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The Second Industrial Revolution took place in America from the 1870s until the beginning of World War I in 1914. During these forty-five years young children and women began working in the workforce as well as many people migrating from all over the world, mostly from Europe in hope to find their American dream and jobs. This created urbanization and overpopulation. Technology also advanced which created a more competitive companies and economy. The characteristics of the Second Industrial Revolution include new technology, manufacturing, and the modern view of operation of business.

Women began leaving their homes and their domestic jobs and started working to help support their families. Both the children and women were under paid despite their long, hard hours. Like people had different views about child labor, people had different views about women working. Some believed that women working were breaking the gender norms and that women were taking jobs and money away from men. Others thought it was better that women were getting out of domestic work and were starting to help support the family. The Second Industrial Revolution also brought many inventions in technology such as mass production and the production of interchangeable parts. These inventions effected World War I. The inventions created during the Second Industrial Revolution positively effected the American economy during the Second Industrial Revolution and World War I. The advanced technology created during the 1870s to 1914 led to the technology we have and use today.

Although the Second Industrial Revolution created problems which negatively effected America such as children and women labor and social inequality, it nevertheless brought changes which positively effected the workforce and the lives of children and women by administering child labor by laws and breaking the old fashioned way of thinking about women in the work force. The Second Industrial Revolution also brought consequences that effected the lives of Americans due to the advance technology. The changes and the consequences brought to America by the Second Industrial Revolution shaped the modern America we know today by creating child labor laws, giving women the rights that men have, and technological advances that benefit the world today.

In this paper, I am going to divide my thesis into three sections: child labor, technology advancements, and women in the workforce. I will use primary and secondary sources to prove and support my claims about those three topics. I will also ask historical questions and answer them with additional sources. In addition, I will tie in how child labor and women in the workforce has changed over time and how technological advancements has benefited America as well as the consequences the technological advancements has had on and in America.

Child labor played a big role during the Second Industrial Revolution. In 1870, one in eight children worked and in 1900 one in six children worked. Furthermore, in 1900 eighteen percent of kids worked, that is about 1.75 million children. Most of these kids were between five years of age to sixteen years of age. These children worked in the textile, glass, and cigar industry, but some worked in the sweatshop which includes assembly and sewing work. The Second Industrial Revolution changed the nature of child labor by the working conditions and the education of the children. The working conditions were terrible. The conditions included crowded work spaces with shut doors. These working conditions affected the children’s eyesight, muscle size, and lungs.

Their eyesight was deprived by watching the thread work to make sure it didn’t get caught, their muscle size was affected by small unimportant movements, and their lungs were affected the cotton pollution from the machinery used in factories. Other conditions were also bad as they were described as children were hired before they had their permits, and children would work if there was work for them to do. Lewis W. Hines was a photographer who used his photos for social reform. He was also an investigator for the National Child Labor Committee. Hines wrote a letter about what he witnessed while he recorded child labors in factories and in their homes. In his letter he included the photos he took as evidence.

Hines witnessed young children performing tough work while they worked long hours day after day. He argues that factory work is not good for young children because of the dangerous and unsanitary conditions. Children are careless and could accidentally hurt or kill themselves on the machines the factories had. In the child labors homes, Hines writes about how he observed that the living conditions were physical bad because they were small, crowded, and that there was no privacy. Young children often overheard what the adults talked about which forces young children to grow up too quickly and teaches them that there is no time for childhood or fun. (Hines). Because the conditions were so bad, the National Child Labor Committee wanted funds to improve the conditions of child labor. The National Child Labor Committee works by contributions which is needed to help improve the factory conditions. The committee also got information out by literature such as pamphlets. Mrs. Langdon Stewardson was the chairman of the Industrial Committee who stated that child labor is a political issue and that it should be removed from politics.

According to Stewardson, poor children work in factories. Because poorer children worked in factories could be why the conditions were so bad and no one cared as well as the low wages.These children were deprived of an education, although some states had school attendance laws and forbid workers under twelve. These laws were often broken and not much was done. Some believed school was unimportant for child labors and that an education for workers was not important and would actually hurt the workers while others believed some school is important. (Dudley). Child labor played a big role because of the low wages. The children were not paid a lot and were paid less for the worth and amount of work they produced.

