Industrialization offered new opportunities to people with
important skills, such as carpentry, metallurgy, and machine operations. Some
creative people became engineers or opened their own businesses, but for the majority
of those who left their farming roots to find their fortunes in the cities,
life was full of disappointments. Most industrial jobs were boring, repetitive,
and poorly paid. Workdays were long with few breaks, and workers performed one
simple task over and over with little sense of accomplishment. Unlike even the
poorest farmer or craftsman, factory workers had no control over tools, jobs,
or working hours. Factory workers could do very little about their difficulties
until later part of the period, when labor unions formed and helped to provoke
the moral conscience of some middle class people.
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