Image of a Mudlark

In the below image we see a poor child, but not a child who is simply poor because he can’t afford a Xbox S. These children are dirt poor and forced into a life of picking trash for things they can sell. These children were put in horrible conditions as they could very easily get injured, and in some cases these injuries could lead to death through infection spreading through cuts. With the way this job was they might as well have been in a factory, getting stuck in machines like old industrial cotton-gins. No matter what job you had at the time being in the city could lead to your demise, because you could be killed by a deranged serial-killer or just die of inhalation of the factory fumes and the infections which plagued the cities. What adds insult to injury is that these children who went through human feces and garbage to find items of some value to sell were named “Mudlarks”, which seems a bit degrading to be called. Overall, most of the jobs were degrading and just about as dangerous. The advancements in technology and medicine were a great effect of the Industrial Revolution, but to achieve such advances in leisures many people had to die. Unfortunately, today in order to make these goods more widely available and cheep, companies like Nike make their products overseas in third-world countries so they can make a profit off their suffering. We do not care where the products or made and how the conditions are in the factories, but we do care how available they are. We are all hypocrites as we criticize each other for these things but we do the same. In many ways it is similar to the Victorians in that some of them would talk about how much they feel for the people suffering in poor working conditions and would try to solve it through some useless government program that causes trouble for everyone. (I’m sorry for extending it so long, I just had a lot to say about it. And sorry if I repeated myself, hope it wasn’t too much trouble.)