The Industrial Revolution

topic 6 the Industrial Revolution throughout the semester we've witnessed the unlikely rise of the European continent to global prominence by establishing colonies in the Americas they began to link the globe commercially culturally and politically the apogee of European power however came as a result of the Industrial Revolution a period in which fundamental changes occurred in agriculture textile and metal manufacturing transportation economic policies and the social structure all of which would launch Europe into a temporary period of global dominance and although Europe would soon be eclipsed by the rise in super powers like the United States and Russia the trends begun in the Industrial Revolution were crucial to the rise of both of these nations although the Industrial Revolution is primarily an economic transformation it had and continues to have significant social impacts now globally the most basic stimulus for the revolution was a substantial increase in human populations from about 375 million people globally in 1,400 to 1 billion people by the early 19th century accompanying this growth was an emerging energy crisis most pronounced in areas where the growth was most significant notably Western Europe and Asia including China and Japan all across the globe wood and charcoal which were the major industrial fuels of the pre-modern world became scarce er and consequently more expensive as a result the cost of energy began pushing existing local and regional economic structures to the breaking point so in its earliest phases the Industrial Revolution can be understood as an attempt to solve this problem by finding cheaper more powerful sources of fuel although of course we know that the revolution quickly went beyond this original purpose consequently the Industrial Revolution spurred the transition from renewable energy sources like wind water wood and muscle power to non-renewable fossil fuels like coal oil and natural gas the greatest breakthrough in this regard as we will soon see was the coal powered steam engine this transition made available for human use vastly greater quantities of energy and gave rise to new industries in manufacturing as well as transportation so broadly speaking there are two main prongs of the Industrial Revolution that we are interested in exploring the first deals with the discovery of fossil fuels as a potential source of energy and the subsequent rise in machinery powered by these fuels from trains to water pumps the second deals with the parallel rise in industrialized manufacturing which dramatically altered the way in which people worked and lived to understand both of these aspects we will be focusing on the British who were at the forefront of industrial development in the 18th and 19th centuries now the reason why it was Europe and specifically Great Britain in the late 18th century that produced the first phases of the Industrial Revolution has been a source of debate among scholars for a long time traditionally Western histories of this period were content to simply state that Europe was different than the rest of the world that it was more creative or less bound by tradition and more innovative in its ability to solve problems now the issue with this explanation is that for one it's quite Eurocentric meaning that it essentially makes the argument that Europeans were just better than the rest of the world and for another thing it doesn't really give credit to the specific circumstances and human choices which made the Industrial Revolution just like any of the other revolutions we've discussed possible scholars will also tell you that given the speed with which the Industrial Revolution spread plenty of other societies were just as capable and ready to industrialize as Europeans were so if we reject the Europe is better argument than to what do we term current research suggests that they were actually two very small very contingent factors which likely played a role first of all we know that the nature of Europe which was comprised of small states instead of one big state like China meant that there was lots of economic competition between these different small states furthermore we know that the newness of these relatively small states meant that their bureaucracies weren't as efficient at collecting taxes now why does that matter well it mattered because monarchy still needed money and in order to get that money they often formed alliances with the merchants class they did things like give them monopolies and privileges in return for loans to the government so for reasons of economic competition and growth it was in the interests of the various European states to actively encourage technological innovation and commerce thus merchants engineers and other innovators were granted a higher social status and more money to develop their ideas than in other countries secondly even though other countries like as we've seen Japan and China were also very commercialized and gave you know many of the same benefits to merchants and traders and innovators Europe had another thing going for it which was it had at its fingertips a global trade network which enabled widespread contact with culturally different peoples this allowed them access not only to ideas and technologies from fire phone places like China but also gave them access to global resources including slave labor from Africa and silver from Latin America in Britain specifically all these factors are concentrated they were quite simply just the most commercial and the most imperialistic of all of the European states so with that background in mind let's begin exploring the origins of the Industrial Revolution by the early 18th century Britain had used up most of their trees for building houses and ships as well as for fuel things like cooking and heating and in their search for something else to burn for fuel they turned to hunks of coal now coal as an energy source was not new it had been in use for quite some time there's actually archaeological evidence in China that indicates that surface mining of coal for household usage began in way way back in about 3000 BC we also know