The Industrial Revolution and its societal impacts

Industrial Revolution refers to the widespread replacement of manual labor by machines which began in Great Britain in the 18th century and quickly spread to other parts of Europe and the United States in the following century. It is considered by many to be the most significant socio-economic transformation of human civilization after the Neolithic Revolution. This paper discusses the positive and negative impacts of the industrial revolution and outlines the ways in which industrialization affected society as a whole and the working class as individuals.

The most significant impact of the industrial revolution was the tremendous spurt in the production of manufactured goods due to adoption of more efficient scientific methods in the manufacturing process. This dramatic increase in production due to industrialization resulted in creation of unprecedented wealth, greater prosperity and a rise in the living standards of the people. However, the benefits of the creation of wealth were by no means uniformly distributed in the population. The newly created class of bourgeoisie (the industrialists and the merchants) was the major beneficiary while the working classes were mercilessly exploited. Some other sections of the society that were impacted negatively by the change included the skilled laborers and artisans who were rendered jobless or were downgraded as routine process laborers, and the land-owning nobility who lost some of their political power to the newly emergent bourgeoisie. Widespread industrialization, following the revolution, also resulted in increased pollution, deforestation, and the destruction of animal and plant habitats (Porter).

Apart from its economic impact, the most important consequence of the Industrial Revolution on the society as a whole was the shifting of the working population from the rural to the urban areas which became the centers of the manufacturing industries. Several British cities such as Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, and Manchester exemplified the rapid growth of manufacturing cities in the 18th and 19th centuries. As an example, before the Industrial Revolution in the early 1770s, Manchester had a population of only 25,000 inhabitants but by 1850, having become a center of cotton manufacturing its population had grown to more than 350,000. The overall shift of the population was also significant -- in pre-industrial England more than three-quarters of the population lived in cities; by mid nineteenth century over half of the population lived in cities (Ashton, 49). The United States experienced similar urbanization as a result of the industrial revolution. In 1860 there were only 9 American cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants but by 1900, such cities had increased to 38 (Porter, para on "Growth of Cities")