Question

Describe the life of children as depicted in Andrew Mearn's famous book "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London."
OR
Explain five effects of print revolution.

CBSE Class X Social Science SA ( 3 marks)

Answer 1

(i) Andrew Mearn’s showed why crime was more profitable than labouring in small underpaid factories.
(ii) A child of seven years old is easily known to make 10 shillings 6 pence a week from thieving.
(iii) Before he can gain as much as a young thief (a boy) he must make 56 gross of matchboxes a week or 1,296 a day.
(iv) It was only after the passage of the Compulsory Elementary Education Act in 1870 and the Factory Acts beginning from 1902, that children were kept out of industrial work.
OR
Impact of print revolution :
(i) New reading public was emerged.
(ii) The hearing people became reading people.
(iii) Religious debates due to fear of prints led to distinctive interpretation of faith.
(iv) Printing transformed the lives of the people.
(v) It opened new ways of looking at things.
(vi) Print culture also affected the life of poor people and women in many ways. The print gave birth to new form of popular literature. Very small books were brought out. They were sold across roads. The poor people brought these books and read with great interest. Books were cheap so that the poor people can also afford them.
(vii) Women’s reading increased enormously in middle class homes. Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their women folk at home and send them to schools. Women schools were also set up.