ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact of industrialism on work and attempts to explain why this fundamental transformation engendered so much social conflict. The agricultural sector was little changed by mechanisation until the 1850s but the organisation of work altered as more was done by waged labourers rather than farm servants. Changes in the organisation of work were most dramatic in the new factories. The cotton magnate Henry Ashworth attacked Lord Shaftesburys proposals for a maximum ten-hour working day in cotton factories. The word Luddism has acquired a wholly misleading modern usage. It implies the use of violence and destruction to oppose any form of progress. Any evaluation of the impact of the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries should take into account its effect on the standard of living of those who lived through it. British society in 1850 remained resolutely hierarchical, its population acutely aware of status, obligations and proprieties.
