Chapter 21 Flashcards
Who strengthened the wealth and size of the middle class?
Men women and families of factory owners.
Class-consciousness
An individual’s sense of class differentiation
Where did early industrialists come from?
Many different backgrounds, Harkort from well established merchant families, Watt, Wedgwood, and Cockerill from humble beginnings.
Luddities
Group of handicraft workers who attacked whole factories in northern England in 1812 and after smashing the new machines that they believed were putting them out of work.
Factory Act of 1833
English law that led to a sharp decline in the employment of children by limiting the hours that children over age nine could work and requiring younger children to attend factory-run elementary schools
Separate Spheres
A gender division of labor with the wife at home as mother and homemaker and the husband as the wage earner
Mines Act of 1842
English law prohibiting underground work for all women and girls as well as for boys under ten
Combination Acts
English laws passed in 1799 that outlawed unions and strikes favoring capitalist business people over skilled artisans. Bitterly resented and widely disregarded by many craft guilds, the acts were repealed by Parliament in 1812
William Blake
(1757-1827) called early factories “satanic mills” and protested against the hardness of life faced by the poor of London
William Wordsworth
(1770-1850) lamented the destruction of rural ways of life and pollution of land and water
Robert Owen
(1771-1858) stated that “very strong facts” supported that employing children under the age of ten was “injurious to the children, and not beneficial to the proprietors.”
What did the majority of workers think about life in factories?
Official Edwin Chadwick, and Andrew Ure wrote about how conditions of factories were not bad and actually increased the amount of luxury one could afford but the majority agreed that conditions in factories were harsh.
What were the first factories?
Cotton Mills, beginning in the 1770’s along rivers and streams, they were often located in sparsely populated areas
How was working with machines?
People often had to keep up with the machine’s fast tempo and were often punished for making mistakes. Children and adolescents could pay for wasted materials out of their own pay, which were unusual consequences for such infractions.
What was the sexual division of labor like in the Industrial Revolution?
The family working as one unit carried on into the first factories but by the 1850’s new ideas were emerging about sexual division and child labor and the man became the primary wage earner.
