Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution

Hey World Civilizations, Mr. Lassiter with you and we're going to be looking at social effects of the Industrial Revolution today. Some of these might be fairly obvious to you, but nevertheless let's go through and see if we can answer these videos goals questions. So first of all we want to identify the effects of the Industrial Revolution on society and see what or see how people responded. We also want to look and see how the organization of society changed, especially as we think of social classes. We want to see what challenges the new working class found, and then how do people respond to these challenges. You have some vocabulary here, make sure that you get that defined. So let's first talk about the growth of populations in Europe and the growth of cities. We've touched on this again and again in our class, and so it continues during the Industrial Revolution, though much more exaggerated. In 1750, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the population of Europe was 140 million, and that was increasing ever since the Columbian Exchange. But by 1850, the population has nearly doubled to 266 million in just 100 years. years. So why is this happening? Well, we have a decline in death rates, but we also have a decline in warfare over those hundred years, to a certain extent, other than the Napoleonic Wars, but not kind of widespread. We also have a decline of disease. or certain diseases in Europe, although city dwelling will lead to some other problems. But we do also have an increase in food supply. We have people being better fed. We have the kind of the beginning of ideas of canning food and refrigerating food, which helps fight against foodborne illnesses. And so we see kind of European growth here. Because of this growth, though, jobs were sometimes scarce. And so from Europe to places like Europe, places like the United States or Argentina or Canada or Australia, we see immigration result. So if you were in an area that was too crowded or had extremely poor conditions, for example, if you were living in Ireland during a time when crop diseases hit their potato crops, many people from Ireland immigrated to the United States. So this is going to be fair. fairly common. But city populations in this time period oftentimes grow a lot. The population in some cities double, and in other places they triple. But this urban growth also has many challenges. For example, if cities are growing faster than you can build, you're going to end up with porous sanitation, not well-built buildings, slums. Also, there's going to be a lot of crime in these cities. There's a high crime rate. And then because people are so packed into these cities, and sometimes they're living two and three families to an apartment, we're talking about the spread of, we can see the spread of diseases. So, for example, cholera epidemics strike many European countries and really different areas of the world in the 1800s. But as the cities grow, we see reforms addressing these issues. For example, boards of health are established and boards of sanitation. We start to see the beginning of garbage pickup and things like that. Because we had, in many places, very poor... Sewage, we're going to see the building of new sewage and water treatment to keep people healthier. Electricity by the late part of the 1800s is going to come into play with electric lighting or even gas lighting before that and made cities safer. Also police and fire departments will be developed in order to help the safety of their citizens and address some of the major issues that came about with urban growth. One of the most important changes that we see during this time period though is changing our social classes. So we have the development of kind of a new middle class and a new working class. And part of this middle class is actually part of the wealthy elite. So just kind of keep in mind that by 1871, most people in Europe enjoyed a higher standard. standard of living than they had before. But there were still a lot of people who did remain poor. The wealthy elite made up about 5% of the population. And this consisted of the old aristocracy or kind of that bourgeoisie who had basically come into a lot of money. And so the top 5% of the population controlled about 30 to 40% of the wealth by about 1870. And this is a process that occurs really throughout the Industrial Revolution. And the this idea of a wealthy elite. Basically, we're the people who would become leaders in government and military in these countries. But part of this wealthy elite was made up of members of the industrial middle class, especially the upper middle class. And so if we look at kind of the old ideas of the middle class, we have kind of, you know, the merchants developing, officials, lawyers, people we call the bourgeois, right? The new industrial middle class was also made up of people who built factories. or bought the machines and figured out where the markets were. And so they were dealing very much in this industrial economy and making money from it. And so they helped kind of make up this new social class, which benefits the most from the Industrial Revolution. They're the ones kind of making money hand over fist during this time of growth. Excuse me. This image that you see on the right is kind of a scene. It's a famous image of an apartment scene. And it shows kind of the social class divides in Europe. So you have on the main floor here a kind of a wealthy elite party going on while, you know, some of your middle class workers' family is in the apartment above. Kind of, if you look at my mouse here, this guy is kind of annoyed with the sound that's coming from downstairs while his wife tends to the baby. their servants tending the fire. And then if you go up further, you kind of have this artist where you have a thief coming in to steal art showing how dangerous city life can be. And then up here at the top, a single mother whose child's in bed, a member of the lowest class staying up all night so that she can sew and make any type of money for her family. And so, excuse me. It kind of is a good example of the social class divide that we see in this time period. The working class, however, develops during this time period as well. And the working class are those people who would do these low-paying jobs in factories. These are the ones you kind of see in this image, women, children working. And then back here you see a member of the wealthy elite kind of keeping track of what's going on in the factory. But members of the working class