The South’s wages were less than the North’s wages for children. As the conditions were bad, the North tried to improve the bad conditions and limit child labor while the South did not do anything to improve the poor conditions. (Olson). In a political cartoon titled White Slavery: Northern Capital and Southern Child Labor Southern kids are being auctioned off to rich Northern capitalist. The children are standing on a podium and look scared and poor. They are standing in front of big men who look scary and mean and look like they have a lot of money. (Cite). Rose Cohen was a factory worker who wrote a newspaper article based on her experience as a young child. She wrote about how she was a coat factory worker who worked early mornings to late nights for low wages. She talked about how it was fast work, not the best work. She said it was easy to be taken advantage of by her boss because she was so young she couldn’t argue back and say she had to get home to get to her family. She had to stay and make more coats. She concludes the factory owners were never satisfied. (Rose Cohen).

During the Second Industrial Revolution there were cases, many of which went to the Supreme Court, to find child labor unconstitutional. The Supreme Court found child labor constitutional and allowed it. (Olson). Some consequences of factories and child labor include the rise of big businesses, the rise of big government, and the loss of countryside population and overcrowded cities due to urbanization. (Olson). Because child labor is not as intense as it was during the Second Industrial Revolution I want to focus on how has children working in the workforce changed over time and how has their role in life developed?

Unlike the Second Industrial Revolution, kids today are required to go to school. Children today are required to go to a private or public school for a certain amount of time under the compulsory education laws. These laws have authority to determine when a child can start school and how old they must be before dropping out. Due to the Fair Labor Standards of 1938, children under eighteen can not work certain dangerous jobs, children under sixteen cannot work during school hours, and most minors cannot work because it is oppressive child labor. In addition, the Fair Labor Standards Act also includes that a standard work week is eight hours a day and forty hours a week and the employee must make minimum wage.

If overtime is needed, an employee can only work four hours of overtime and must be paid one and a half time regular pay. Today children go to elementary school from ages five to eleven , middle school from eleven to thirteen, and high school from thirteen or fourteen to about eighteen. Most kids don’t start working until their last two years of high school and even then, they don’t work in factories. After high school it is advised to get a higher education to get a job which during the Second Industrial Revolution would be a man’s job. Children were not the only group of people who were mistreated during the Second Industrial Revolution, so were woman.

Just like how children were treated unfairly in the workforce, women were too. Up until the Second Industrial Revolution women stayed home took care of the children, family, and house. Most women worked in the textile, garment, and food canning industries. Women also worked as journalist, social workers, or office workers. Like the children, women were underpaid. Some men thought women should be a true women which means being a submissive wife and a mother whose priority was her home and family. This was worrisome because men were seen as employed outside the home and women were homemakers so by women working outside the home was worrisome because it broke the natural order and gender norms of the Second Industrial Revolution time period.

People argued that married women who worked negatively effected their home and neglected their children because they were gone for twelve hours or more. They also argued a home isn’t a home without a mother. While teenage girls worked in factories, they worked long hours like everyone else. Because they worked so much, they don’t have the time or strength to do housework. It is argued that factory girls will get married later and the later a women gets married she won’t make a good home. Many people who thought this were men because they were afraid of change in women’s appearance and afraid women were going to take away the man’s money and jobs.Another belief is that while women should be allowed to work, but they should stay home when they have a young child. Industrialization gave women more rights and it caused them to not become as anxious to marry as before.

The women who worked had different backgrounds, some had a high school degree, others had a university degree, and some were immigrants. Women working was a positive step away from gender norms. A social class norm that was broken was the idea that poor women were taken care of by men and rich women had no aim in life. During the Second Industrial Revolution women started to work outside the house. Now there was the idea that women could take care of themselves and pursue their own paths in life. Another norm that was broken was appointed marriages, women now married based on respeect, honor, and love. They began to help support their families by the wages they made by working in factories.

Typically, men made more than women and were the main source of money in the family. Teenage sons were often paid more than their mothers. Because of the inequality in the workforce women got together to create the Women’s Suffrage Association. The members of this association believed men and women deserved the same rights and responsibilities since men and women are created equal. Actually, World War I also gave women the man’s job because while the men were drafted off to fight in the war, women worked their jobs. Women saw this as working on behalf of the war and believed this showed that they were just as patriotic as men. Since fathers and mothers or men and women were both working and supporting their families women wanted equal rights. Women were not allowed to vote before or during the Second Industrial Revolution.

