This chapter deals heavily with the industrial revolution in England where classes began to
divide and the economy switched into a consumer based economy. At this time, the upper and
middle class had more leisure money where they could purchase items that weren’t essential to
survival. However, in order to obtain those unessential items, workers spent hours and hours
working in hostile environments. This contributed to the class divide between the wealthy and the
poor. In the source “Urban Living Conditions” it states, “If factory working conditions were
deplorable in the early decades of the English Industrial Revolution, the urban living conditions for
many of those workers were no less horrific” (265). The following primary source dives into the
living conditions of an every-day working class man dealing with “a narrow, coal-black, foul-
smelling steam, full of debris and refuse” (266). In this era, the working class lived dependent on the
small wages they received from their hard work in factories that had no concern for their workers.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, the people that purchased these goods finally had leisure
money to spend on unnecessary items. This contrasting view can be illustrated in the image on page
275 where it shows a wealthy family on a train with trinkets and luxury clothing items. The family is
laws and regulations were the rich people that weren’t dealing with the conditions.