The American Industrial Revolution had many profound and
indelible effects on American society. The enormous
expansion of American business and industry promoted a
drastic change in the basic division of labor. The basic
need of industry is labor, so a great demand for a workforce
was created. Growing industrialization caused a huge influx
of laborers into cities. As more factories sprang up, labor
was expanded to utilize women and children. With expanding
business and more workers, workers began to adamantly demand
higher wages or more favorable hours; unionization came into
full force. The American Industrial Revolution caused major
growth of urban populations, precipitated a change the
division of labor, and began movements for workers rights
The migration of laborers from rural farm life to urban
factory life was a major result of America's
industrialization. A fact of economic life is that workers
in an industrial setting are able to command higher wages
than farm workers. Labor in an industrial setting is simply
more efficient than the productivity of farm workers.
Because economic systems compensate laborers in accordance
with their output rather than how hard or how long they
work, industrial labor becomes the obvious choice for a
worker. As Chamberlain states in The Enterprising
Americans, "The productivity for a worker in a factory could
be as much as ten times that of their farming counterparts"
(97). Simply stated, the simple gain in productivity meant
a wage increase ten times that of farm work, only by
switching to industrial labor. For the great majority of
workers, this was too much to resist, causing an exodus of
laborers from rural to urban areas and skyrocketing the
As factories spread, there was a high demand for
workers. However, during the early stages of
industrialization, labor was difficult to obtain. In urban
areas...