Ms. Garratt
Honors World History
Pages 100-107
 Factory
 Women
workers
 Children
 Labor
conditions
14-16 hours work days
Low wages
Hazardous conditions
No compensation for
injuries
• Women & children
paid less
• Patience Kershaw’s
story
•
•
•
•
 Physiocrat
who
believed in no gov
regulation or
interference with the
forces of supply and
demand (S/D)
 Believed that natural
laws (S/D) governed
the economy
 Free
market would
result in lower prices.
 Lower prices would
increase
consumerism.
 Growing economy
would provide jobs.
 Greater prosperity
would encourage
greater capital
investments
Theory that
population would
outpace food
supply
 The only checks on
this would be war,
disease & famine.
 Urged population
control.
 Incorrect theory,
resources have kept
up with population

 When
wages are high
families have more
children.
 More children
increased the supply
of labor which causes
wages to decrease.
 Also leads to greater
unemployment and
misery for working
classes
Believed in
government
intervention.
 Goal of society should
be “the greatest
happiness for the
greatest number”
 Laws should be judged
by their “utility”
whether or not they
promoted happiness or
pain?

Disciple of Bentham
 Laws or actions were
good if they promoted
happiness; wrong if
they produced pain
 Favored government
 intervention .
 Supported greater
suffrage for women &
workers so they could
gain political influence
& work for reforms

 John Wesley
 Religious
revival mid-
1700s
 Adoption of sober
way & moral ways
 Salvation
 Helped channel
frustration & anger
from revolution to
social reform
 Benefitted
from IR
 Came from 3 groups:
• Merchants &
entrepreneurs
• Inventors
• Skilled artisans
 New
standard of
living
 New way of life
 Opposed
laissez-faire
 Condemned
industrial capitalism as a
tool of the rich
 Advocated
that “people as a whole” or
the government should own and operate
the “means of production” (industries,
railroads, factories, etc.) instead of
private individuals.
 Early
Socialists
 Self-sufficient
communities
 Share all property
 Based on Thomas
More’s Utopia
 Robert
Owen was
mill owner
 Built New Lanark as
community where
workers lived well
 Did not allow child
labor & encouraged
labor unions.

History determined by economics

All history is a history of class struggle

The bourgeoisie own the “means of production” &
control wealth

The proletariat are exploited working class

Predicted a class struggle in which the proletariat
would triumph.

Proletariat would establish a classless society in
which wealth & power would be equally distributed.
 History
based on scientific laws?
 Assumptions were wrong
 Predictions never came to fruition.
 Opposite occurred (sol)
 Unity among workers v. nationalism.
 Reforms gained through participation in
the political process not revolution
 Russia, Cuba, China….communism was
forced upon people