Actually, some states allowed women to vote in the 1910s, but of course they Southern and Eastern states resisted. There was an amendment proposed in 1923 that prohibited all discrimination based on sex so equal pay for men and women, or you couldn’t give a job to a man if a women was more qualified, etcetera, but it was not ratified. Even in todays times women are not treated equally as men, but are treated better than they were during the Second Industrial Revolution. A historical question I have is, how has the women’s role changed in the working force over time? Well, more women have jobs and are working outside of their house. A lot of women now have what was seen as the man’s job with professions such as doctors and lawyers. Because women began working alongside with men, they wanted equal rights. The nineteenth amendment gave women the right to vote.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 made it illegal to pay less based on the employee’s sex. This where the saying Equal pay for equal work comes from. A consequence is that although women should make as much as men, sometimes they don’t. Women also have to spend more on hygiene products than men. For an example, women’s razors are often more expensive than men’s razors and other feminine products such as pads and tampons have a higher tax on them than the normal sales tax. Today, women are still not treated equally as men although they are treated more fairly and more equally than they were during the Second Industrial Revolution.

The Second Industrial Revolution brought many technological advances between the 1870s until 1914. The invention of electricity transformed American society. Americans were able to stay out later because of the lights on the streets. Because Americans were able to stay out later because of electricity and streetlights, factory owners made workers stay later. Some boats ran on steam hence the name steamboats and railroad trains ran on coal. Coal was mined for and that created jobs. Industrialization changed the nature in which things were produced. Interchangeable parts were invented which made items more efficient and cheap. An example is the sewing machine, which mostly women worked with this machine. The invention of interchangeable parts led to the invention of mass production. (Mokyr). Mass production meant that demands became higher and manufactures became more competitive because more items were produced faster. Mass production increased the products efficiency and liability while keeping prices for the good low. Before mass production, items were made to a made-to-order basis in factories which as mentioned before were often made my children and were not that good of quality but were really expensive.

Mass production also affected World War I by making products such as weapons faster than ever. New weapons were created which increased how deadly the war was. War vehicles like planes and tanks were mass produced and were able to be made because of the new technology that the Second Industrial Revolution brought. This is scary in todays times because of the invention of the atomic bomb which could be mass produced and could actually take out the entire earth.

Mass production was the deadliest weapon of World War I. The scientific inventions help modern science and medicine which we use and know today.(Olson). Because of all the advanced technology there are now lower death rates, people live longer, we have greater ability of goods and food, we have better living standards, and transportation was improved and is more efficient. (Dudley).

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The Second Industrial Revolution in History

The revolution is typically dated around 1870 and 1914, albeit some of its characteristics can be traced back to the 1850s (Zhang 146). It is, nonetheless, evident that the quick pace of path-breaking innovations dialed back in 1825 and later in the last third of the century. This essay will try to analyze different perspectives of the second industrial revolution.

The industrial revolution was a historical development moment when present-day innovations brought a class of wealthy business innovators and an agreeable working class upheld by laborers who were made up of foreigners and arrivals from America’s homesteads and modest communities (Melnyk 12). Fast improvements in steel making, synthetic substances, and power assisted in fuel creation, including efficient industrial buyer merchandise and artilleries. Getting around on trains, autos, and bikes became more straightforward. Simultaneously, thoughts and news spread through papers, the radio, and broadcasts, changing the ways of life rapidly.

The extraordinary pathbreaking developments in electricity and gas described below were critical not because they massively affected creation at the end of the day. Still, they expanded the viability of innovative work in the microinventive movement (Zimmerman 35). Ultimately such action runs into lessening minor items, except if a significant new advancement opens new skylines.

The benefits of coal were later discovered by Soho Motor Works of James Watt and Mathew Boulton. William Murdock, their director, started different experiments and later built a small factory providing gas power. One of the representatives, Samuel Clegg, got inspired by the lighting results. Clegg resigned and opened a gas business, the Gas Lighting and Coke Company. Step by step, his business rose as gas lighting was implemented in many factories, mills, and houses.

The economic impact of gaslighting allowed factories to labor significantly for many hours. The gaslighting innovation was most influential throughout the cold weather when evenings were longer. Gas’s more splendid lighting permitted people to read and write for several hours. This increased literacy, hence accelerating the Industrial Revolution. Towns turned out to be more secure spots because gas lamps were placed along the road.

