The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on the Social Class (Essay Sample)

Social Structure during the Industrial Revolution
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The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on the Social Class
The Industrial Revolution remains one of the most remarkable milestones in the socio-economic history of the world. It was a time when society utilized its efforts to improve the economic status of the nation at large (Drucker, 2017). In Britain where it began, there was rapid growth and development of urbanization and the subsequent rise of the working class. The industrialists and other allied people in business formed a social class of bourgeoisie who controlled the economy and politics by extension. In a sense, the industrial revolution disrupted the existing class and developed a new capitalist social order where each was represented albeit at a different level.
The Industrial Revolution in the cities was characterized by the presence of a low class of citizens. As urbanization rapidly gained ground, there was an exponential influx of farmland populations who came to work in the newly built industries. The resultant high society in the young cities overwhelmed the available housing and sanitation resources and pushed the immigrants into slums and other substandard shelters. The slums were characterized by poor sanitation, high infant mortality, and diseases like tuberculosis. The overall mortality rate skyrocketed as the impoverished workers spend long hours running machines under deplorable conditions (Neuss, 2016). The lower class in the slums expanded the labor market, and so the industrialists exploited this situation to reduce the daily wage (Gilboy, 2017) further. With this income, the lower class could not emancipate itself and thus remained in the shanties running a vicious cycle of poverty.