In 1781, James Watts perfected the steam engine, heat could be converted into movement, allowing the industrialisation of Great Britain. Once the machine of Industrialism started working, new class systems emerged. The middle class (consisting of Doctors, Lawyers and factory owners. Making money though the manifestation of consumerism.) And the working class (worked in the factories, mined materials for mass production or opened shops.) Perhaps the biggest change, was the industrial effect on agriculture; less and less people were required to work on farms as machines replaced most of their labour. This saw a surge in the number of people moving out of rural communities. In seventeen fifty; only fifteen percent of the population lived in towns or cities, contrastingly one hundred years later, fifty percent lived in towns or cities.

Life in crowded cities, as apposed to isolated villages brought a change in mentality, which potentially led to depression, poverty and loneness, but importantly created a sense of class consciousness, through living and working with people in the same conditions, with the same problems. People could agree on the same issues, and sympathetically complain about their situations.

‘Finally concern with productivity also implied the need for education and literacy. Reading, writing and arithmetic had been optional for peasants and farm labourers of pre-industrial societies. That is why any discussion of literature in pre-capitalist or early capitalist times involves the literature of the upper and middle classes. But the complex interacting processes of capitalist production now required a literate work force — if only to read instructions of machinery and labels on packing cases — with a basic level of numeracy and, as important as these two things, ingrained habits of time discipline and obedience.’ (- Chris Harmon)