Various chemicals like ammonia, naptha, and coal tar were also produced during coal gas production. It was later realized that Ammonia when combined with different chemicals, created artificial fertilizer. Mackintosh later found out that naptha could dissolve rubber, prompting the well-known waterproof jacket bearing his name.

The tar from coal appeared to be smelly at first, but later, it was realized that when combined with street stone coarseness, it made a brilliant fixed layer to top street surfaces called tarmacadam. It changed the dusty paths of the nineteenth century into the dark, smooth roads used today.

Additionally, tar turned into a focal point of another industry when it was found that dyes could be extracted from it. These turned out to be the first artificial dyes, making them highly requested. Later, gaslighting could be seen in many shops, houses, factories, and even schools (Atkinson 103). This modest illumination was soon to experience stiff competition from the recently designed yet significantly more expensive electric light.

The economic capability of electricity had been associated with the 19th century when Humphrey Davy exhibited its lighting abilities in 1808. According to researchers’ logic, for example, Oersted and Faraday developed the electric engine in 1821 and the dynamo in 1831 bringing a bigger impact to the lighting companies.

In 1851, Crampton’s Company positioned the first successful submarine cable in Calais and turned it into a mechanical victory (Mowatt 402). Along with the rail lines, the telegraph was an early illustration of an innovative framework, a combination of discrete creations that had to be formed together.

Using electrical flow to influence a polarized spike to convey data at a faster speed was an exemplary macro invention. Long-distance telegraphs, notwithstanding, required numerous ensuing micro innovations (Pettinger 18). Submarine cables were viewed as troublesome to master, causing the signals to be weak and slow.

The overseas cables used by President Buchanan and Queen Victoria to convey messages in August 1858 later stopped working. The insulating methods and reinforcing the lines appropriately had to be perfectly done, and the capacitance issue had to be overcome (Popkova et al. 23). The electric transmission impulses had to be understood before the telegraph could turn out to be genuinely valuable. Physicists Lord Kelvin made vital assistance to the innovation (Mohajan 8). Thomson designed an excellent method of conveying short reverse pulses directly following the primary pulse to hone the signal.

The utilization of electricity as an excellent method for conveying and utilizing energy was much more troublesome than the improvement of the telegraph (Nagy 223). Before putting it to work, a proficient method needed to be improvised to produce electric power using different energy sources and develop long-distance conveying currents.

Gram’s machine significantly helped reduce the expense of alternating current. The vacuum issue was tackled in 1865 when Sprengel made a vacuum siphon (Temizel et al. 42). Jablochkoff later designed an improved arc lamp that only used alternating current. Consequently, factories, roads, railroad stations, and comparative public spots started to supplant gaslight with an arc lights.

Westinghouse noticed that electricity was a technical network, an arrangement of firmly interrelated viable inventions (Andersson et al. 1082). In such a manner, it looked like gaslighting frameworks, yet electricity was perceived as an overall energy transmission system (Xu et al. 92). Edison was intrigued by frameworks of innovations. His capacity to grasp the comprehensive image and direct the research exertion of others was just about as evolved as his specialized creativity.

Electric power usage extended rapidly in 1870, with a more miniature-than-expected electric railroad presented during the Berlin display in 1879. Electric covers and hotplates were then introduced at the modern presentation of Vienna in 1883, while the electric trolleys were up, and running in Frankfurt and Glasgow by 1884 (Koc et al. 309). The mid-1880s saw the innovation of the current light by Thomas A. Edison in the United States and Joseph Swan in England.

In 1889, Croatian-conceived American Nikola Tesla created an electric polyphase engine using alternating current, later improved by Westinghouse. Of equivalent significance was the transformer initially created by the Frenchman Lucien Gaulard and his British accomplice John D. Gibbs and later enhanced by the American William Stanley. He worked for Westinghouse (Kennedy 895). Tesla’s polyphase engine and the Gaulard Gibbs transformer tackled the specialized issues of alternating current. They made it desirable over direct current, which couldn’t conquer the issue of uneconomical transmission.

Driven by Tesla and Westinghouse, the powers for substituting current crushed those direct supporting currents driven by Edison. By 1890, the principle specialized issues had been addressed; power had been restrained (Kennedy 889). After that, a line of micro inventions expanded unwavering quality and strength and diminished cost. In 1900, a radiant light expense one fifth what it had twenty years sooner and was two times as effective.

