With the Industrial Revolution came the rise of the middle-class.  Entrepreneurs who had invested in new industries, factory owners, shippers, merchants, skilled workers, professionals, businesspeople and wealthy farmers composed this class.  The Industrial Revolution expanded the power and wealth of the middle class.
 

Excerpt from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776)
Adam Smith believed that laissez-faire economics--the free market and an unregulated exhange of goods and services would eventually be beneficial to everyone, not just the rich.  He wrote that by producing more goods at lower prices they would be made more affordable to everyone.  The growing economy would encourage capitalists to reinvest profits in new ventures.
 

The Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia: British History 1700-1900:  Entrepreneurs & Business Leaders
 

The Peel Web: The Factory Movement
 

Read about two American industrialists:
Andrew Carnegie
and
Francis Cabot Lowell
 (Factory Rules from the Handbook to Lowell, 1848)
 

Click above to search this archive for primary sources about factory owners.