Chapter+20+(The+Industrial+Revolution+and+its+Impact+on+European++Society)

//PS: This is from the Study Guide, yada yada...//

The Industrial Revolution that came first to Britain and then to the Continent of Europe changed the political and social order of Western people fully as much as the religious revolution called the Reformation, the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment, or the political revolutions that followed the French Revolution. In many ways it changed the lives of the common worker more than the previous revolutions. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain, where inventions, organizational skills, and natural resources combined to remake the countryside and the cities. It spread after a generation to the continent, particularly to places that had the same natural resources and organizational systems as Britain's, and by the middle of the nineteenth century had redefined society. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London demonstrated the achievements but did not point out the human suffering that accompanied those achievements. The social impact of the Industrial Revolution is still being observed and assessed. A tremendous growth in city populations, the creation of a new middle class and a working class, an ever increasing gap in earnings and quality of life between owners and workers all helped to make the modern age what it has been for a century--for better and for worse. The most striking losers in this new age were for many decades the children who were literally "used up" to supply labor for factories. Eventually reaction came. The workers themselves, however limited their powers might be, began calling for more rights to determine their work and lives: and social reformers made the case of the workers so articulately that at last government had to respond. The class struggle of modern times was underway.