Like a lot of questions historical, the more one studies the Industrial Revolution, the more questions one has. I have often wondered about exactly this kind o

Like a lot of questions historical, the more one studies the Industrial Revolution, the more questions one has. I have often wondered about exactly this kind of thing so it's nice to see a researched take on it. The thing in my mind was always that culturally, an image of "big city industry" arose at some point - but that point clearly wasn't the late 1700's, or even into the first decades of the 1800's. So then, when was it? There are a few reference markers that suggest when that image could have coalesced, though: * The first railroads of the 1830's * The gold rushes and immigration waves of the mid-19th (precipitated by faster communication and rising sea traffic) * The Crimean and US Civil Wars, both "industrial" in their making. * The completion of transcontinental railroads * The creation of modern urban sanitation * The organization of wage labor as a movement, including revolutionary forms These markers seem to align well with the 1850's-1870's growth figure assessment. The world by 1880 had experienced a vast reallocation of physical resources and human capital, and fell into a new political context premised around those reallocations. In the emerging cities, by day, immigrants toiled in sweatshops; by night, those with the means came out to party underneath the gaslamps. More and more goods were available imported. If you travelled, you bumped shoulders with the vast crowds at hub train stations. And there was always news of something more being invented. All of that made the revolution a visible thing reorganizing everyday life, even if it only tangentially affected you. Before that period, while you might have heard of new developments from afar, most of them did not carry such sudden impact.