that the Aztecs and the Romans had utilized coal the use of coal wasn't particularly new in Britain either and they had been using it for metalworking and things like that since the Middle Ages but by the time you get to the 18th century because of the shortage in other fuel sources it was becoming more and more in demand for domestic use and with that demand came the need for improved mining techniques but early coal miners in this era struggled the major issue was that coal mines often filled with water that needed to be pumped out in order to continue mining and early on in order to get that water out it had to be pulled out one bucketful at a time usually by horses or mules the work of two men proved to be decisive in resolving this issue in 1712 a British inventor by the name of Thomas Newcomen had created the first practical workable steam engine now we know that other less powerful versions of the steam engine existed globally in places like China and the Ottoman Empire but new Cummins engine operated by condensing steam drawn into a cylinder which created a partial vacuum which thereby allowed atmospheric pressure to push the piston into the cylinder and you can kind of see a working model of it on your screen by 1715 the first known new kiman engine was operating to draw water out of a mine in Cornwall and soon orders for mines all over England were streaming in for instance some cities the employing new kiman engines to pump municipal water supplies by the time of his death Newcomen and others had installed hundreds of engines all over England and small numbers were being built in other European countries as well including France and Spain working to improve on new Commons design James Watt a Scottish engineer and chemist produced the watt steam engine in 1781 which was to prove even more significant in the history of the Industrial Revolution watt recognized that new communes design was inefficient because the machine itself had to be heated and then cooled in order to produce the alternating steam and water that made the whole thing work around 1765 watt altered the new common design by adding a separate condenser which allowed the creation of steam to take place constantly in a separate chamber eventually Watt would also adapt his machine to produce rotary motion which is essentially a circular motion rather than the up-and-down motion of nucleons which would broaden the machines use beyond just pumping water once Watt had a workable prototype he was put in touch with an industrialist what visions that a machine like watts could improve the efficiency of his business from 1780 until 1800 watt held a patent on his design and hundreds of watt seam engines were installed all across England he became a very wealthy man after 1800 when his patent ran out others would improve on his design and continually find new uses for the engine but it wasn't only fossil fuels like coal now being mined efficiently thanks to steam pumps that led to greater energy at the disposal of humans major gains and inefficiency and the development of the factory system again something which occurred in Great Britain also radically increased the ability to manufacture large quantities of goods though this manufacturing revolution would eventually impact every major industry we we'll be focusing on the first industries who experience these changes the textile industry prior to about 1760 textiles had been manufactured in people's homes as a sort of a part-time occupation by those who did many other things this was mostly done in farming households for wool especially this was a rather labor-intensive process to move from raw material to a finished product wool had to be sorted cleaned and dyed carted and combed and then spun into thread which could then be woven to make cloth but even then the process wasn't done other processes needed to be performed to change other the texture or the color of the raw fabric most of these stages of production were performed by women and children and they were work that was largely done at home this process known as putting out was both inefficient and as you can imagine highly irregular some people were really good at doing all of these things but other people weren't that great so the end product varied widely however in the mid 18th century things began to change with the invention of labor saving devices that would both speed up the production of cloth as well as make the process more regular and the quality higher for example the invention in the mid 1760s of the spinning jenny by inventor James Hargreaves completely revolutionized the spinning portion of creating cloth by allowing the operator of one machine to simultaneously spin dozens of threats by 1788 nearly 20,000 spinning Jenny's were being employed in England by 1784 elements of the steam engine had been combined with the spinning jenny to produce further mechanization of the process in doing so for the first time Western countries were able to out produce India in cotton cloth manufacturing as one steam engine could power mini spindles and looms these large expensive machines also demanded that the setting in which textile manufacturing was occurring to change small-scale products in private homes was no longer needed wanted or even possible with inventions like the spinning jenny and so this was replaced with factory production the factories which began springing up throughout the British countryside brought with them new concerns though they were large but often dusty poorly illuminated poorly ventilated and downright dangerous the textile industry continued to employ women and children and for their work they were paid lower wages than their male counterparts working conditions and wages in these factories were not subject to really any regulation at all in these early stages early in the 19th century the British also invented steam locomotives and steam ships again putting that steam engine to other uses which would of course revolutionize travel in 1851 they held the first World's Fair at which they exhibited Telegraph's sewing machines guns reaping machines and steam hammers to demonstrate that they were the world's leading