Comparison between Busto Arsizio
and Coketown
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The industrial revolution in Busto
The industrial revolution in Cooktown ( England)
 The english industrial revolution
 Why the Revolution Began in England
 Environment changes before and after the revolution
 Workers conditions
 Hard Times
 Coketown
 Charles Dickens
The comparison between Busto Arsizio and Cooktown
The industrial revolution of Busto took place
between the end of the eighties and the first
twenty years of nineties. It was mainly based
on three sectors of the local textile craft: the
dyeing plant, the knitwear mill and the
embroidery.
The development of these activities was at
the beginning hard since due to the
American secession war was stopped the
import of cotton so the government decided
to reduce the customs charge to support the
import of foreign tissues.
The textile sector of Busto however grew up
in quantity and quality. Were created new
enterprises which later became a
fundamental part of the local production
The Industrial Revolution started in Britain in 18th century, the period
between 1760 and 1890.
The most important changes of the Industrial Revolution were:
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the invention of machines to do
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the work of hand tools;
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the use of other kinds of power,
in place of the muscles of human
and of animals, as the steam engine,
the first electric battery and the
cotton gin (a machine to clean
cotton) the adoption of the factory
system (the organization of a
factory using machines supervised
by a director)
At the start of this period, Britain was a rural country.
There were some large cities, but not many. Most people
lived and worked on farms.
Richer farmers with lots
of land began to take over
the smaller farms. This
caused a lot of
unemployment, so people
left the land and began to
work in factories.
The technological development of the first half of the
19th century brought about many changes in society.
Men, women and even children worked in the
factories or in the mines for thirteen hours every
day for very little money. The poor families sent
their children to work in the factories to earn more
money. Their salaries were very low and the their
working conditions weren't regulated by any law.
Because of the dramatic sanitary conditions in which
the working classes lived, many diseases spread in
the poor slums of the towns.
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth
in England in 1812. When he was twelve
he left school and went to work in a factory.
That's why he was so interested in the
conditions of the working people during
the industrial revolution, especially in the
children's ones. In 1831 he became a
newspaper reporter. Soon he started writing
stories for magazines. His first novel,
“the pickwick papers”, was published in 1836.
Dickens' books tell about poverty and social
problems in the 19th century. He wrote
stories also about these children in his novels
David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.
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Thomas Gradgrind is an educator and
writer on political questions. He has found
a school where his educational theories
are put into practice: children are taught
nothing but facts, and he educates his own
children, Louisa and Tom, in the same way,
neglecting their imagination and their
affections. He also adopts an orphan,
Sissy Jupe, whose father worked in a
circus before his death. Mr Gradgrind
suggests to his daughter that she should
marry Josiah Bounderby, a rich factoryowner and banker of the city some thirty
years older that she is. Louisa, desiring to
help her brother Tom in his career,
consents to the marriage, which naturally
proves to be very unhappy. Tom who is
selfish and lazy, is given a job in
Bounderby’s bank, and eventually steals
some money from it. Tom’s guilt is
discovered and he runs away and hides
among the circus folk, who show kindness
and sympathy by sheltering him. In the
end Gradgrind, helped by the example of
Sissy Jupe’s unselfishness and love for
others, understands the damage caused by
his narrow and materialistic philosophy.
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It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been
red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters
stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted
face of a savage.
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which
interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever
and ever, and never got uncoiled.
It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with illsmelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where
there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the
piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down,
like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.
It contained several large streets all very like one another,
and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited
by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at
the same hours, with the same sound upon the same
pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was
the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the
counterpart of the last and the next.
BUSTO ARSIZIO
 1880-1920
 textile
 j
COKETOWN
 1760-1890
 oil, chemical
products,electricity
Chiara Grazioli
 Francesca Martorella
 Chiara Segato
 Sara Moroni
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