The apparently limitless change fostered a mentality of expendability: people could be replaced, raw material replenished, nature rearranged and even homelands exchanged. .
In 1850, most people were still farmers and much of industry produced tools and materials for farming. Large factories were few; handcrafts still flourised. Electricity was too expensive to make that it was treated almost as a precious metal. Construction and machine making were the result of trial and error, not architechtural and engineering knowledge. This situation changed radically in two spurts. The first spurt, between 1850 and 1870, saw most of Europe consolidating earlier industrialization, extending it to previously untouched areas. The shift to machine production became permanent; steam power and other forms of energy were harnessed; and more sophisticated tools introduced. Unions developed and social legislation was passed, especially laws dealing with hours and conditions of labor and protection of woman and children. In more advanced industrial areas, the workplace changed, with woman and children being pused out by unskilled male labor.
During the second sput, which occured after the Great Depression of 1873 until World War One, heavy industy became concentrated in large firms, capitalized by specialist banks. Cartels and monopolies drastically altered the scale of development. These industrial giants controlled the output, price and distribution of commodities; they dominated smaller firms, financed and controlled research and development, utilized scientific advances and expanded far beyond their national frontiers. The "captains of industry"-the owners or managers of these large firms-possessed such extraordinary economic power that they often commanded political power as well. Industrial titans could order politicians to represent their interests. These dynamic and powerful men, could "cause" depression or "own "cities.