How Did The Industrial Revolution Affect The Status Of The Middle Class

Marked by the increased use of machinery and factories, the Industrial Revolution was the shift from manual labor to a mechanized system of production that occurred in Britain in the eighteenth century. Before the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing occurred in the domestic system, where village workers in the countryside produced goods by hand. However, the domestic workers’ inefficient manual labor could not keep up with the growing population’s increasing demand for goods. As a result, new machinery was invented to mechanize production and increase the efficiency of manufacturing, and factories were established to bring workers and machinery together. Aside from a more productive system of production, the Industrial Revolution also created

The Industrial Revolution disproportionally impacted the living conditions and health status of the lower class, which included manual workers in factories and mines. Since Britain’s physical and health facilities could not keep pace with the rapid movement of rural workers into the cities, the workers had to live in poorly built, inexpensive terrace housing that lacked a sewage system. Thus, human waste was emptied directly into streams and rivers, which contaminated the drinking water and led to the rapid spread of diseases like cholera that dramatically reduced life expectancy.10 As a result, at the start of the nineteenth century, major cities had a life expectancy between thirty to thirty-three years while the rural areas lived ten years longer.11 The difference in life expectancy between the cities and the countryside reflected the industrial cities’ unsanitary living conditions and the negative impact on the urban population’s health. Although the Industrial Revolution did not affect the middle class and upper class’s health, as they lived in country estates, it significantly influenced their political power. In the eighteenth century, landownership and religion were the basis of social, economic, and political power. As a result, the members of Parliament only included aristocrats and important church officials, and the majority of people, who did not own a significant amount of property, had no voice in the British government. However, the Reform Bill of 1832, which extended the right to vote to more middle-class men, altered the source of political power and Britain’s social structure.12 Under Britain’s new social class system, wealth, rather than landownership, became the basis of political power. Thus, while the landowning aristocracy declined in