The shifting world of the Industrial Revolution also drove tension by friendly experts about the deficiency of opportunity, independence, and self-sufficiency that is supplanted by weariness, reiteration, and work, as indicated by Freeman (Levin et al. 1215). Mid-20th century movies like Fritz Lang’s science fiction troubled the world “City” or Charlie Chaplin’s mechanical production system parody “Present day Times” catch this apprehension about the gathering line laborer as a human-robot.

Either way, the impacts of electric power on assembling usefulness were slowly understood, as manufacturing factories just leisurely educated the benefits of power as a type of modern power (Niiler 5). The Second Industrial Revolution ended not long before World War I, as students of history would say. It was trailed by the Third Industrial Revolution, where advanced correspondences, modernization, and the web changed how people would send data, carry on with work, and associate with one another.

In conclusion, industrialization was the continuation of the first. It directly impacted real wages and ways of life, which varied fundamentally between 1914 and 1870. Additionally, it stirred the topographical focal point of the innovative initiative from Britain to a more scattered locus. The administration remained immovably the restraining infrastructure of the developed Western world.

Works Cited

Andersson, David E., Pablo Galaso, and Patricio Sáiz. “Patent collaboration networks in Sweden and Spain during the Second Industrial Revolution.” Industry and Innovation 26.9 (2019): 1075-1102.

Atkinson, Robert D. “Shaping structural change in an era of new technology.” Praise for Work in the Digital Age 103 (2018).

Kennedy, Christopher. “The energy embodied in the first and second industrial revolutions.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 24.4 (2020): 887-898.

Koc, Tayfun Caglar, and Suat Teker. “Industrial revolutions and its effects on quality of life.” PressAcademia Procedia 9.1 (2019): 304-311.

Levin, Miriam R. “What Were World’s Fairs for? Catalysts for Trade-Based Urban Development in the Second Industrial Revolution.” Journal of Urban History 47.6 (2021): 1203-1224.

Melnyk, Leonid Hryhorovych, et al. “The effect of industrial revolutions on the transformation of social and economic systems.” (2019). 1-25.

Mohajan, Haradhan. “The second industrial revolution has brought modern social and economic developments.” (2019): 1-14.

Mowatt, Rasul A. “A people’s history of leisure studies: Early 1700s to the late 1800s.” Annals of leisure research 20.4 (2017): 397-405.

Nagy, Katalin Kanczné. “Opportunities to craftsmanship education in the late 1800s under the Industrial Code of 1884.” Opus et Educatio n 8.1 (2021). 189-285.

Niiler, Eric. “How the Second Industrial Revolution Changed Americans’ Lives.” History, 2019. 1-12.

Pettinger, Richard. “Industrial Revolutions.” The Socio-Economic Foundations of Sustainable Business . Palgrave Pivot, Cham, 2020. 15-24.

Popkova, Elena G., Yulia V. Ragulina, and Aleksei V. Bogoviz. “Fundamental differences of transition to the industry from previous industrial revolutions.” Industrial Revolution of the 21st Century . Springer, Cham, 2019. 21-29.

Temizel, Cenk, et al. “A Comprehensive Review of the second Industrial Revolution in Oil and Gas Industry.” SPE/IATMI Asia Pacific Oil & Gas Conference and Exhibition . OnePetro, 2021. 21-89.

Xu, Min, Jeanne M. David, and Suk Hi Kim. “The fourth industrial revolution: Opportunities and challenges.” International journal of financial research 9.2 (2018): 90-95.

Zhang, Ce, and Jianming Yang. “Second Industrial Revolution.” A History of Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore, 2020. 137-195.

Zimmerman, Claire. “Albert Kahn in the second industrial revolution.” AA Files 75 (2017): 28-44.

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The second industrial revolution and its social consequence Essay

As opposed to the first industrial revolution which had its focus on the use of energy and muscle, the second industrial revolution did focus more on the use of the brain and information technology (Korten 222). This revolution did have an almost immediate effect on the lives of people. The benefits did not only accrue to the producers but also the consumers and this helped to improve the quality of life.

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This phase of the industrial revolution is in most cases simply referred to as the (separate) technical revolution. During this period there were extensive innovations that came up in very many industries. The electrical, chemical, petroleum and steel industries formed the major leaders when it came to the second industrial revolution (Adler 431).

The major specific advancements included the incorporation of steam turbines that were fired by oil and steel ships that were driven by internal combustion. The development of the aero-plane formed a major advancement in the second industrial revolution. Transport was therefore immensely improved as equally as the standards of living of the people.