manufacturers of machinery by this time the characteristics of industrial society smoke rising from buildings bigger cities and denser proper relations railroads could be seen in many places all throughout Britain by the late 19th century the Industrial Revolution had spread geographically beyond Europe to the United States Russia and even to Japan the American Civil War which we got in 1861 would become the first truly industrialized war in which the increasingly urbanized and factory based northern states fought and won against the agricultural focus of the southern states an industrialization would grow pretty explosively in the United States after that point by the early 20th century the Industrial Revolution had become truly global as any number of Asian Latin American and African countries developed industrial sectors oil natural gas and nuclear power joined coal as widely available sources of energy so with the broad features of the revolution itself in place let's turn to examine some of the outcomes including changes to economy and society in Europe and Beyond the most immediate impacts of the Industrial Revolution and the access to huge new sources of energy and mechanized production gave rise to enormous Lee increased output of goods and services in Britain the origin point of the Industrial Revolution industrial output increased 50 times over between 1750 and 1900 this was wholly unprecedented and a completely unimaginable jump in the capacity of a human society to produce wealth behind this was the acceleration in the rate of technological innovation both inventions themselves like the spinning jenny power loom steam engine and cotton gin as well as a culture of innovation which was just sort of the overwhelming confidence which pervaded Britain and the West really in these days that things could endlessly be improved this is an outgrowth again you should see the connection to enlightenment and that belief in progress one of the most important impacts of the Industrial Revolution was in the social roles and lives of those who lived in industrialized societies the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for most people to continue in the same roles that they and their ancestors had occupied for centuries for example by 1914 only 8% of the British population were employed in agricultural related fields most of them were now working in industries of one sort or another often and in a way that I think it's difficult for us to really imagine or appreciate finding a new way of life was confusing and traumatic for the people who lived through it the Industrial Revolution produced lots of opportunities they became hard to navigate emerging industrial society the group that benefitted probably the most conspicuously from industrialization was the middle class that said it's kind of hard to define what the middle class actually was at its upper levels were bankers merchants factory and mine owners all of whom were very wealthy and many of whom sought to assimilate into a wrist aquatic lifestyle by buying country houses obtaining seats in parliament sometimes even gaining noble titles themselves but far more numerous among the middle classes were the small businessmen doctors lawyers engineers teachers journalists and all of them set the tone for a distinctively middle-class outlook with its own set of values and asked the industrial economy matured it created even more jobs that enabled more people to join the ranks of the middle class as clerks salespeople and bank tellers by the end of the 19th century the middle class represented roughly 20% of the British population politically the middle class sought to gain more of a voice in government and by 1832 they managed to get a reform bill passed which expanded voting rights to many middle class men culturally the middle classes tended to value thrift and hard work which were supported by a rigid system of morality in which the central value was respectability or the notion that the only way to maintain your social status was via virtuous behavior women in these families were increasingly classified as homemakers responsible for creating an emotional Haven from there for their men and a refuge from industrialized society as well as modeling middle-class values themselves but the overwhelming majority of the industrialized societies population did not belong to the middle class instead they belonged to the working class some 70% of 19th century Britons population fell into this category these people were manual workers in mines ports factories construction sites and workshops and overall they benefited the least and for the most from the transformations of the Industrial Revolution their lives which revolved around their work were most impacted by the new working conditions of the revolution most visibly they began to move in mass in numbers from the countryside into the city in search of work and a trend that historians call urbanization Liverpool for example grew from about 77,000 people in 1800 to about 400,000 people in 1850 by 1851 the majority of Britain's population lived in towns and cities this is a massive shift from the way it had always been before by the end of the century London was the world's largest city with some six million inhabitants but this rapid growth made cities fairly miserable places to live they were vastly overcrowded smothered in smoke and filled with endless row houses and warehouses with very few open public spaces the total lack of sanitation in urban areas combined with water supplies that were polluted by new industries resulted in epidemics that were pretty common so dire were conditions in cities that by 1850 the average life expectancy had actually dropped in Britain it was now only about 39 and a half years which was slightly less than it had been three centuries earlier under such circumstances social protests became common as workers look for ways to make new labor systems and living conditions palatable by 1815 many workers mostly artisans had formed a variety of so-called friendly societies which were the forerunners to unions the dues that members paid to these friendly societies contributed to