Final answer:
Industrialization brought both advancements and hardships. Reform movements emerged to address the challenges faced by the working class due to long hours, low wages, and inhumane living conditions. Governments attempted to regulate conditions, but the transition to industrial society was particularly brutal for the poor.
Step-by-step explanation:
While becoming industrialized led to a painful formation, it also resulted in significant socioeconomic transformations. The process of industrialization involved the movement from home-based production to factory production, which in turn led to massive industrial changes. During this era, often referred to as the Second Industrial Revolution, urbanization and industrialization provided both opportunities for improved living standards and challenges with long working hours, low wages, and inhumane living conditions, particularly for the working class. As industrialization spread, many skilled workers or artisans found the factory system devastating, resulting in the degradation of craft skills, and the subjection to harsh work discipline.
Faced with such hardships, there was the birth of reform movements aimed at addressing the suffering and discontent that arose from industrialization. Governments, influenced by social activists and some politicians who emerged from these ranks, attempted to establish regulations and reforms to improve the harsh realities of the industrial age. However, the inequalities between industrialized and non-industrialized nations grew, contributing to different levels of economic development and standards of living across countries.
The impact of industrialization was not limited to those who lived through it; it fundamentally reshaped society, expectations, and the quality of life, particularly in the Western world. Yet, for the poor, the transition to an industrial society was exceptionally brutal with poor housing conditions, widespread disease due to unclean water, and minimal healthcare.