There is a scene described vividly in one of my favorite books “The Worldly Philosophers”.  The Queen of England is riding around London with her staff and she’s astounded to see so many poor people.  In a very short period of time the major cities of England went from housing 14% of the nation’s population to housing 42%.  

What had happened?  The Industrial Revolution had happened.  With the invention of automated mills, suddenly the demand for woven cloth had jumped.  And with the newfound wealth of some, people had money to spend.  The only problem was they needed more wool.  New farm inventions made farming the land more efficient as well.  So, off went the serfs who were working the land for crops for themselves and the landlord, to be replaced with sheep.  With no livelihood and no land, the people came to the city in hope of getting work at these new-fangled things - factories.

But there wasn’t enough housing.  There wasn’t enough infrastructure.  There weren’t enough jobs.  But the people kept coming.  Suddenly, the major cities were over-run with poor people.  The number of bankruptcies sky-rocketed as small and large merchants speculated and lost, trying to figure out the new economy.

And that’s how the Queen came to utter her famous question, as she viewed her once beautiful city, now overfilled with rubbish and squatters.  ”Where did all these poor people come from?”

Change isn’t easy.  The dawning of a bright new age means some will prosper, many will not.  The future belongs to the agile, the flexible and the quick to accept change and innovate.  And in the meantime, there are a lot of things that work one day and not the next.