Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 98 of the revised (1964) edition of T.S. Ashton’s 1948 book, The Industrial Revolution: 1760-1830:

Many of the social discomforts that have been attributed to the industrial revolution in Britain were, in fact, the result of forces which (for all we know) would still have operated if manufacturing had remained undeveloped and there had been no change of economic form.

DBx: Indeed. Life for ordinary men, women, and children before the industrial revolution was marked throughout by deep poverty that not infrequently was lethal.