# What are some overlooked impacts of the industrial revolution on everyday lives? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [November 13, 2025, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833 "2025-11-13T18:01:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2025, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/41 "2025-11-14T23:44:03Z")
James C. Scott’s Against the Grain is one of many books that argues sedentary agriculture and cities long before the IR increased rates of infectious disease, not least because storing grain attracted rats and mice and because people were close together. Industrial diseases were, obvs, an IR thing. One overlooked IR–or capitalism–thing is that “The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally.” Not saying feudalism was better, but work was certainly different, as was resistance. Strikes replace burning the castle, and instead of killing the lord, we have Muley’s question in The Grapes of Wrath: “Then who DO we shoot?” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/42 "2025-11-15T00:15:49Z")
I think a big overlooked impact was a substantial change in how people socialized. If you were a farmer in a pre-industrial society, you mainly saw your family every day. You had occasional opportunities to see groups of other people like at market days or religious services, which were non-work environments. If you were a factory worker after the industrial revolution, you were seeing the same group of your fellow workers on a daily basis at your workplace. So you had a social group with which you didn’t have an emotional connection like you did with your family. And the environment where you were interacting with this social group was different. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/43 "2025-11-15T00:27:20Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > I think it was Alvin Toffler’s _The Third Wave_ which expands on the idea that the industrial revolution (the first one) began the practice of keeping time. While some things -church services, the prayer on the hours, etc. - did rely on clock time, most people’s lives were fairly lax about time. Factories made it a necessity that _everyone,_ the whole shift, show up on time, the same time, and finish work the same time. Things like train schedules etc. reinforced the need. For a satire of Victorian England’s newfound obsession with time, look no further than _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/44 "2025-11-15T00:39:21Z")
The British Marxist historian E.P. Thompson outlined industrial time discipline some years before Toffler. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/45 "2025-11-15T00:49:13Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If you were a farmer in a pre-industrial society, you mainly saw your family every day. That might have been the case in America where perhaps due to the mode of pioneer settlement followed a pattern of isolated farmsteads. In Europe the prevailing pattern was living in a small village surrounded by the fields and pastures people worked. So e.g. an English farmer saw his neighbors every day. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/46 "2025-11-15T00:53:16Z")
A rural newspaper publisher (James Comstock) told the story of a farmer canceling his subscription due to financial hardship. The publisher asked if the farmer had something he could barter. Corn maybe? The farmer replied, “If I had corn, why the hell would I need a newspaper?” ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/47 "2025-11-15T01:02:10Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > One overlooked IR–or capitalism–thing is that “The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally.” Which the Soviets unfortunately seemed to take as advice on how to successfully build an industrial infrastructure, rather than as something lamentable. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/48 "2025-11-15T01:08:28Z")
Indeed. Lenin went from opposing Taylorism in 1913 to insisting it was essential in 1918. That’s one reason many left critics refer to the Soviet Union and its equally deplorable offspring as state capitalism rather than socialism. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/49 "2025-11-15T01:58:26Z")
Thanks, correction welcomed. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/50 "2025-11-15T16:39:41Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > The railroad networks, and the Sears catalog, enabled people in far-flung rural areas to obtain goods that had been mass-produced in industrial factories. It also opened up the market for Blacks to obtain certain consumer goods that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to purchase, being forbidden from patronizing certain brick & mortar businesses. The Sears catalogue didn’t include a field for “Race” that you would check when you sent in your order. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/51 "2025-11-15T17:09:04Z")
> [@batsto](#): > > Not that I doubt you, but do you know of a source for that? I’d love to read some more about it. [The Master Speaks](https://www.straightdope.com/21341739/what-did-people-use-before-toilet-paper-was-invented) (though unfortunately only anecdotally). ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/52 "2025-11-15T17:34:32Z")
> [@batsto](#): > > Not that I doubt you, but do you know of a source for that? I’d love to read some more about it. Here’s [an article](https://www.history.com/articles/toilet-paper-hygiene-ancient-rome-china) from the History Channel that discusses it. I’m not saying cable TV is an unimpeachable source or anything, but they cite an academic. “[Barry Kudrowitz](https://dha.design.umn.edu/faculty/BKudrowitz.html), associate professor and director of product design at the University of Minnesota, [has studied the history and use of toilet paper](http://www.wonderbarry.com/TP%20Site/index.html). Through the 1700s, corncobs were a common toilet paper alternative. Then, newspapers and magazines arrived in the early 18th century. “The ‘legend’ goes that people were primarily using the Sears catalog in outhouses, but when the catalog began to be printed in glossy paper people needed to find a replacement,” says Kudrowitz. Americans also nailed the _Farmer’s Almanac_ onto outhouse walls, leading the company to pre-drill [the legendary “hole”](https://www.farmersalmanac.com/the-hole) into their publication in 1919.” ---
**Author:** ![batsto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@batsto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/batsto)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/53 "2025-11-15T20:51:45Z")
True, but even the academic refers to it as a legend. I don’t doubt that people needed to find a replacement as he says. But is there contemporary evidence anywhere of widespread outrage? ---
