The Industrial Revolution’s foundation began with many new technical inventions that widened the need for industrial workers. Hargreave’s spinning jenny and Arkwright’s water frame both allowed inexperienced workers to spin yarn much faster than talented cottage weavers. Thus, these developments not only assisted the manufacture of cotton goods by making the process much quicker, but they also began the cultivation of a new class of factory workers. For the first time, men, women, and children united in a single working space with complicated machinery to work for middle-class employers. Critics defined this new class of workers as being made up of “part-humans: soulless depersonalized, disembodied, who could become members, or little wheels rather of a complex mechanism” who yielded to their boss’s every demand (Pollard 1).
Once-skilled artisans and craftsmen were often subject to working routine processes as machines began to mass produce the goods formerly made by hand.
This change in labor had a devastating impact on accomplished workers; they were no longer any different than their unskilled counterparts, women, and children in the eyes of factory owners. Due to the noticeable difference between Proletariats and the Bourgeoisie, social relations came to be excessively discussed across the European continent. Many people adhered to the idea that individuals were members of economically determined classes with set interests because it explained the great difference between the Proletariats and the Bourgeois. Thus, it was believed that conflicting classes existed because individuals developed an appropriate sense of class-consciousness (Buckler 740).
The Term Paper on Working Class Workers Unions Conditions
... secure some of these goals for the working class, and helped to give workers their share of the world... Two alternative views ... revolution see only ruin for the working class, "only industry has made it possible for workers who have barely emerged from a ... half of the century protected workers and was enforced. Second, the economic level of the working class was greatly improved by collective ...
This consciousness is very obvious when looking at the mindset of the middle-class owners. They were primarily focused on production and gave little thought to the environment of their workers. As a result, most early factories contained extremely unpleasant work conditions.
Mills and factories were dangerously loud, and they were sweltering hot in the summer while poorly heated in the winter. Work days consisted of endlessly long hours and holidays were rarely granted. Furthermore, no laws or unions stood protecting the early urban proletariat workers. Despite these horrid conditions, the proletariat workers were desperate for jobs and were entirely dependant on their employers. Also, because of class-consciousness, they came to accept their positions in society as grueling factory workers. On top of terrible work conditions, the Proletariats’ living conditions were less than satisfactory due to the rapid population increase in urban cities. Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the continent’s population was rural. However, by mid-nineteenth century, half of all Europeans lived in cities and worked in the new industrial factories instead of farms. This transformation of Europe from a rural to urbanized society depressed the living standards of workers to horrendous levels.
In doing so, however, it paved the way for reform. As manufacturers continued to place high demands on their workers, public opinion about such awful working conditions came to a forefront. Karl Marx, a profound socialist of the industrialization era, stated in his world-renown Communist Manifesto that, “Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex” (Marx 4).
Marx believed that this rapid period of industrialization would essentially cause society to split into “two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx 2).
The Essay on The Meiji Restorations Affect On The Peasant And Working Class
The Meiji Restorations Affect on the Peasant and Working Class The Meiji Restoration, despite all the good it created, negatively affected the lives of peasants and laborers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The restoration is characterized by modernization, a term that symbolizes the use of present day ideals over ancient times and holding progressive opinions over earlier ones. In ...
Although this Marx was initially correct, contrary to what he had envisaged, European society split into more than just two separate social classes. The urban working class found it difficult to remain united with workers of all skill levels, ages, and sexes. As workers demanded more rights and experienced a series of union failures due to the great differences, it became more obvious to the Proletariats that unity was in the past.
