INTRODUCTION

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION GLOSSARY

Tenancy: Alquiler

Hoe: azada
Fallow: barbecho
Marry: casarse con alguien
Clover: trébol

Drill: taladradora
Life expectancy: esperanza de vida
Breeding: cultivo o animal de cría (loc. adj.)
Crops: cultivo
Soil: tierra, barro
Turnips: nabo
Property: propiedad
Barley: cebada
Wheat: trigo

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Coal shuttle: transportar carbón
Cotton mills: molinillos de algodón
Owner: propietario

Spindle: huso
Spinning wheel: rueca

Spinning mill: hilandería

Spinning machine: máquina de hilar

Spinning Jenny: hiladora con husos múltiples

Speed up: ir más rápido
Steam Engine: motor a vapor

Loom: telar
Thread: hilo
Twist: torcer
Engine wheel: rueda a motor
Weave: tejer

Weaver: tejedor físico
Craftsmen: artesano
Raw cotton: algodón en bruto

Yarn: hilo

CHECKING YOURSELF: MATCH THE WORDS OF THE GLOSSARY (INTRODUCTION)  WITH THE DEFINITIONS

• If you are a tenant or occupant, you have a......

• Plants grown to be harvested as food, or for other economic purpose.

• Material in the top layer of the surface of the earth in which plants can grow

• A tool with a flat blade (hoja) attached at right angles (en ángulo recto) to a long handle

• Plant of the genus Trifolium, also called ‘trefoil’ (three leaves)

• Cultivated land that is not seeded for one or more growing seasons

• Take in marriage

• Predicted life-span calculated on the basis of statistical probabilities

• The production of animals or plants by inbreeding or hybridization

• Widely cultivated plant with a large fleshy edible (comestible) white or yellow roo

• Cultivated since prehistoric times; grown for forage and grain; it serves as a base malt for beer and certain distilled beverages (bebidas)

• Something owned; any tangible or intangible possession that is owned by someone

• Grass sometimes cooked whole or cracked as cereal; usually ground ("molido" in this context) into flour

• A person who owns something; possessor

• A tool with a sharp point and cutting edges for making holes in hard materials

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

QUESTIONS

When did the Industrial Revolution take place?
In the late 1700s
In the late 1800s
In the late 1900s

What were those who owned the land called?
monarchs
aristocrats
workers

How were the new machines powered?
By water, steam and coal.
By water, fire and oil.
By train, car and bus.

How did the new machines work?
More slowly and carefully.
Cheaper and faster.
More silently and more slowly.

Where was the work done?
In farms.
In workshops.
In factories.

New inventions were applied first in...
The automobile industry.
The textile industry.
The farming sector.

Where could products be sold now?
In England.
Where they were produced.
All around the world.

Where did many families move to?
Farms.
Industrial towns.
Coastal areas.

Which new social class appeared during the Industrial Revolution?
Aristocracy.
The working class.
Farmers.

Why did industrial towns become black?
Because of the bad weather.
Because of the new building materials.
Because of the pollution.

Where were some of the worst working conditions?
In textile mills.
In farms.
In shops and shopping centres.

How much was a child paid?
2 dollars a week.
2 dollars an hour.
2 dollars a year.

How long did children work?
From 7 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon.
From 5 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon.
From 5 in the morning to 7 in the evening.

How old were children when they started to work.
5 years old.
10 years old.
12 years old.

Who inspired and created the first unions?
Reformers and workers.
Businessmen.
Children working in factories.

What's the name of the present revolution?
A Second Revolution.
A post-Industrial Revolution.
A Technological Revolution.

LIFE CONDITIONS DURING INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) is a work of fiction. But it presents a startlingly accurate portrayal of urban life experienced by many at the time. Gaskell provides a realistic description of the dank [frío-húmedo] cellar dwelling [sótano-vivienda] of one family in a Manchester slum:

You went down one step even from the foul [fétida] area into the cellar in which a family of human beings lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes many of them were broken and stuffed with rags [harapos]. . . . the smell was so foul as almost to knock the two men down. . . . they began to penetrate the thick [grueso] darkness of the place, and to see three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay wet brick floor [suelo de ladrillo], through which the stagnant [estancado], filthy moisture  [sucia humedad] of the street oozed up [supurante]

ELIZABETH GASKELL, Mary Barton

PHILOSOPHERS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM

In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution opened a wide gap between the rich and the poor. Business leaders believed that governments should stay out of business and economic affairs. Reformers, however, felt that governments needed to play an active role to improve conditions for the poor. Workers also demanded more rights and protection. They formed labor unions to increase their influence.

In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution opened a wide gap between the rich and the poor. Business leaders believed that governments should stay out of business and economic affairs. Reformers, however, felt that governments needed to play an active role to improve conditions for the poor. Workers also demanded more rights and protection. They formed labor unions to increase their influence.