Other fields that drew a lot of attention was invention of the telephone, the automobile was commercialized, innovation of very varied food preservation techniques like refrigeration and others, perfection of processes involved in canning and mass production of consumer goods. The drift was from mass production and towards quality of what was produced. In essence the desire to have these quality levels did affect the inventions that were coming up.

The automatic industry was the subsequent happening of use of machines tools and the computers in the production processes. It is to be noted though that the second industrial revolution happened in different parts of the world at different times. Singapore for example was experiencing it as late as the 1980s.

One of the major effects of the second industrial revolution was caused by the societal struggles to obtain class. According to Mantoux (30), there was arise in various classes of people among them the producer royales and state factories who had immense power attributed to them in the social standing.

In as much as there was a lot of changes in terms of the institutions that were present; together with the environmental conditions surrounding the changes, the economic play was so relevant and of great magnitude in affecting the social position of people.

The extent to which the environment did affect the social lives cannot be compared to the magnitude with which the economics played in influencing the interrelationships in society. Families seemed to predominantly live on the fines they got and even the borrowings that they got. At this time, the feudal landlords got reduced in number for a while.

The church and specifically the Catholic Church did have impact on the social lives of the people. According to Foster (24), peasant employers who had multiple problems with control of the social standing did try to take over the church. In the United Kingdom, these employers set up a parish within the Manchester.

This was a way that did enhance social relationships in this period. Social routines also did take root at some time during this period. This was a case of the United Kingdom although other places did have their own identifiable social routines.

Into the middle of the nineteenth century the growth of steam ships and more use of railways were pilot to this. The Bessemer which formed one of the remarkable steel inventions took place way before 1871. This together with the Siemens ventured in the production of steel that was not only cheap but also allowed for quicker steam transport.

Social lives were not spared by these developments. In the lives the family unit, set up of society, security in society, standards of living, and wage levels among a host of other aspects were affected by the happenings during the second industrial revolution. There can not be a limited view of how the social lives were affected.

At the same time, these lives were affected differently in different locations and so in these places a specific mention is of essence. Further it was difficult to separate the social lives from the economic effects.

According to Spielvogel (702) the second industrial revolution has had an immense impact on how the economic systems are currently run. This includes the depressions that are experienced amongst other economic cycles. On a global scale the second industrial revolution did affect the social lives of the people through the economic and other impacts that this revolution was having on the social lives of people.

A commonality noted between the first and second industrial revolutions is that they both led growth in population and were boosted by government facilitated barriers to trade. The second industrial revolution however did focus only on the development of electricity, improvement of steel and use of chemicals.

The innovations led to great improvements in the production processes and notably in the United Kingdom, the textile industry was greatly boosted. Railroad was not left behind in this revolution. There was unprecedented advancement according to Duiker (550) in the transport systems which by extension affected the social lives of people.

The work done by the laborers became less and therefore people had time to focus more on other aspects of their social lives. Unlike the first industrial revolution where the focus was on productivity and the workers in the industries were very much burdened with work, this type of revolution led to a decrease in the manual work since inventions like the flying shuttle done in 1733 took up much of the manual roles in the textile industry.

Machines were later developed that could spin the yarn and comb the wool. Automation of the textile industry in the United Kingdom was achieved sometime in the 1780s where the use of manual labor was limited.

Worker unions cropped up because of this revolution and would come together to push for the rights of the workers. In the UK textile industry for example, the Luddite movement was established some time in 1811. This movement was fighting for the employees in the textile industry whose lives were at risk.

The workers were bound to lose their livelihoods since they were being replaced in the industries by the machines that had come up to improve efficiency in the operations. This struggle does remain a nightmare in Europe currently as there is much squabbling between the job securities of laborers mostly manual ones and innovations that are supposed to make work easier.

Education in the age of the second industrial revolution became more technical. Since there was an advent in the area of machines, there was dire need to create the awareness on how the machines were to be operated. This required that the workers get training in the same with much emphasis being laid on the technical aspects.

This led even to the advent of schools of the mature being attended by the workers who had to get more formal skills on the operation of the machine. Even though this did not affect much the time spent by the families, still the impact was there.

More time was available for the workers to travel. This was best coupled by the development of trains that accorded the people the favour to travel form one place to another. Synott (201) insinuates that communications were immensely developed during this age. This conversely positively affected the relationships at the work place and the social standing as well. Telegraph and telephone technologies were the major head starts in these invention area.

