Industrial Revolution 1730 1900 In the early 1700

Industrial Revolution 1730 -1900 In the early 1700 s, almost everybody was a farmer, or worked on a farm. Cities had businesses and government, but little else. Most people did not leave their farm or village very much, they mostly used the goods that were available to them on the farm. If you’ll remember, things had been like this since the Neolithic times. All goods were hand made by the people themselves: clothes, tools, carriages, bedding and food.

Life was not at all like it is today. People did not go to a job and earn money and buy mass produced (things that are made by one company over and over ex: Ford cars) things, they had to trade for the materials and produce themselves. You had to trade for milk and make your own butter if you did not own your own cow for example. Much time was spent doing these activities day after day. In around 1730 in Europe, innovations (improvements on old things) in iron working, steam engines and tools began to show up. These ideas spread throughout Europe and the United States. These innovations would lay the groundwork for the world we see today economically and socially.

The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and the USA. There are many reasons for this: 1. ) Great Britain and the US had a good food supply and medicine. More and more people were living to a healthy old age. With more people and only a limited amount of land, new jobs had to be created. 2. ) In all of the wars that had been fought and the wars that were still to be fought, none of them took place on the Great Britain islands and minimal damage had been done to American cities. 3. ) With the Enlightenment and Renaissance thinkers and scientists, education had changed. People no longer just learned about the bible and the language of Latin. They learned science and mathematics and something called “Natural Philosophy” which explained the different substances and patterns on earth. With more people learning these things they were more able to make discoveries about things they could use like iron and steam.

4. ) There was a large class of businessmen, mostly because of the colonies Britain owned. In the later 1700’s, Adam Smith’s book The Wealth of Nations about the Free Market Economy made these businessmen search out new ideas to compete with old businesses. 5. ) Great Britain and the US had a great diverse amount of natural resources at their disposal. Coal, tin, iron on the British Islands, as well as cotton, sugar, timber and everything else from their colonies.

The Industrial Revolution Social Changes Prior to the Industrial Revolution, wealth had been primarily based on land owned. Almost all places in Europe and the US had a family, or subsistence economy. This means that they produce and consume everything on their own small farms. With the birth of the Industrial Revolution, there was a great new need for people to work in the factories. Places like America had just had a population increase and so their cities grew, also the US took in millions of immigrants to work in the factories.

This created a completely new social order and economy. Wealth was now based on position in factories and your pay. Also, those good at their jobs would get promotions and become part of the new middle class. The economy was completely turned around. Whereas people used to make all of their own goods, they now went to a job and earned money and then went and spent it on mass produced goods, this allowed people to have much more free time. Culture changed with the move to the cities as well. Farms were made larger and now were used to supply the people in the cities with food.

Drawbacks Since the Industrial Revolution spread so quickly, cities and politics did not have time to adjust. The output of goods, and the wealth created through Smith’s competition capitalism model were great, but there were many problems. 1. ) Pollution: So much coal was burned in cities that roofs and windows and streets were covered with the coal smoke that had come back down from the air. This made cities ugly and many had lifelong health problems. 2. ) Child Labor: Parents were paid so poorly that they needed their kids to work too. These jobs were often dangerous and underpaid. Also there were no mandatory school laws so kids had to work very long hours.

3. ) Work Accidents: Many of the machines were highly dangerous. The gears and sharp edges were all sticking out and it was very easy to lose an arm or a leg, if not your life while working. 4. ) Unfair: Since the industries were new, there were no laws to say what bosses could and could not due. Bosses would find the people that would work for the cheapest the longest. If one of those people got hurt at work, the boss would fire them and hire someone else. 5. ) Cities Conditions: The cities became overcrowded with the working poor of the Industries. They lived in things called tenements in which they had to live among open sewers and disease. The tenements were rooms just large enough for people sleep in. Life was very hard on those that worked in the industries. It would be over 150 years before things adjusted and they were treated fairly.

The Industrial Revolution Tenements

The European Industrial Revolution Child Labor

The Industrial Revolution Factory Conditions

1. ) Describe the life of a worker in the early part of the Industrial Revolution.

• 2. ) Was the way millions of people were treated for so long ok to have the type of life we have now? Why, why not? Explain.

