American History II
Professor Jopp's Lecture
Thursday, September 23, 1999
Industrialization and Modernization
and how are these changes affecting people's
lives
Three interrelated processes:
(1) Industrialization: What are the characteristics of an
industrial economy?
- The work is concentrated in factories = more and more people
are working for someone else in a factory
- The workforce in concentrated in manufacturing
- Must have increasingly expanded markets = more places to sell
the products that are produced
- Markets are/were expanded through advertising
- Mail order system; catalogs
- The railroad is used to transport products
- More and more specialization in everything
- For example, in manufacturing, someone make a part of a
shoe, not a whole shoe
- In the professions, a lawyer might specialize in only one
area of law
- As things become specialized, they become stratified = have
more layers or classes
- Upper class: independently wealthy or own factories or
railroads
- Middle class: new professionals such as lawyers,
doctors, dentists, teachers, factory managers (while color
workers are workers who do "clean work" -- they don't get
dirty -- teachers, bank workers, etc.)
- Between middle and lower classes -- part of both: "blue
collar" workers: skilled workers without higher education
but who need skills that the lower class workers don't
need
- Lower class: unskilled work such as factory line
workers, domestic home workers, cleaning, etc.
(2) Modernization
- "Time-work discipline" = working by the clock; less
autonomy
- Wage work
- Better standard of living? For some yes, for some no
- A separation between home and work
- People are buying what they used to make or trade for with
neighbors; now need money
- At first, basic things: food, soap, candles, clothing,
shoes, etc.
- Education changes
- Some people become more highly educated
- Education become more specialized
- More general education is necessary; more standardization
in public schools
- More education and more types of education led to status
being related to education
(3) Urbanization
- Cities grow
- Immigration contributes to growth of (especially eastern)
cities with manufacturing
- Markets grow, too, because of large numbers of people in the
cities
--
People's lives change:
- Wage work - standard of living
- Less autonomy
- People buying what they used to make
- Family size decreases
- Fewer children needed as farm workers
- Families have more desire for their fewer children to
achieve more and get more education; can now imagine a "better"
life for their children: more goods, more education, and higher
status and class; a chance to be children and not live like
adults (these opportunites not available to poor immigrants
however)