[grafmax]

In Victorian England farmers were being displaced through the enclosure movement. Common land was privatized. The old way of life (farming) was taken away from them by the upper class. An economy shifting to factory labor was also a factor - farming lost its sustainability for most poor farmers in the new economy. Farming was hard and becoming harder. Factories were horrific. The notion that people simply chose factories because their old way of life was available to them and factories were just “better” is an oversimplification.