faced... Pretty much horrendous working conditions in the Industrial Revolution. Oftentimes it would work being 12 to 16 hours a day, most times six days a week. There was no job security. They could be fired at any time. There was no minimum wage. It was basically the factory owners paying as low as they could in order to get workers. And if you wouldn't work for that wage, someone else would. Excuse me, cotton mills and coal mines were usually the most dangerous. This image shows a textile mill and you can see children kind of crying because of the horrible conditions. Women working the looms and this child climbing under these dangerous machines. Children would make up about two-thirds of cotton industry workforce in Britain by 1830. They were extremely cheap laborers. They basically were paid one-sixth or one-third of what an adult man would have been paid. And they usually faced pretty harsh discipline in factories to make sure they stayed on task and they were doing what they were supposed to. But they also faced extremely dangerous conditions because women, or excuse me, children were seen as kind of having those delicate hands that could work the twine on the machines or they could climb up in a machine and fix a problem. And of course, this resulted in many deaths. And as we'll see in a little bit, the Factory Act of 1833 set age requirements. Finally, in Britain, meaning that you had to be nine years old, set hours limits, they couldn't work more than 10 or 12 hours a day, which is still more than what we do today. And the Mines Act even banned women and small children from working underground. Women would eventually make up 50% of the labor in textile factories as women continued to enter more and more into the workplace. In the working class, it was becoming more important for women to enter work because... Wages for men were so low that they needed two incomes to support their family, and sometimes even more than that with their children. And even though most women would still remain in the home, we were seeing women having to enter industrial work more and more. Oftentimes, they were paid half or less of what men received. But we're going to spend some more time on this tomorrow. Of course, these pitiful conditions and the Industrial Revolution eventually give rise to a movement. new movements and especially a new idea called socialism, which is a system in which society owns and controls some of the means of production. And this was seen as a system that would protect workers more. So again, we're going to talk more about this in the coming days, but a group known as the utopian socialists, such as Robert Owen, believe that labor and owners should cooperate in industry in order to achieve the best results. And he even opens up, he's an owner of a factory himself, and so he kind of has this utopian society that he experiments with. And it's moderately successful until it fails. You may have heard of this guy Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels, who wrote the, these two guys write the Communist Manifesto, and they establish a theory about socialism that will inspire a lot of reforms down the way. But ultimately, socialists are going to have the most impact in forming political parties. and trade unions. And that's what you see, this idea of people coming together and together they're much stronger as kind of a labor group. And these are the ones that are going to achieve many of the reforms in Europe, though they have varying degrees of success across Europe and the United States. Eventually, though, industrial reforms are pushed by labor unions. In Britain, as I told you, the Factory Act of 1833 set age requirements and hours limits for women and children. The Mines Act banned women and children from working. children from working underground in mines because those jobs were seen as so dangerous. And there will be several others of these that we'll look at down the line, including in the United States. Most of the time they were dealing with women and children. working. Some of them would deal with inspections of factories and places that produce food and things of that nature in order to make sure that they were safe. Excuse me again. One of the last social changes that we see coming about in the Industrial Revolution is the expansion of education and new forms of entertainment or leisure. So prior to the 1850s, education was really seen for the elite and upper middle classes only. But by the 1870s, we started to see that in order to get skilled workers for these increasingly complex factory jobs, education was needed or a basic education. And so we started seeing the establishment of of primary schools for boys and girls. And then boys would usually go further in education still at this time. And so because of this industrialization, we see a commitment to education to produce these skilled workers. Also, one of the other reasons to increase education was because the right to vote was expanding. And so we see more and more people able to vote in increasingly democratic societies. For example, in the 1800s, all adult white men are able to vote. And then theoretically, after the Civil War, all men are able to vote in the United States. Well, if we wanted to. an educated voting group we needed to have education or public school systems. Also we saw as people had money more money especially in the middle class during the Industrial Revolution we also see forms of leisure and for the working class oftentimes these served these large crowd events served as distractions so amusement parks zoos athletics such as baseball in the United States or soccer in Britain dance halls these were the most popular attractions baseball would become the American pastime in the United States and I believe it was something like in the 1800s or 1840s, up to 2,000 people went to watch the British soccer championship match. So the popularity of these sports were growing. The picture on the... the bottom right is a picture of a hippopotamus in a British zoo in about 1870. And people just kind of go and see these animals and, you know. What you do at zoos. Also sports, people began to play more sports. Women would even enjoy sports. So tennis and croquet were considered less vigorous sports for women, whereas men might play things like baseball or soccer or whatever other. Sports you can think of. All right. So these are your video goals. I lost a little bit of steam at the end. Sorry for all the coughing throughout. Make sure that you can answer these video goals questions for class tomorrow. And we'll see you then. Have a wonderful day.

