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Hi. This is Lecture 20. How did the factory change the way people live.
We're gonna talk about urbanization, class tensions, and positive effects of urbanization.
The best example of urbanization in England during the Industrial Revolution was Manchester.
People started moving to the cities; that is actually the definition of urbanization.
And Manchester was the best example in the 19th century.
Manchester's population grew from 45,000 to 300,000.
A visiter to Manchester, as you read, Alexis de Tocqueville
once read, "From this filthy sewer, pure gold flows."
What that means is, Manchester is incredibly dirty but it was also incredibly profitable.
And most of the profits came from the cotton industry. They were selling textiles around the world.
So the next thing we have to talk about is living conditions.
People moved to Manchester so quickly that they didn't have time to build anything.
And back then, there was no building plans or blueprints. There's no building codes or inspectors to come and around and make sure that everything was safe. There was no running water.
And all this pollution from the factories led to cholera outbreaks. Cholera, unfortunately, is a disease that gives you diarrhea so badly you can actually dehydrate and die.
It has a very strong impact upon population. Right over here is a very famous chart from the Industrial Revolution done in the 1840s
about the average age of death.
So in 1840, the average age of death for gentleman and professional people of Manchester was 38. For tradesmen, it was 20. For laborers, it was 17.
Contrast that with Rutland, where laborers lived til 39, tradesmen lived til 41, and gentlemen lived til 52.
And you can see that it's having a huge impact on people's life. It's so bad and so dirty that most kids who start working at the ages of 5, they die by the age of 17.
And the reason was because the working conditions were so bad. The machines never rested and the average worker worked about 14 hours a day, 6 days a week
and the factories were really unlit and unclean.
And not only that, the thing that was used to run the machines, the steam engine, was coal.
Here, you can see somebody pulling a cart of coal right here. And then there are guys pushing from behind because they are pushing it uphill.
And the coal shaft is so narrow they can't even stand up.
And what happened if this guy let go, the cart would run back and run these two guys over and kill them. There's no welfare so if you get hurt, that's it.
Now, the working conditions are bad, the living conditions are bad, there's lots of urbanization.
But there also creates this class tension, and it revolutionizes social structure. And as you read, the upper class were these wealthy merchants and factory owners.
Best exemplified by the Victorian Dandy. This was a very well-dressed gentleman, and here you have a picture of two Victorian Dandies.
They're dressed in the latest fashion, the top hats, the silk shirts, their cotton tweeds, and all that other things. So they're looking really good,
but they're living off the efforts of others and they look down upon the middle class.
Now this is the greatest invention the Industrial Revolution, it changes the class structure.
We have a huge growth in the middle class. Upper middle class, which includes most
people from Brea, are in government employees, doctors, lawyers, and managers.
In the lower middle class, you have factory overseers, people who are in charge of factories on the day-to-day stuff, and skilled workers,
like a carpenter, or a plumber.
Although ironically today, plumbers can make just as much as doctors today in our society because plumbing is a hard job.
At the very bottom, you had the working class.
These are the people who actually worked on the factory floors, where they mined the coal. And here's somebody who I always found interesting.
There's this mythical figure in England named Ned Ludd. And his followers, the Luddites, were people who destroyed technology as a way to save their jobs.
They would burn the weaving machines to save the weavers, or they would burn the spinning generators so the spinsters would have a job.
Now, there were some positive effects of the Industrial Revolution. Most importantly, the standard of living.
Now, the Standard of Living is defined as the degree of wealth or material comfort available to a person or community.
Here at Brea, we have a very high standard of living. There's a lot of material comfort available.
We have running water, we've got electricity, we've got air conditioning, we've got heat.
And this Industrial Revolution, because its raising the standard of living, there's jobs available. There's very low unemployment, unlike these people here who are standing in line waiting for a job.
It evened the wealth of the nation. Before the Industrial Revolution, there was the really wealthy and the really poor. There was nothing in between.
But now because of the Industrial Revolution, we have the middle class.
Finally, it really improved life for everybody especially after 1850. And that year is important because that's the year people started creating sewage systems throughout England.
And throughout most of the world today, we take it for granted. But running sewage, running water, things that take our feces and urine away, is actually very important if you live in an urban area.
Another big invention is what you guys are in now. Without the Industrial Revolution, we would not have made children go to school.
You realize that children working was so bad for them, that we forbid them from working. We passed all these laws and even today in America, you need to be at least 16 to work, or 15 to work.
But back then when they passed these kinds of law, what did you do with these kids all day?
Well, we have a demand for engineers and professional workers, and we've limited children's hours for how much they can work,
so let's create institutions for them to go to learn to read and write so they can be engineers and professional workers, we'll call them schools.
Now, the long term impact, it's still happening today. If you've ever had a new cellphone with a new camera, or you've got a new ipad, or a new computer,
that's the Industrial Revolution, they're always improving.
But in the 19th century, we started to afford consumer goods that were luxuries. Everybody could afford them. Everybody in England could get fine china.
They can actually get personal plates, like my wife and I did when we got married.
You can have a variety of clothing, there are some people in campus that never have to wear the same outfit twice.
You can get a car, everybody here can afford a car, even the poorest. There's food, we're very lucky here in America.
Even if you're so poor you can't afford food, we have government that can provide food for you.
And we also have something new that develops, called Unions, which are institutions designed to protect workers' rights.
Here's a political cartoon from the Industrial Worker Magazine of 1913 that says that labor is "the goose that lays the golden egg."
The surplus value is given to the wealthy owner, who takes it all. And the labor force is the one that produces it all.
That is lecture number 20, Impact of the Industrialization.
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