The great grandparents inherited farms and worked them until old age when their children would support them. They saw the value of their crop drop dramatically relative to how much they could harvest in their lifetime vs the cost of living, and almost always have to sell their farm for a retirement.
The children (probably a half dozen of them) could not afford land (nor could the parents - land prices were on the rise and was scarce for the first time ever in the states), and farming was on the decline, so they moved to the city. They worked in sweatshops that exploited them for incredible amounts of labor without any workers protections. But because their parents tilled the fields and they bought their crops with the penance from their boss, they adapted to a world without farming.
The industrial revolution was never driven by the farmers hanging up their hoes and moving to the city. That happened, but in small quantity. What happened was that a generation of farmers made a generation of not-farmers and when they died their farms were sold to megafarm corporations rather than tilled by their children because the efficiencies of farming made their plots generate too little crop to support a family.
The difference is that here, the obsoleted class does not have a store of capital to cash out on like the farmers did - when farming died, you liquidated the farm at 50 and lived off the sale until you were 60 and your kids would support you until you died at 70.
This time, the obsoleted class will be 40 year old truck drivers who have done that for twenty years - and they will be left in crisis with no savings and no viable pivot in the economy. It will be interesting.
They made the same or more crop, but the market value of crops dropped through the floor during the green revolution and made it require way more scale to make a profit off agriculture.
So they would have needed a much greater quantity of crop yield to make the same relative income, and most family farms were not big enough to support it (and the farmers didn't have the savings to afford equipment).
They all successfully transitioned into industrial factory jobs, where they received living wages and benefits and weren't at all abused by the factory owners and lived happily ever after? I honestly don't know. This is where that history repeating itself quote comes into play.
The children (probably a half dozen of them) could not afford land (nor could the parents - land prices were on the rise and was scarce for the first time ever in the states), and farming was on the decline, so they moved to the city. They worked in sweatshops that exploited them for incredible amounts of labor without any workers protections. But because their parents tilled the fields and they bought their crops with the penance from their boss, they adapted to a world without farming.
The industrial revolution was never driven by the farmers hanging up their hoes and moving to the city. That happened, but in small quantity. What happened was that a generation of farmers made a generation of not-farmers and when they died their farms were sold to megafarm corporations rather than tilled by their children because the efficiencies of farming made their plots generate too little crop to support a family.
The difference is that here, the obsoleted class does not have a store of capital to cash out on like the farmers did - when farming died, you liquidated the farm at 50 and lived off the sale until you were 60 and your kids would support you until you died at 70.
This time, the obsoleted class will be 40 year old truck drivers who have done that for twenty years - and they will be left in crisis with no savings and no viable pivot in the economy. It will be interesting.