Industrial Revolution Continued and Trade and Empire in East Asia

HIST 10042/27/13

Industrial Revolution

• Technologies allow for increased production… • Making manufactured goods more

affordable… • Easier travel and communication encourages trade and migration.

Working Conditions• Most industrial jobs were unskilled, repetitive, and boring.• New lighting technologies made for long work hours.• Women and textile mills - Earn 1/3rd to 1/2 a man’s salary.• “It is in fact the constant aim and tendency of every improvement in machinery to supersede human labour altogether or to diminish its cost, by substituting the industry of women and children for that of men.”

Andrew Uwe, 1835

Child Labor

• Children had always contributed to family labor.• Workers brought children as young as five or six

with them to work.• Lack of public schools and day cares.• Cotton mills may have up to 2/3rds of its labor

from children.• 14-16 hour work days for

children.

Changes in Society

• There are “two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy, who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets… the rich and the poor.” Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Entrepreneurs and Class Mobility

• Landowning gentry and merchants had held wealth and influence before the Industrial Revolution.• Industrialization allowed investors to self-finance manufacturing businesses.• Potential for great wealth, ability to buy into high society. John Astor (1763-1848), son of a

shipwright turned first Americanmulti-millionaire

Middle Class Values

• Idea that hard work, thrift, and temperance leads to success.• Compare with desperation of low income factory laborers.• “Cult of domesticity” removal of middle class women from the business world.

Women and the “Victorian Age”

• “Victorian Age”: 1850-1901• The reign of Queen Victoria and rules of behavior surrounding the family.• Feminine virtues and idealized home life.• Upper and middle class women experience “separate spheres”, rearing children and running the household.• Reliance on servants, status symbol of the middle class.

Working Women

• Middle-class women could work until marriage in appropriate careers, store and offices, not factories.

• Typewriter and the telephone open women’s sphere as secretaries.

• Limited educational opportunities, elite universities and teachers’ colleges.

• Working-class women worked in textile factories and domestic services.• Did not alleviate them of household duties.

Urbanization

• 1851: Britain becomes first nation with a majority urban population.

• Railroads bring goods and necessities to urban centers.

• Streetcars and subways allow for sprawl.

Urban Improvements

• Sanitation– Early industrial cities suffered from overcrowding and

poor sanitation, causing widespread disease.– Plumbing brought in clean water and removed sewage.– Lighting made cities safer at night.– Expansion of municipal services: police, fire, sanitation, building and health inspectors, schools, parks, etc.

Urban Improvements

• Housing– Urban planning and the grid system– Tenements replaced with modern apartment blocks.– Industrial, commercial, and residential zoning

Electricity and Air Pollution

• Coal powered industry caused incredible air pollution.

• “Pea-soup” fogs over large cities blocked out the sun.• Electricity is cleaner, power plants can be moved to

the outskirts of the city.• Electric transportation cut down the need for horses

and their pollution.

Economic and Political Ideas• Mercantilism: Governments should regulate trade in order to

protect balance of trade.– Building a network of overseas colonies– Forbidding colonies to trade with other nations– Monopolizing markets– Promote accumulation of gold and silver– Forbidding trade carried in foreign ships– Export subsidies– Maximizing the use of domestic resources– Restricting domestic consumption

Economic and Political Ideas

• Laissez faire (“let them do”) and Free-Market Capitalism– Adam Smith, The Wealth of

Nations (1776)– “invisible hand” guides capitalism

towards increases in the general welfare.

• Debates about realities of urban misery and poverty and competition between nations.

Adam Smith on the Role of Government

“First the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies…; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it…; thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain.” – Wealth of Nations (Book V)

Positivism, Protest, and Reform• Positivism: Scientific method could solve social

as well as technical problems.• Scientists and artists should guide the poor in

workers’ communities under the protection of business leaders.

• Focused on investing in “modernization”.• Luddites

Chartism and Reform

• 1834: Grand National Consolidate Trade Union• Chartism: Universal male suffrage, secret

ballot, salaries for members of Parliament, and annual elections.

• Slow and uneven reform, limits on child labor and price protections on foods.

Labor Unions

• Early 19th Century: “Friendly Societies” for mutual assistance in times of illness, unemployment, and disability.• 1850’s: Britain legalizes workers’ strikes.• Labor unions develop to fight for wages, improved working conditions, and insurance.• Slow to develop because of inherent costs.• Extension of voting rights encourages unions to be a part of political and economic system, rather than revolt.

Army sent against coal miners inBaltimore, 1877.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)• German journalist, philosopher, sociologist, historian, political economist, and political theorist.• Key figure in the development of the social sciences and socialist political theory.• Socialism – belief in cooperative management of the economy with a focus on the larger social good.• Marxism: political ideology which seeks to improve society through the implementation of socialism with the final goal of communism.• Materialist interpretation of history: social change occurs through conflict between social classes.

Communist Manifesto (1848)• Communist League (1834-1850): Utopian socialist and Christian communist organization,

– “the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, based on the ideals of love of one’s neighbor, equality, and justice”

• Marx and Engels commissioned by Communist League to set out their principles and purposes.• Presents an analytical approach to the history of class struggles and theproblems of capitalism.

What does Marx mean by Communism?

• Who decides what to do with the wealth you produce?

• Primitive Communism – You do!• Slave Society – Male slave and land owners• Feudalism – Aristocracy and Theocracy• Capitalism – Your employer (aka capitalists)• Socialism – Democratic consensus of the workers• Communism – You do!

Communist Manifesto

• What does Marx see as the driving force of history?

• Who are the bourgeoisie? Who are the proletariat?

• What role has the bourgeoisie played in history?• What role has the proletariat played in history?• How does Marx suggest people address social

inequalities?

World Trade

• Technological developments alongside increased interaction due to colonialism integrated the world economy more than ever before.

• Steamships and railroads cut the cost of shipping goods and resources.

• Industrialized nations focused on turning raw materials (domestic and those imported for non-industrialized nations) into manufactured goods for both domestic consumption and export.

• New technologies effect demand, for example, synthetic dyes damage indigo plantations in India.

World Finance

• Free market capitalism left economies vulnerable to swings in the business cycle.• Booms and busts: depressions cost jobs and investments.• Interconnected finance magnified effects of busts, causing world-wide depressions.• 1873: Austrian banks collapses causing depression in US.• British domination of trade, finance, and information meant most transactions occur in pounds sterling.