AP WH 5.9 Society and the Industrial Age

affected social class hierarchies

• industrial working class

  • made up of factory workers and miners

  • composed of rural people who moved to industrial urban areas in search of work because of the increased mechanization of farming

  • prior to the Industrial Revolution, most workers possessed some kind of skill that their work required

    • during the Industrial Revolution, the working class worked in factories, performing unskilled labor

      • machines were the precision instruments

      • working class was viewed by factory managers as interchangeable since they could easily be replaced with another unskilled worker

  • working class did benefit in some ways from the rise of industry

    • their wages were higher than in many of the rural places they came from

  • there were steep costs as well

    • danger of factory work and mining

    • crowded living conditions and shoddy tenements

    • spread of disease

    • mind-numbing repetitive work

• middle class

  • benefitted the most from industrialization

  • includes white-collar workers such as wealthy factory owners and managers, lawyers, doctors, and teachers

  • could afford manufactured products that improved their quality of life and some in the upper middle class could buy their way into aristocracy

  • believed that they had risen from the working class who they perceived as lazy

• industrialists

  • at the top of the social hierarchy

  • the wealth they gained by owning industrial corporations allowed them to become more powerful than the traditional landed aristocracy

industrialization had a profound effect on women depending on their class

• working class women

  • worked wage-earning jobs in factories since, if they were married, their husbands’ wages were not sufficient to sustain a family

  • men, women, and children in the industrial environment were often split up and worked in different factories or mines

    • while children were still working, they were doing so apart from the traditional context of the family

    • children as young as 5 worked wage jobs in factories and mines

    • some governments passed laws to remove children from the difficulties of industrial work and into schools

• middle class women

  • husbands earned enough money to support the family

  • in general, they did not work

  • stayed at home in their ‘separate sphere’

    • middle class women were increasingly defined by their domestic roles as homemakers whose main task was to create a safe haven for their working men and a nurturing environment in which to raise children

challenges of industrialization

• the rapid pace of industrialization meant that industrial cities grew far too quickly for their infrastructure to keep up

  • pollution

    • coal smoke from factories and steamships often resulted in a toxic fog that lingered over cities causing health problems

    • industrial and human waste was often dumped into nearby rivers which polluted the drinking water

  • housing shortages

    • because more people were flooding into cities than there were places to live

    • hastily constructed tenements were built to house them

      • in some cases, several families lived together in small apartments with poor sanitation and ventilation

      • created conditions for the rapid spread of diseases like typhoid and cholera which sickened and killed many in the working class

  • increased crime

    • with so many poor and working class people concentrated into urban areas, there was significant rise in crimes

      • theft was often because people stole in order to survive

      • violent crime was often associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption