New Social Classes: Industrial Middle Class/Working Class

• Entrepreneurs: built factories/bought machines; organization
  Diverse social origins (farmers, apprentices, merchants, aristocrats)
• Industrial entrenpreneurs on par with noble elites
• Agricultural laborers, domestic servants, factory workers
  Decline of artisans/craftspeople

Standards of Living:

• Growth of gap between rich and poor
• Wide variation: increase/decrease in standards of living
• Best gains: middle class/skilled workers

Change: Reformers

• Trade unions: improve wages/working conditions
• Combination Acts 1799, 1800: Outlawed labor unions
• Luddites: destroyed machinery (1812)
• Chartism: achieve political democracy
  People's Charter (1838) Goals: universal male suffrage
  Parliament: pay/annual sessions/no property qualifications
  Achieved sense of working-class consciousness

Government Reforms:

• Helped by civic-minded citizens/parliamentary commissions
• Factory Act of 1833:
  Children (9-13) = 8 hrs/day & (13-18) = 12 hrs/day
  (Factory inspectors appointed)
• Ten Hours Act (1837) included women
• Coal Mines Act (1842): no boys under 10 or women