"The Industrial Revolution put mobility in the place of stability". Critically examine.

Answer:

The Industrial Revolution dissolved the settled world of the pre-industrial village and replaced it with a society defined by movement: of people to the towns, of goods by rail and steamship, and of individuals between social classes.

Geographical mobility

• Enclosure and mechanised farming released labour from the countryside.
• Massive migration to the factory towns produced rapid urbanisation.
• Railways and steamships made long-distance travel ordinary.
• Emigration to America and the colonies occurred on an unprecedented scale.

Social and economic mobility

• Wealth from industry rivalled and then displaced inherited landed status.
• Self-made industrialists rose from modest origins, and a new middle class emerged.
• Wage labour replaced the fixed obligations of custom and guild.
• Capital and goods circulated with a new freedom in a widening market.

A qualification

• For most workers mobility meant insecurity rather than opportunity.
• Class boundaries remained formidable, and few rose far.
• Landed aristocracy retained great political influence well into the century.

Consequences of the change

• Trade unions and Chartism arose from the new urban working class.
• Public health and factory legislation followed the crisis of the towns.
• Marx and Engels drew their analysis directly from these conditions in Manchester.

The epigram is thus apt as a description of the transformation. As historians note, industrialisation replaced a world of inherited place with one of movement and change, though for the labouring majority that mobility more often meant dislocation and precariousness than advancement.