The lives of the working class in the mid-19th century were dominated by working days of 14 to 16 hours, inadequate health and safety standards in the workplace, poor wages, insufficient nourishment, unhealthy housing, low purchasing power, the exploitation of women and children at work, and insecure employment. Workers lived in misery, ravaged by diseases such as tuberculosis and by social ills such as alcoholism. The outcry against such conditions spread beyond literature and essays, and with the emergence of statistics the new discipline of sociology was born.