 LAISSEZ FAIRE: LET PEOPLE DO AS THEY PLEASE

The term laissez faire refers to the economic policy of letting owners of industry and business set working conditions without interference. This policy favors a free market unregulated by the government. The term is French for “let do,” and by extension, “let people do as they please.”

Laissez-faire economics stemmed from French economic philosophers of the Enlightenment. They criticized the idea that nations grow wealthy by placing heavy tariffs on foreign goods. These philosophers believed that if government allowed free trade —the flow of commerce in the world market without government regulation— the economy would prosper.

Adam Smith, a professor at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, defended the idea of a free economy, or free markets, in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations. According to Smith, economic liberty guaranteed economic progress.

As a result, government should not interfere. Smith’s arguments rested on what he called the three natural laws of economics:

• the law of self-interest—People work for their own good.

• the law of competition—Competition forces people to make a better product.

• the law of supply and demand—Enough goods would be produced at the lowest possible price to meet demand in a market economy.

Smith’s basic ideas were supported by British economists Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo. Like Smith, they believed that natural laws governed economic life. Their important ideas were the foundation of laissez- faire capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system in which the factors of production are privately owned and money is invested in business ventures to make a profit. These ideas also helped bring about the Industrial Revolution.

In An Essay on the Principle of Population, written in 1798, Thomas Malthus argued that population tended to increase more rapidly than the food supply. Without Wars and epidemics to kill off the extra people, most were destined to be poor and miserable. The predictions of Malthus seemed to be coming true in the 1840s.

David Ricardo, a wealthy stockbroker, took Malthus’s theory one step further in his book, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817). Like Malthus, Ricardo believed that a permanent underclass would always be poor. In a market system, if there are many workers and abundant resources, then labor and resources are cheap. If there are few workers and scarce resources, then they are expensive. Ricardo believed that wages would be forced down as population increased.

Laissez-faire thinkers such as Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo opposed government efforts to help poor workers. They thought that creating minimum wage laws and better working conditions would upset the free market system, lower profits, and undermine the production of wealth in society.

UTILITARISM PAVES THE WAY TO SOCIALISM

In contrast to laissez-faire philosophy, which advised governments to leave business alone, other theorists believed that governments should intervene. These thinkers, such as  Jeremy Bentham believed that wealthy people or the government must take action to improve people’s lives. In the late 1700s, Bentham introduced the philosophy of utilitarianism.

Bentham wrote his most influential works in the late 1700s. According to Bentham’s theory, people should judge ideas, institutions, and actions on the basis of their utility, or usefulness. He argued that the government should try to promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people. A government policy was only useful if it promoted this goal. Bentham believed that in general the individual should be free to pursue his or her own advantage without interference from the state.

John Stuart Mill, a philosopher and economist, led the utilitarian movement in the 1800s. Mill came to question unregulated capitalism. He believed it was wrong that workers should lead deprived lives that sometimes bordered on starvation. Mill wished to help ordinary working people with policies that would lead to a more equal division of profits. He also favored a cooperative system of agriculture and women’s rights, including the right to vote. Mill called for the government to do away with great differences in wealth. Utilitarians also pushed for reforms in the legal and prison systems and in education.

Socialism French reformers such as Charles Fourier, Saint-Simon, and others sought to offset the ill effects of industrialization with a new economic system called socialism. In socialism, the factors of production are owned by the public and operate for the welfare of all. Socialism grew out of an optimistic view of human nature, a belief in progress, and a concern for social justice. Socialists argued that the government should plan the economy rather than depend on free-market capitalism to do the job. They argued that government control of factories, mines, railroads, and other key industries would end poverty and promote equality. Public ownership, they believed, would help workers, who were at the mercy of their employers. Some socialists—such as Louis Blanc—advocated change through extension of the right to vote.

MARXISM: A RADICAL VERSION OF SOCIALISM

The writings of a German journalist named Karl Marx introduced the world to a radical type of socialism called Marxism. Marx and Friedrich Engels, a German whose father owned a textile mill in Manchester, outlined their ideas in a 23-page pamphlet called The Communist Manifesto. In their manifesto, Marx and Engels argued that human societies have always been divided into warring classes. In their own time, these were the middle class “haves” or employers, called the bourgeoisie, and the “have-nots” or workers, called the proletariat. While the wealthy controlled the means of producing goods, the poor performed backbreaking labor under terrible conditions:

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

 KARL MARX and FRIEDRICH ENGELS, The Communist Manifesto (1848)

According to Marx and Engels, the Industrial Revolution had enriched the wealthy and impoverished the poor. The two writers predicted that the workers would overthrow the owners: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite.”