How Industrial revolutions have helped in the development of OB as a new science.

Though human relationships have existed since time immemorial, the branch of knowledge dealing with them is relatively recent. Prior to the industrial revolution, people worked in small groups and had simple work relationships. They were, however, subjected to unhealthy working conditions and scarcity of resources, so they hardly had any job satisfaction.
During the early stages of the industrial revolution, the conditions of workers showed no signs of improvement. But as increased industrial activity led to greater supply of goods, wages, working conditions, and level of job satisfaction gradually improved.
The Industrial Revolution
"When you could have the visual demonstration that, instead of a pecuniary lost, a well oriented attention to form the character and increase the commodities of those who are entirely at your service, will increase essentially your earnings, prosperity, and happiness, no reason, except those based on the ignorance of the own good, could in the future impede you to pay the greatest attention to the living machines you use; and by doing so you will impede an accumulation of the human misery, of which now is hard to have an adequate idea."
Speech to factories' supervisors
Robert Owen, 1813
As we have seen, already since beginnings of the mechanization there was people who got worried about the "living machines". In this speech for the managers of factories of that time, Owen, a notably prosperous director of a chain of spinning mills in Scotland, -who could demonstrate in his own factories that it was as important to worry about the "living machines" as it was to worry about the "inanimate machines"- he made a point and is interesting to see how, with a visionary mind, he warns about a future "accumulation of human misery" which later would happen