Early Western Industrialization: Theoretical Analysis

To say that the early Western industrialization intensified positive relationships between factory owners and industrial workers, and that it benefitted equally both classes are both wrong statements. In fact, the industrial development brought new problems and separation between the new group of factory owners and laborers. It is not a coincidence that in this period both owners and members of the working class started to believe in class-consciousness, a sense of class differentiation. Industrial laborers had work in very dangerous and unsanitary conditions eleven hours per day, three-hundred days a year just to be able to feed their families, while factory owners got richer and richer. Many workers came to view their masters as rivals. In
1825, a paper discussing a strike in the woolen center of Bradford observed that “it is all the workers of England against a few masters of Bradford.” This shows how the relations and climate between the two classes were tense, and how the workers were unhappy.