“Adam Smith argued that Individuals who were allowed to pursue rationally their own economic self-interest would benefit society as well as themselves” (Sherman & Salisbury, 2008, p.187). This argument helped industrial capitalism grow in the 19th and 20th centuries. Industrial capitalism affected the bourgeoisie and the working class. Although the bourgeoisie gained money and power, the working class suffered through poor working conditions.
The bourgeoisie, also known as the middle class, gained money and power as the industrial capitalism got stronger. They consisted of merchants, tradesmen, and professionals. In the middle class, the men worked outside the home to support their families, while the women stayed at home to take care of the house and children. Unfortunately, the lower class was unable to do the same. All the members of the family had to work to support each other. Dennis Sherman and Joyce Salisbury ( 2008) state in the textbook “The West In The World”, that the people of the working class had to work six days a week, twelve to sixteen hours a day, earning only a small amount of money ( p.277).
The bourgeoisie and the lower class regarded their children differently. The middle class treasured their children and gave them an education; therefore, they had the chance to become successful in their life. On the other hand, the working class cared for their children, but they also needed them to work as well. In the workplace, children were mistreated. For example, if the children did not perform well they were chained to the machines and whipped. “One governmental investigation of child labor described how children were rendered pale, weak and unhealthy from laboring for hours like little slaves” (...
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...ame middle class. These workers could enjoy the benefit of the bourgeoisie by providing their children with an education. In addition, wives could stay home and raise their children. I believe that having socialism as part of an economy is important. It helped to establish the minimum wage in the United States. Futhermore, it assisted in creating a better healthcare system. Therefore, a mixed economy of capitalism and socialism is great for our country.
Works Cited
Kilkenny, N. (2007). Reformation.org-it’s about time! Rome, Rockefeller, the U.S., and Standard Oil. Retrieved from http://www.reformation.org/rockefeller.html
PBS Home Programs. (n.d.). The rockefellers. Retrieved March 23, 2011 from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/sfeature/sf_8.html
Sherman, D., & Salisbury, J. (2008). The west in the world. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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After the Civil War, the United States had a total transformation. The country used to be mainly agricultural, but by the late 1800’s it became the world's leading industrial nation. Railroads and new inventions emerged rapidly along with big businesses. Huge corporations controlled the economy and a large amount of job opportunities emerged. Sadly, workers were mistreated and the workplace was a dangerous place to be, but that did not stop the average people from fighting for their rights. New political ideas came about and the United States turned upside down into a whole new era.
With this in mind, some perspective on the society of that time is vital. During this time the industrial revolution is taking place, a massive movement away from small farms, businesses operated out of homes, small shops on the corner, and so on. Instead, machines are mass-producing products in giant factories, with underpaid workers. No longer do people need to have individual skills. Now, it is only necessary that they can keep the machines going, and do small, repetitive work. The lower working class can no longer live a normal life following their own pursuits, but are lowered to working inhumane hours in these factories. This widens the gap between the upper and lower class-called bourgeois and proletariat-until they are essentially two different worlds. The bourgeois, a tiny portion of the population, has the majority of the wealth while the proletariat, t...
The Industrial Revolution was an age of great change and growth throughout the world. It represented change from 1760 and on. The movement started in Great Britain and impacted everything from manufacturing processes to the daily life of every average citizen. The social impacts of the Industrial Revolution greatly impacted the world for years to come.
A class system began to appear with a well-defined wealthy class, middle class, and working class. The wealthy class replaced gentry’s, and now you could rise to wealth instead of being born into it. In 1850 the wealthy class, which was 10% of the population, controlled 70% of the wealth. (Lecture 11). A distant middle class made up of lawyers, doctors, teachers, clerks, accountants, and other office employees, appeared during this time (Give Me Liberty 348). The middle class had women who stayed at home and manage the household and men were expected to work (Lecture 11). The middle class was often drawn to evangelical religions and were the driving force of the temperance movement (Lecture 11). The working class made up the rest of the class systems, these were the low wage, unskilled workers, mostly made up of immigrates and blacks (Lecture
First, during the industrial revolution, bad working conditions were almost for sure. So many people had been stuck with a dangerous job, and on top of that the way they worked was even worse. Even little kids had to work in these terrible conditions. Children were forced to work where adults had a hard time working, mostly things that were easier so that way it wasn’t too complicated to where they couldn’t do it or slowed production. People took pictures to show how children worked in industries and factories. Lewis Hine was one of the people who took pictures. In one of his photographs he captures how just kids are working on big machines, these kids are running around these factories barefoot and with no protective gear on (Hine, 1908). Most of these kids are working for money around machines most parents today wouldn’t let their 16yr old kid go near. Many of these bad working conditions caused people to lose an arm or a leg, literally! Because people would work on machines without safety equipment and get their hand or arm caught in a belt...
