The Industrial Revolution led to mass urbanization as people moved from farms to cities for work. This created new social classes - an emerging middle class of factory owners and entrepreneurs prospered while the working class faced poverty, unsafe working conditions, and lived in overcrowded slums without basic sanitation. Workers organized unions and protests like the Luddites who smashed machines, but had little power. Religions like Methodism helped workers cope, while muckraking journalists exposed issues and pushed reforms through legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Act.

1. SOCIAL IMPACT
OF THE
INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION

2. PEOPLE MOVE TO CITIES
 Urbanization
 Movement of people to the cities
 Changes in farming, growing population and an
increasing demand for workers led people to
move from farms to cities
 Entrepreneurs
 Became wealthy as a result of the Industrial
Revolution
 Workers
 Exposed to poverty and horrible living conditions
 Suffered dangerous working conditions
 Had unsafe and unsanitary working conditions

3. NEW SOCIAL CLASSES EMERGE
 Industrial Revolution created a new middle class
and a new working class
 Middle Class owned and operated new machines,
factories, mines and railroads and they enjoyed a
more comfortable life than the working class
 Working Class became workers in the factories
and mines and lived in uncomfortable
environments

4. THE INDUSTRIAL MIDDLE CLASS
 Came from a variety of backgrounds
(merchants, inventors, rags to riches)
 Lived in well furnished and spacious
homes
 Wore fancy clothes, worked hard to get
ahead and had little sympathy for the
poor
 Women focused on raising the children

5. INDUSTRIAL WORKING CLASS
 Lived in foul smelling slums
 They were packed in tiny rooms in tenements (multistory
buildings divided into apartments)
 There was no running water, sewage or sanitation system
so waste and garbage rotted in the street
 Sewage was dumped into the river so there was a horrible
smell and the water became contaminated (unclean)
leading to the spread of diseases such as cholera

6. WORKERS STAGE PROTESTS
 Workers organized groups called labor unions,
although they were illegal many met in secret
 They wished to initiate reforms (changes) such
as increase in pay however they had no political
power and often times their frustration turned
into violence

7. WORKERS STAGE PROTESTS
 1811-1813 groups of textile workers known as
Luddites smashed the machines that were taking
over their jobs and they burned factories

8. LETS WATCH AND YOU DECIDE…
 The Luddites

9. WORKERS AND RELIGION
 Methodism
 Workers found comfort with this religion
 Stressed the need for a personal sense of
faith and encouraged followers to improve
themselves by adopting sober and moral
ways
 Had songs and hymns that promised
forgiveness and a better life to come
 Helped to channel workers anger away from
revolution and towards reform
What do workers do to
deal with their
frustration of their
bad working
conditions?

10. THE POWER OF JOURNALISM
 Muckrakers
 Term is said to be created by
Roosevelt because he references
the man who “rakes muck” in
comparison to the writers
 Investigative reporters who
shed light on people’s miserable
conditions
 Targeted trusts, crime, fraud,
public health and safety

11. THE POWER OF JOURNALISM
 Played a powerful role in bringing about
federal legislation to improve aspects of
society
 Upton Sinclair
 Wrote The Jungle
 “corrupt businessmen who treated the public
with utter contempt and disdain”
 Told about the filthy conditions under which
meat was packaged all for the sake of profit
and greed
 Roosevelt set out to prove Sinclair wrong,
however when his commission return they
report it was worse than what he had written!!
 Roosevelt establishes the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA)

12. WHAT DID YOU THINK???
Create a list of things
that shocked you about
the sanitary conditions,
or lack thereof, that
existed in the
nineteenth century