The industrial revolution offered the hope of financial betterment to thousands throughout the United Kingdoms-- and drew the rural populations to the industrial cities. This drop of rural manpower had a severe impact on agricultural production-- fewer farm hands meant fewer acres under tillage, which resulted in lesser crop yields, which pushed up the price of food in the burgeoning industrial cities. The rustic had traded the misery of subsistence farming for the starving misery of Hades in places like Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow.

Once the scales fell from their eyes, these recent immigrants to the industrial cities of Britain left in droves for a better life in the "new worlds" beyond the seas, much to the enrichment of places like Canada and the United States.