Likewise, the Industrial Revolution teaches that neither the welfare of the contemporary wealthy and fortunate, nor even the future well-being of subsequent generations is ever justified as the fruits of the suffering of other human beings. In retrospect, the progression from agrarian to industrial economies need not have required the degree of suffering with which it was, unfortunately, associated, particularly in the nineteenth century. The best evidence for this proposition seems to be the efforts, most of which were successful, on the part of Bismark, in Germany, while workers suffered greater hardships, by comparison, in the rest of the newly industrialized world. Greed and callousness, is, unfortunately, characteristic of many elements of human life, which was not necessarily any more true of capitalists during the eighteenth century than before (or after). The rapid technological progress made possible by the Industrial Revolution simply occurred so quickly, that it outpaced any corresponding development of the development of humanitarian theory, or concepts of social welfare that (almost) all modern societies take for granted as indispensable, today.

Contemporary Industrial and Social Exploitation:

Even in the modern industrialized nations, worker exploitation for monetary gain and profits, first witnessed during the Industrial Revolution, persists, today, perhaps to the detriment of more human lives now, than were affected during the eighteenth century. In the United States, industrial welfare is very highly regulated, at every level of government. Modern workers in most of the Western (industrialized)

World, are protected by laws guaranteeing safe work environments, insurance, minimum wages, and retirement pensions. Even so, it is no less a function of economics and a degree of social stratification that accounts for the hardest, most unpleasant, and hazardous industries, such as mining, heavy construction, and enlistment in the armed forces is a burden borne, largely by the lower classes, while the more fortunate are more likely to continue their higher education and work in safer, more lucrative industries.

The situation is even more dramatic, and reminiscent of the social...

Nowadays, human industrial greed inspires the export of industrialized production from modern countries, where workers are legally entitled to fair pay and safe working conditions, to Third World countries, particularly in the populous, but hopelessly impoverished regions of South Amercia and Asia, where conditions mirror those finally rectified in this part of the world by social concern.
Modern capitalists, in the form of manufacturers of sporting goods and designer clothes transfer production to Third World areas, not to provide a better life for the least fortunate, but to maximize profits by exploiting their situation, ignoring all the principles now guaranteed workers in the developed countries, and compensating them as little as a few dollars a week.

Conclusion:

The schism and split characterized and engendered by the Industrial

Revolution has, in many respects, endured even into the twenty-first century, notwithstanding other elements of profound social and environmental progress. The division of nations into two categories of the "haves" (or modern, developed nations)

and the "have nots" (or underdeveloped, "Third World" nations), is, in the eyes of many social historians, merely a continuing projection, onto the international plane, of precisely what had occurred within individual developing nations during the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, if one considers the entire world and the human condition of the most populated (and impoverished) regions of the world today, comparatively little has changed from the darkest days of social hardships first introduced two centuries ago by the Industrial Revolution.

Works Cited

Burchell, S.D. (1968) Age of Progress.

Time Life: UK

Faissler, M., Hayes, C. (1966) Modern Times: Mainstreams of Civilization.

Macmillan: New York

Garraty, J.A. (1975) the American Nation: A History of the United States to Harper & Row: New York

Kowalick, T.M. (1989) Eugen Weber's the Western Tradition.

Annenberg/CPB: Santa Barbara