A Beginner's Guide to the Industrial Revolution: Part Five

In the fifth and final part of A Beginner's Guide to the Industrial Revolution, we will examine how changes in economics meant changes in society. Many important societal innovations came about during the nineteenth century which we still enjoy today.

A basic effect of the Industrial Revolution on society was movement of people. As I have discussed in previous sections, there was a mass migration of peoples out of rural areas that no longer needed their labor on farms, into the towns and cities. This movement created a number of strains on municipalities. More people meant a greater need for cheap housing, which unfortunately started out in most places as run-down tenant housing and shanties. Sanitation also needed to be improved with more people in the cities. Sewers were constructed to deal with the problem of waste, and ways were explored to purify water in pipes throughout the city. In addition, improvements of transportation not only increased movement within countries, but also outside of those countries. Immigration increased to a large extent during the nineteenth century, especially in the United States, when Europeans would seek opportunity across the Atlantic on newly designed steamships.

As the standard of living rose within the populations of newly industrialized countries, so to did spending power. With more goods available on the market due to factory production, people could begin to use their hard-earned wages on better food, clothes, and entertainment. As more and more people had better diets and accommodations, the mortality rate began to every so slowly decrease over the course of the nineteenth century. Improvements in medicine accompanied the rise of the chemical industry in the United States and Germany. Joseph Lister's antiseptics and pain-relieving aspirin were able to be produced in large quantities, thus benefiting a larger section of the population.

The middle class was on the rise during the Industrial Revolution. Because of the increasingly complex nature of capitalist-based business enterprise, more and more skilled laborers were need to perform specific tasks. Clerks and bookkeepers needed to keep records of transactions, lawyers were needed to settle business disputes, and managers were needed to run factories. These people did not make as much money as factory owners, but they still had enough money for a number of comforts. The suburbs became increasingly important during the Industrial Revolution. Middle class workers who did not want to live in the crowded and dirty cities could move out to the peripheral regions since they had money for housing and transportation.

Because of the rise in standard of living and the increase in wage-labor, opportunities for recreation, leisure, and entertainment increased during the Industrial Revolution. More and more people were able to see theater productions, vaudeville acts, and eventually movies in the twentieth century. Furthermore, cities started to implement plans for public attractions such as parks and landmarks. Newspapers were also on the rise. Better printing techniques allowed companies to sell more and more papers to appeal to a wide audience. Penny papers were favorites of the working class.

The Industrial Revolution was a time of revolutionary advances in social theory and economic theory. Adam Smith is known as the "father of modern capitalism" because of his groundbreaking work in economics in the eighteenth century. Smith's book "The Wealth of Nations" outlined his belief that economies would benefit most if the natural laws of supply, demand, and competition could be left untouched by government intervention. This theory came to be known commonly as "laissez-faire" or "hands off," in which government regulated industry very sparsely. Smith believed that this system would benefit everyone in society. However, there were other social thinkers of the Industrial Revolution that held a far more dim view of the economic changes that were taking place. Thomas Malthus believed that population growth would outstrip available resources, much like too many rabbits can outstrip the available vegetation. Although Malthus' theory would largely be discredited due to the increasingly broad nature of the global economy, his warning of population growth is echoed today in our exponentially-growing world of humans. Another thinker named David Ricardo believed that employers would set wages as low as they possibly could: low enough to maximize profits but high enough to keep employees. He called this theory the "iron law of wages."

Perhaps the most important social thinker during the Industrial Revolution was Karl Marx. Marx was very concerned about the situation of the working class and how it was being exploited by factory owners and the middle class. Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels collaborated on "The Communist Manifesto" in the 1860s, which provided the basis for what we know today as communism. Marx believed that history was driven by class conflict, and that eventually capitalism would reach a point in which the proletariat (working class) would rise up against and violently overthrow the bourgeoisie (middle and upper class). Marx's theories would have far-reaching effects and influence a number of twentieth-century revolts, most notably the Russian Revolution.

Although the social theory coming out of the Industrial Revolution is interesting, it pales in comparison with what was actually happening with the main subject of these theories, the workers. Workers had long been oppressed by factory owners in the absence of government intervention, but soon found a way of striking back. Workers associations known as trade unions became increasingly common in Britain, Germany, and the United States in the nineteenth century. These unions worked on the principle of strength in numbers and were able to organize strikes and demonstrations in order to petition their employers for better wages. Often this brought them into conflict with upper management who would strike back using scabs to fill strikers' jobs and blacklists to prevent strikers from finding work elsewhere. Other times though, the two sides would meet and reach a compromise on certain issues like wages and work hours in a process known as collective bargaining. Organized labor was a huge stride for the oppressed working class in the nineteenth century.

Finally, art and aesthetics were changing. An important movement of art, literature, and music emerged in the nineteenth century called Romanticism. The Romantic Movement was a reaction to what many thought was the cold, reason-oriented pragmatism of the Enlightenment. The new movement emphasized emotion as a driving force and looked to historical heroism and idyllic settings for its subject matter. Heroism and bravery were hallmarks of this very important artistic movment.

So, there you have the end to A Beginner's Guide to the Industrial Revolution. These five parts have surveyed a small chunk of this very fascinating trend in human history. Perhaps this will be enough to convince you to seek more knowledge on the subject and delve into the tantalizing world of industrial history.