The Industrial Revolution was a period in history when mankind found innovative and efficient ways of producing goods, manufacturing services and creating new methods of transportation. This not only revolutionizedthe way the market system functioned, but also changed the way peopleperceived their status in society and what they required as basicnecessities. However, the price that humanity was forced to pay for theemergence of the Industrial Revolution greatly outweighed the rewards thatit brought alongside its origin. Prior to the Industrial Age, the Western European market operated on asimple "putting-out" system. The average producer was able to manufacture aproduct in the same area that he or she lived on and the demand for thatproduct was usually set by a few local consumers. The process was easy andsimple, provided that the product being created was always required bysomeone else. However, the invention of Machinery and all of itsaccompanying peripherals allowed producers to start manufacturing on a massscale. With factories placed in central locations of the townships (knownas centralization), the previous system was dismantled and categorized intosteps. No longer would one person be required to build, market or transporttheir product since the new system introduced the art of specialization.Specialization allowed a person to perform a single task and guarantee themwages as a source of income. However, as wonderful as this might seem, thisnew system led to the emergence of a n working class (proletariat) andforced them to depend on market conditions in order to survive asproducers. Although seemingly content at first, those who became employedby these factories were immediately subjected to deplorable conditions.Arnold Toynbee made a scholarly assessment of this new wave ofsocio-economic behavior and concluded that the working class is sufferingdue to a series of hardships that make their lives miserable. He cited lowwa...
