The World Economy & Social Changes

The World Economy & Social Changes

New Technologies And The World Economy

A. By 1890 Germany and the United States had surpassed Great Britain as the world’s leading industrial powers.

B. The motive force behind this second phase of industrialization consisted of deliberate combinations of business entrepreneurship, engineering, and science, especially physics and chemistry.

C. Electricity and the steel and chemical industries were the first results of this new force.

D. The next fifty years saw a tremendous expansion of the world’s rail networks.

E. The largest rail network by far was in the United States, it was longer than the seven longest networks combined.

F. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1915, a railroad across the isthmus carried freight between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

G. Japan built a model steam train, and trained British engineers to build them. Within a few years, Japan began manufacturing its own equipment.

H. Steam-powered ships were dated back to the 1830’s but were initially too costly for anything but first-class passenger traffic. Steel replaced the wood that had been used for hulls. Propellers replaced paddle wheels. Engineers built more powerful and fuel-efficient engines.

I. To control their ships around the globe, shipping companies used a new medium of communications: submarine telegraph cables laid on the ocean floor. Cables became the indispensable tools of modern shipping and business, the public and the press extolled the “annihilation of time and space.”

Two innovations That Increased Production

A. A series of inventions made steel the cheapest and most versatile metal ever known.

AI. Steel became cheap and abundant enough to make rails, bridges, ships, and even “tin” cans meant to be used once and thrown away.

AII. Sulfuric Acid and Chlorine Bleach were manufactured on a large scale.

AIII. Chemistry also made important advances in the manufacture of explosives.

B. No innovation of the late nineteenth century changed people’s lives as radically as electricity.

BI. Inventors in the 1870’s devised efficient generators that turned mechanical energy into electric current.

BII. By the turn of the century electric lighting was replaced by smelly gas lamps.

World Trade and Finance

A. World Trade expanded tenfold between 1850-1913.

AI. Capitalist economies, however, were prey to sudden swings in the business cycle-booms followed by deep depressions in which workers lost their jobs and investors.

AII. Worldwide recessions occurred in the mid 1880’s and the mid-1890’s as well.

AIII. Britain continued to dominate the flow of trade, finance, and information.

Social Changes

A. A dramatic number of Europeans and their descendants fled and went overseas because of famines, wars, and the increasing death rate in their native countries.

AI. Growing cities.

AII. Urbanization reforms, three classes-Wealthy, Middle Class, and the Working Class.

AII. In the complexes if urban life, businesses of all kinds arose, and the professions-engineering, accounting, research, journalism, and the law among others took on increased importance.

AIII. Over population had affected quality of life (Pollution, overheating)

Middle Class Women

A. The Victorians contrasted the masculine ideals of strength and courage with the feminine virtues of beauty and kindness.

AI. Men and women lived in “separate spheres.”

AII. The most important duty of middle-class women were raising children. Victorian morality frowned on careers for middle-class women.

AIII. Many women had education-related careers.

Working Class Women

A. Women formed a majority of the workers in the textile industrials and in domestic service.

AI. Female servants were vulnerable to sexual abuse by their masters or their master’s son.

AII. Victorian society practiced a strict division of labor by gender.

Socialism

A. Socialism was an ideology developed by radical thinkers who questioned the sanctity of private property and argued in support of industrial workers against their employers.

AI. Labor unions were organizations formed by industrial workers to defend their interests in negotiations with employers.

AII. Movements not identical.

AIII. Best-known socialist was Karl Marx, who collaborated with Friedrich Engels. Together they combined German philosophy, French revolutionary ideas, and knowledge of British Industrial Conditions.