It's... not that simple.

The well known narrative is that the Industrial Revolution at the start of the 1800's profoundly reformed society over the past 200 years. Events such as the Civil War, World War 1 and 2 accelerated that evolution.

At its heart, it's a very complex story though. Depending on the region, continent, culture, technological advances,... different areas and domains of the economy would experience changes. And it's not like one day people woke up thinking "Oh, we've entered the era of the Industrial Revolution, let's head to the factory now!"

Looking at larger timescales, economic change is above all a gradual change. For instance, some of the issues you'd see in urban centers - poverty, unemployment, sustenance living - did already exist long before modern industry established itself. What you do see is that industrialization - establishing factories, infrastructure,... - such as it happened in London or New York, exacerbated existing societal tensions, and created new ones. At the same time, society organically adapted to those challenges through the gradual adoption of technologies such as trains, metro/tram lines, bridges, sewers and so on. Organically, because at time nobody new how things would pan out, much like we don't know how modern technology is going to affect society in the next decades.

At the same time, none of that suddenly pushed existing industries out of business from one day to the next. Farmers, butchers and grocers were very much an intrinsic part of society and they didn't simply went out of business in a few short years.

Over the past 200 years, as - among other things - mobility increased, you do see a change in how an entire economy evolves from local activity towards regional interconnected networks of trade and exchange. And that created increasing pressure on traditional modes of living up to the point where they were no longer viable.

We should be aware that the modern concept of a small business doesn't necessarily apply to historic professions and trades, and how those tie in societies that were very much different 200 years ago from where we are today.

The trades and professions back in the day weren't so much "jobs", they were specialists who learned the trade from father to son. That ties into the fact that local economies were heavily based on how families were connected. Social connections pretty defined with whom you'd trade. The people that came to you to get their horse new shoes, or with whom you'd trade a few hats of grain, well, your families very likely knew each other going back several generations. Trust was essential in order to make this all work.

Let's also not forget that people avoided travel if possible. It was simply a proposition which was too expensive and too risky, given that modes of transportation were extremely limited. Mass migration never happened because people wanted to, but because they were forced too. (Irish Potato Famine of the 1840's is a great example). Most people lived their entire lives within the same 20 to 25 mile radius. Hence why local communities at the time were close knit.

When a local community - village, hamlet,... - lost a blacksmith or a master carpenter, that wasn't just a loss of a worker, it had a profound impact on that community. So, that then ties into the fact why people were so adamant on their kids to follow in their trail and were apprehensive towards newcomers who hoped to compete.

World War 1 and - certainly - World War 2 with the advent of modern transportation as cars, trains, airplanes, boats, mass production and so on changed all of that.

In fact, it's an evolution that happened in subsequent waves where parts of the economy and society altered in a snowball like fashion. Supermarkets and retail chains, for instance, didn't exist in the 19th century. The earliest forms date back to the 1910's. And they only started to pick up in the 1930's. But the real change happened after World War II when suburban development boomed and automobile ownership saw a sharp increase.

Smaller and larger communities had already evolved massively between 1800 - 1945. But 1945, that's the point where the modern changes we still enjoy start to fundamentally alter them: television, telephone, modern media, roads & freeways,... became essential parts of society as a whole, even though those were already established in urban centers by a couple of decades already.

So, we are talking about changes that happen at different speeds depending on where you lived and who'd you talk to.

I think that still rings very much true today. The problems we see today in smaller, rural communities today - unemployment, emigration, downturn - still tie into an evolution that started in the 19th century and still is fully underway. A historian 300 years from now will likely look at our era and interpret that as a continuation rooted in dynamics that originated further in the past.

If I have to make an apt analogy, then the coal mine industry of Appalachia would be a great one. It's a poster child of how an industry first established itself as a front runner and supported entire local communities as it tied into a regional and national economy, and then began a decline as that same larger economy moved on. That's the point where you see a domino / chain effect. As the industry that supported the majority of a community through salaried jobs declined, unemployed inevitably stalls local business for local traders: washers, grocers, bars, woodwork, car repair,... Meanwhile, retail chains survive because of network effects and distribution.

Don't let the title fool you but this video does a great job at showing the impact of that dynamic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJZmr7E2M_U

If butchers, farmers, book binders and grocers didn't survive, that's mostly because society has fundamentally altered over the past 70 years and moved from communities where close connections and traditions were essential for survival of the community, into groups with a far greater social and geographical mobility.

In a way, it's still possible to open a butcher or book binder business and be successful at it (If you know how to diversify), but your trade wouldn't be essential to the functioning a close knit local community such as it was even 100 years ago.