In the case of Japan, the industrial revolution really only hit home after WW2 when in just a few decades it rebuilt it’s economy by investing in industry. Japan concentraited on electronic goods, a wise move when you consider that in the economic boom of post war america everyone wanted new-fangled electronics like TVs, washing machines and vaccum cleaners etc.

Hope that helps.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Name given to the vast social and economic changes connected with the introduction and rapid development of machine technology in Europe after 1760. The spread of industrialization throughout the world in the late 19th and 20th centuries is sometimes called the second industrial revolution. The term "industrial revolution" is usually attributed to the 19th-century British historian Arnold Toynbee (uncle of the contemporary historian Arnold J. Toynbee), whose [Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century in England, 1884] was so influential that until the 1930′s his analysis of the subject was virtually unchallenged. Actually, the term goes back to J. A. Blanqui and other French writers.Karl Marx used it as early as 1867.

OLD Views:

The old ideas of the industrial revolution was of a cataclysmic upheaval that came upon European society virtually overnight. There is, of course, much validity in this view. In England the textile industry grew with amazing rapidity beginning with James Hargreaves’ invention of the Jenny for the spinning of cotton thread about 1767. Richard Arkwright perfected the water frame shorty afterward, and in 1779 Samuel Compton combined both inventions in the mule. The machine was gradually improved until by 1800 it could spin 400 yd. of fine cotton yarn simultaneously. Water power drove the machinery until the improvement of the steam engine by James Watt in 1782. The era was one of extraordinary inventive genius.

The evil that resulted from the new factory system were certainly real. There were greedy businessmen who used the new technology to exploit men, women, and children in the "dark, satanic mills" of mushrooming factory towns. It was, as the title of one well-known history calls it ""the bleak age". In their influential book, [The rise of modern Industry, 1926], J. L. and B. B Hammond sum up the tradition view: "The towns had their profitable dirt, their profitable smoke, their profitable slum, their profitable disorder, their profitable ignorance, their profitable despair………….This was to be the lot…………….. of….mankind…………………………………………………………………………..
The new factories and the new furnaces were like the Pyramids, telling of man’s enslavement".

NEW Views:

This customary interpretation has been altered by more scholarship, which places these judgment in better perspective. Nearly every aspect of industrialization had deep roots, in some cases as far back as medieval times. The changes were therefore more gradual than previously supposed. The transformation of feudal agricultural society began with the earliest enclosure movement, by which the common fields were fenced off as private property and small farms absorbed into large, efficiently operated estates. A commercial revolution took place in the 15th centuries when the great voyages of discovery transformed the pattern of European commerce. Entrepreneurial capitalism developed in the 17th century, and there were significant advances in machine building even earlier. Watt’s "revolutionary" steam engine was in reality the culmination of more than a century of work on the Continent. The factory system grew out of the shops of the guilds and out of some features of the domestic system, although we usually, associate. the use of interchangeable parts with Eli Whitney and Simeon North, the idea was actually explored before 1700. The major change in technology that could be regarded as truly revolutionary was in the manufacture of steel. The chief advance was the Bessemer converter (1856), but iron was formed into structural shapes by water-powered forges at a much earlier date. The process of making coke from coal, developed in 1763, reached a high efficiency after 1776 through the contribution of John Wilkinson. After coke was recognized as a superior fuel, steel making became a major area for research. A major contribution, for example, was the reverberate furnace, patented in 1784 by Henry Cort. He also introduced the first real rolling mill, which was another step forward. The technology of the industrial revolution was connected with developments in investment and finance, in the corporate form of business enterprise, and in state economy policy. The urbanization of society and the growth of population were two of the foremost social changes. The increased importance of industrialists, financiers. and businessmen and the rise of a much larger working class affected the political order of the 19th century. The contrary doctrines of socialism and [laissez faire] arose as a result of the industrial revolution.

The Second Industrial Revolution:

Industrial spread from England to France and Belgium most noticeably in the 1830′s. German industrialism began in earnest about 1850. The production demand of the Civil War gave impetus’s to the growth of industry in the United States.Still later, Japan and Russia felt the effects of industrialization. Economic historians frequently use the term ""second Industrial revolution" to describe the spread of industrialization beyond western Europe after 1870. Although in part a continuation of the first, this second revolution had unique characteristics. Electricity and oil gradually replaced steam as sources of power. The development of synthetic dyes and fabrics, light metals such as aluminum, and ferroalloys such as manganese and tungsten emphasized the growing importance of co-operative scientific research rather than the inventive genius of the individual. Even more obviously, automobiles and airplane, radio and television were truly revolutionary changes in transportation and communication. The introduction of automatic machinery and the specialization of labor led to mass unemployment. Giant corporations and financial institutions dominated the industrial scene. Although industrialization was formerly associated with private initiative and individual enterprise, the role of government has steadily increased-as planner, encourager, regulator, and even as entrepreneur. In Communist countries economic development is directed entirely by the government.

(Samuel E. Gluck, Hofstra University)

2. In addition:

Refer to "WIKIPEDIA" for more informations on "The Industrial Revolution" and "The Second Industrial Revolution".

At one point in NY City

Deplorable working conditions were the norm for factory workers

Disease, in particular, V.D was rampant.

Prostitution was rampant

Homeless children were living in the street…so many of them that in NYC they were put on trains and sent out West to be adopted by anybody who would take them. Nobody cared about their safety or if they were being adopted by abusive pedophiles, or if they were used as slave labor, or if they were murdered.

Over crowed, unsanitary, vermin infested tenement living was the norm.

People worked 12-16 hour a day. There was no job security

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The Bankers and investors did VERY WELL. The Robber Barons came to power…the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, Rockefellers, just to name a few. Business did very well. The wages were very low and there were no unions.

So you’ll have to argue that either the ends justified the means, or they didn’t.

Pick a time period…in the beginning it was hard on the people, but then it became legal to have unions and legal to strike, and that’s when things turned around and America was able to grow a Middle Class.

Conservative Business people weren’t happy about unionization and collective bargaining because it cut into their profits. Maximizing profit was what they did. That meant they had to keep wages as low as possible. They really liked the worker-as-slave model.