Working conditions were awful. Days were long, arduous, and monotonous. Workers lived in conditions that people living in the developed world today would associate with abject poverty. One way that workers responded to these conditions was by organizing into labor unions. Another response was in many cases purely theoretical. Socialism, most famously Marxian socialism. I should probably point out here that socialism is an imperfect opposite to capitalism, even though the two are often juxtaposed.