Industrialization

During the end of the 1700s, a rapid proliferation of factory-based industry and mass production began in urban areas of Great Britain, before sweeping across Western Europe and the United States, changing these regions’ economies and society. Many domestic and international migrants moved from largely agrarian areas to Manchester, England, New York City, and other new urban industrial centers looking for work opportunities in factories and other industrial workplaces. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, artists drew inspiration from these changes, using a wide range of mediums to depict these changing environments. For example, Lewis Hine’s early 20th-century photographs of exploited youth workers helped bring about the United States’ first child labor laws.