to children not working in factories. The testimony of John Wright really puts everything into perspective because it’s a first hand account of his life working in the factories since he was a six year old. The fact that he worked the same hours then, to the hours he worked as an adult just shows how despicable the working conditions were in the factories. Just like the medical examiner he also explained that the children who grew up in these working factories suffered many health complications, some even became crippled due to over exhaustion. According to Engels, how did such an environment affect the poor mentally as well as physically? Engels believed that the scandalous environment in which the poor were forced to live in was a result of continuous mistreatment from the upper classes. He claims that the poor were basically treated like animals, hoarded from the country in to the city, and forced to work ungodly hours in order to keep up with the demands of industrialization. Then the poor were forced to live in cramped quarters where no proper sanitation systems existed, and even clean drinking water was a luxury. Engels explains that because so many people were cramped into such small rooms for such a long period of time the air quality was severely polluted and this caused many health problems. Engels brings up many good points by questioning how the upper classes ever expected the poor to stay healthy or even humane when their conditions were beyond poor. The fact that the poor were always subjected to extremes of hopes and fears really threw most people over the edge. They had no choice but to be mentally unstable because of the conditions they lived in. They were constantly living for survival in the most disgusting conditions while the rich got richer due to their hard work. Document #5: These maps reveal something about connections between population density, urbanization, and the industrializing process. What do these maps tell us about these connections? What might some of the social consequences of these connections be? The maps explain that as industrialization grew, and urbanization grew, more and more people started to move into the cities in hopes of finding opportunities for work and better living standards. You can see that the first map of the population density in England in 1801 seems quite dispersed compared to the population density of England in 1851. Also you can see from the map of England in 1851 that there was a huge population boom in between those 50 years. When looking at the map of concentration of Industry in England in 1851 then it is clear that people moved from the countryside to the larger cities that were the heart of industrialization. Engle best described the social consequences of the changes from 1801 to 1851 in such a short period of time in the previously discussed documents. With overpopulation cities got more crowded and the living quality in these cities steadily decreased. The environment was affected tremendously due to the cluster of factories and misuse by the overpopulation. Disease was more prominent because it was easier to spread in unsanitary and overpopulated areas. When employment opportunities arise, people will surely flock to them, especially the poor. This was just the case in England during the industrialization. Sadly what people failed to realize is that their quality of life would greatly decrease rather than increase due to the mass overpopulation.