The traditional family structure was destroyed, as result of labor mobility and the population shift to the cities. Working-class women were affected in different, and in some ways, worse ways than men because of industrialization than their male counterparts -- prostitution was a common, desperate resort of many women struggling to eke out an existence in the cities.
Agriculture was also transformed by industrialization. The cotton gin made processing cotton on a mass scale possible and profitable, and factories could rapidly weave cotton into consumer goods like fabric for clothing. Thus fashion also became more accessible to the masses. This era saw the birth of the consumer. Entrepreneurs strove to satisfy this new appetite for goods by mass-producing what once could only be made by hand on a farm, or which only was custom-made the wealthy. This new focus on mass-produced spectacles to...
At first, this took the form of the Luddite movement, which attempted to destroy factories in the name of traditional handicrafts. However, soon it became clear that industrialism was 'here to stay,' and instead socially concerned individuals strove to find ways to deal with the modern urban problems of crime, sickness, and oppression through the use of laws and social organization.
Works Cited
Sherman, Dennis & Joyce Salisbury. "Chapter 17: Factories, Cities, and Families in the Industrial Age. The Industrial Revolution (1780-1850)." The West and the World, Part II.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
