Industrial Social Changes Key Terms

“working class”

term first used in the late 1830’s to describe people that came from near and far to work in cities as factory workers, porters, builders, and domestic servant. They were all wage laborers.

“middle class”

wealthy factory owners, sometimes referred to as cotton lords, the so-called “new-nobility” that treated factory workers like old serfs.

Robert Owen

social reformer, self-made cotton manufacturer, combined strict discipline with concern for health, safety, and work hours. 1834 was involve with an organization that helped create one of the largest early unions the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union.

Factory Acts

English laws passed from 1802 to 1833 that limited the workday of child laborers and set minimum hygiene and safety requirements.

Mines Act of 1842

English law prohibiting underground work for all women and girls as well as for boys under ten.

class consciousness

Awareness of belonging to a distinct social economic class whose interests might conflict with those of other classes.

William Blake

Romantic Poet, called early factories “satanic mills” and protested against the hard life of the London poor. Critic of the industrial revolution.

William Wordsworth

Romantic Poet, talked about the destruction of rural lifestyle and the pollution of the land and water. Critic of the industrial revolution.

Luddites

Group of handicraft worker who attacked factories in northern England in 1811 and later, smashing the new machines that they believed were putting them out of work.

Friedrich Engels

Pessimistic view of Malthus and Ricardo reinforced by him, future revolutionary and colleague of Karl Marx, Prussian, wrote The condition of the Working Class in England, blamed industrial capitalism for causing the quality of life for workers to be worse than those of cottage workers and agricultural laborers of old poverty (before the industrial revolution).

Condition of the Working Class

written by Friedrich Engels, it was an attack on the capitalist classes, he wrote the middle class basically committed mass murder wholesale robber, and a lot of other crimes basically meaning that capitalism exploited people and increased worker poverty.

Karl Marx

German intellectual, took ideas od socialism and made them modern, created Marxist socialism aka Marxism which basically called for a working-class revolution to overthrow capitalist society and establish a communist state.

Combination Acts

British laws passed in 1799 that outlaws unions and strikes, favoring capitalist business people over skilled artisans. Bitterly resented and widely disregarded by man craft guilds, the acts were repealed by Parliament in 1824.

Chartists

England, the people’s charter of 1838 and the movement pressed for reform, wanted universal male suffrage in the face of economic distress of the working class, wanted complete political democracy and rule by the common people.