Once again we were writing simultaneously. I think that what you wrote parallels what I wrote, because the shift to an industrial economy had a profound influence on social organization. People left the farms and small towns to find work, because factories required centralization; and once they'd entered the industrial system, they found themselves forced to move from city to city to follow the work as the fortunes of business ebbed and flowed. This broke up the once-tightknit local societies that supported people, and there was really no other choice but to compensate with more formal support systems. Those systems aren't perfect, and have had negative side-effects, but then they were created by humans. We're doing the best we can under less-than-ideal circumstances.
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