The Industrial Revolution created vast wealth while also
improving the standard of living for most people. Even
so, this new industrial economy produced cities that
struggled to cope with poverty, and the social gap
between rich and poor increased substantially. Judged
according to utilitarian standards of social justice,
the Industrial Revolution produced progress because it
achieved the greatest good for the greatest number of
people.
England’s Industrial Revolution made progress in
technology and standards of living, yet as the poor
began to protest their worsening life style, the
government was forced to intervene. The
technological revolution in the modes of production
of the 19th c. English economy demonstrated that
reason applied to social problems produces progress.
Still,
workers had to fight for their rights by using the
political system to demand their fair share of
prosperity: better salaries, better working
conditions, better housing, and the right to vote.
Conservatives countered by creating a mass media
culture designed to distract workers from protesting
the drastic gap between the social classes.
Enlightenment
thinkers believed that the synthesis of science with
liberalism would lead to social progress; however,
the city grew into a squalid and corrupt industrial
complex. When the workers compared the conditions in
which they lived with the opulent lifestyle of the
rich factory owners, they challenged the foundations
of capitalism by demanding reforms. To prevent
revolution, the owners agreed to modify their
laissez faire ideals and grant enough rights to
placate the poor. The more the city grew, though,
social unrest increased, and as a result of the
quest to dominate international trade, devastating
war enveloped the world.
The Industrial
Revolution was meant to be an expansion of the
Enlightenment belief in progress, but capitalism,
ironically, ended up widening the relative gap
between the rich and poor, and the exploitation of
this growing rift by politicians led to the rise of
fascism, communism, and eventually world war.
Due to advances in food
production and to liberal economic freedom in England,
the population boomed and competition for profit made
the economy more productive. As more and more people
could afford English goods, factory owners sought more
efficient production and higher profits. In the process,
an industrial economy came into being. An avalanche of
new inventions utilized the new source of power, coal,
and the new building material, iron. Unfortunately, the
factory owners continued to exploit the workers, and
eventually, these technologies led to the creation of
machines of mass destruction in the wars to come. What
seemed the ideal dream of urban prosperity and
productivity initially, quickly became a nightmare for
the working and lower classes as the conditions
worsened, diseases ran rampant, and the poor grew
conscious of their subservient position in the new
social order. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, London took the place of Manchester as the
prime example of an ideal industrial city. This “new
world city” began then to blossom and burgeon, its
population exploding and its borders expanding.
Literature during the Victorian era reflected the
conflict raging between the rich and the poor; some of
the writers just published their stories to exploit the
workers, while others agitated for industrial reform,
while still others encouraged a violent revolution. In
the long run, the working class became more aware of
their position in their society, and conflict loomed.
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