Social Changes Industrial Revolution completely changed people’s lives. Average workday – hours per day. Average work week – 6 days. Wages: –Men - $ $2.50 per week. –Women - $.75 - $1.00 per week. –Children - $.25 - $.50 per week.

Factories were hot and unventilated. As factories were in cities, massive movement of people to cities. –Called urbanization. Workers were unskilled and made little money. –Lived in cramped apartment houses called tenements. No insurance, sick time, vacation time, worker’s comp. –If you were sick/injured/late, you were fired.

Tenements

Political Philosophies Many were unhappy with the situations of the workers. Led to many new political philosophies. Humanitarianism. –Biggest philosophy. –Felt people should work to improve the lives of those around them. –Pushed factory owners for better pay, shorter hours, better conditions. –Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Liberalism. –Focused on individual personal liberty. –Everyone should be treated equally under the law. –Did not believe in true democracy – felt only property owners should be able to participate in gov’t.

Utilitarianism. –Founded by Jeremy Bentham. –Believed that gov’t should work for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. –Laws and gov’t programs should be judged by their usefulness. –Gov’t should stay out of people’s lives as much as possible, but should educate the people.

Socialism. –Most important philosophy. –Started by Karl Marx. –Personal interests should be put aside for the interests of society as a whole. –Use democratic methods to redistribute wealth from rich to poor. Extreme form of Socialism is Communism. –Dictatorship, gov’t redistributes wealth by force. –Gov’t owns and controls everything.

SOCIALISM DOES NOT WORK! People are lazy, greedy and do not work well together.

Karl Marx