Industrialization

Pessimistic Views

Loss of Independence for the Laborer

• Dependence on factory wages
• No room to grow food, hunt, fish
• Loss of the virtuous worker of the land
• Loss of skilled artisanal work

Child Labor

• Children stripped from their families
• Exploited by long hours, low or zero wages
• 1819 - over half of the labor force under 19

Life at Work and at Home

• Dangerous factories, lethal accidents
• Poorhouses - welfare designed to be miserable
• Tenement Housing
• Open sewers - Cholera Outbreaks

Cholera Outbreak of 1854

Luddites

Friedrich Engels

• Condition of the Working Class in England
• Focused on wages and working conditions
• Early foundation of Socialism
• Later worked with Karl Marx

Optimistic Views

Wages and Standards of Living

• Rising wages after 1850
• Rising life expectancy
• Decreasing mortality rates
• Less disease and starvation

Real Wage Growth

Chartists

Chartists

• Vote for all males over 21
• Secret ballot
• No property qualifications for Parliament
• Payment for members of Parliament
• Annual Elections

Reform and Government Intervention

• Saddler Commission
• Factory Act 1833
• Mines Act 1842
• Repeal of Corn Laws 1847
• Political organization and social consciousness

No economist today seriously disputes the fact that the industrial revolution began the transformation that has led to extraordinarily high (compared with the rest of human history) living standards for ordinary people throughout the market industrial economies.

The standard-of-living debate today is not about whether the industrial revolution made people better off, but about when.

-Clark Nardinelli, Industrial Revolution and Standard of Living, 2008