Slowly but surely, as the Industrial Revolution continued, the expanding amount of economic professions and skilled workers verse unskilled workers shaped more new social groups instead of destroying them as the “Manifesto” had predicted. With the development of many jobs, talents, and wages, a complex, confusing hierarchy of subclasses formed in which individuals struggled to rise or hold their own in the social order. Though poverty and misery had long been overlooked, by early 1830s, the workers’ plight became impossible to ignore. Written by a member of the British Parliament in 1832, “The Sadler Report” detailed stories of brutality, degradation, and oppression against factory workers of all ages and status. Its purpose was to impose regulations on the working conditions of children in British textile mills. Its overpowering substance spoke for itself. Parliament responded in 1833 with the ratification of the Factory Act. As the most significant early accomplishment of the parliamentary committee, this limited the factory workday for children between 9 and 13 to eight hours and that of adolescents between 14 and 18 to twelve hours. Due to this law, employment of children declined rapidly.
At last, the pattern of whole families working together in factory settings ceased. Robert Owen was another reformer who helped reshaped the unified working class. In his own textile mill, he raised pay, improved working conditions, and did not allow children under the age of eleven to work. Directly related to Owens’ reforms, crime and disease rates dropped and life improved. After such reform measures were taken, a shift towards separate spheres of work for men and women went underway. Married women who had children were told to stay at home and tend to the household chores. Unless a woman was part of the lowest working class and her husband could not provide for the family, she was not to work. Moreover, virtually no occupation was open for a woman to live independently and men received substantially higher waged and more promising employments.
The Essay on Working Class Immigrants Social Americans
Class consciousness - "The working class not only increases in number, it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength no more... the workers begin to form combinations... they club together... they found permanent associations." -Karl Marx In the 1880's one hundred American communities grew by 100% or more. Cities drew people who were dissatisfied with ...
Men became the breadwinners of every family as factory workers or businessmen. The concept of “separate spheres” reveals the changing society of industrialization in which women and men’s roles became much more distinct. Not only did a distinct change occur between the duties of men and women, however. The once-unified Proletariat working class progressively broke into three different social levels of its own depending on worker’s skill level. The new social hierarchy of the working class consisted of skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers (Buckler 799).
Each of these classes developed widely divergent lifestyles and cultural values. At the top of this new social system was the labor aristocracy, which consisted of the highly skilled workers and made up fifteen percent of the working class.
These workers earned twice as much as the unskilled workers at the bottom of the social stratum. Most of these labor aristocrats were construction bosses, factory foreman, cabinetmakers, jewelers, and printers, yet the group was constantly being enlarged by new skilled professionals like ship builders and railway engineers. The labor aristocracy showed a strong tie to their family and economic improvement frowned about drinking and sexual permissiveness. They were the pacesetters and leaders for the whole working class. Underneath the labor aristocracy rested the semiskilled and unskilled urban workers. Carpenters, bricklayers, and pipe-fitters often were considered they bulk of the semi-skilled working class (Buckler 802).
A growing number of these individuals earned relatively good wages and their significance to the labor force was on the rise.
The larger group of unskilled laborers like shoremen, wagon-driving teamsters, and teenagers were too unorganized and divided to move their way up in the working class hierarchy (Buckler 803).
The Essay on Working Class Workers Hours Machines
First of all, the working class evolved in England. This happened mostly because England was the first to use machines for mass production. For instance, with new inventions like the Spinning Jenny machines in England, it caused a revolution to take place in England first. These machines reduced the values of the old tools, the property of the individual craftsmen and replaced the accomplishments ...
Also, married women who had to keep jobs and unmarried women who worked full-time also fell into the class of unskilled laborers. Women were generally confined to low-paying jobs that did not have sufficient enough wages for them to live independently. Most often, women found themselves working as domestic servants, which served as the largest component of this group. All unskilled workers were united by their meager earnings. No development in modern history has altered European society more than the Industrial Revolution. The onset of this revolution not only dramatically increased the efficiency of production, but it altered European’s wealth and urban populations while creating numerous jobs.
A new, complex social system resulted that created composed of two different phases. At the onset of the revolution, a wealthy middle class overpowered a large urban working class that comprised of men, women, and children. However, as the revolution furthered, the once united working class was further divided between skilled and unskilled workers. Also, the spheres of men and women no longer intertwined and females were to remain at home and tend to family matters. The Industrial Revolution ultimately changed the social hierarchy of European workers remarkably..
