Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution
Chapter 5 section 3
I. People Move to New Industrial Cities
A. The Industrial Revolution brought great riches to entrepreneurs, but
great poverty and harsh living conditions to people working.
B. Changes in farming, soaring population growth, and an ever-increasing
demands for workers lead masses of people to migrate from farms to
cities.
II. New Social Classes Emerge
A. The Industrial Revolution created two new classes of people: a middle
class of entrepreneurs whose lifestyles were fairly comfortable and an
industrial working class.
B. Industrial Middle Class
1. Entrepreneurs (middle class) had running water, spaces homes, well-
furnished on paved streets.
2. The Middle class took pride in their hard work and determination to get ahead.
3. Only a few had sympathy for the poor.
C. The Industrial Working Class
1. The vast number of poor struggled to survive in foul-smelling slums.
2. Most packed into tenements, or multistory buildings divided into
apartments without running water or sanitation systems.
3. This led to the spread of disease, such as cholera.
D. Workers Stage Futile Protest
E. Workers Find Comfort in Religion
1. Methodism became a solace to many of the workers which was
established by John Wesley.
2. John Wesley stressed the need for personal sense of faith and
encouraged his followers to improve themselves by adopting sober,
moral ways.
III. Life in the Factories and Mines
A. Factory workers face harsh conditions
1. Workers faced a ridged schedule working shifts lasting 12 to 16 hours
and breaks were only given with permission from the owners.
2. Exhausted workers suffered accidents from machines that had no
safety devices.
3. Workers that became sick lost their jobs.
B. Women in the work force
1. Majority of the workers were women because they were paid half than
what men were paid.
2. Women worked in the factories and then went home to feed and clothe
their families and take care of the family.
C. Miners faced worse conditions
1. They worked in darkness, coal dust destroyed their lungs, and there
were always the dangers of explosion, flooding, and collapsing
tunnels.
D. Children having dangerous jobs
1. Factories and mines hired many boys and girls because they were
small and could crawl under machinery, sit all day opening vents, or
hauled coal carts.
2. Child labor laws called “factory acts” were passed to reduce the work
day to twelve hours and removed children under the age of nine from
working.
IV. Results of Industrialization
A. Eventually, labor unions won bargaining rights with employers for
better working conditions, hours, and wages.
B. Positive effects were that as demand for goods increased, new factories
opened which created more jobs.
1. Wages rose, and the cost of railroad travel fell making so people could
travel to visit family in other towns.
Chapter 5 section 4 New Ways of Thinking
Question: What new ideas about economics and society were fostered as a result of the Industrial Revolution?
I. Laissez-Faire Economics
A. Adam Smith and free enterprise
1. Adam Smith was the writer of The Wealth of Nations, in which he
wrote that government should not interfere in free operation of the
economy.
2. The free market would produce more goods at lower prices making
them affordable to everyone.
B. Thomas Malthus Holds Bleak View
1. Thomas predicted that population would outpace the food supply and
he urged families to have fewer children.
2. The only checks on population growth, were nature’s natural methods
of war, disease, and famine
3. He was wrong.
C. Ricardo Shares View
1. He had the same view as Malthus in that they felt that individuals
should be left to improve their lot through thrift, hard work, and
limiting the size of their families.
D. Ricardo’s “Iron Law Wages” stated that wage increases will not raise
the standard of living of poor families. It would only cover the
necessities.
(What did Adam Smith believe? What did Holds and Shares believe? What was is “Iron Law Wages?)
II. Utilitarians For Limited Government
A. Jeremy Bentham was advocating Utilitarianism, or the idea that the
goal of society should be “the greatest happiness for the greatest
number of its citizens.
1. All laws or actions should be judge by their “utility” or did they
provide more pleasure or happiness.
2. John Stuart Mill believed in individual freedom and wanted the
government to improve the hard lives of the working class.
3. Mill believed that government should intervene to prevent harm to its
citizens, such as abuse workers.
(What did John Stuart Mill see as the proper role of government?)
III. Socialist Thoughts Emerges
A. Under socialism, the people as whole rather than private individuals
would own and operate the means of production, which are the farms,
factories, railways, and other large businesses.
B. Are Utopians Dreams?
1. Robert Owen set up a Utopian society in New Lanark in which all
work was shared and all property was owned in common.
2. Early socialists believed that all property and all means of production
should be owned by the people as a whole.
(What is socialism? What did early socialists believe?)
IV. Karl Marx Explains Class Struggles
A. Karl Marx was a German philosopher who with Friedrich Engels
published The Communist Manifesto.
1. According to Communism, an inevitable struggle between social classes
would lead to a classless society where all means of production would
be owned by the community
2. In industrialized Europe, Marx stated that the “haves” were the
bourgeoisie, and the “have-nots” were the proletariat or the working
class.
3. According to Marx, the modern class struggle pitted the bourgeoisie
against the proletariat and they would triumph.
4. Marx predicted that the proletariat would overthrow capitalism though
revolution, take control of the means of production, and create a
classless society.
5. Communism will become a governmental force against capitalism.
(What did Marx predict was the future of the proletariat?)
V. Marxism in the Future
A. In the late 1800s, Russian socialists embraced Marxism, and the
Russian Revolution of the 1917 set up a communist-inspired
government.
B. In time, nationalism won out over working-class loyalty.
1. People felt stronger ties to their own countries.
C. Marx was wrong about international revolution, and by the 1990s, few
communist countries remained.
(How accurate did Marx’s predictions about social classes prove to be?)