AP European History

Barron’s

Industrialization Shapes Europe

Results of the Industrial Revolution

  1. The most significant result was the increased production and availability of manufactured goods.
    1. Material prosperity increased because there were cheaper high-quality goods.
    2. Increased consumption led to more jobs.
  2. Factory workers lived in poverty on low wages.
    1. Housing was in dismal tenements.
    2. For the first half of the nineteenth century, entire families, including children from age five up, worked 14 hours a day under unsafe and unhealthy conditions.
    3. Crowded slums were worsened by the absence of public services in cities that had expanded too rapidly.
    4. Although these living conditions did not differ much from those under which people had lived for centuries on farms, the concentration of the population made them more unhealthy.
    5. This visibility of poverty in the cities led thinkers to ponder the causes of poverty and prompted the institutions of society to push for its alleviation.
      1. The Sadler Commission in Great Britain helped initiate legislation to improve working conditions in factories.
  3. Urbanization was one of the Industrial Revolution’s most important socioeconomic effects.
    1. Working class injustices, gender exploitation, and standard-of-living issues became the nineteenth century’s greatest social and political dilemmas.
    2. Literally tens of millions of people moved from the countryside to the cities as the factory system replaced the domestic system
    3. The family structure changed greatly in that productive work was taken out of the home and to the factory, and children were separated from their families and rural settings
    4. Gender roles changed
      1. Women’s work was seen as less valuable and was increasingly associated with domestic duties
      2. Men were separated from wives and children, leaving home to go to work or working in different factories
  4. By the end of the century, wages and the quality of life for the working class improved because of laws restricting the labor of children and women, creating social welfare programs, and promoting improved diet and the use of birth control.
    1. The many reform laws that restricted the labor of women and children included:
      1. The Factory Act of 1833
      2. The Mines Act of 1842
      3. The Ten Hours Act of 1847
  5. The Industrial Revolution may have prevented a large-scale human tragedy by increasing production, but the filthy conditions of crowded city life and the grinding poverty of the cities led many reformers, such as Edwin Chadwick, to call for changes.

Effects on Class and Gender

Two new overall classes developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution: industrialists/ capitalists and factory workers. However, the reality was that there were many levels of class distinction within each of these overall classifications of class and, thus, class distinctions became more important at the time.

  1. There was a huge divide between the bourgeoisie, the servant-keeping middle class, and the proletariat, or working class.
  2. The division oflabor by gender was much more pronounced among the upperclasses, where women were homemakers, than in the lower classes, where women often had to work outside the home.
  3. The gap between wealthy and working classes remained enormous.
    1. 5 percent of British households received 33 percent of all income.
    2. 20 percent of households made 50-60 percent of British income.
    3. 80 percent of the population shared 40 percent of the income.
    4. The competitive nature of the markets led many of the factory owners to offer low wages for long hours, to create poor and unsafe working conditions, and to employ child labor.
    5. The rigid discipline of factory work contrasted with the rural pace of farm work that most of the laborers had been accustomed to.
    6. Not until the mid-nineteenth century did the standard ofliving improve for the average industrial worker.
    7. Child labor laws were enacted after the first three decades of the nineteenth century to limit the number of hours children could be required to work.
    8. A gender division of labor emerged.
      1. Men became the main breadwinners, while married women tended to stay home to raise the children.
      2. Jobs available to women were “dead-end” and poorly paid.
      3. The early attempts of workers to organize were met with hostility from industrialists and anti-union regulations from governments, and had very limited success.
  4. Class diversity was remarkable, even within the traditional classes.
    1. The upper class was created when the newly wealthy industrialists intermarried with the fading nobility to create a new top notch in European society.
    2. The middle class, or bourgeoisie, saw huge diversity:
      1. Tended to own homes;
      2. Usually made about $10,000/year while the poor made $400;
      3. Spent 25 percent on food and 25 percent on servants;
      4. Victorian behavior pattern emerged as the norm.
  5. Drinking, gambling, and sex condemned as vices.
  6. Hypocritically ignored in private.
  7. Age becomes one of the most sexually repressed yet privately perverted.
    1. Included industrialists, bankers, white-collar workers, bureaucrats, shopkeepers, business owners, and technical workers.
    2. The Lower Class or proletariat, which also had huge diversity, totaled about 80 percent of the population,
      1. Top of the lower classes tried to emulate the upper classes’ Victorian behavior;
      2. Many different levels of lower classes with Labor aristocracy or those who could hire and fire at the top;
      3. Skilled workers, such as plumbers or masons, were next;
      4. Semi-skilled laborers, such as carpenter’s assistant;
      5. Day laborers did jobs for a day’s pay, such as loading ships;
      6. Domestic servants were low on the level of working class workers, but were relatively well paid, and many young women spent time as domestic servants.

Leisure Time

Leisure time centered increasingly on the family or small groups, concurrent with the development of activities and spaces to use that time. Some of the activities included:

Reforms Began in the Cities

The rapid growth of cities during the Industrial Revolution necessitated urban reform to improve conditions that had existed for centuries: poor sanitation and other services, overcrowded housing, inadequate transportation. Influenced by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), whose philosophy of utilitarianism emphasized “the greatest good for the greatest number,” city planners and urban reformers redesigned the many European cities and initiated a public health movement to improve urban life for all classes.

  1. The Chadwick Report of 1842 indicated that British citizens were living in filthy unsanitary conditions that were spreading disease.
    1. Calculated that installing sewage and water systems in British cities would be less expensive than exporting the filth by other means.
    2. Cholera epidemic broke out after its release, supporting its conclusions.
    3. Cholera used to create the Public Health Act of 1848.
  2. Paris redesigned between 1853 and 1870 by Georges Haussmann.
    1. First urban planning in Europe.
    2. Slums destroyed.
    3. Public transportation created.
    4. Zoning laws passed.
      1. Shopping districts at street level with housing above.
      2. Large town homes.
      3. Many large roundabouts.
      4. Parks and open spaces added.
    5. Sewage and water systems added.
    6. Soon followed by electricity.
    7. Broad avenues to prevent revolutionary barricades.
    8. Other cities such as Vienna followed the French example.
  3. Standard of living improved for most Europeans from the middle of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth.
  4. Disparities in wealth between the classes led to conflict between them.
    1. Encouraged the growth of political radicalism.
    2. Hierarchies of wealth and status existed among both the middle and working classes.
  5. Relegation of women to menial jobs or to child raising fostered a women’s rights movement.
    1. First wave of feminism emerged.
    2. Goals included gender equality in opportunity, legal and voting rights.