§ middle class

• The middle class which was a principal beneficiary of industrialization

• consisted of:

  • • small business owners

    • factory managers

    • engineers

    • accountants

    • skilled employees of large corporations

    • professionals such as teachers, physicians, and attorneys.

§ industrial working class

• masses of laborers who toiled in factories and mines constituted a new working class

• Less skilled than the artisans and crafts workers of earlier times, the new workers tended to machines or provided heavy labor for low wages

• Concentrated in mining and industrial centers, the working class began to influence political affairs by the mid-nineteenth century

  • • 1811-1816 -- Luddites: organized bands of English handicraft workers went on a rampage and destroyed textile machines that they blamed for their low wages and unemployment

    • 1832 - series of British parliamentary acts expanded the franchise for men by reducing property qualifications

    • 1840s -- the British Parliament began to pass laws regulating child labor and ultimately restricted or removed children from the industrial workforce.

    • 1881 -- England, education for children age five to ten became mandatory

§ middle-class women

Industrialization dramatically changed the terms of work for women

• Before Industrialization

  • • Agriculture and domestic manufacturing could easily accommodate women’s dual role as mothers and workers, since the workplace was either at home or nearby

• Post-Industrialization

• • • industry moved production from the home to the factory, married women were unable to work unless they left their homes and children in someone else’s care

    • Middle-class women generally did not work outside the home

      • • encouraged women to devote themselves to traditional pursuits such as the raising of children, the management of the home, and the preservation of traditional family values

        • industrialization effectively seated middle-class women in the domestic sphere.

        • industrialization brought stringent confinement to the domestic sphere and pressure to conform to new models of behavior revolving around their roles as mothers and wives

    • Working class women

      • • One of every three European women became a domestic servant at some point in her life

§ pollution

• widespread burning of fossil fuels, such as wood and coal, fouled the air with vast quantities of chemicals and particulate matter

• occupational diseases among some trades

  • • Chimney sweeps contracted cancer of the scrotum from hydrocarbon deposits found in chimney soot

• Effluents from factories and mills and an increasing amount of untreated sewage dirtied virtually every major river.

§ poverty

• family economies persisted as fathers, mothers, and children pooled their wages and sometimes even worked together in factories.

  • • Workers left their homes each day to labor an average of fourteen hours in factories

• about fifty million Europeans migrated to the western hemisphere during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

  • • 1840s-1850s -- millions of Irish migrants departed for the United States during the potato famines

    • 1890s--millions of Jews left the Russian empire

§ increased crime

• urban police forces were established to control workers’ public behavior

  • • prostitution, gambling, socializing at bars and pubs, and staged fights between dogs or roosters were all initially targeted

• England

  • • 1829 -- London's Metropolitan Police, Bobbys (also called "peelers", derived from the name of Sir Robert Peel, who established the force

• United States

  • • 1838 -- first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston

§ public health crises

• cholera and typhus -- tainted water supplies and unsanitary living conditions led to periodic epidemics

• dysentery and tuberculosis were also common maladies

• death rates commonly exceeded birthrates, and only the constant stream of new arrivals from the country kept cities growing

§ housing shortages

• slipshod construction of dwellings close to the mills and factories

• families occupied overcrowded tenements lacking in comfort and amenities

• cramped spaces in apartments obliged many to share the same bed, increasing the likelihood of incestuous relationships and the ease of disease transmission

§ insufficient infrastructure to accommodate urban growth

• few open spaces outside the buildings were usually home to herds of pigs living in their own dung or were depositories for pools of stagnant water and human waste.

• not until the end of the nineteenth century (1800s) the government authorities began tending to the problems of the early industrial cities

  • • improved municipal water supplies

    • expanded sewage systems

    • introduced building codes that outlawed the construction of rickety tenements to accommodate poorly paid workers

    • City authorities began to build parks and recreational facilities to make cities more livable