chapter 17

The laboring classes; some were 70% or more were neither aristocrats nor members of the middle class. They were manual workers in the mines, ports, factories,contrition site, workshops and farms of an industrializing Britain. Their conditions tried and changed over time it was laboring classes who suffers most and benefit least from the epic transformations of the industrial revolution. The lives of the laboring classes were shaped primarily by the new working conditions of the industrial era. Chief among the conditions was rapid urbanization's. By 1851 a majority of Britons population lived in towns and cities and a big change from the overwhelming rural life of almost all previous civilizations. Later London was the worlds largest city with more than 6 million inhabitants. The cities were mostly over crowded and smoky with inadequate sanitation, endless row houses and ware houses and often polluted water supplies. This was the environment most of the urban workers lived in the first half of the 19th century. Then the industrial factories grew numbers of desperate people looked for employment offered a work environment far different from the artisans shop or the tents farm. In the early decades the 19th century britains industrialist favored girls and young unmarried women as employees in the mills. A gendered hierarchy of labor emerged in the factories with men supervisory and more skilled positions while women occupied the less skilled and lighter jobs. Women weren't welcome in the unions that offered men ability.