The progress of the industrial revolution:the world is mechanized!
The Industrial Revolution took place during the 19th century, shortly after the French Revolution. It brought the growth of industrialization in different countries of Europe and enriched the world with technical advancements.
The invention of machines allowed the mass production of material goods using different materials, including coal used mainly for steam engines. Iron and coal were the two raw materials; as they said, it was the “bread of industry”. This is how the railways appeared, one of the most precious inventions of the 19th century, facilitating transport.
A second emerging element of industry is the evolution of communication:the beginning of the telephone, the novelty of being able to talk to each other at a distance. Transport and communication are the technical advances that marked this industrial revolution the most and will continue to improve over time.
Then weaving arrived in textile production; you could produce in quantity thanks to the machines and this is how the department stores arose. Although the machines were more efficient than the craftsmen, the latter soon found themselves out of work and the problem of unemployment arose.
Economic growth and commercialism
Since industrialization, the European economy has grown and further divided the citizens of the countries. The effects of the Industrial Revolution enabled states to sell their goods to other nations and enrich themselves from these sales through the actions of mercantilist traders, who hoarded the precious metals, then exported them and traded in the countries. financially powerful. Consumption was further increased by the mass productions of the country itself and those of neighboring nations. Western Europe was unified by similar societies, particularly between France and West Germany and between the Netherlands and Italy. Thus, Europe has created for itself an overwhelming place in the world by its accumulation of precious materials and therefore of its wealth.
But the economy calculated by the wages of the inhabitants would have been far from would be as bright if we had not only taken into account the income of liberal bourgeois bosses and business leaders. By the invention of machines which did the work of workers, unemployment arose in Europe. This is why socialism was created by demanding more equality between the wages of the inhabitants of the nation, whether they were bourgeois or proletarians.
The birth of the proletariat and the working condition
In the 19th century, industry demanded many workers, both women and children and men, so that they could all serve as labor and that the production of goods would increase. However, this situation allowed the poorest, the proletarians, to work, although the working conditions were appropriate to the thought of the liberal bourgeois who saw only their personal reward in this affair and did not pay attention to the working condition of the workers. workers.
With the increase in consumption, working conditions deteriorated, rapidly becoming “working-class misery”; the working hours never ended, the workers were underpaid, they risked many accidents and unemployment at any time. In addition, the bosses preferred children, because they cost less and their agility allowed them advantageous efficiency in the galleries or with the looms under which they managed to slip and repair them.
Later, from the middle of the 19th century, after having attempted several unsuccessful strikes and demonstrations to which the authorities responded with imprisonment and repression, the working conditions of the workers deteriorated. improved by the creation of trade unions which will have above all reduced the hours of work and increased the wages of the proletarians. Also, new laws were introduced concerning children, for whom work was limited and the working age was set at eight years.
The social class struggle
The 19th century opposed the proletarians and the bourgeois; the proletariat included the largest part of the French people, the lowest social class, as was the Third Estate. At the beginning of this century, the bourgeoisie imposed itself; the French Revolution disadvantaged the aristocrats of the Ancien Régime who had the wealth of the poorest, they had to find another way to earn money and quickly sided with the liberals.
The liberal bourgeois, who soon became entrepreneurs and businessmen, wanted to be free in their trade to raise money in a rather dishonest way, while the less well-off socialists remained in their financial problems, without finding the help sought. We can better distinguish the differences between these two social classes, and this is why there was a rivalry between them, especially since the bourgeoisie possessed the working class, its workforce. It had settled in the cities, close to their place of work, but it was also there that the liberals had established themselves and that the industrial revolution flourished best.
The bourgeoisie gave its inferiors poverty, disease, alcoholism and begging. For the bourgeoisie, the proletariat was the risk of disorder, stupidity and destruction. From 1850, the socialist proletarians will have begun to demonstrate and go on strike in order to obtain a certain equality between men and to pronounce a certain accusation against the liberal bourgeois.
The evolution of liberalism and socialism through the industrial revolution
Liberalism was the most widespread current of thought during the first part of the 19th century; the notion of free trade came from the French Revolution which opposed external constraints but maintained social inequalities. The industrial revolution only reinforced this way of doing things; the bosses of the companies regulated their business themselves and lined their pockets by exploiting the workers. Thus, the liberals thought to improve the economy of the country and to contribute to its enrichment, as explained it the philosopher Adam Smith.
During the second half of the XIXth century, socialism was adopted by the spirits men by trying to catch up with the negative effects of liberalism. It was after the consequences of the industrial revolution that the socialists improved their living and working conditions by following the ideas of the philosopher Karl Marx. Thus, the beginning of the 19th century was still a period of great social differences, while at the end of this century, equity between the wealth of citizens will have managed to begin to be put in place.