... to society, both economically and socially over a relatively short period of time. The transition which began in the mid eighteenth century, from hand tool manufacture to mass production by machine, although generally viewed as progress, also had some dire consequences. Along with mass production came Capitalism. The invention of machines to speed up and increase production also took away the livelihood of many craftsmen and agricultural workers and with it their control over their own means of subsistence. The new way put control squarely in the hands of those who owned the means of production; the wealthy industrialists who owned the factories and the machinery therein. In order for the new factory system to operate there was a need to create and discipline a cheap work force. The enclosures of the late seventeenth century had already forced many peasants off the land and into the cities in order to ...

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