1. Economic Advance and Industrial Society
PSIR205 Week 9
Economic Advance and Industrial Society

2. Towards an industrial society
British industrial leadership:
Natural resources, industrial capital, technology, adequate food supply, and foreign and domestic markets (p. 494).
Leadership in these sectors: textile weaving, ironmaking, shipbuilding, and china production
Belgium, France, and Germany followed the example of Britain

3. Population and migration:
Migration to cities.
In Eastern Europe industrialization did not develop at a slower pace, with the societies in his region keeping their agrarian economies
Migration created crucial social problems which were due to shortage of house, water, and food as well as due to the poor infrastructure, lack of sufficient lightning and sewers.
Countryside was better, though land reform and the abolition of serfdom did not make a such a huge impact in changing the lives of the farmers. These reforms, on the contrary reinforced industrialization as they liberated agrarian labour from land in that they could move from the country side to the city (where they would be further transformed into workforce for factories, or proletaranized.
There was a famine in Ireland, causing many people to die or emigrate

4. Railways: Widespread in England and growing in Western Europe
They developed owing to the character of the industrial economy which favoured capital goods to consumer goods
Trains----application of the steam engine
Railroad construction----demand for iron, steel, ans skilled labour

5. The Labour Force
Labour force consisted of different groups in the early-nineteenth century:
‘Factory workers, artisans, cottage industry craftspeople, household servants, miners, rural peddlers, farm workers, and railroad workers’.
The ‘labouring poor’ refers to a group of people who continued leaving in abject conditions even though they could find a job to work
Manufacturing industry was totally mechanized
Factory workers were growing: artisanship was becoming more and more less needed
Workers had no security

6. Proleterianization of factory workers and urban artisans
Proleterianization: ‘loss of ownership of the means of production’
People having enough financial resources bought other resources that were necessary in running an industrial enterprise: machinery, raw material, and labor
Factory worksers were disciplined:
Textile workers were better off than hand-loom weavers
Urban artisans proleterianized slower than factory workers. The main threat for artisans was ‘the change in the way factory system reorganized production’. Here, we should think about the changes in the guild stystem.
Master/apprentice relationship
Guild had control over the ‘labour recruitment, training, pace of production, quality of product, and price’ (p. 498).
France abonded guilds; they interfered free economy
Guids’s response to industrialization: confection
Apprenticeship lost its appeal, as there was a supply of unemployed who just moved to the city needed a job.

7. Working Class Political Action: The Example of British Chartism
The London Working Men’s Association’s 1838 proposal for political reform that was framed with Six Points

8. Classical Economics
Followers of Adam Smith suggsted a limited role for the government. It role should be limited to:
Maintaining a sound currency
Enforcing contracts
Protecting property
Keeping tariffs and taxes low (p. 503).

9. Malthus on population
High wages results in an increase in the population of the worker class
It is impossible to prevent workers’ poverty
The solution: workers should have less children and spend their on consumer goods

10. Ricardo on wages Overpopulation leads to lower wages.
Excess of children----labor market--- competition for jobs---lower wages---making few children---labor shortage----wage increase
To prevent this cycle: low wages

11. Government policies on classical economics