A loss in jobs was another social ramification of the second industrial revolution. This is because the people were to be replaced by machines which were not only faster but also cost less to the owners of the firms. In England in the early 1800s, the job losses in the textile industry were eminent and this led to the emergence of numerous bodies to fight for the rights of the workers. This they did by forming the Luddite that was meant to protect their members from being shoved off work because of the machines presence.

Migrations were also eminent from the urban to urban centers with people searching for new jobs. Those persons that had been laid off from their positions on the advent of the technology age had to make a living somehow and so they traveled from one urban centre to another. This in a way did distort the social lives of people especially the family unit. There was need to settle in whole new locations and adapt to new lifestyles all together which was not easy as such.

The working hours during this revolution dropped to a record low since the work was beginning to be automated. Initially during the first industrial revolution, pressure had mounted on the social lives of the workers since the emphasis was on production and more production.

Later, automation led to improvement of lives of the people during this period. It was during this period that the telephone was developed. Although a reserve of the rich, the telephone led to improved communications between people.

At some point there was a decline in the slaves that were being employed industries. This simply constituted the job losses that were happening at that time as a result of automation. These slaves mostly from Africa would end up in the streets without a living. Their lives were therefore dwindling by the day and some of them resorted to criminal activities. This in part explains the high levels of insecurity that were experienced during this period.

There was a rise of the working class movements during this period. This in essence had a very pivotal role in the capitalism that was noted in the countries during that period. The workers got an opportunity to be freed from the obligations that had held them during the pre-capitalist periods yet they still had the privilege to present there labor on the capitalist labor market.

However this working class development at that time also meant that the workers could not be allowed any independent production but have to strictly adhere to the instructions that they were receiving from their employers. In a way, these employees were being forced to supply their labor in the market.

New management styles came up most of them having there focus on division of labor. There was anew style of administration that allowed there to be a span of control and managerial hierarchies did develop. There was the linear form of management so that each employee would report to that higher in authority. In Singapore for example, there was new patterns of authority that were coming up in the 1980s. Management took a whole new dimension where the lie of power had to be respected.

There was a distribution in the wealth that had been accumulated. This took place as a result of the change in ownership and the production techniques employed. Initially in the first industrial revolution, the oligarchial system of ownership was dominant.

However at the advent of the second industrial revolution, the capital of firms was divided into sticks that meant that several people would be allowed to own a single company. The income disparities in society were then put to check as those considered lower in society had an opportunity to have a share in the wealthy firms that were existent at that time.

This was one of the factors that contributed to the general improvement in the living standards. There was a shift from the previously dominant laissez faire as the governments did focus on how to meet the ever dynamic needs of the complex yet industrial communities prevalent at that time. There was thus an effect of socialization on the basic sectors of the economy. There was need to reduce the stringency with which the work place was being treated.

Explorations increased more because of the second industrial revolution. It is during this period that the scramble for Africa was rife. Many missionaries got an opportunity to traverse the seas to the ends of the earth preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. This was facilitated by the steam powered water vessels that were built as a result of the second industrial revolution.

Some of the explorers like David Livingstone and others had to be socially alienated from their families and the backgrounds that they grew up in. they had to start up new lifestyles in the depths of East Africa.

Many new jobs were created for the people and therefore their standards of living wee affected positively. This is because there were newer yet numerous applications for the innovations in the technical field like gas making. Jobs were also created for the masses in the areas of the chemical industry for the chemicals that were used in the production processes, gas making and railway transport.

Urban growth as a consequence kept growing at unprecedented paces and therefore social ills were bound to increase. As more people grew up together in the same locality, problems of poor sanitation cropped up.

Water was scarce with other social amenities lacking. Some of the diseases that spread during this period were attributed to the poor sanitation and the high growth of population growth. Housing problems were also prevalent as there was inadequacy of housing facilities.

There was also strain on the resources that were available. There was a heightened level of criminal activities since not all the people were employed. There were many idlers coming up and this led to very unprecedented level of insecurity cropping up. Law and order enforcers therefore had to be deployed inmost of such places to be able to sustain acceptable interactions among the people

The employment opportunities were also opened up to the manufacturing industry. There was a shift from the agricultural production life of the people and veered to adapt their lifestyles to accommodating the new jobs in the manufacturing industries. There was a drop from about seventy five percent of those employed in the agricultural industry to about sixty seven percent.

