ChangeIn Urban Society At the end of the 18th century a revolution in energy andindustry began in England and spread rapidly all around Europe later in the 19thcentury, bringing about dramatic and radical change. A significant impact of theIndustrial Revolution was that on urban society. The population of towns grewvastly because economic advantage entailed that the new factories and offices besituated in the cities.
The outlook of the city and urban life in general wereprofoundly modified and altered. Modern industry created factory owners andcapitalists who strengthened the wealth and size of the middle class. Beside theexpansion of the bourgeoisie, the age of industrialization saw the emergence ofa new urban proletariat – the working class. The life of this new group and itsrelations with the middle class are controversial issues to modern history.
Somebelieve that the Industrial Revolution “inevitably caused much humanmisery” and affliction. Other historians profess that Industrializationbrought economic improvement for the laboring classes. Both conclusions shouldbe qualified to a certain extent. Economic growth does not mean more happiness. Given the contemporary stories by people at that time, life in the early urbansociety seems to have been more somber than historians are usually prow todescribe it.
No generalities about natural law or inevitable development canblind us to the fact, that the progress in which we believe has been won at theexpense of much injustice and wrong, which was not inevitable. Still, I believethat industry was a salvation from a rapid population growth and immensepoverty. Furthermore, by the end of the 19th century the appearance of Europeancities and life in them had evolved and change for the better. Industrializationwas preceded and accompanied by rapid population growth, which began in Europeafter 1720.
People had serious difficulty providing their subsistence by simplygrowing their food. There was widespread poverty and underemployment. Moreover,the need for workers in the city was huge. More and more factories were openingtheir doors. The result of this was a vast migration from the countryside to thecity where peasants were already being employed. “The number of peopleliving in the cities of 20000 or more in England and Wales jumped from 1.
5million in 1801 to 6. 3 million by 1891″ (Mckay, 762). With this mass exodusfrom the countryside, life in urban areas changed drastically. Overcrowdingexacerbated by lack of sanitation and medical knowledge made life in the cityquite hard and miserable. A description of Manchester in 1844, given by one ofthe most passionate critics of the Industrial Revolution, Friederich Engels,conveys in great detail the deplorable outlook of the city. “.
. . theconfusion has only recently reached its height when every scrap of space left bythe old way of building has been filled up or patched over until not a foot ofland is left to be further occpupied” (Engels 2). Lack of sanitation causedpeople to live in such filth and scum that is hard to imagine. “In dryweather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green, slime pools areleft standing on this bank, from depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gasconstantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty orfifty feet above the surface of the stream” (Engels 2).
The appallingliving conditions in the city during the early stages of the IndustrialRevolution brought about two important changes. By developing his famous germtheory of disease, Louis Pasteur brought about the so-called Bacterialrevolution and lead the road to taming the ferocity of the death in urban areascaused by unsanitary and overcrowded living conditions. The theory that diseasewas inflicted by microorganisms completely revolutionized modern medicine andbrought about the important health movement in the city. After 1870 sanitationwas a priority on the agenda lists of city administration in most industrializedEuropean countries.
Urban planning and transportation after 1870 transformedEuropean cities into beautiful and enchanting places. Water supply systems andwaste disposals construction were accompanied by the building of boulevards,townhalls, theaters, museums. The greatest innovation in this area at the time-the electric streetcar- immensely facilitated the expansion of the city andhelped alleviate the problem of overcrowding. A good example of urban planningand transportation was the rebuilding of Paris, which laid the foundations ofmodern urbanism all around Europe.
The appearance of the city and the quality oflife in it greatly improved by the end of the 19th century. But, livingconditions in the city during the Industrial Revolution were pretty bad, afactor that greatly contributed to the bad plight of the working class at thattime. As urban civilization was starting to prevail over rural life, changes inthe structure of the society and in family life became inevitable. Urban societybecame more diversified while the classes lost a great part of their unity. Economic specialization produced many new social groups.
