• politics vs. government
• government is a set of organizations that carry out actions such as collecting taxes or establishing laws
  
• the decision-makers in government are chosen by a political process
• politics is how people try to influence the way a country is governed
  
• how is the politics relevant to the technology?
  
• impact of technology on politics
• how politics shapes what's possible in new technology
• in the early stages the industrial revolution caused quite a lot of misery, how was that fixed?
• got though the transition: finally technology created more good jobs than it destroyed old jobs
• the government started to act to protect workers
• workers act to protect themselves through unions
• cities were cleaned up through government action
  

• Upper class landowners had all the political power. England has a legislature with two houses: the House of Lords was the hereditary nobility, but landowners also dominated the House of Commons
• before 1832 only landowners had the right to vote, so the government tended to act in the interest of the rich and middle class
• the landowners saw themselves as representing the population of their area, but they acted in their own interests
  

Leading up to the industrial revolution, the key change making possible an Agricultural Revolution was Enclosure, a change in how the use of agricultural land was organized

• key to agriculture becoming more efficient
  
• land ownership:
• the owners of the land were rich upper class families
• in the medieval pattern they leased the land to villages whose residents cooperated to farm communally but different families has the right to the produce of different amounts of land
• landowners pushed for the land to be divided up into individual farms--enclosure
  
• during enclosure the landowners wrote new leases to individual families--often 19 year leases
  
• every family in that village had the right to get a lease for an amount of land equivalent to the rights they had before
• land that previously had been common pasture land and woodland was also divided up
  
• but people who got very small farms couldn't survive on their own without the right to use the common (because it has been divided up too) and had to sell out their leases, so farms got larger (several hundred acres)
• the replacement of communal farms with family farms was well underway before the industrial revolution--started on the basis of agreement of villagers but was increasingly forced after 1760
• family farms (on leased land) worked by the family and some hired agricultural laborers (at first fairly often hired on an annual basis)
  
• this was key because it gave opportunities to those farmers who were interested in improving--they could invest in improving their land or new crops
  
• End result of this process of enclosure & farms getting larger was a pattern of large family farms on land leased from an upper class landowner:
  • Farms of 200-500 acres
    
  • One family held the lease and makes decisions
  • That family could invest in improvements and get profits

• 15-20% of the land was owned by the farmers themselves, 75% by large landlords, usually the old aristocracy whose families had owned the land for many generations
• only land owners had the right to vote
  
• farmers did often have 19 year leases--farm size refers to the size of the farm a family leased and managed, not the land owned by a landlord
• the small farmers who sold their land rights mostly become agricultural laborers but some moved to cities
  
• the overall labor surplus kept wages down
  
• in a few areas people were moved off the land to increase pastureland for sheep
• it is somewhat oversimplified to say that poor people moved from rural areas to the cities and provided the labor force for the industrial revolution
• but agriculture certainly made a difference because it allowed population increases and fed an increasing population of city-dwellers

Labor: What were the possible strategies for workers to fight against low wages and bad conditions?

• unions and strikes, but unions were illegal at first
  
• riots and calls for revolution (which were taken seriously because of the model of the French Revolution)
  
• right to vote: fight to expand the right to vote from just landowners to universal male suffrage
• charities particularly concerned with protecting children
• government regulation, but how do you persuade government to look out for the rights of workers if they don't vote
  

Since poorer people could not vote they often expressed discontent with riots

• as early as the late 18th century
• when food prices were high and people were going hungry, riots were the common way to put pressure on the government and the elite
  
• Luddite movement--beginning in 1811, a few gangs of home textile workers burned factories and smashed machines with sledgehammers because they saw that the factories were taking away their jobs 
  
• particularly attached stocking frames: a knitting machine that they feared would put hand knitters out of work+
• 
  
• This pretty much disappeared after the "Frame Breaking Act" of 1812 made smashing machines a capital offense. 
  
• One of those executed was a 12 year old boy named Abraham Charlson.

