The Industrial revolution was a social and cultural revolution because it transformed the way human beings went about making a living.  
 

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Urbanization -  Industrialization brought about great increase in urbanization.  In 1800 Europe had 22 cities with more than 100 000 inhabitants.  By 1895, the number of such cities had increased to 120.Cities such as London and Paris became new centers of both wealth and poverty.  -  The necessity for marketing finished goods created great urban centers where there was access to water and railways. Such was the case with Liverpool, Hamburg, Marseilles, and New York. -  The Industrial Revolution created a new middle class (bourgeoisie) as well as new working class - Karl Marx called these people proletariat.  Karl Marx (1818-1883) wrote the Communist Manifesto (1848) as a mean to call for a working class revolution and to encourage communism.  -  The gap between the rich and the poor greatly lengthened, and became visible in the cities.  Before the Industrial Revolution, buildings that housed both poor and rich on different floors was common.  In the 19th century, the dominating middle class and the expanding proletariats caused this intermingling to end.  The bourgeoisie and aristocrats lived in wealthy neighbourhoods while proletariats lived in ghettos. -  However, the lack of any urban planning caused overcrowding, poor housing, and poor to non-existent sanitation.  As a result, the death rate exceeded the birth rate in the cities.     (back to top) The Introduction of the Factory -   Inspired by curiosity and motivated by the prospect of financial rewards, inventors discovered ways of tapping new sources of power and finding new ways of producing goods. -   Previous to the Industrial Revolution period, goods were produced by individuals.  This was called a Cottage Industry, where labor force consists of family units or individuals working at home with their own equipment.  With the introduction of machinery, the cottage industry began to dissipate as individuals and their family were forced to work in factories in the cities.  It is in these factories that production was greatly increased.  Instead of each person handcrafting a piece of work, assembly lines were set up in factories where each person completed a part.  This allowed for mass production in an efficient and cheap time.  -  As a result, less people became directly dependent upon agriculture to survive.  In Britain this meant around 30% of the population. -  At the same time labour became depersonalized -> in a factory, groups of workers were directed by a foreman, not the owner. -  As the Industrial Revolution progressed, factories began to get larger and machines better.  These new innovations severely reduced the need for workers and caused massive unemployment.  This creates a group of people who hated and tried to destroy the new machines that replaced them. They were called the luddites. - In the current society, the term luddites still exists and these people have latched onto their predecessor's ideas of anti technology.     (back to top) Women in the Industrial Revolution -  Before industrialization women worked on farms and stayed home with the children. -With industrialization, the textile mills needed workers, and women were preferred because they are cheap and obedient, and they would also do all the work that the men refused to do.  Thus, women started working for the first time. -  At the beginning of the revolution, women and children, wherever they worked, had the most exploitative working conditions and the lowest rates of pay – 1/2 to 1/3 of the men’s pay.  They also work 14-16 hr/day, and do nothing else but sleep. -Many of the women that worked in textile mills got lung disease because of all the dusty air they breathed in. Women's long skirts and hair would also get stuck in the machinery and it could cripple them. -Women also worked in coal mines, 1/3 worked in domestic services, serving upper class women. -   Eventually, feminist women such as Susan B. Anthony began protesting and criticizing the abuse of women. -   After the Sadler Report in 1832,  the children were sent home and  the government realized the need for people to take care of them.  Rather than hire people to care for the children, the government let the women go home.  This created the stereotype that women have the main responsibility of taking care of the children, a stereotype that continues until today. -  The nineteenth century is a transitional period for European women. It is a time of continued exploitation and yet a time when female literacy improved rapidly and women began the crusade that would eventually win them full rights in the 20th century.     (back to top) Children in the Industrial Revolution -  At the beginning of the revolution, there was no legislation about working condition in the mills, plants, or factories.  Children were ideal for the work because they were cheap, weren’t big enough to argue and were small enough to fit between the machines, which the adults could not. -  One example of this is Alexander Gray, a pump boy aged 10 years old. In 1842 the Royal Commission reported on him talking about his working conditions. He said: "I pump out the water in the under bottom of the pit to keep the men's room (coal face) dry. I am obliged to pump fast or the water would cover me. I had to run away a few weeks ago as the water came up so fast that I could not pump at all. The water frequently covers my legs. I have been two years at the pump. I am paid 10d (old pence) a day. No holiday but the Sabbath (Sunday). I go down at three, sometimes five in the morning, and come up at six or seven at night. -  Children were forced to work at extremely young ages (~5) and received no education or extra support from the government. -  As the Industrial Revolution progressed, people and more importantly, the government began to take awareness of the seriousness of problem. -  Industrial reformer and moralist Richard Oastler argued that “child labour in mills was comparable to the chattel slavery of Africans on the plantations in the Americas.” -  “One of the most disgusting sights I have ever seen was that of young females, dressed like boys in trousers, crawling on all fours, with belts round their waists and chains passing between their legs, at day pits at Hunshelf Bank, and in many small pits near Holmfirth and New Mills”(J.C.Symons – Sub-commissioner). -  In 1832, Michael Sadler secured a parliamentary investigation into the conditions in the textile factories and came up with the Sadler Report, the first official time in which the government took notice of the workers. -  This report aroused serious concerns and lead to the the factory act in 1833.It limited the hours of child labour in textile mills and, most importantly, appointed factory inspectors to administer it. 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