The Industrial Revolution! Unit 16 1800’s - Today What is The Industrial Revolution?

The Industrial revolution is the time period in the early to middle of the 1800’s when Europeans started to be able to create and use machines. The word ‘Industrial’ means relating to the production or manufacture of goods (‘stuff’). As we know, a revolution is a BIG change. Think about The Scientific Revolution that started in the 1500’s. The Scientific Revolution was a change in the way human beings figured things out about the universe. The Industrial revolution was a change in the way people made goods (things)!

Before the Industrial revolution that took place in Europe and America, most people were farmers or worked in some form of agriculture. During the Industrial revolution, that all began to change! In the year 1800 A.D, the world population was around 1 Billion. Today, about 7 Billion people live on earth. People moved from small farms into cities to find work in factories or other businesses that produced manufactured goods. Machines made it possible for less people to produce more food!

The Explosion of Population around 1800 Shown Above

From Farms to Factories -- The Industrial Revolution

With new technology like the steam engine and sources of energy like coal, more wealth $$$ was generated than ever before. For many people their Standard of Living improved. Standard of living means the average way that people live, including the access they have to food, what kind of housing they are able to afford, and the general comfort of their lives.

New Social Classes Emerge -- The Wealthy Elite

With the Industrial revolution, societies began to completely change. New ‘Social Classes’, or groups of people who live in similar conditions, emerged. If you had enough money to afford to buy machinery or your own factory, you would have become incredibly wealthy $$$ and joined a new class of ‘wealthy elites.’ The people who could afford to buy the newest machines and hire the best trained workers became unimaginably rich. As the old saying goes “it takes money to make money.”

A new ‘middle class’ also emerged from the changes that The Industrial Revolution brought about. These were people who weren’t quite rich, but who had enough money to live comfortable lives. Rather than being poor, this middle group of people could afford good housing, food, and recreation (fun).

Most people fell into a new ‘working class.’ Those who couldn’t or didn’t find work were poor and struggled to survive. The people who did find work often had very difficult lives as well. These workers would be paid by the hour rather than farming their own food to eat or sell like most people before The Industrial Revolution. They moved to the cities for jobs and found housing in apartments or whatever was available.

Unlike today, there were no protections for workers during the early parts of The Industrial age. Workers, including children, would often lose their arms in workplace

machinery for example. There were no concerns for the health and well being of employees, and because there were so many people desperate for a job, individual workers had very little ability to ask for better wages and a safer work environment.

In the early decades of The Industrial Revolution there were no laws against children working. On top of this, there were almost no public schools, so instead of going to elementary or middle school, children would be sent out to work in order to help support the family.

Two Competing Ideas of Society in The Industrial Age Many people during the Industrial Age believed that the government should stay out of

the economy and let private individuals do whatever they wanted with their businesses. As we have talked about previously, this philosophy is called “Laissez Faire”, or “hands off.”

Adam Smith was the Enlightenment philosopher who is best known for his ideas on Laissez Faire economics, and much of Western Civilization is based on this idea. He argued that if the government stayed out of the economy, people would have more freedom to buy, sell, and trade goods and services. This would create the most wealth $$$ and give the most freedom to individuals to do what they wanted.

While societies and economies that follow this way of thinking are typically much more free and much better at producing wealth $$$, they often lead to huge amounts of ‘Income Inequality.” Income inequality means that there are some people who are very rich and some people that are very poor.

“Laissez Faire” = Government should keep its hands off the economy! Today people who believe this strongly are called ‘Conservative.’

However, many people looked at the way working class and poor people were being treated and argued that the government should step in and do something! A new idea emerged in the 1800’s by a German man named Karl Marx.

Karl Marx looked at how the vast majority of people were being treated in the factories, and how terrible some of their lives were, and came up with the idea of ‘Communism.’ The root word of communism is ‘community.’ This is because Marx argued that instead of a rich few people having most of the money and not doing any of the actual physical labor, all the workers should join together to share what they were producing. According to Marx, instead of a boss sitting back making all the money while workers did the labor, the laborers should own the factories and businesses.

Karl Marx came up with the idea of communism because he felt empathy for the poor working class of The Industrial Revolution. However, his ideas would play out in the real world in horrible ways. Communism in his view was supposed to be every person working to the best of their ability and taking only what they need from the community -- everyone sharing!

What happened time and time again when countries tried to implement communism was typically nothing close to fairness and equality.

Communism usually ended up with the government owning everything, and I mean

EVERYTHING. Communist governments would tell people where they were going to work, where they were going to live, and what their daily lives would be like. With the government in control of all aspects of the economy, private individuals had no ability to start their own businesses or sell the things they made.

Communist governments have historically been violent and oppressive. In communist societies, people did not have the right to question the government, or speak out against what they saw as unfair. Because the government decided what was going to be produced, people had almost no choice in what they could eat, wear, drive, decorate with, etc. Communism would end up killing millions of people between 1850 - and today…

Karl Marx is known for being the ‘father’ of Communism

Questions...

1)In your own words, summarize what “The Industrial Revolution” is…

2)Before the Industrial Revolution what did most human

beings do? 3)In your own words, describe ‘standard of living.’

4)What was the social stratification of Industrial Revolution

societies? (Social Stratification = Pyramid/Layers of society)

5)What is income inequality? (Do not write an answer you

don’t understand/copy off google)

6)Explain the difference between Laissez-Faire and Communism?

Communist Leader of Russia During and After World War II Pictured Below. He was

responsible for the death of millions of his own people….