Few developments in the history of the world have had more far-reaching implications than the Industrial Revolution. As mechanization replaced labor in rural areas, people moved to the cities to work in factories (urbanization.) The populations of industrial countries grew exponentially as did wealth. As industrial countries demanded raw materials for manufacturing, they looked outside of their borders and colonized other lands. This drove the spread of Western political, cultural, and economic institutions to other lands. It also led to warfare, including two world wars that cost hundreds of millions of lives.
The Industrial Revolution also led to dangerous working conditions and unfair wages for low-skilled workers. As a result, of these conditions, labor unions, and socialism developed. A new system of economics, communism, was devised to counteract the uneven distribution of wealth that emerged in industrial economies.
A new wave of technology followed the Industrial Revolution. Innovations that had the greatest impact on society, and were directly related to industrialism, included railway transportation, electricity, telecommunications, and the assembly line.
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