5.10 Society and the Industrial Age

New social classes emerge

Industrialization created a new middle class of factory owners, merchants, and professionals, alongside a growing working class (proletariat) who labored in factories for wages. This shifted societies away from the older aristocratic order based on land ownership toward one based on capital and industrial wealth.

Harsh working and living conditions

Factory workers, including many women and children, faced long hours, low wages, dangerous machinery, and unsanitary conditions. Rapid urbanization packed workers into overcrowded slums with poor sanitation, leading to disease outbreaks like cholera. These conditions fueled reform movements and labor organizing.

Responses to industrial society

Reformers pushed for labor unions, factory laws limiting child labor and work hours, and public health reforms. Thinkers like Karl Marx developed socialism/communism, criticizing capitalism's inequality and calling for workers to seize the means of production, while others championed liberal reform within capitalism.

Key terms

Middle class

A new social class of factory owners, merchants, and professionals that grew with industrialization.

Proletariat

The industrial working class who labored in factories for wages, often under harsh conditions.

Urbanization

The rapid growth of cities as workers moved to find factory jobs, often leading to overcrowded slums.

Karl Marx

Philosopher who critiqued capitalism and developed socialist/communist theory advocating worker ownership of production.

Labor unions

Organizations formed by workers to demand better wages, hours, and working conditions.

Try an AP-style question

Industrialization created a new social structure with…

1. a middle class and an industrial working class
2. only nobles and peasants, as before
3. only enslaved workers and owners
4. no social classes of any kind