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Industrial Revolution And The Industrial Age

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The Industrial Revolution affected all aspects of American life, and it provoked more changes than just those in the factories. How one experienced the Industrial Revolution depended on where one lived. By 1900, more than a third of America’s people lived in cities, and city populations were growing twice as fast as the population as a whole. Between 1870 and 1920, the number of Americans living in cities increased fivefold, from 10 million to 54 million. Most of the massive industries of the Industrial Age emerged in the North. Because the work was there, these cities ballooned into metropolises. And as the cities of the North grew, economic disparities between the wealthy and the poor became more pronounced; the corporations of the Industrial Age generated enormous fortunes for a handful of people, leaving most industrial laborers living in poverty. Most of the people living in these growing cities were workers working in the new factories of the Industrial Age. The manufacturers sometimes provided company housing close to the factories so that the entire work force could walk to work. The independent builders sought quick profits and got away with throwing up inferior houses because they had no building codes. Those developers also carved up previously built single-family homes into multiple-unit dwellings called tenements, which often had thin walls and frequently lacked windows as well. These kinds of close quarters led to communal childcare networks, and they also

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