As the farmer’s fell one by one the Industrial age would soon be  in full swing. Industry requires workers and “breeding” a work force would be an excellent opportunity to have wage slaves toil without asking questions. The system used to create this new work force was called the Public Education System. Howard Zinn on page 263, paragraph two says, “…the spread of public school education enabled the learning…for a whole generation of workers, skilled and semiskilled who would be the literate labor force of the new industrial age.” A work force was literally being grown to serve the interests of big business. this didn’t start until the late 19th century, but once it started i quickly ran amok. Certian textbooks were banned for being laced with propaganda, teachers had no control of the content to be taught, and the teachers themselves were now selected based on citizenship. The school system is now successfully indoctrinating the new generation with patriotism and capitalism.

Of course the only children not being controlled by the public school system were the children of the rich. The grand scheme of the school system was aimed at the working class. This is the epitome of how industrialization “screwed” the working class and made the rich richer. At this time education was not a way to better one’s self so much as it was a tool of capitalism to create the new working class; civil, obedient, and patriotic slaves. This generation would have the intelligence necessary to allow the factory owners to reason with them thus preventing any form of  “controversies and strikes.” Howard Zinn most likely included this in order to show the crux of the Industrial revolution. The farmers are being replaced by people who only know how to work in factories. Everything is to be industrialized including the public school system. Zinn uses multiple accounts of people to prove this point. Industrialization could not thrive with constant striking holding up production and ruining efficiency. whereas people who were forced to leave their farms would strike soon they wouldn’t be needed. As the industrial revolution headed into full swing, the already gargantuan gulf between the working class and the rich would grow to become astronomical!