Chapter 17 MUB (Socialist movement)

Transcontinental Migration

·  Nineteenth to early twentieth century, rapid population growth drove Europeans to Americas

o   50 million crossed Atlantic

o   British migrants to avoid urban slums, Irish to avoid potato famines of 1840s, Jews to abandon tsarist persecution

·  Many entered workforce of United States

o   Aided rapid U.S. industrialization

New Social Classes

·  Economic factors resulted I decline of slavery

· Capitalist wealth brought new status to non-aristocratic families

·  New urban classes of professionals

·  Blue-collar factory workers

·  Urban environment also created new types of diversions

o   Sporting events

Women at Home and Work

·  Agriculture and domestic manufacturing had easily accommodated women

·  Industrialization changed terms of work

·  Working-class women were expected to work until marriage, often after marriage as well

o   Domestic service

o   Labor-saving devices replaced women’s industrial jobs

·  Middle-class women confined to domestic sphere

o   Expected to conform to new models of behavior

Child Labor

·  Easily exploited, abused

·  1840s, British Parliament began to pass child labor laws

·  Moral concerns removed children from labor pool

·  Also, need for educated workforce

The Socialist Challenge

·  Socialism first used in context of utopian socialists Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Robert Owen (1771-1858)

·  Opposed competition of market system

·  Attempted to create small model communities

·  Inspirational for larger social units

Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)

·  Two major classes:

o   Capitalists, who control means of production

o   Proletariat, wageworkers who sell labor

·  Exploitative nature of capitalist system

·  Religion: “opiate of the masses”

·  The Communist Manifesto

o   Argued for an overthrow of capitalists in favor of a “dictatorship of the proletariat”

Social Reform and Trade Unions

·  Socialism had major impacts on 19^th century reformers

o   Addressed issues of medical insurance, unemployment compensation, retirement benefits

·  Trade unions formed for collective bargaining

o   Strikes to address workers’ concerns

Global Effects of Industrialization

·  Geographic division of labor

o   Some peoples produced raw materials

o   Others processed and consumed them

·  Uneven economic development

·  Developing export dependencies of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, south and southeast Asia

o   Low wages, small domestic markets