a substantial shift in nearly everything about daily life for those generations caught up in the transition from rural to urban worlds. The most obvious change was in the relationship between people and the land itself. No longer were people defined by their place of birth, by where they had always lived. They were defined - by others as well as themselves - by a series of portable skills (Bensel, 2001, p. 255).
The magnitude of this change is difficult for those of us who have grown up in a world in which mobility is the norm. But it must have been for those living at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution a shattering (as well as liberating) discovery: For the first time in millennia, since humans has given up the freedom of pastoralism for the greater security and wealth of agriculture people began to sever ancient connections, as Marx (1977, viz. p. 17) describes.
This shift was advantageous for some, disadvantageous for many, for the choice to stay and farm or go to the city was often that of landlords rather than poor workers. The overall effect of industrialization was an increase in we
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