The Industrial Revolution is a period that started around the 1750s, and is a period we are currently living in; it is seen today as one of the most dramatic and impactful eras in human-history. Thanks to Britain’s start-up of the period, we now have a society in which progress is culturally embedded as a necessity to survive. This was developed by the revolutionary inventions of the period, along with the strive for innovation from other international countries.
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
The Industrial Revolution restructured the employer-employee relationship into an impersonal association exhibited by indifference to the quality of life of the worker. Children were especially exploited because they could be hired for lower wages and were made to work equally long days (Miller). Around the 1830s, children constituted about one-third of the labor in New England (Illinois Labor History Society). The conditions of workers as a whole necessitated action on behalf of the rights of laborers.
In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s big business began to boom. For the first time companies were developing large factories to manufacture their goods. Due to the new mechanics and cheap labor, factory owners could now produce their goods at a cheaper rate. As big businesses brought wealth and capitalism, it also widened the gap between the wealthy elite and the poor. One class in particular was horribly affected by the growth of big factories. This class was the poor working class. According to the article “Child Labor in the United States” written by Robert Whaples, a big proportion of the labour work force was made up of children: “In 1820 children aged 15 and under made up 23 percent of the manufacturing labor force of the industrializing
The growth of factories and all other associated businesses created numerous opportunities for those seeking to increase their wealth. It wasn’t just the Rockefellers and the Carnegies that benefitted from this period in American history. Many small businesses were also created as a result of the tremendous development of the cities. Income growth for all Americans saw significant increases. Prior to this period, most income was gained from farming and most farmers earned enough to sustain their homestead from year to year. Machinery soon replaced the hand tools and animal-powered farm implements which allowed the farmers to increase their crop yields per season as they were able to farm more land effectively. Higher yields equalled higher profits for farmers. Before the Civil War it took 61 hours of labor to produce an acre of wheat. By 1900, it took 3 hours, 19 minutes. Those who left the farms for the cities were greeted by factories and businesses in dire need of a work force. This also created many opportunities for jobs ‘in the middle’, those jobs between the elite monopolists who owned the businesses and the lower paid laborers who worked the assembly lines at the factories. The American middle class has its roots in the Industrial Revolution.
Imagine waking up at five in the morning to walk over a mile to a factory where you work until noon where you get a half hour break for lunch, then it’s back to work until nine or ten at night, when you are finally allowed to go home and you are only eight years old. Today that seems unimaginable, but during the early 19th century it was the everyday life of thousands of children whose ages range from as young as five until you died. During the Industrial Revolution many children were required to work dangerous jobs to help their families.
When discussing industrialization much of what is discussed occurs during the industrial revolution. Unlike other revolutions which mostly impacted borders, territorial expansions, change in political regimes, etc., the Industrial revolution was change of a different sort. Occurring mostly within America and Europe, the Industrial Revolution impacted society as a whole by introducing innovations which impact the way one generally lives on a day-to-day basis. New machinery, methods, and techniques of producing goods such as the way clothes are made, or the way waste is produced changed the way society functioned. Overall, the Industrial Revolution improved quality of life. Initially, however such rapid change also caused human suffering of a
The aims of this paper are to evaluate the effects the Industrial Revolution had on the wider world. This essay will be assessing the impact of technology and innovation on employment of the era, and how the factory system gave rise to socialism. In addition, it will be evaluating how the Industrial Revolution was the precursor to the phenomenon of consumerism and the resulting globalization.
Industrialization is the process in which a society transforms itself from an agricultural society, farming, to a society based on manufacturing goods and services, using machinery. The Industrial Revolution acquired a colossal impact on societies, making forceful changes in the lives of individuals, and changing the social classes drastically, but not all classes benefited equally. Those who were lucky enough to be business owners or had the opportunity to obtain a better profession, were able to enjoy leisure time and comfort in many ways. Those who were uneducated and were limited to unskilled labor work, remained at the bottom of the economic ladder. Furthermore, the two classes that benefited from the Industrial Revolution were the “upper” and “middle” class, leaving the “lower” class to be the only one who suffers. In other words, the rich got richer, the middle class grew, and the poor remained poor. The deeper the Industrial Revolution grew, the more powerful the “upper” and “middle” class became. To remain at the top of the social ladder, the upper class had to continue being the wealthiest and most powerful.