It created a vast rangeof jobs, skills and earnings, which intermingled with one another creating newsubclasses. Thus the very rich and the very poor were separated by the vastspace occupied by these new strata. Urban society resembled the society from theage of agriculture and aristocracy by one thing. The economic gap between richand poor remained enormous and income distribution stayed highly unequal withone fifth of society receiving more than the remaining four fifths. With theemergence of the factory owners and industrial capitalists, he relations betweenthe middle and the working class changed. But did the new industrial middleclass ruthlessly exploit the workers? I believe that at the begging this wascertainly the case.
People were coming to the city as “family units”and as such worked in the factories. “In the early years some very youngkids were employed solely to keep the family together” (Mckay 718). Theconditions of work were appalling. An excerpt from Parliamentary Papers inEngland named “Evidence Before the Sadler Committee”, mirrors thequite dark side of life in the factories.
In this testimony several people whoworked at factories in different industries and towns in England draw a vividpicture of the factory reality. Both children and grownups were made to workfourteen to sixteen hours a day with only an hour brake and a salary that washardly intended to compensate the tremendous load of work. Children were”strapped” “severely” if they lagged and deteriorated theirwork. The sight of the workers reflected their sad plight.
“Any man . . . mustacknowledge, that an uglier set of men and women, of boys and girls, taking themin the mass it would be impossible to imagine. . .
Their complexion is sallow. . . Their sature low. .
. Their limbs slender and playing badly and ungracefully. . . Great numbers of girls and women walking lamely or awkwardly, with raised chestsand spinal flexures” (Gaskell, 1).
Miserable life and poverty allowedpeople few recreational outlets and money to spend. For this reason a process ofcorruption and degradation of morals spread among working class people. Anillustration of this is the proliferation of prostitution at the time. Thecontinuing distance between rich and poor made for every kind of debauchery andsexual exploitation. Important factor in the degradation of morals that spreadthrough urban society and the working classes in particular was the diminishingrole that religion played in daily live. Urban society became more secular andmore and more people started to regard the church as conservative institutionthat defended social order and custom.
As a result of this illegitimacy andsexual experimentation before marriage triumphed during the 19th century. Women’s actively entering the labor force was a new development spurred by theIndustrial Revolution. In the preindustrial world women did leave home at anearly age in search for work but their opportunities were limited. The servicein another family’s household was by far the most common.
The employment ofgirls and women in factories had an important effect on their stereotypic roleof household carers. It weaned them away from home and the domestic tasks. “Shut up from morning till night, except when they are sent home for theirmeals, these girls are ignorant of and unhandy at every domesticemployment” (“Observations on the Loss of Woolen Spinning,1794”). However, the plight of the urban working class changed as thegrowth of modern cities approached the end of the 19th century. The average realincome raised substantially.
The practice of employing children from an earlyage was abandoned. Less and less women were working in sweated industries. Instead men were the primary wage earners while women stayed at home taking careof the household and the children. The early practice of hiring entire familiesin the factory disappeared. Family life became more stable, as mercenarymarriages were substituted by romantic love.
Sex roles in urban society becamehighly distinct. The most distressing changes brought to urban society-overcrowding, lack of urban planning, unsanitary conditions, unemployment andpoverty -were eventually offset by the compensation and remedy of economicgrowth. Urban society not only change for the better. This change was aremarkable step for humanity. For one thing, the city promoted diversity andcreativity. It was the uncontested home of new ideologies, ideas, movements,crucial scientific discoveries, customs, fashions, developments in art andliterature.
BibliographyGaskell, P. “The Physical Deterioration of the textile Workers. ” 27Sept. 1997. 23 April. 2000.
www. fordham. edu/halsall/mod/modsbook. html Engels,Friederich. “Industrial Manchester,1844.
” 27 Sept. 1997. 23 April. 2000. www. fordham.
edu/halsall/mod/modsbook. html “Observations on the Lossof Woolen Spinning,1794. ” 27 Sept. 1997. 23 April. 2000.
www. fordham. edu/halsall/mod/modsbook. html”Evidence Given Before the Sadler Committee. ” 27 Sept. 1997.
23 April. 2000. www. fordham.
edu/halsall/mod/modsbook. html McKay P. , Buckler, Hill. “History of Western Society. ” 3th ed. Boston: Houghton MifflinCompany, 1987.
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