AP Euro Vocabulary Industrial Revolution

The London Working Men's Association

A group that produced the People's Charter in 1838.

Chartism and the People's Charter

A much more meaningful expression of the attempts of British workers to improve their condition developed in [this movement]-the "first important political movement of working men organized during the nineteenth century." It's aim was to achieve political democracy. [This movement] took its name from [this document] drawn up in 1838 by the London's Working Men's Association. [This document] demanded universal male suffrage, payment for members of Parliament, the elimination of property qualifications for members of Parliament, and annual sessions of Parliament. Women, too, joined in the movement. [Those who participate in this movement] in many large towns often had female sections. Although some women were quite active in the movement, they were fighting to win political rights for their husbands, not for themselves, as [those who participate in this movement]s' platform did not include the right to vote for women.

Agricultural Revolution

A significant increase in food production, caused by the new methods of farming and stock breeding, occurred during the 18th century. Feed more people for less money and labor (mass production). Most people now had extra money to buy manufactured goods. Rapid population increase provided surplus labor for new factories.

Working Class

At the same time that the members of the industrial middle class were seeking to reduce the barriers between themselves and the landed elite, they also were trying to separate themselves from the laboring classes below them. [This class] was actually a mixture of groups in the first nineteenth century. Factory workers would eventually form an industrial proletariat, but in the first half of the century, they did to constitute a majority of [this class] in any major city even in Britain.

Industrial Revolution

Began in Britain after 1750. Created a dramatic jump in industrial production. New sources of energy and power were found (coal and steam replaced wind and water using machinery and thereby increasing productivity). This decreased the use of human and animal labor. Factories replaced the workshop and had specialized labor, but they had terrible working conditions(especially treatment of married women). Lead to mass movement of people from the countryside to urban areas, revolution in transportation, new consumption patterns and a search for new sources of raw materials.

The Great Famine

Between 1781 and 1845, the Irish population doubled from 4 million to 8 million. Probably half of this population depended on the potato for survival. In the summer of 1845, the potato crop in Ireland was struck by blight due to a fungus that turned the potatoes black. Between 1845 and 1851, [this occurrence] decimated the Irish population. More than a million died of starvation and disease, and almost 2 million emigrated to the United States and Britain. Of all the European nations, only Ireland had a declining population in the nineteenth century. But other countries, too, faced problems of dire poverty and declining standards of living as their populations exploded.

Child Labor

Both children and women were employed in large numbers in early factories and mines. Children had been an important part of the family economy in preindustrial times, working in the fields or carding and spinning wool at home with the growth of the cottage industry. In the Industrial Revolution, however, [this] was exploited more than ever and in a considerably more systematic fashion. The owners of cotton factories appreciated certain features of [this]. Children had an especially delicate touch as spinners of cotton. Their smaller size made it easier for them to crawl under machines to gather loose cotton. Moreover, children were more easily broken to factory work. Above all, children represented a cheap supply of labor. In 1821, just about half of the British population was under twenty years of age. Hence, children made up a particularly abundant supply of labor, and they were paid only about one-sixth to one-third of what a man was paid. In the cotton factories in 1838, children under eighteen made up 29 percent of the total workforce; children as young as seven worked twelve to fifteen hours per day, six days a week, in cotton mills.

Samuel Crompton's mule

Combined the water frame and the spinning jenny to increase production of yarn even further. It produced fine and strong thread.

Richard Arkwright's water frame

English inventor and entrepreneur who became the wealthiest and most successful textile manufacturer of the early Industrial Revolution. He made [this invention] in 1768. This was a new spinning machine powered by water or horse; helped further increase yarn production.

Factory Discipline

From its beginning, the [this place] system demanded a new type of [expected rules and behavior] from its employees. Workers were forced to work regular hours and in shifts to keep the machines producing at a steady pace for maximum output. This represented a massive adjustment, for early [this place] laborers.

Tariffs

Governments on the continent also used this to further industrialization. After 1815, cheap British goods flooded continental markets. The French responded with high [these] to protect their fledging industries.

