The Working class respond to the industrial revolution by attempting to create reforms. During the year 1799 and 1800, the British Combination Acts prohibited workers from forming unions. Hence the working class had no bargaining power with their new employers. There were no laws prevented businesses from hiring children to work in factories or laws that regulated what factories did with their bio-hazard waste. That resulted in the working class creating reforms search as forming 'friendly societies' to help ill or injured workers and the unemployed. Some Englishmen decided that the best way to improve society would be to get rid of the Industrial Revolution. These Luddites argued for laws to set minimum wages, regulate female and child labor, and organize unions. The British government treated the Luddites harshly, even imposing the death penalty of some of them.