We also want to look and see how the organization of society changed, especially as we think of social classes. We want to see what challenges the new working class found, and then how do people respond to these challenges. You have some vocabulary here, make sure that you get that defined.

So let's first talk about the growth of populations in Europe and the growth of cities. We've touched on this again and again in our class, and so it continues during the Industrial Revolution, though much more exaggerated. In 1750, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the population of Europe was 140 million, and that was increasing ever since the Columbian Exchange.

But by 1850, the population has nearly doubled to 266 million in just 100 years. years. So why is this happening?

Well, we have a decline in death rates, but we also have a decline in warfare over those hundred years, to a certain extent, other than the Napoleonic Wars, but not kind of widespread. We also have a decline of disease. or certain diseases in Europe, although city dwelling will lead to some other problems. But we do also have an increase in food supply. We have people being better fed.

We have the kind of the beginning of ideas of canning food and refrigerating food, which helps fight against foodborne illnesses. And so we see kind of European growth here. Because of this growth, though, jobs were sometimes scarce.

And so from Europe to places like Europe, places like the United States or Argentina or Canada or Australia, we see immigration result. So if you were in an area that was too crowded or had extremely poor conditions, for example, if you were living in Ireland during a time when crop diseases hit their potato crops, many people from Ireland immigrated to the United States. So this is going to be fair.

fairly common. But city populations in this time period oftentimes grow a lot. The population in some cities double, and in other places they triple.

But this urban growth also has many challenges. For example, if cities are growing faster than you can build, you're going to end up with porous sanitation, not well-built buildings, slums. Also, there's going to be a lot of crime in these cities. There's a high crime rate. And then because people are so packed into these cities, and sometimes they're living two and three families to an apartment, we're talking about the spread of, we can see the spread of diseases.

So, for example, cholera epidemics strike many European countries and really different areas of the world in the 1800s. But as the cities grow, we see reforms addressing these issues. For example, boards of health are established and boards of sanitation.

We start to see the beginning of garbage pickup and things like that. Because we had, in many places, very poor... Sewage, we're going to see the building of new sewage and water treatment to keep people healthier. Electricity by the late part of the 1800s is going to come into play with electric lighting or even gas lighting before that and made cities safer. Also police and fire departments will be developed in order to help the safety of their citizens and address some of the major issues that came about with urban growth.

One of the most important changes that we see during this time period though is changing our social classes. So we have the development of kind of a new middle class and a new working class. And part of this middle class is actually part of the wealthy elite.

So just kind of keep in mind that by 1871, most people in Europe enjoyed a higher standard. standard of living than they had before. But there were still a lot of people who did remain poor.

The wealthy elite made up about 5% of the population. And this consisted of the old aristocracy or kind of that bourgeoisie who had basically come into a lot of money. And so the top 5% of the population controlled about 30 to 40% of the wealth by about 1870. And this is a process that occurs really throughout the Industrial Revolution. And the this idea of a wealthy elite. Basically, we're the people who would become leaders in government and military in these countries.

But part of this wealthy elite was made up of members of the industrial middle class, especially the upper middle class. And so if we look at kind of the old ideas of the middle class, we have kind of, you know, the merchants developing, officials, lawyers, people we call the bourgeois, right? The new industrial middle class was also made up of people who built factories.

or bought the machines and figured out where the markets were. And so they were dealing very much in this industrial economy and making money from it. And so they helped kind of make up this new social class, which benefits the most from the Industrial Revolution. They're the ones kind of making money hand over fist during this time of growth. Excuse me.

This image that you see on the right is kind of a scene. It's a famous image of an apartment scene. And it shows kind of the social class divides in Europe.

So you have on the main floor here a kind of a wealthy elite party going on while, you know, some of your middle class workers' family is in the apartment above. Kind of, if you look at my mouse here, this guy is kind of annoyed with the sound that's coming from downstairs while his wife tends to the baby. their servants tending the fire.

And then if you go up further, you kind of have this artist where you have a thief coming in to steal art showing how dangerous city life can be. And then up here at the top, a single mother whose child's in bed, a member of the lowest class staying up all night so that she can sew and make any type of money for her family. And so, excuse me.

It kind of is a good example of the social class divide that we see in this time period. The working class, however, develops during this time period as well. And the working class are those people who would do these low-paying jobs in factories.

These are the ones you kind of see in this image, women, children working. And then back here you see a member of the wealthy elite kind of keeping track of what's going on in the factory. But members of the working class faced... Pretty much horrendous working conditions in the Industrial Revolution. Oftentimes it would work being 12 to 16 hours a day, most times six days a week.

