History Memes

Explanation: In the 19th century, the boom of the Industrial Revolution resulted in a great many brand-new jobs that did not have high skill barriers. Children were employed, because their small size meant they could navigate the tightly-packed machinery more easily. This was not unusual, insofar as child labor has traditionally been employed at a large scale in previous societies. It was unusual, however, insofar as the employers were no longer family or aristocratic patrons, but instead disinterested and often transient management, and the danger of the work was not related to skill or coordination (or lack thereof) but to the inherently undiscerning process of automated machinery. The trip-hammer does not stop when a soft piece of flesh aligns with it instead of a bar of iron, because the trip-hammer neither sees nor thinks.

For this reason, injuries and fatalities were... quite common before the advent of safety regulations imposed on the new class of bourgeois factory owners.