How Did The Middle Class Grow During The Industrial Revolution

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The Industrial Revolution was an era in the 19th century that marked the beginning of the way society functions today. It was a time when new inventions, mass production, and urbanization rose. Although this revolution became extremely beneficial in the long run, during its growth, the Industrial Revolution was more harmful in its trial and error phase because of the social tension it caused, over population, and the practices of child labor. One major reason the Industrial Revolution was harmful to the people of that century was because of its ideas on child labor.Most child workers stemmed stemmed from the lower class who were in need of providing for their families. The children were hired over men due to their efficiency and speed in…show more content…
While the upper class lived in grand mansions with lavish lifestyles, the city workers lived in dire straits and in disease ridden quarters. The lower class, therefore, deeply resented the rich, as the rich despised the poor and found them dirty and full of disease. Not only did the upper class make a lot of money during the revolution, the middle class also arose financially. The middle class included bankers, merchants, and factory owners. They benefited much so from the Industrial Revolution, that some grew even wealthier than aristocrats and landowners. The upper class looked down upon the middle and the middle disliked the fact that they were not socially or politically equal to the upper. One thing all classes had in common was that they deeply resented one another. Enraged by the unfair treatment and conditions they had to suffer, the lower class started labor unions, a call for reforms to be made for the working class. They hoped it would create social and political equality, but that law was not vetoed until the late 1800s. In The Ideas that Conquered the World, Michael Mandelbaum stated that even though the Industrial Revolution made the ways of traditional society seem pointless, the prejudice between the social classes still remained, even to this day(Document F). The idea of a social pyramid and people being categorized into different classes was a large part of life before the revolution and did not go away even after the revolution. This idea created a lot of controversies and corruption during the Industrial

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