There was no job security. They could be fired at any time. There was no minimum wage. It was basically the factory owners paying as low as they could in order to get workers.

And if you wouldn't work for that wage, someone else would. Excuse me, cotton mills and coal mines were usually the most dangerous. This image shows a textile mill and you can see children kind of crying because of the horrible conditions. Women working the looms and this child climbing under these dangerous machines. Children would make up about two-thirds of cotton industry workforce in Britain by 1830. They were extremely cheap laborers.

They basically were paid one-sixth or one-third of what an adult man would have been paid. And they usually faced pretty harsh discipline in factories to make sure they stayed on task and they were doing what they were supposed to. But they also faced extremely dangerous conditions because women, or excuse me, children were seen as kind of having those delicate hands that could work the twine on the machines or they could climb up in a machine and fix a problem. And of course, this resulted in many deaths.

And as we'll see in a little bit, the Factory Act of 1833 set age requirements. Finally, in Britain, meaning that you had to be nine years old, set hours limits, they couldn't work more than 10 or 12 hours a day, which is still more than what we do today. And the Mines Act even banned women and small children from working underground. Women would eventually make up 50% of the labor in textile factories as women continued to enter more and more into the workplace.

In the working class, it was becoming more important for women to enter work because... Wages for men were so low that they needed two incomes to support their family, and sometimes even more than that with their children. And even though most women would still remain in the home, we were seeing women having to enter industrial work more and more.

Oftentimes, they were paid half or less of what men received. But we're going to spend some more time on this tomorrow. Of course, these pitiful conditions and the Industrial Revolution eventually give rise to a movement. new movements and especially a new idea called socialism, which is a system in which society owns and controls some of the means of production.

And this was seen as a system that would protect workers more. So again, we're going to talk more about this in the coming days, but a group known as the utopian socialists, such as Robert Owen, believe that labor and owners should cooperate in industry in order to achieve the best results. And he even opens up, he's an owner of a factory himself, and so he kind of has this utopian society that he experiments with.

And it's moderately successful until it fails. You may have heard of this guy Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels, who wrote the, these two guys write the Communist Manifesto, and they establish a theory about socialism that will inspire a lot of reforms down the way. But ultimately, socialists are going to have the most impact in forming political parties.

and trade unions. And that's what you see, this idea of people coming together and together they're much stronger as kind of a labor group. And these are the ones that are going to achieve many of the reforms in Europe, though they have varying degrees of success across Europe and the United States. Eventually, though, industrial reforms are pushed by labor unions.

In Britain, as I told you, the Factory Act of 1833 set age requirements and hours limits for women and children. The Mines Act banned women and children from working. children from working underground in mines because those jobs were seen as so dangerous.

And there will be several others of these that we'll look at down the line, including in the United States. Most of the time they were dealing with women and children. working.

Some of them would deal with inspections of factories and places that produce food and things of that nature in order to make sure that they were safe. Excuse me again. One of the last social changes that we see coming about in the Industrial Revolution is the expansion of education and new forms of entertainment or leisure.

So prior to the 1850s, education was really seen for the elite and upper middle classes only. But by the 1870s, we started to see that in order to get skilled workers for these increasingly complex factory jobs, education was needed or a basic education. And so we started seeing the establishment of of primary schools for boys and girls.

And then boys would usually go further in education still at this time. And so because of this industrialization, we see a commitment to education to produce these skilled workers. Also, one of the other reasons to increase education was because the right to vote was expanding. And so we see more and more people able to vote in increasingly democratic societies.

For example, in the 1800s, all adult white men are able to vote. And then theoretically, after the Civil War, all men are able to vote in the United States. Well, if we wanted to. an educated voting group we needed to have education or public school systems.

Also we saw as people had money more money especially in the middle class during the Industrial Revolution we also see forms of leisure and for the working class oftentimes these served these large crowd events served as distractions so amusement parks zoos athletics such as baseball in the United States or soccer in Britain dance halls these were the most popular attractions baseball would become the American pastime in the United States and I believe it was something like in the 1800s or 1840s, up to 2,000 people went to watch the British soccer championship match. So the popularity of these sports were growing. The picture on the...

the bottom right is a picture of a hippopotamus in a British zoo in about 1870. And people just kind of go and see these animals and, you know. What you do at zoos. Also sports, people began to play more sports.

Women would even enjoy sports. So tennis and croquet were considered less vigorous sports for women, whereas men might play things like baseball or soccer or whatever other. Sports you can think of. All right.

So these are your video goals. I lost a little bit of steam at the end. Sorry for all the coughing throughout. Make sure that you can answer these video goals questions for class tomorrow. And we'll see you then.

Have a wonderful day.

Transcript for:Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution

Transcript for:
Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution