Efficiency

The basic definition of efficiency during the first and second Industrial Revolutions was less input, more output. This essentially means that finding an efficient way to go about something or handle a problem means to come up with a solution that involves less effort while, at the same time, allows more production. In concept, efficiency is seemingly the right way to solve a problem, but in reality, it only created a dangerous atmosphere for factory workers. Despite the fact that this so called efficiency decreased the amount of time spent on one item to be produced, it increased health and economic issues within the working class. People of all types within the proletariat were forced to work in factories; children and women were not excluded. Children had to work starting at the age of five. At such a young age, these children were required to work thirteen hours a day, in an environment where the air was polluted and there were major dangers throughout their paths. Some children nine, ten and eleven years old were forced to work for fourteen or fifteen hours a day.

The effects of these working conditions on the proletariat included stunted growth, relaxed muscles, slender conformation, and in some cases, complete loss of appetite. Although the newly found “efficient” solutions to underproduction made a profound difference in society, they ruined the lives of those working in the factories. And, without the factory workers’ health, they would soon become too weak to work and eventually die. If this had continued much longer, efficiency would have failed, nonetheless.