India's Cotton Cloth Production

In the eighteenth century, [this country] had become one of the world's greatest exporters of [this product] produced by hand labor. This was a good example of newly industrialized European states pursuing a deliberate policy of preventing the growth of mechanized industry.

Factory Acts

In the reform-minded decades of the 1830s and 1840s, new legislation was passed. [This legislation] of 1833] strengthened earlier labor legislation. All textile factories were now included. Children between the ages of nine and thirteen could work only eight hours a day; those between thirteen and eighteen, twelve hours. Factory inspectors were appointed with the power to fine those who broke the law. Another piece of legislation in 1833 required that children between nine and thirteen have at least two hours of elementary education during the working day.

New Elites

Increasingly, the new industrial entrepreneurs-the bankers and owner of factories and mines-came to amass much wealth and play and important role alongside the traditional [this group] of their societies. The Industrial Revolution began at a time when the preindustrial agrarian world was still largely dominated by [this group]. As the new bourgeois bought great estates and acquires social respectability, they also sought political power, and in the course of the nineteenth century, their wealthiest members would merge with those old elites.

The factory

Initially, the product of the cotton industry, [this place] became the chief means of organizing labor for the new machines. As the work place shifted from the artisan's shop and the peasant's cottage to [this place], the latter was not viewed as a just a larger work unit. Employers hired workers who no longer owned the means of production but were simply paid wages to run the machines.

Great Exhibition of 1851

It displayed Britain's wealth; it was a huge symbol of British success. It was the worlds first industrial fair. Took place in the Crystal Palace. Represented Britain's imperial power.

Coal and Coke

It was a new way of producing cast iron which required [this item] (to burn off impurities), derived from [this mineral]. It was fuel of the industrial revolution that seemed to be in unlimited quantity and a derivative of the fuel that was used to make high quality iron.

Britain's Poor Law Commission

Knowledge of the pathetic conditions in the early industrial cities is largely derived from an abundance of social investigations in the 1820s. Detailed reports for these investigations were produced by [this association]. The investigators were often struck by the physically and morally debilitating effects of urban industrial life on the poor. They observed, for example, that young working-class men were considerably shorter and scrawnier than the sons of middle-class families and much more subject to disease. They were especially alarmed by what they considered the moral consequences of such living conditions: prostitution, crime, and sexual immortality, all of which they saw as effects of living in squalor.

Canals

Man-made waterways. Governments in northern Europe, especially in Britain, built these man-made waterways in the 1700s and 1800s to benefit commerce. It contributed to the rise of industrialization.

Cholera

Many middle-class citizens were quite willing to support the public health reforms of me like Chadwick because of their fear of [this disease]. Outbreaks of this deadly disease had ravaged Europe in the early 1830s and late 1840s and were especially rampant in the overcrowded cities. As city authorities and wealthier residents became convinced that filthy conditions helped spread the disease, they began to support the call for new public health measures.

Industrial Factory

New method for producing goods. Worked together instead of individually. Opposite of the cottage system.

Edwin Chadwick

One of the best of a new breed of urban reformers was [this person]. With a background in law, [this person] became obsessed with eliminating the poverty and squalor in metropolitan areas. He became a civil servant and was soon appointed to a number of government investigatory commissions. As secretary of the Poor slaw Commission, he initiated a passionate search for detailed facts about the living conditions of the working classes. After three years of investigation, [this person] summarized the results in his Report on the Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, published in 1842. In it, [this person] was advocating a system of modern sanitary reforms consisting of efficient sewers and a supply of piped water. Six years after his report and largely due to his efforts, Britain's first Public Health Act created the National Board of Health, empowered to form local boards that would establish modern sanitary systems.

Puddling

Process in which coke was used to burn away impurities in pig iron to produce high quality iron called wrought iron. A boom in the British iron industry ensued.

James Watt and the rotary engine

Scottish engineer and inventor whose improvements in the steam engine led to its wide use in industry (1736-1819). He was asked to repair the Newcomen engine but instead created a steam engine. Power come from steam instead of air pressure. It could pump three times as quickly as the old engine. 1782, developed [this product] that could turn a shaft.

