Urbanization & the Working Class

In 1801, about 20 percent of England's population lived in towns of more than 10,000 people. By 1851, that figure had crossed 50 percent. No society in human history had urbanized this fast. No society was remotely prepared for what it meant.

The countryside emptied. Enclosure acts had fenced off common lands that rural families had depended on for generations, turning shared pastures into private property almost overnight. Mechanized threshing machines eliminated winter work. Families who had survived for centuries on a patchwork of small farming, cottage spinning, and access to the commons found themselves with nothing. The factories in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow needed hands. The dispossessed needed wages. The match was made, and it was brutal.

This was The mass movement of population from rural areas to cities, and the rapid physical growth of cities themselves. In the context of industrialization, urbanization was driven by the collapse of rural livelihoods and the demand for factory labor. Between 1800 and 1900, London grew from roughly 1 million to 6.5 million people, Manchester from 75,000 to over 500,000. Similar patterns repeated across Europe and North America throughout the nineteenth century. on an unprecedented scale. Cities that had functioned for centuries as market towns and regional centers were transformed, in a few decades, into sprawling industrial landscapes of brick, soot, and iron. The transformation was physical, social, and psychological. People who had lived their entire lives regulated by sunlight and seasons now lived by the factory bell.