Some people saw political change as the only hope--if poorer people can't vote the government will not look out for their interests

• Radicals wanted something like the French Revolution in England
  
• Allen sees 1815-1832 as a period where the working class organized to try to get the right to vote
• the corn laws were an example of the government favoring the landowners--
• tariffs to keep the price of grain high,
  
• which made it hard for the poor to afford food
  
• 1832 reform act reapportioned parliamentary representation based on population and gave the vote to heads of household with at least 10 pounds net worth or renting land for at least 50 pounds a year, about 1/5 of the male population. Gave the vote to the middle class but not the working class.
• poor laws (welfare) was reformed, but not in ways that benefited the poor. The intention was to make receiving help if you couldn't support yourself humiliating
  
• the middle class factory owners got enough power relative to the upper class landowners to repeal the corn laws
  
• Chartist movement fought unsuccessfully for a People's Charter (written in 1838) including universal male suffrage
• 1867 reform act doubled the voting population by adding all male householders and those who rented unfurnished lodgings for at least 10 pounds a year, but only in cities
• extension of the vote in 1884-5 gave the vote to rural men on the same terms.  About 40% of males still could not vote
• In 1918 all men over the age of 18 and women over the age of 30 got the vote

• factory workers worked around 70 hours a week for low wages
  
• Laws were based on the traditional belief was that ordinary people could and should watch out for themselves both as employees and consumers (as consumer goods came to be made far away instead of locally and technology became more complex that didn't work so well any more).
• employees had no right to compensation for accidents from their employers because of a legal principle called "fellow servant"
• many were injured on the job: disabled workers became one of the images used by those working for reform
• disability became a clearer category because the stricter time and work discipline of factories made it harder for disabled people to work
• workers formed voluntary associations, which focused on creating community (leading to criticism that they spent money on funerals, not basic needs)

• factory act of 1833 forbade employment of children under 9 and limited hours for children to 9 hours a day for children 9-13 and 12 hours a day for children 13-18
• this and later reform laws were pushed by the Tories (the rich landowners), who shifted to paternalism as a political strategy
• Mines Act of 1842: prohibited the employment of females and boys below the age of 10 in mines
• 1844 Factory Act: women and young people 14-18 limited to 12 hours a day during the week and 9 hours on Sunday, machines must be fenced
• 1847 Factory Act: limited work for women and young people 14-18 in the textile industry to 10 hours a day
• 1859 Act: allowed peaceful picketing during a strike--the first protection for union activity
• 1860 Food and Drug Act: the first legal protection from adulteration of food.
• 1866 Sanitary Act: the first effect requirement that cities and towns deal with health hazards such as sewage contamination
• 1870 Elementary Education Act established local education boards to make sure schools were available for all children from age 5 to 13, but these schools could still charge fees
  
• 1878 Factory Act: required children under 10 to be in school and limited work to a half day for children 10-14
• 1880 Education act required children to attend school from the ages of 5 to 10
  
• 1891 Factory Act: increased the minimum age for children to work from 10 to 11, prohibited the employment of women for 4 weeks after childbirth and strengthened the requirements for fencing machines
• but notice that men are still assumed to be responsible for themselves
  

in the second half of the 19th century trade unions begin to have some success in protecting workers

• unions at the time were usually divided up by work, eg. coal miners union
• 1800 combination acts had prohibited all union activity repealed in 1824-25 but the legality of unions was unclear until 1871
• 1859 Act: allowed peaceful picketing during a strike--the first protection for union activity
• the government was afraid of revolution, realized they needed to improve conditions to prevent workers from being so desperate they organized a revolution
• after 1850 unions become more respectable, get some right to negotiate wages and working conditions
• unions grew in the 1850s and 1860s to about a million members in 1874--these provided sickness and unemployment benefits and negotiated with management
  
• successful 1889 London Dock Strike began a push to organize less skilled workers

The industrial revolution was also entering a new phase: the transition from pre-industrial jobs has been completed

• few people left who have lost their jobs to technological change
• The biggest change was the increased number of higher paying (high productivity) industrial jobs
• the capital industries (iron, steel, coal, locomotives, building machines for factories) paid higher wages because it was skilled work
• skilled workers got a larger share of the new wealth, pulling up average wages
  

     --many were still stunted by malnutrition

• cheap imported food became more widely available
• factories produce cheap machine-made goods, transportation becomes cheaper as a result of the railroad (though working class people walked to work and rarely could afford to travel)
  
• stores selling low cost goods become common in the second half of the century

Cities were improving in the second part of the industrial revolution, but still tended to grow faster than they could provide services and amenities

• middle class people become interested in improving cities
• parks and public buildings
• improvements in public health were much more important than improvements in medicine
  
• sewers and water supply--improvement were needed for health
• germ theory of disease was not accepted until the end of the century but people began to realize the importance of sanitation
  
• but cities were still growing faster than infrastructure could keep up