provide insurance against sickness something that was not at all common at the time and then the social life provided by being a member of one of these societies provided some relief of an otherwise pretty bleak environment other workers though became violent artisans attacked and burned the machines and factories that had taken away their livelihoods some others joined the political arena and they joined movements intent on spreading the vote to the lower classes something that would be gradually achieved between 1850 and 1900 by 1824 trade unions in Britain at least have been legalized and lots of factory workers joined to achieve better working conditions and wages over time the assumptions of a capitalist society but the free market would take care of everything began to be challenged by those who saw themselves as the victims of it even some industrialists and the wealthy encouraged their workers to create communities to take care of each other and provided housing and education Karl Marx a German thinker formalized a lot of this discontent into a theory known as socialism though obviously German by birth mark spent much of his life in England and witnessed the brutality of industrial society his observations and analysis led him to the conclusion that industrial capitalism was an inherently unstable system that it was doomed to collapse in revolutionary upheaval Marx believed that this revolutionary upheaval would give birth to a classless socialist society which would bring about the end of the conflict between the wealthy and the poor mark synthesized the industrial political and scientific revolutions of the past centuries and the memory of the French Revolution particularly influenced him and provided evidence that grand upheavals which gave rise to new societies were possible Marx believed that he was a scientist that he was participating in the enlightened tradition of coming up with scientific laws of society Marxist socialist ideas inspired movements of workers and intellectuals and in the grim harshness of industrialization these new socialist parties recruited members contested elections when they gained the right to vote agitated for reform and plotted revolution by the 1890s when the in class political party the Labour Party was established in Britain things had calmed down a bit the Labour Party advocated a reformist program and a peaceful democratic transition to socialism it largely rejected that revolutionary emphasis in the class struggle that was inherent in classic Marxism and the Labour Party would come into conflict with more violent approaches of those who began to call themselves communists now this sort of peaceful transition though what happened largely because of the improving working conditions in Britain Germany and elsewhere which were largely due from pressure from the unions and the middle class and this mostly prevented the polarization that Marx had envisioned but as we'll soon see industrialization does not have the same impact everywhere

topic 6 the Industrial Revolution throughout the semester we&#39;ve witnessed the unlikely rise of the European continent to global prominence by establishing colonies in the Americas they began to link the globe commercially culturally and politically the apogee of European power however came as a result of the Industrial Revolution a period in which fundamental changes occurred in agriculture textile and metal manufacturing transportation economic policies and the social structure all of which would launch Europe into a temporary period of global dominance and although Europe would soon be eclipsed by the rise in super powers like the United States and Russia the trends begun in the Industrial Revolution were crucial to the rise of both of these nations although the Industrial Revolution is primarily an economic transformation it had and continues to have significant social impacts now globally the most basic stimulus for the revolution was a substantial increase in human populations from about 375 million people globally in 1,400 to 1 billion people by the early 19th century accompanying this growth was an emerging energy crisis most pronounced in areas where the growth was most significant notably Western Europe and Asia including China and Japan all across the globe wood and charcoal which were the major industrial fuels of the pre-modern world became scarce er and consequently more expensive as a result the cost of energy began pushing existing local and regional economic structures to the breaking point so in its earliest phases the Industrial Revolution can be understood as an attempt to solve this problem by finding cheaper more powerful sources of fuel although of course we know that the revolution quickly went beyond this original purpose consequently the Industrial Revolution spurred the transition from renewable energy sources like wind water wood and muscle power to non-renewable fossil fuels like coal oil and natural gas the greatest breakthrough in this regard as we will soon see was the coal powered steam engine this transition made available for human use vastly greater quantities of energy and gave rise to new industries in manufacturing as well as transportation so broadly speaking there are two main prongs of the Industrial Revolution that we are interested in exploring the first deals with the discovery of fossil fuels as a potential source of energy and the subsequent rise in machinery powered by these fuels from trains to water pumps the second deals with the parallel rise in industrialized manufacturing which dramatically altered the way in which people worked and lived to understand both of these aspects we will be focusing on the British who were at the forefront of industrial development in the 18th and 19th centuries now the reason why it was Europe and specifically Great Britain in the late 18th century that produced the first phases of the Industrial Revolution has been a source of debate among scholars for a long time traditionally Western histories of this period were content to simply state that Europe was different than the rest of the world that it was more creative or less bound by tradition