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Comment by aeternum | Hacker News Reader

This seems obviously wrong as there are many counter examples. Employees in Ford's plants for instance saw huge wage increases and an additional day off. Mining mechanization made mines far less deadly and greatly reduced the human exertion required. I'd much rather harvest corn in an air conditioned combine vs. with an ox.

Even during the early industrial revolution, notorious for poor working conditions, people overlook why there was such high demand for those shitty jobs. The reason is because people were literally starving in the countryside. A family's survival was dependent on a good harvest.

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During the early industrial revolution people were not starving in the countryside because of poor harvests. They were starving in the countryside because the UK at that time siezed land that was previously held in common and granted it to the nobility through the enclosure acts. Now to survive as a peasant you could not subsist off of common land, you had to pay rent to a lord and work their land, and as agricultural productivity increased through mechanization and improved farming techniques the lords only needed so many people to work. A subsistence farmer would become unable to afford rising rents, as they did not benefit from mechanization due to not having the capital to buy machines.

Yes agreed, but the net result is that living in the countryside was far from romanticized agrarian life people often picture it as. Lords owning land was a very old idea, it's a bit of a leap to say that was due to mechanization.

Becuase they would quit and work anywhere else after a few days.

In 1913 Ford had to hire over 52,000 workers just to maintain an active factory workforce of 14,000.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-stor...

> The reason is because people were literally starving in the countryside.

Because their land was stolen during enclosure.

> Employees in Ford's plants for instance saw huge wage increases and an additional day off

I think there was something else going on that might explain that.

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