WAS THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BAD FOR THE POOR?

WAS THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BAD FOR THE POOR? The debate about whether the Industrial Revolution was bad for the poor is still unresolved. It is an issue on which reasonable people differ. I have always surmised that the Industrial Revolution brought poverty to the cities where it was more noticeable. The Christmas issue of the Economist has a wonderful article on hunter-gatherers which summarizes my beliefs: “Eighteenth-century rural England was a place where people starved each spring as the winter stores ran out, where in bad years and poor districts long hours of agricultural labour—if it could be got—barely paid enough to keep body and soul together, and a place where the “putting-out” system of textile manufacture at home drove workers harder for lower pay than even the factories would. (Ask Zambians today why they take ill-paid jobs in Chinese-managed mines, or Vietnamese why they sew shirts in multinational-owned factories.) The industrial revolution caused a population explosion because it enabled more babies to survive—malnourished, perhaps, but at least alive.”