The process of industrialization was both sweeping and complex, so it is not surprising that historians have disagreed over its impact on the lives of workers. Economic historians generally emphasize industrialization's benefits. Focusing on wages and the standard of living, they estimate that between 1820 and 1860 real wages rose anywhere from 60 to 100 percent. Even unskilled workers enjoyed a rise in purchasing power, thanks partly to higher wages but mostly due to the lower cost of consumer items, which were now mass-produced. At the beginning of the century only prosperous families could enjoy items like matched chairs, finished furniture, carpets, clocks, silverware, and dishes. Historians examining estate inventories, however, have found that by midcentury such items were well within reach of workers and their families. Inexpensive textiles enlarged personal wardrobes, allowed for more frequent changes of clothing, and thus promoted cleanliness. Workers' diets also improved as the variety of foods available in stores greatly increased. These gains spread throughout all ranks of free white society.

Labor historians, who emphasize instead workers' attitudes, have painted a bleaker picture. As workers ceased to be skilled craftspeople, they sensed that manual labor no longer commanded respect in the community. Moreover, even though their standard of living might be increasing, workers were receiving a smaller proportion of the wealth their labor produced. Given this increasingly unequal distribution of wealth, they were not as well off as employers and professionals, who no longer did manual labor. Furthermore, they faced a lifetime of hard and tedious work with only a limited chance of rising into the middle class. From this perspective, industrialization took a heavy psychological toll on factory laborers by weakening their pride and independence and by hardening class lines. Their despair was voiced by group of cotton mill workers who protested that workers were becoming "mere machine[s] producing wealth by perpetual exertion, yet living a life of unceasing anxiety and want. . . ."

1			Start by reading Harriet Robertson's account of the Lowell Mill girls. What did she perceive as the most significant changes that factory jobs brought to the lives of young female workers? How do her assessments compare to those in the counterpoint essay? How, if at all, does the issue of gender alter historical perspectives on these issues? http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/robinson-lowell.html Next read the section about David Montgomery in Margaret Walsh's essay. What are the issues that most concern Montgomery? Does he believe that the worker's status in American society was improving or declining during the early 19th-century? What reasons does he give for these changes? On which side of the debate does he stand? http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1373/n6_v45/17011113/p1/article.jhtml