Sorry, buddy, but, you know, you gave it a good run. You didn't know about Stalin. But capitalism isn't without its problems or its critics, and there were certainly lots of shortcomings to industrial capitalism in the 19th century. 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.