Preindustrial Workers

The US was an agrarian society. There were no cities with populations of more than 100,000, and six out every seven American workers were farmers. Almost half of them lived west of the Appalachian Mountains. The number of states had more than doubled, from sixteen to thirty-four, and nine American cities had more than 100,000 in population.

Ireland and the Potato

The cultivation of [this vegetable], a nutritious and relatively easy food to grow that produced three times as much food per acre as grain! gave the peasants of [this country] a bunch staple that enabled them to survive and even expand in numbers. As only an acre or two of [this food] was sufficient to feed a family, men and women of [this country] married earlier than elsewhere and started having children earlier as well. This led to a significant growth in population.

Steamboats

The introduction of [this machine] remedied the lack of a good system of internal transportation, which seemed to limit American economic development by making the transport of goods prohibitively expensive. [This machine] facilitated transportation on the Great Lakes, Atlantic coastal waters, and rivers. It was especially important to the Mississippi valley; by 1860 one thousand of [these machines] plied that river. After the American Civil War, railroads began to replace [these] on many routes.

The Poor Law of 1834

The problem of poverty among the working classes was also addressed in Britain by government action in the form of [this act], which established workhouses where jobless poor people were forced to live. The intent of this policy, based in the assumption that the poor were responsible for their own pitiful conditions, was "to make the workhouses as like prisons as possible...to establish therein a discipline so severe and repulsive as to make them a terror to the poor."

Bourgeoisie

The rise of industrial capitalism produced a new middle-class group. [This social group] or middle class was not new; it had existed since the emergence of cities in the Middle Ages. Originally, [this group] was the burgher or town dweller! active as a merchant, official, artisan, lawyer, or scholar! who enjoyed a special set of rights from the charter of the town. As wealthy townspeople bought land, the original meaning the word [this group] became lost, and the term came to include people involved in commerce, industry, and banking as well as professionals, such as lawyers, teachers, physicians, and government officials at various levels. At the lower end of the economic scale were master craftspeople and shopkeepers.

Hand-loom weavers

They were home based and survived until the mid-1820s. These people were now guaranteed a constant supply of yarn, full employment and high wages. Even when the power loom came into production, these people continued to do well because of the inefficiency of the power looms. When bigger factories came out, these weavers died out.

The American System

This reduced costs and revolutionized production by saving labor, important to society that had few skilled artisans. It set up tariffs to protect [people of this country]'s interests from competition with products from overseas. It also used interchangeable parts.

The Amalgamated Society of Engineers

This was the largest and most successful of these unions and was formed in 1850. It's provision of generous unemployment benefits in return for a small weekly payment was precisely the kind of practical gains these trade unions sought. Larger goals would have to wait.

Robert Owen

This well-known cotton magnate and social reformers was also one of the leaders in the effort to create national unions. [This person] came to believe in the creation of voluntary associations that would demonstrate to others the benefits if cooperative rather than competitive living. Although [this person]'s program was not directed specifically to trade unionists, his ideas had great appeal to some of their leaders.

The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union

Under Robert Owen's direction, plans emerged for [this association], which was formed in February 1834. [This association]'s primary purpose was to coordinate a general strike for the eight-hour working day. However, by the summer of that year, the lack of real working-class support led to the federation's total collapse, and the union movement reverted to trade unions for individual crafts.

Suburbs

Wealthy, middle-class inhabitants, as usual, insulate themselves as best they could. Often living [here] or the outer ring of the city, where they could have individual houses and gardens.

Cotton Industry

With new inventions yarn production and weaving of cloth dramatically increased beginning in the late 1700's. The spinning jenny (James Hargreaves) and then the water frame spinning machine(Richard Arkwright) were invented and later combined in the invention called the mule (Samuel Crompton). This increased yarn production to new heights. Then the power loom was invented(Edmund Cartwright) and now weaving was able to keep up with yarn production. Those inventions were later replaced with new improved machines and around the late 1820's we saw an end to the home-based hand loom weaver. Towns grew around these factories. The steam engine pushed productivity to even greater heights.

