Industrial Revolution Flashcards
Describe the problems of housing for low wage workers during the Industrial revolution.
No building codes
No national free education
Very poor police protection
Streets had no drains and were piled high with waste
Widespread disease
Poor conditions were due to the fast pace of population growth in cities and government’s unwillingness to address the problems
Describe the working conditions of low wage workers
12 hour work days, 6 days a week
Paid 1 to 5 dollars per day
Incredibly dangerous
No minimum wage, worker’s compensation, or overtime
Business allowed to regulate businesses
Government in the US at the time believed in extreme hands-off principles
Allowed businesses to gain huge profits and make owners incredibly wealthy while workers remained incredibly poor
What does hands off mean in the economy?
No government involvement in the economy
Explain how the invisible hand works and an example of it.
Invisible Hand - the collective decisions of all consumers informs businesses of what to make without the need for governments involvement
Picnic pants vs the charger
Who owns the factors of production in capitalism and makes decisions?
The people/ consumers/ business
What is the incentive to work hard in capitalism?
Provides incentives for hard work and new ideas in the form of money
What is social darwinism?
Applies ideas of “Survival of the Fittest” to humans
Explain how Social Darwinism justified the condition of the poor classes.
Poor people are poor because they are not as advanced as rich people
What did Thomas Malthus believe in?
Believed population grows faster than food supply
Thought we should expect more war, famine and disease to lower population
Overpopulation would lead to everyone being miserable
Did his ideas come true? Why or why not.
No, because we created technology that allowed for humans to make large amounts of food. (high yield grains)
What was a common feature between all the Capitalist reforms?
They did not actually want to change the system, used excuse to justify why it was broken.
They blamed the poor people for the problems.
How did Robert Owen try to fix the problems during the Industrial Revolution?
Tried to create a utopian town, that was meant to be perfect place to live and work and everyone would be considered equal.
Describe the ideas of socialism?
Governments would improve the lives of all people
The government would guide the economy instead of hoping for the “Invisible Hand” to work
Major industries that are important to the health of the nations, such as energy, banking, and transportation would be controlled by the government
All other businesses would be owned by individuals
Why is Karl Marx an important person in history?
He wrote the ideas in the communist manifesto, which laid the groundworks for the ideas of communism
What did Karl Marx see as the biggest cause of the problems of industrialization?
Created two groups of people, the haves who are the wealthy business owners who did not pay their workers anything, and the have-nots who are the workers. They have nothing because of the haves.
