Relations Between Capital and Labor Flashcards
Class-Consciousness
A Marxist ideal that is an individual’s sense of class differentiation. Many individuals came to believe they existed and developed an appropriate sense of class feeling
Describe early industrialists and provide examples.
Early industrialists operated in a highly competitive economic system. There were countless production problems, and success and large profits were not certain. Most early industrialists drew upon their families and friends for labor and capital, but came from a variety of backgrounds. Some examples are Harkort, Watt, Wedgewood, and Cockerill.
How were members of ethnic and religious groups react to industrialization?
In traditional occupations controlled by the landed aristocracy they had been discriminated, but they jumped at the new chance and often helped one another. Scots, Quakers, and other Protestant dissenters were important in Britain, Protestants and Jews dominated banking in Catholic France.
What happened as factories and firms grew larger?
Opportunities declined in well-developed industries. It became considerably harder for a gifted but poor young mechanic to start a small enterprise and end up as a wealthy manufacturer.
In 1830’s Britain and 1860’s France and Germany, who ran enterprises?
Leading industrialists were more likely to have inherited their well-established empires, and they were much more financially secure than their struggling fathers and mothers.
What happened to the wives and daughters of successful businessmen?
They found fewer opportunities for active participation in Europe’s increasingly complex business world. Instead of contributing as a vital partner in the business, the middle-class women were valued for their increasing ladylike femininity. They should concentrate on their proper role as a wife and a mother.
Which romantic poets criticized the early Industrial Revolution and what did they say about it?
William Blake called early factories satanic mills and protested against the hard life of the London poor. William Wordsworth lamented the destruction of the rural way of life and the pollution of the land and the water.
Who were the Luddites?
A group of handicraft workers who attacked whole factories in northern England in 1812 and after, smashing the new machines that they believed were putting them out of work.
Who was Friedrich Engels?
A future revolutionary and colleague of Karl Marx, Engels supported the pessimistic view that factories were bad. In 1844, he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, a blistering indictment of the middle classes.
Name some people who believed that conditions were improving for working people.
Andrew Ure, Edwin Chadwick
Why were working people suffering in the early years of the Industrial Revolution?
There was little or no increase in purchasing power from 1780-1820, there was a period of constant warfare with France from 1792-1815, food prices rose faster than wages, and the living conditions of the poor declined.
What were some changes that came along with the revolution?
Hours in the average workweek increased, the wartime decline in the average worker’s real wages and standard of living from 1792 to 1815 had a powerful negative impact on workers
How had the worker’s standard of living changed?
They ate food of higher nutritional quality as the Industrial Revolution progressed. Diets became more varied, with people eating more potatoes, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. Clothing improved as well.
Why were cottage workers reluctant to work in the new factories, despite relatively good wages?
Workers had to keep up with the machine and follow its relentless tempo. They also had to show up every day, on time, and work long monotonous hours under the supervision of demanding overseers, and were punished systematically if they broke the work rules.
What did early factories resemble?
English poorhouses, where totally destitute people went to live at public expense. Some were industrial prisons, where the inmates had to work in order to receive their food and lodging.