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/54 "2025-11-15T21:02:43Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Humans Used to Sleep in Two Shifts, And Maybe We Should Do It Again : ScienceAlert I do suspect the prevalence of bimodal sleep is overstated. The issue becomes that when its repeated as definite fact, it gets construed as a widely universal phenomena…when…it might have been only a few people in a few situations. All I’ve seen are stories that “suggest” “sometimes” “certain people” did this, but I’ve not seen true and definitive proof about how widespread it is. It makes a good and interesting cocktail party factoid. Unfortunately, it has been repeated enough that we take it as an absolute truth, and repeat it here as such as well. I’m still doubtful, but it has entered our consciousness as ‘must be true’ that we can’t fight it. ---
**Author:** ![batsto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@batsto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/batsto)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/55 "2025-11-15T21:37:00Z")
> [@Sigene](#): > > I do suspect the prevalence of bimodal sleep is overstated. The issue becomes that when its repeated as definite fact, it gets construed as a widely universal phenomena…when…it might have been only a few people in a few situations. We could probably do a whole thread on these—historical ‘facts’ that we aren’t actually sure of—not the same as the debunked ones in another active thread, but stuff like this that get accepted as fact without really good evidence. ---
**Author:** ![pirviii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pirviii/32/3233_2.png) [@pirviii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pirviii)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2025, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/56 "2025-11-15T21:37:07Z")
> [@Sigene](#): > > Unfortunately, it has been repeated enough that we take it as an absolute truth, and repeat it here as such as well. And AI picks it up and repeats it forever no matter the number of times it is corrected. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2025, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/57 "2025-11-16T00:03:46Z")
Put the sentence “What evidence is there that sleeping in two shifts used to be common?” into Google and look at the answer. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2025, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/58 "2025-11-16T00:38:30Z")
One overlooked aspect of the Industrial Revolution was its impact on breakfast. Rather than being a meal of leftovers; it became a necessary meal to fuel the workday. It’s during this time that foods like eggs and bacon became “breakfast foods”, and the need for something quick and easy eventually gave rise to the proliferation of breakfast cereals. > [@](#): > > By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Full English Breakfast History became a staple for workers. Industrial jobs required strength and energy, so a heavy breakfast was practical. People working in factories, docks, and mines needed a meal that kept them going until lunchtime. Eating a Full English in the morning meant they could work long hours without stopping for another meal. The meal also provided warmth and comfort, particularly in colder months when workers needed substantial nourishment. > > This led to the rise of small cafés, often called greasy spoons. These cafés offered filling meals at low prices. Workers could stop in for a plate of eggs, bacon, sausages, and beans before heading to work. These places were busy in the mornings and became part of daily life for many. They were simple and functional and served large portions to keep customers satisfied. Many cafés became local institutions, known for their consistent quality and affordable prices. Even today, greasy spoons are popular across the UK. They serve traditional Full English Breakfasts with large portions and simple, hearty ingredients. [The Full English Breakfast History | Secret Food Tours](https://www.secretfoodtours.com/blog/the-full-english-breakfast-history/#:%5C~:text=By%20the%20late%2019th%20and,portions%20and%20simple%2C%20hearty%20ingredients) . > [@](#): > > Breakfast — as we think of the meal today, that is — has its origins in part in the Industrial Revolution, as the new expectations around labor under capitalism altered the ways in which people ate. Dinner, not supper or lunch, became the main meal of the day. Breakfast was something to be consumed before leaving for the factory — and with the expansion of public schooling, before leaving for school. > **[A History of Breakfast (and the Case for Leftovers)](https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/a-history-of-breakfast-and-the-case/)** > > I always find great comfort in knowing that things are "socially constructed," that our beliefs and practices have histories, that despite their seeming to be all-pervasive and ever-enduring that they're malleable. Things change. We can... ---
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2025, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/59 "2025-11-16T00:48:18Z")
Keep in mind that I’m NOT saying that it didn’t occur. This error in understanding my point will lead to erroneous dismissal of my contention. What I’m saying is that I don’t believe the behavior to be as broadly common as the statement implies. ….and not so oddly, when I use co-pilot to ask “What evidence is there against sleeping in two shifts used to be common?” I get references about the limited geographic and cultural scope. Anthropological evidence against universality, interpretive issues with historical texts, biological and evolutionary considerations for monophasic sleep, and experimental evidence being context dependent. Essentially, my references are pointing to the behavior being present in high latitude areas where it was dark for long periods of time. I can also make the argument that bi-phasic sleep is not too far off of taking afternoon naps (especially when it gets dark so early in the afternoon in the winter). People were going to sleep at dusk, then waking up for a few more hours. What is the difference between that, and taking a nap in front of the TV during the evening news? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2025, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833/60 "2025-11-16T00:50:23Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > foods like eggs and bacon became “breakfast foods” The focus being on things that could quickly be pan fried. Sausage, sliced ham and hash are notable too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-overlooked-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution-on-everyday-lives/1024833.md?page=4)