Adjustments of the Industrial Revolution The problems of the Industrial Revolution raged on from the 1700’s, 1800’s and into the 1900’s. The primary problems were the working conditions of those in factories, child labor, and the conditions of cities. While factory, natural resource and transportation owners had gotten more and more wealthy and powerful, those that worked in the factories got poorer and conditions worsened. Cities got larger and so did factories, soon, there were more people in cities than on farms for the first time in history.

Labor Unions Bosses would not listen to their worker’s complaints - they would simply fire the worker. The workers were powerless by themselves, they had to band together to get power. In the mid 1800’s labor unions began appearing. For example, all of the people in the factory would join together and make demands: raise, 8 hour work day, safer conditions. If the demands were not met, they would go on strike and leave the owner without a workforce and unable to make any money. The owner would then have two options: 1. ) Meet their demands or 2. ) Fire everyone and hire all brand new workers. This often caused violence between new and old workers. Also, bosses would kill or fire people trying to organize the labor union.

Labor Unions made things slightly more equal, but not all places unionized. Also, most governments were still on the business owners’ side. This was one key adjustment to labor during the Industrial Revolution.

Communism

Communism In 1848 a German living in England named Karl Marx saw the type of life the people of the Industrial Revolution were living in London, England. He wrote a book called the Communist Manifesto. In the book he saw that if the Industrial Revolution continued on this pace, people not of a certain country, but all over the world would rise up and take over the world. Mostly, he said, because so few had all of the money and power, and so many had nothing to show for their extremely hard work and hard life. . He said this worldwide revolution would control the world and everyone would share things equally, there would be no rich and no poor. No matter what your job was, you would make the same as everybody else. The worker would be just as equal as the boss.

The governments and business owners of the world saw Marx’s book as a serious threat. They saw Labor Unions as the beginning of Marx’s prophecy. At this point the governments began to pass laws giving right’s to workers and limiting the power of business owners. This was a necessary adjustment to the course of economics and labor right’s in the Industrial Revolution.

1. ) Were labor unions inevitable? Were they the necessary first step? Explain. 2. ) What did Karl Marx say was going to happen? 3. ) What if Karl Marx had never written his book, do you think his prophecy would have come true? 4. ) Even though Karl Marx was a strict critic of Free Market Economy would you agree he did a lot to make it better? Explain. 5. ) Do you agree with the Communist government, yes or no? Explain. Also, do you think the world would be a better place if it was all communist?

Communism VS Capitalism

Meiji Restoration Since 1603 the Shogun had ruled Japan. This was known as the Tokugawa Shogunate, named after it’s founder Tokugawa Ieyasu. The Shogun, Daimyo and Samurai had the most power, the nobles and emperor had little real power. Throughout the Shogun period in Japan, they practiced isolationism, this means that they did not deal with other nations, and kept to themselves.

Meiji In 1853, steam warships arrived in Edo (Tokyo). They were part of the American Navy led by Commodore Matthew Perry. The people of Japan had never seen such ships - - they had not taken part at all in the Industrial Revolution because of their isolationist ways. Perry demanded that Japan trade with the United States. He offered the Japanese and unfair trade deal, and the Japanese at first said that they would not accept. Perry warned the Japanese that there were many more ships like the ones he had brought, and it would be unwise to resist the United States. The Japanese agreed and soon other nations were forcing Japan to trade in unfair contracts as well.

Meiji In 1868, the young Meiji Emperor moved to Tokyo and ended the now weak Shogunate. He was restored to power. His new message to the people of Japan was this: The only way to get rid of these unfair foreigners is to modernize economically and militarily. He rapidly made changes to Japan. He ended the old social structures. The group that was hurt the worst were the Samurai, they now had no power and the emperor considered them useless. Also, all daimyo and nobles lost their land it was given to the people.

Meiji The government was made into a constitutional democracy like England. The education system was modeled after the Germans. The Navy was modeled after the United States. By the 1890’s, just twenty years after he began, the emperor had completely modernized. Not only had they become the most powerful country in Asia, but in the world. Between 1890 and 1912 they defeated the Chinese, Russians and Koreans and took their land resources. The Japanese were now the ones making unfair deals with the Europeans because of how powerful their navy was in the Pacific. They were a true world power. Never before or since has a nation modernized so quickly as the Japanese throughout the Meiji Restoration. In just 20 years they went from a weak poor nation to a world power.