Industrialization and Marxism images of nineteenth-century industrialization, urbanization, and class society

Late Nineteenth-Century Economic Growth in Global Perspective While economies across the industrializing world grew rapidly between 1870 and 1910, that of the United States grew fastest, gradually overtaking even Great Britain at the dawn of what would become 'the American century.'

Cities Reaching Population Level of 100,000 by 1750, 1800, and 1850 In 1750 the largest cities owed their existence primarily to commerce, but industrialization caused populations to concentrate more in cities. England, the leading industrial nation, contained many of the largest cities. Source: Data from Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census [Lewistown, N.Y.: St. David’s University Press, 1987], pp. 22–24.

Courtesy, Sheffield Archives and Local Studies Library Industrial Sheffield This painting of one of the key British industrial cities, Sheffield, in 1858 shows the factories, many specializing in producing steel and metal goods, that dominated the landscape.

Girl dragging coal wagon in mine This engraving of a girl dragging a coal wagon in the mines was one of several that accompanied a parliamentary report on working conditions in the mines. They shocked public opinion and contributed to the Mines Act of 1842. (British Library)

Leisure Activity for the Working Poor Some harsh forms of entertainment turned up in the industrial period. Scores of working-class spectators came to see the celebrated dog “Billy” kill a hundred rats at one time at the Westminster Pit in London in 1822. The British Library

Leisure activity of bourgeois Germans

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert dressed as a “bourgeois” couple in the mid 19th c. Eventually many working class, aristocratic, and even royal families adopted bourgeois values.

New Lanark Utopian Community Robert Owen’s community of New Lanark, in the Scottish lowlands, was an example of utopian socialism that worked. A practical businessman with a social conscience, Owen built huge brick textile factories at the falls of the River Clyde. He also provided brick dwellings for workers, paid them fair wages, and ran schools for their children. British Library

Karl Marx Through his writings and agitation, Marx transformed the socialism of his day and created an ideology that helped shape the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Corbis