and more innovative in its ability to solve problems now the issue with this explanation is that for one it&#39;s quite Eurocentric meaning that it essentially makes the argument that Europeans were just better than the rest of the world and for another thing it doesn&#39;t really give credit to the specific circumstances and human choices which made the Industrial Revolution just like any of the other revolutions we&#39;ve discussed possible scholars will also tell you that given the speed with which the Industrial Revolution spread plenty of other societies were just as capable and ready to industrialize as Europeans were so if we reject the Europe is better argument than to what do we term current research suggests that they were actually two very small very contingent factors which likely played a role first of all we know that the nature of Europe which was comprised of small states instead of one big state like China meant that there was lots of economic competition between these different small states furthermore we know that the newness of these relatively small states meant that their bureaucracies weren&#39;t as efficient at collecting taxes now why does that matter well it mattered because monarchy still needed money and in order to get that money they often formed alliances with the merchants class they did things like give them monopolies and privileges in return for loans to the government so for reasons of economic competition and growth it was in the interests of the various European states to actively encourage technological innovation and commerce thus merchants engineers and other innovators were granted a higher social status and more money to develop their ideas than in other countries secondly even though other countries like as we&#39;ve seen Japan and China were also very commercialized and gave you know many of the same benefits to merchants and traders and innovators Europe had another thing going for it which was it had at its fingertips a global trade network which enabled widespread contact with culturally different peoples this allowed them access not only to ideas and technologies from fire phone places like China but also gave them access to global resources including slave labor from Africa and silver from Latin America in Britain specifically all these factors are concentrated they were quite simply just the most commercial and the most imperialistic of all of the European states so with that background in mind let&#39;s begin exploring the origins of the Industrial Revolution by the early 18th century Britain had used up most of their trees for building houses and ships as well as for fuel things like cooking and heating and in their search for something else to burn for fuel they turned to hunks of coal now coal as an energy source was not new it had been in use for quite some time there&#39;s actually archaeological evidence in China that indicates that surface mining of coal for household usage began in way way back in about 3000 BC we also know that the Aztecs and the Romans had utilized coal the use of coal wasn&#39;t particularly new in Britain either and they had been using it for metalworking and things like that since the Middle Ages but by the time you get to the 18th century because of the shortage in other fuel sources it was becoming more and more in demand for domestic use and with that demand came the need for improved mining techniques but early coal miners in this era struggled the major issue was that coal mines often filled with water that needed to be pumped out in order to continue mining and early on in order to get that water out it had to be pulled out one bucketful at a time usually by horses or mules the work of two men proved to be decisive in resolving this issue in 1712 a British inventor by the name of Thomas Newcomen had created the first practical workable steam engine now we know that other less powerful versions of the steam engine existed globally in places like China and the Ottoman Empire but new Cummins engine operated by condensing steam drawn into a cylinder which created a partial vacuum which thereby allowed atmospheric pressure to push the piston into the cylinder and you can kind of see a working model of it on your screen by 1715 the first known new kiman engine was operating to draw water out of a mine in Cornwall and soon orders for mines all over England were streaming in for instance some cities the employing new kiman engines to pump municipal water supplies by the time of his death Newcomen and others had installed hundreds of engines all over England and small numbers were being built in other European countries as well including France and Spain working to improve on new Commons design James Watt a Scottish engineer and chemist produced the watt steam engine in 1781 which was to prove even more significant in the history of the Industrial Revolution watt recognized that new communes design was inefficient because the machine itself had to be heated and then cooled in order to produce the alternating steam and water that made the whole thing work around 1765 watt altered the new common design by adding a separate condenser which allowed the creation of steam to take place constantly in a separate chamber eventually Watt would also adapt his machine to produce rotary motion which is essentially a circular motion rather than the up-and-down motion of nucleons which would broaden the machines use beyond just pumping water once Watt had a workable prototype he was put in touch with an industrialist what visions that a machine like watts could improve the efficiency of his business from 1780 until 1800 watt held a patent on his design and hundreds of watt seam engines were installed all across England he became a very wealthy man after 1800 when his patent ran out others would improve on his design and continually find new uses for the engine but it wasn&#39;t only fossil fuels like coal now being mined efficiently thanks to steam pumps that led to greater energy at the disposal of humans major gains and inefficiency and the development of the factory system again something which occurred in Great Britain also radically