The industrial revolution was one of the biggest cataclysms in European history. Between 1790 and 1850, the countryside rapidly depopulated. Huge masses of people flooded into cities for factory work, living cheek-by-jowl in unhygienic slums.
In Britain, the government could barely keep up with the spirit of laissez-faire capitalism. There were almost no restrictions on child labour, working hours, or safety in the workplace. And, if progressive legislation was proposed, newly emboldened capitalists often resisted it as an imposition on their freedom – and their profits.