Service sector was beginning to be established during this period and did compliment well with the new lifestyles that had been taken up by the peoples.

Due to this second industrial revolution, there was a noticeable change in how the businesses were being run and owned. It is said that in 1800 almost all the people in America had their focus on units of production that were family based. The main persons working in these places were the long term or permanent slaves and or spouses. The family unit was therefore very vital as this would usually be composed of the father, the mother, children and the servants and at times slaves.

Moral rules of behavior were the order of the day and they did guide the interactions of families and society as a whole. There were non quantitative characteristics that did govern the way the family businesses were run. Payment of wages to employees in these family units was ideally a function of the moral traditions that were established.

This sometimes was referred to as the moral economy. There was a very wide gap in the relationship between the employers and their workers. In social terms there was a great disjoint between these two groups. Not much could be discussed between them unless it related to the work environment. Fair wages was not an issue. They were singlehandedly determined by the employers.

The work that was done by the women was reevaluated time from time as segregation was so vivid. Before payment of their wages, the women had to be reconfirmed to be doing a great piece of work. In most cases, the women were not paid.

Slaves too did not have a wage to their credit. There was a desire to create a racist form of the labor market by the southern white supremacists. The men were favored. The whites had more favour in this period as the blacks faced slavery and segregation.

Later in 1914 an idea was introduced by one Henry Ford which impacted on the wages that were being paid out to the employees and thus influencing the social lives of the employees. This was done with the desire to improve the efficiency of the workers. This led to the introduction of the new deal in 1933 that had a social security system.

Through this safety of the workers was improved and equally there social standing as well as the standards of life were awesomely improved. The industrial revolution led to an inauguration of various trends and the perpetration of the same led to a properly mixed matrix of the world that is currently viewed as contemporary.

The rural workers who mainly had their focus in the agricultural sector were considered to be having more autonomy than the workers who were operating in the urban areas. The urban worker was more reliant on the employer’s will. The relations between the combination of capital and labor were very well aggravated.

Marxism which did focus on capitalism was a resultant of this squabble. This would later affect the lives of the people socially since the people had their incomes dependant on this work. The standards of the living of the masses relied on the outcome of these squabbles. The second industrial revolution was unique in that companies were being run like family farms with the day to day operations carried out with minimum supervision (Fisher 4).

Social lives of the people were also affected by the laissez faire doctrine that did come up after the writings of people like Ricardo and Adam smith. In their arguments; they actually ended up affecting the interventionary measures by the government in issues relating to the productive facilities.

Population expansion was experienced by the presence of this new industrial revolution that was sweeping across the nations. The rise in professions also was a consequent of the second industrial revolution. In this revolution the service industry did accord the population an opportunity to grow in terms of their professional lives rather than manually.

With better living standards, there was also a noted increase in the population. This is because the families could afford to take care of their members.

In conclusion, the social lives of the people were affected both positively and negatively. There was an improvement in the living standards of the people and more of the working class culture cropping up. On the other hand, crowding and other negative attributes were eminent in this type of revolution.

Only selected parts of the globe felt the positive consequences and especially those considered of higher class. The fact that the effects of this revolution still trickle down to the current social standing cannot be down played. There has been more inventions which have influenced people currently including the internet technologies and social networking among others.

Mantoux, Paul. The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: an Outline of the beginnings of modern factories in England . Oxon: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Fisher, Kimball. Leading self-directed work teams: a guide to developing new team leadership skills. New York: McGraw hill, 2000. Print.

Korten, David. When corporations rule the world. Connecticut: Kumarian press inc., 2001. Print.

Spielvogel, Jackson. Western Civilization: Alternate Volume: Since 1300. Belmont: Thomson higher education, 2006. Print.

Synott, John. Global and international studies: Transdisciplinary perspectives

Boston: Thomson Learning Inc., 2000. Print.

Adler, Philip & Pouwels, Randall. World Civilizations: Since 1500 . Boston: Thomson learning Inc., 2008. Print.

Duiker, William & Spielvogel, Jackson. World History, Volumes 1-2. Boston: Clark Baxter & Suzanne Jeans, 2007. Print.

Foster, John. Class struggle and the industrial revolution: early industrial capitalism in three English Towns. London: Methuen & Co. ltd, 2003. Print.

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