increased the ability to manufacture large quantities of goods though this manufacturing revolution would eventually impact every major industry we we&#39;ll be focusing on the first industries who experience these changes the textile industry prior to about 1760 textiles had been manufactured in people&#39;s homes as a sort of a part-time occupation by those who did many other things this was mostly done in farming households for wool especially this was a rather labor-intensive process to move from raw material to a finished product wool had to be sorted cleaned and dyed carted and combed and then spun into thread which could then be woven to make cloth but even then the process wasn&#39;t done other processes needed to be performed to change other the texture or the color of the raw fabric most of these stages of production were performed by women and children and they were work that was largely done at home this process known as putting out was both inefficient and as you can imagine highly irregular some people were really good at doing all of these things but other people weren&#39;t that great so the end product varied widely however in the mid 18th century things began to change with the invention of labor saving devices that would both speed up the production of cloth as well as make the process more regular and the quality higher for example the invention in the mid 1760s of the spinning jenny by inventor James Hargreaves completely revolutionized the spinning portion of creating cloth by allowing the operator of one machine to simultaneously spin dozens of threats by 1788 nearly 20,000 spinning Jenny&#39;s were being employed in England by 1784 elements of the steam engine had been combined with the spinning jenny to produce further mechanization of the process in doing so for the first time Western countries were able to out produce India in cotton cloth manufacturing as one steam engine could power mini spindles and looms these large expensive machines also demanded that the setting in which textile manufacturing was occurring to change small-scale products in private homes was no longer needed wanted or even possible with inventions like the spinning jenny and so this was replaced with factory production the factories which began springing up throughout the British countryside brought with them new concerns though they were large but often dusty poorly illuminated poorly ventilated and downright dangerous the textile industry continued to employ women and children and for their work they were paid lower wages than their male counterparts working conditions and wages in these factories were not subject to really any regulation at all in these early stages early in the 19th century the British also invented steam locomotives and steam ships again putting that steam engine to other uses which would of course revolutionize travel in 1851 they held the first World&#39;s Fair at which they exhibited Telegraph&#39;s sewing machines guns reaping machines and steam hammers to demonstrate that they were the world&#39;s leading manufacturers of machinery by this time the characteristics of industrial society smoke rising from buildings bigger cities and denser proper relations railroads could be seen in many places all throughout Britain by the late 19th century the Industrial Revolution had spread geographically beyond Europe to the United States Russia and even to Japan the American Civil War which we got in 1861 would become the first truly industrialized war in which the increasingly urbanized and factory based northern states fought and won against the agricultural focus of the southern states an industrialization would grow pretty explosively in the United States after that point by the early 20th century the Industrial Revolution had become truly global as any number of Asian Latin American and African countries developed industrial sectors oil natural gas and nuclear power joined coal as widely available sources of energy so with the broad features of the revolution itself in place let&#39;s turn to examine some of the outcomes including changes to economy and society in Europe and Beyond the most immediate impacts of the Industrial Revolution and the access to huge new sources of energy and mechanized production gave rise to enormous Lee increased output of goods and services in Britain the origin point of the Industrial Revolution industrial output increased 50 times over between 1750 and 1900 this was wholly unprecedented and a completely unimaginable jump in the capacity of a human society to produce wealth behind this was the acceleration in the rate of technological innovation both inventions themselves like the spinning jenny power loom steam engine and cotton gin as well as a culture of innovation which was just sort of the overwhelming confidence which pervaded Britain and the West really in these days that things could endlessly be improved this is an outgrowth again you should see the connection to enlightenment and that belief in progress one of the most important impacts of the Industrial Revolution was in the social roles and lives of those who lived in industrialized societies the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for most people to continue in the same roles that they and their ancestors had occupied for centuries for example by 1914 only 8% of the British population were employed in agricultural related fields most of them were now working in industries of one sort or another often and in a way that I think it&#39;s difficult for us to really imagine or appreciate finding a new way of life was confusing and traumatic for the people who lived through it the Industrial Revolution produced lots of opportunities they became hard to navigate emerging industrial society the group that benefitted probably the most conspicuously from industrialization was the middle class that said it&#39;s kind of hard to define what the middle class actually was at its upper levels were bankers merchants factory and mine owners all of whom were very wealthy and many of whom sought to assimilate into a wrist aquatic lifestyle by buying country houses obtaining seats in parliament sometimes