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Industrial revolution and its effects
Introduction - Video : Industrial Revolution, turning points in History (link to youtube)
1. Economic change
Source 1
There was, first, Old England, the country of the cathedrals and minsters1 and manor houses, of Parson2 and Squire3, guide-book and quaint4 highways and byways England.
Then, there is the industrial England of coal, iron, steel, cotton, wool, railways, mills, foundries, warehouses, railway stations, mill chimneys, slums, a cynically devastated country-side, sooty5 dismal5 little towns and still fortress-like cities. This England makes up a larger part of the Midlands and the North and exists everywhere.
The third England, I concluded, was the new post-war England, belonging far more to the age itself than to this particular island. America, I supposed, was its real birthplace. This is the England of arterial and by-pass roads, of filling-stations and factories that look like exhibition buildings, of giant cinemas and dance halls and cafés, bungalows with tiny garages, cocktail bars, Woolworth's, motor-coaches, factory girls looking like actresses. It is a large-scale, mass-production job, with cut prices.
J. B. Priestley, English journey, London, 1934.
1large churches - 2Anglican priest - 3local landowner - 4picturesque, charming - 5black, gloomy
Use the video and source 1 to complete the tableOld England
First Industrial Revolution
Second Industrial Revolution
Time
Main activity
Energy / power
Industries
Means of transport
Place of living
2. Social change Source 2 Jean-André RIXENS, Foundry workers, 1887
Source 3 At what time, in the brisk time, did those girls go to the mill ? - In the brisk time, for about six weeks, they have gone at three o’clock in the morning, and ended at ten or nearly half-past at night. What interval for rest and refreshment were allowed during those nineteen hours of labour ? - Breakfast a quarter of an hour, dinner half an hour and drinking a quarter of an hour. Had you not great difficulty in awakening your children to this excessive labour ? - Yes. In the early time we had to take them up asleep and shake them when we got them on the floor to dress them, before we could get them off to their work ; but not so in the common hours. What time did you get them Up in the morning? - In general at two o’clock to dress them. So that they had not above four hours of sleep at this time? - No, they had not. The usual hours of work were from six in the morning to half-past eight at night ? - Yes. Did this excessive term of labour cause much cruelty also? - Yes, with being so much fatigued the strap was frequently used. Evidence given by Samuel Coulson to theParliamentary Commission on Factory Children’s Labour, 1831
Source 4Workers' flat, Berlin 1910
Main characteristics of social classes
Peasantry
Working-class
Middle-class
Bourgeoisie
Aristocracy
Sketch : Parliamentary Commission
3. Political reactions to economic and social change
Source 5
Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can in his local situation judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776 What is Adam Smith's statement ? What should be the role of the State ? Scenario Imagine that you live in a society that requires all kids between age 5 and 20 to go boarding school. Kids have no choice on matters : if you refuse to attend school, you will be forcibly sent to prison. You must attend school 16 hours a day, and the rest of your time is reserved for sleeping. At school, you are required to write essays and solve equations all day. You are given some food throughout the day, but you are always hungry. You will suffer from malnutrition, poor eyesight from reading and writing, permanent claw-like hands because of excessive pencil-gripping, and numerous other ailments. The teachers at your school don't teach. All they do is collect student work and sell it to book publishers. Teachers make a lot of money from these books, over 0.000 per year, and have all the free time they want. Discuss the following questions :1. Could teachers continue to make money without thousands of students ?2. Describe your quality of life as a student.3. One of your friends is talking about overthrowing the teachers. What do you think ? How would you divide up the work and money ? Source 6
The history of all existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society, has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature : it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other - bourgeoisie and proletariat. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite! Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
Source 7
PREFACE It has been maintained in a certain quarter that the practical deductions from my treatises would be the abandonment of the conquest of political power by the proletariat organised politically and economically. That is quite an arbitrary deduction, the accuracy of which I altogether deny. I set myself against the notion that we have to expect shortly a collapse of the bourgeois economy, and that social democracy should be induced by the prospect of such an imminent, great, social catastrophe to adapt its tactics to that assumption. That I maintain most emphatically.The adherents of this theory of a catastrophe, base it especially on the conclusions of the Communist Manifesto. This is a mistake in every respect. The theory which the Communist Manifesto sets forth of the evolution of modern society was correct as far as it characterised the general tendencies of that evolution. But it was mistaken in several special deductions, above all in the estimate of the time the evolution would take. (…)Social conditions have not developed to such an acute opposition of things and classes as is depicted in the Manifesto. (…)The number of members of the possessing classes is today not smaller but larger. The enormous increase of social wealth is not accompanied by a decreasing number of large capitalists but by an increasing number of capitalists of all degrees. The middle classes change their character but they do not disappear from the social scale.The concentration in productive industry is not being accomplished even today in all its departments with equal thoroughness and at an equal rate. In a great many branches of production it certainly justifies the forecasts of the socialist critic of society ; but in other branches it lags even today behind them. The process of concentration in agriculture proceeds still more slowly. Trade statistics show an extraordinarily, elaborated graduation of enterprises in regard to size. (…) Factory legislation, the democratising of local government, (…) the freeing of trade unions (…) all these characterise this phase of the evolution. But the more the political organisations of modern nations are democratised the more the needs and opportunities of great political catastrophes are diminished.Edouard Bernstein, Evolutionnary Socialism, 1909.
What is the name of the doctrine supported by Bernstein ? What are its objectives and means of action ? To what extent was he opposed to Marxism ? Did the economic and social evolution give him reason ?
Source 8 Jean-Baptiste Godin, Social Palace at Guise, 1871
Describe the structure. What are the living conditions in the Social Palace (advantages/drawbacks) ? Source 9 : Catechism, end 19th century. 
working class, mill, landowner, income/outcom, salary, wages, slums, union, trade, realistic, coal, working time, strap, craftsman, power, factory, workshop, purchase power, lower class, upper class, middle class, peasantry, worker, nobility, steam, steamboat, inventors, innovation, workday, abuses, emerge, refined, social ladder, terraced houses, manor houses, textile industry, fields, mine field, primary/secondary/tertiary sector, social discount, social spatial segregation, district, suburbs,
Tags : that, but, what, not, society
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