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Industrial Technology and the Urban Proletariat
The semi rural craftsman that we just described was put out of business as railroads brought factory produced goods at cheaper prices than he could ever match and survive. The formerly independent craftsman was now a precariously perched basic laborer whose existence was always haunted by the prospect of the next recession. And so a gigantic new class of these interchangeable, hand to mouth wage laborers that would later in the century be called the urban proletariat, festered and tried to survive in the alleys and set cellars of the cities.