even gaining noble titles themselves but far more numerous among the middle classes were the small businessmen doctors lawyers engineers teachers journalists and all of them set the tone for a distinctively middle-class outlook with its own set of values and asked the industrial economy matured it created even more jobs that enabled more people to join the ranks of the middle class as clerks salespeople and bank tellers by the end of the 19th century the middle class represented roughly 20% of the British population politically the middle class sought to gain more of a voice in government and by 1832 they managed to get a reform bill passed which expanded voting rights to many middle class men culturally the middle classes tended to value thrift and hard work which were supported by a rigid system of morality in which the central value was respectability or the notion that the only way to maintain your social status was via virtuous behavior women in these families were increasingly classified as homemakers responsible for creating an emotional Haven from there for their men and a refuge from industrialized society as well as modeling middle-class values themselves but the overwhelming majority of the industrialized societies population did not belong to the middle class instead they belonged to the working class some 70% of 19th century Britons population fell into this category these people were manual workers in mines ports factories construction sites and workshops and overall they benefited the least and for the most from the transformations of the Industrial Revolution their lives which revolved around their work were most impacted by the new working conditions of the revolution most visibly they began to move in mass in numbers from the countryside into the city in search of work and a trend that historians call urbanization Liverpool for example grew from about 77,000 people in 1800 to about 400,000 people in 1850 by 1851 the majority of Britain&#39;s population lived in towns and cities this is a massive shift from the way it had always been before by the end of the century London was the world&#39;s largest city with some six million inhabitants but this rapid growth made cities fairly miserable places to live they were vastly overcrowded smothered in smoke and filled with endless row houses and warehouses with very few open public spaces the total lack of sanitation in urban areas combined with water supplies that were polluted by new industries resulted in epidemics that were pretty common so dire were conditions in cities that by 1850 the average life expectancy had actually dropped in Britain it was now only about 39 and a half years which was slightly less than it had been three centuries earlier under such circumstances social protests became common as workers look for ways to make new labor systems and living conditions palatable by 1815 many workers mostly artisans had formed a variety of so-called friendly societies which were the forerunners to unions the dues that members paid to these friendly societies contributed to provide insurance against sickness something that was not at all common at the time and then the social life provided by being a member of one of these societies provided some relief of an otherwise pretty bleak environment other workers though became violent artisans attacked and burned the machines and factories that had taken away their livelihoods some others joined the political arena and they joined movements intent on spreading the vote to the lower classes something that would be gradually achieved between 1850 and 1900 by 1824 trade unions in Britain at least have been legalized and lots of factory workers joined to achieve better working conditions and wages over time the assumptions of a capitalist society but the free market would take care of everything began to be challenged by those who saw themselves as the victims of it even some industrialists and the wealthy encouraged their workers to create communities to take care of each other and provided housing and education Karl Marx a German thinker formalized a lot of this discontent into a theory known as socialism though obviously German by birth mark spent much of his life in England and witnessed the brutality of industrial society his observations and analysis led him to the conclusion that industrial capitalism was an inherently unstable system that it was doomed to collapse in revolutionary upheaval Marx believed that this revolutionary upheaval would give birth to a classless socialist society which would bring about the end of the conflict between the wealthy and the poor mark synthesized the industrial political and scientific revolutions of the past centuries and the memory of the French Revolution particularly influenced him and provided evidence that grand upheavals which gave rise to new societies were possible Marx believed that he was a scientist that he was participating in the enlightened tradition of coming up with scientific laws of society Marxist socialist ideas inspired movements of workers and intellectuals and in the grim harshness of industrialization these new socialist parties recruited members contested elections when they gained the right to vote agitated for reform and plotted revolution by the 1890s when the in class political party the Labour Party was established in Britain things had calmed down a bit the Labour Party advocated a reformist program and a peaceful democratic transition to socialism it largely rejected that revolutionary emphasis in the class struggle that was inherent in classic Marxism and the Labour Party would come into conflict with more violent approaches of those who began to call themselves communists now this sort of peaceful transition though what happened largely because of the improving working conditions in Britain Germany and elsewhere which were largely due from pressure from the unions and the middle class and this mostly prevented the polarization that Marx had envisioned but as we&#39;ll soon see industrialization does not have the same impact everywhere

Transcript for:The Industrial Revolution

Transcript for:
The Industrial Revolution