Even so, there is no doubt that from the middle of the nineteenth century, most factory and mill workers began to notice a determined upward trend in the quality of their material lives, and for the first time ever they had a little money to spend on the luxuries that until recently had been the exclusive preserve of the middle and upper classes. It also marked the beginning of many people viewing the work they did exclusively as a means to purchase more stuff, so closing the loop of production and consumption that now sustains so much of our contemporary economy. Indeed, for much of the
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