Basics
What is the Industrial Revolution?
The transition from agrarian (farming) economies to industrialized societies focused on making goods in factories.
What is wage labor?
Making money from work. Wages were often low, and workers were seen as replaceable.
Under capitalism, how are businesses owned?
Privately, by business owners called capitalists, who own the means of production (land, resources, factories)
What are stocks (shares), and what market are they sold on?
Small sections of a business that people can buy on the stock market. Businesses use the money to grow and may reward stockholders with profit.
What is a strike?
When labor unions stop working to protest mistreatment and try to improve their conditions
What invention, improved by James Watt, allowed factories, trains, and ships to run on coal power?
The steam engine!
What is urbanization?
This is the movement of people from rural areas to cities in search of factory jobs
What is the main goal of businesses under capitalism?
To earn as much profit as possible (they are “profit motivated”)
What is a monopoly, and why is it powerful?
A large business with no other business to compete with. It can charge any price it wants.
What is socialism?
The idea of higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy, used for social programs (education, healthcare), and replacing capitalism’s competition with cooperation
Where and when did the Industrial Revolution Begin?
Great Britain in the late 1700s (late 18th century)
What is consumer culture (consumerism)?
The belief that it is good to buy and use a lot of goods and services
What is the “market,” and what do businesses do there?
The place where people buy and sell goods. Businesses compete there, and those with the best business survive.
What are Transnational Corporations, and why did they develop?
Corporations that operate in multiple countries. This developed because European corporations had started to run out of new customers.
What is public ownership, and what did socialists think should be publicly owned?
Government ownership of major businesses or necessities like water, electricity, and railroads
Name two areas the Industrial Revolution spread to by the mid-1800s.
Belgium, France, Germany, and the United States? (Later in the 1800s: Russia and Japan.)
What 3 social classes emerged?
Working class (factory workers, small farmers)
Middle class (professionals like lawyers, doctors, teachers, shop owners, office workers)
Upper class (very rich industrial and business families, owners of factories)
What does laissez-faire capitalism mean?
“Hands off” capitalism: the government should not have laws over businesses and should let them operate independently
How did Transnational Corporations affect Africa and Asia compared with Europe and the US?
Europe and the US gained raw materials and wealth. Africa and Asia lost resources and became less wealthy and more dependent on foreign goods.
Name one government regulation from the slides and what it did.
Factory Acts (1833): limited child labor and working hours.
Pure Food and Drug Act (1906): created the FDA.
Clean Air Act (1970): created the EPA to reduce pollution.
Does the Industrial Revolution have a specific end date? Explain.
No end date!
It began in the late 1700s, continued through the 1800s, and spread worldwide into the 1900s and beyond. We still use industrial technology today!
What is class consciousness (class divisions)?
When people began to identify with their own class and grew unhappy with the wealthy capitalist class.
How were workers treated under capitalism in the early Industrial Revolution? And why was this possible?
Unfairly, because there were no regulations on pay or working conditions
What does it mean to fall behind in the “balance of trade”?
Spending more money on foreign goods than on domestic ones, which happened to Asian and African countries like China and India
Which country’s attempt to industrialize was very successful: Japan (Meiji Restoration), Russia (Witte System), or China (Self-Strengthening Movement)?
Japan became an industrialized nation very quickly.
Russia succeeded with railroads but industry stayed in a few cities.
China largely failed.