The Industrial Revolution Vocabulary | Chapter 25

Corporation

A business owned by stockholders who share in it's profits but are not personally responsible for it's debts.

Entrepreneur

A person who organizes, manages, and takes on the risks of business.

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".

Middle Class

A social class made up of skilled workers, professionals, business-people, and wealthy farmers.

Karl Marx

Introduced the world to a radical type of socialism called Marxism.

Factories

Machines in large buildings.

Enclosures

One of the fenced-in or hedged-in fields created by wealthy British landowners on land that was formerly worked by village farmers.

Laissez Fraire

Refers to the economic policy of letting owners of industry and business set working conditions without interference.

Strike

Refusal to work.

Union

The association of workers, formed to bargain for better working conditions and higher wages.

Socialism

The economic system in which the factors of production are are owned by the public and operate for the welfare of all.

Industrial Revolution

The greatly increased output of machine-made goods that began in England in the middle 1700s.

Industrialization

The process of developing machine production of goods.

Factors of Production

The resources needed to produce goods and services that the Industrial Revolution inquired. These included Land, Labor, and Capital (or wealth).

Crop Rotation

The system of growing a different in a field to preserve the fertility of the land.

Utilitarianism

The theory, proposed by Jeremy Bentham in the late 1700s, that government actions are useful only if they promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Communism

An economic system in which all means of production--land, mines, factories, railroads, and businesses--are owned by the people, private property does not exist, and all goods and services are shared equally.

Capitlism

An economic system in which the factors of production are privately owned and money is invested in business ventures to make a profit.

Stock

Certain rights of ownership.

Urbanization

City building and the movement of people to cities.