HIST103 Study Guide

Unit 9: Life and Labor in the Industrial World

9a. Describe the importance of certain inventions that came about during the Second Industrial Revolution

  • What important inventions came about during the Second Industrial Revolution?
  • How did automation help drive innovation?
  • What inventors and innovators helped spur the Second Industrial Revolution?

As discussed in Unit 8, the Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914) featured advancements in the steel, electrical, and oil industries. Since it was first developed in Turkey during the mid-13th century, steel production was slow and laborious. In 1856, Henry Bessemer (1813–1898) invented the Bessemer Process, which afforded mass production of steel from pig iron. Beginning in 1900, Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), an American industrialist, offered an innovative business model at Carnegie Steel by cutting labor costs and materials and speeding up the production process. His employees worked 12-hour days, seven days a week. Steel was used to improve rail lines and build the skyscrapers that would support vertical construction in American cities.

To review, see:


9b. Explain what life was like in industrial cities and how the growth of industrialization affected cities

  • What was life like in an industrial city?
  • How was life different depending on socio-economic status?
  • How did the conditions of industrial cities lead to modern reforms?

Life for the working class in industrial cities was dirty, cramped, and dangerous. Many families lived in small tenement apartments built of wood and prone to fires, with few windows and poor ventilation. Spoiled and rotten food was normal. Jacob Riis published photographs of the unsafe, unsanitary living conditions in his book How the Other Half Lives (1890). New York installed a sewer system after a massive cholera outbreak in the 1840s. Reformers like Jane Addams, who founded Chicago's Hull House in 1889 and other settlement houses, worked to improve living conditions and educated the poor on maintaining sanitary living conditions. 

Meanwhile, wealthy neighborhoods featured large houses, gas lamps, running water, flushing toilets, and electrified street cars. Beginning in the 1850s, sewage systems removed waste. Opportunities for leisure and recreation included libraries, amusement parks, books, newspapers, music halls, and theaters.

To review, see:


9c. Discuss the movement of people globally and what effect this had on the places that they went

  • Why do people move from one place to another?
  • What is a diaspora, and what are some important ones in history?
  • What is a settler colony, and how did they impact the development of the modern world?

Europeans moved to Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States, and Uruguay to flee poverty and religious persecution during the 19th century. For example, ten million people left Ireland to settle in the United States, Canada, and Australia during Ireland's Great Potato Famine (1845–1852). Many Japanese emigrated to Peru and Brazil, and many Chinese emigrated to Mexico, Canada, the United States, and other countries in the Americas. 

In the Americas, European and Asian immigrants faced varying forms of racism, nativism (a push against immigrants), and segregation. In 1882, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The U.S. government also reneged on its 1894 promise to welcome and guarantee the rights of Japanese immigrants when it convinced Japan to withhold the passports of Japanese emigrants in its Gentleman's Agreement of 1907.

To review, see Communities in Diaspora and Settler Colonies.


9d. Analyze different reform and revolutionary movements to better understand how people criticized the Industrial Era

  • What are coerced and semi-coerced labor?
  • What were different reform movements during the industrial era?
  • What regulations and reforms came as a result of resistance?
  • What is socialism, and why did it develop?

The Industrial era featured three forms of labor: free or paid, coerced, and semi-coerced. Paid labor is when workers assume positions of their own free will and receive wages and benefits according to mutually agreed-upon contracts. During the industrial era, work was often semi-coerced because laborers received low pay, worked long hours, and were subject to dangerous working conditions. The employer held great power because it was easy to replace sick, injured, or unwilling workers. Coerced laborers included prisoners and children who earned meager wages (if any) and were forced to obey their "employers" or parents.

As discussed in Unit 6, Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) protested the extreme poverty, alienation, and poor living conditions they witnessed in the industrialized cities. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), they predicted a class struggle would occur over the means of production. The proletariat (working class) would revolt against the bourgeoisie (upper classes and wealthy elite) to demand better working conditions, and capitalism would implode. These socialist ideas would fuel revolutions in Russia, China, and around the world into the 20th century.

Meanwhile, unionization movements spread throughout the world as workers organized to gain more leverage and negotiate fairer contracts. The British Parliament passed The Factory Acts from 1860–1880 to build on previous laws that regulated businesses. They also expanded national healthcare, regulated workplace safety, limited work hours, and restricted child labor. Historians believe this progressive government response may have discouraged British citizens from engaging in violent protests as occurred in many other European countries during this time. The United States and Germany followed, and several countries passed laws mandating free public education for children. 

To review, see:


Unit 9 Vocabulary

  • Andrew Carnegie
  • Bessemer Process
  • Bourgeoisie
  • Chinese Exclusion Act
  • coerced labor
  • Gentleman's Agreement of 1907
  • Great Potato Famine
  • Henry Bessemer
  • How the Other Half Lives
  • Hull House
  • Jacob Riis
  • Jane Addams
  • paid labor
  • Proletariat
  • semi-coerced labor
  • socialism
  • The Factory Acts
  • unionization movements