5.9 Flashcards
How the I.R. affected commoners
Industrialization effects on cities
Migration to urban areas from rural farmlands, because farming became more mechanic and less workers were needed.
- Population growth in urban cities
- Cities unprepared for the sudden influx of residents, and attempted to accommodate growing populations with hastily constructed buildings like tenements
Tenements
Large living complexes occupied by the working class in urban industrial cities, because they were paid low wages and unable to afford better living conditions. Extremely close quarters, poorly ventilated, no plumbing, led to the rapid spread of disease like cholera and typhoid. Construction often sponsored by factory workers who’s workers needed living quarters. Human waste dumped into streets or into rivers/water supplies or near it due to lack of plumbing; important to note that germ theory was not well understood at this time, but once the connection between contaminated water supply and disease spreading was made, cities made remedial efforts such as improved plumbing and more efficient trash management. Multiple families would often live together in these close quarters.
Cholera
Spread through drinking contaminated water, symptoms included severe diarrhea and vomiting
Middle class in the Industrial Revolution
Grew substantially, experienced an increase in disposable income, which allowed them better access to education. This led to middle-class, white-collar workers, and factory owners/factory managers became the top of the social hierarchy. Led to a growing consumer culture, advertising culture, leisure
Industrial Revolution effect on families
Prior to I.R.: most people lived and worked on family farms.
After I.R.: families worked apart from each other all day: the fracturing of the family unit
Women in the Industrial Revolution
Working class: often held factory jobs, because their husbands did not make enough money to sustain their families. Children often worked from the age of 5 in factories and coal mines.
Middle class: wives of white-collar workers often did not have jobs and instead were a part of the emerging Cult of Domesticity. Their husbands made enough money to sustain a family.
Cult of Domesticity
A lifestyle that grew in prominence in industrialized nations which promoted and honored women staying home as a housewife who raised a family, and kept the house comfortable to her husband’s liking. Honored for raising future contributors to society.
Opposition to doctrines like the Cult of Domesticity
Women who believed they had more value than childbearing and caring for their husbands.
Seneca Falls Convention, 1848, U.S.: Declaration of Sentiments, modeled off of the Declaration of Independence but inclusive of women
Environmental effects of the Industrial Revolution
Fossil fuels were the foundation of industrialization: coal, petroleum
Smog: combo of smoke and fog, caused respiratory complications for residents in smoggy cities
Polluted water supplies with human and industrial waste
- Ex: London’s River Thames: water level declined due to drought, exposed human waste and produced stench that lingered over the city
Spread of cholera, typhoid and bacterial infections
New social classes as a result of industrialization
1) Industrial working class: factory workers and miners, made up of rural farmers who migrated as a result of mechanized farming that decreased agricultural jobs available. Viewed by factory owners as interchangeable and low-value due to the jobs not requiring skilled labor.
- bad living conditions: tenements
- spread of disease
- bad working conditions, loss of limbs, dangerous factory and mining work environments
- higher average wages than what they got working as rural farmers
2) Middle class: Factory owners, managers, white-collar workers, doctors, lawyers, teachers
- accumulated wealth, could afford manufactured products which led to increased standard of living and quality of life
- could sometimes use their money towards upwards social mobility into the aristocracy
- believed that they rose from the working class based on merit and that the working class’ low societal orientation was fault of their own, due to laziness
3) Industrialists: owners of industrial corporations
- accumulated massive amounts of wealth through their industrial enterprises
- wealth let them hold more power than what landed aristocracy tended to wield throughout history
- highest social class
Industrial Revolution’s effect on skilled labor
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most jobs required skill
- Farmers knew how to tend livestock, plow fields
- Artisans could delicately carve and assemble wood
After the Industrial Revolution, machines were able to replicate the production of precise, good quality products, therefore making skilled labor unnecessary.
Main Industrial Problems
1) Pollution: coal smoke from factories, steamships covered towns with soot, produced smog, respiratory illnesses and health problems abounded
2) Housing shortages: tenements, because more people were migrating to urban areas than present housing complexes could sustain
3) Increased crime rates: poor populations concentrated in small areas led to an increase in theft (of necessities to survive especially), violent crime (associated to rapid increase in alcoholism)