Domestic Servants

Women dominated this area of work, where they mainly did things that were considered "women's work". [This job] showed clearly that the working patterns of women were not significantly changed just because of their large scale employment rates in factories.

Trade Unions

Workers looked to the formation of labor organizations to gain decent wages and working conditions. The British government, reacting against the radicalism of the French revolutionary working classes, had passed the Combination Acts in 1799 and 1800 outlawing associations of workers. The legislation failed to prevent the formation of [these groups], however. These new associations were formed by skilled workers in a number of new industries, including the cotton spinners, ironworkers, coal miners, and shipwrights. [These groups] served two purposes. One was to preserve their own workers' position by limiting entry into their trade; the other was to gain benefits from their employees. These early [groups] had limited goals. They favored a working-class struggle against employers, but only to win improvements for the members of their own trades. Some of [these groups] were willing to strike to attain their goals. Bitter strikes were carried out by hand-loom weavers in multiple cities. Such blatant illegal activity cause Parliament to repeal the Combination Acts in 1824, accepting the argument of some members that the acts themselves had so alienated workers that they had formed [these groups]. [These groups] were now tolerated, but other legislation enabled authorities to keep close watch over their activities.

The Workhouse

[These places] were made to be as much like prisons as possible. Discipline was established severely and repulsively to make the, a terror to the poor. Within a few years, despite sporadic opposition, more than 200,000 poor people were locked up in [these places], where family members were separated, forced to live in dormitories, given work assignments, and fed dreadful food. Children were often recruited from parish [these places] as cheap labor factories.

Ten Hours Act of 1847

[This act] reduced the workday for children between thirteen and eighteen to ten hours. Women were also now included in the ten-hour limit.

Luddites

[This group] was composed of skilled craftspeople in the Midlands and northern England who in 1812 attacked the machines that they believed threatened their livelihoods. These attacks failed to stop the industrial mechanization of Britain and have been viewed as utterly naive. Some historians, however, have also seen them as an intense eruption of feeling against unrestrained industrial capitalism. The inability of 12,000 troops to find the culprits provides stunning evidence of the local support they received in their areas.

James Hargreaves spinning jenny

[This invention], which was made in 1768, allowed people to generate yarn in larger quantities with less labor. It allowed 1 worker to control 8 spools of cloth at one time.

Coal Mines Act of 1842

[this act] eliminated the employment of boys under ten and women in mines? Eventually, men too would benefit from the move to restrict factory hours.

George Stephenson's Rocket

a train used in the first public railway line, which opened in 1830. It extended 32 miles from Liverpool to Manchester. [This train] sped along at 16 mph. Locomotives had reached 50 mph. During this time, new companies were formed to build additional railroads as the infant industry proved successful not only technically but also financially.

Joint-stock Companies

an association that raises capital by selling shares to individuals who receive dividends on their investment while a board of directors runs the company.

The Crystal Palace

covering 19 acres, [this place] contained 100,000 exhibits that showed the wide variety of products created by the Industrial Revolution. 6 million people visited the fair in 6 months. though most of them were Britons who had traveled to London by train, foreign visitors were also prominent.

Richard Trevithick

he pioneered the first steam-powered locomotive on an industrial rail line in Southern Wales. It pulled 10 tons of ore and 70 people at 5 mph. Better locomotives soon followed.

Henry Cort

in 1784 developed the puddling furnace which is a new method for melting and stirring molten ore. This allowed the production of purer iron. He also developed heavy-duty, steam-powered rolling mills, which were capable of shaping iron into different shapes.

Railroads

in 1840, Britain had almost 2,000 miles of [this invention]; by 1850 , 6,000 miles of these crisscrossed the country. This contributed significantly to the maturing of the Industrial revolution. The [this invention] demand for coal and iron furthered the growth of those industries.

The Cottage System

the way people use to make products before factories. This system was done by hand and was a slow process. Textiles were produced by rural workers who worked from their homes. Usually, the entire family participates, the women and children would spin while the men wove on the looms. The merchant would buy the raw materials and "put them out" to rural workers who would make them into cloth.