Chapter 13: Mass Society and
Democracy
Section 1: The Growth of
Industrial Prosperity
• Differences between 2 Industrial
Revolutions
– First Industrial Revolution: textiles, railroads,
iron, and coal
– Second Industrial Revolution: steel,
chemicals, electricity, and petroleum
• Steel replaced iron – useful in building lighter,
smaller, and faster machines
• Electricity became the new form of energy – it
could be converted to heat, light, and motion
– Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan: light bulb
• Factories could remain open 24hours/day
– Alexander Graham Bell: telephone in 1876
– Guglielmo Marconi: radio waves across Atlantic in
1901
• Development of internal-combustion
engine provided a new source of power
– Ocean liners, airplanes, and automobiles
were a result
• 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first flight
in Kitty Hawk, NC
• By 1919, the first regular passenger air service
was established
**end of notes**
• New Patterns
– Europeans could afford to buy more products
• Increased wages
• Lower prices of manufactured goods
– Reduced transportation costs for goods
– Europe was divided into 2 economic zones
• Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Germany, &
northern Italy were advanced industrial countries
• Southern Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Russia were
largely agricultural countries
• Working Classes
– To improve their working conditions, they
formed political parties and socialist trade
unions
• Based on the thoughts and ideas of Karl Marx
– Wrote The Communist Manifesto which called for a new
social system that would be classless
– One of his ideas of socialism would lead to communism
• Most important socialist party was the German
Social Democratic Party
– Elected delegates to parliament to help improve
conditions for the working class
– Trade Unions
• Trade or labor unions were also created to improve
working conditions
– Used strikes to raise wages, better working conditions,
and gain the right of collective bargaining
**end of notes**
Section 2: The Emergence of
Mass Society
• New Urban Environment
– More and more people lived in the cities
– The size of cities grew, especially in
industrialized countries
• Ex: in London, the population grew from 960,000
to 6,500,000 between 1800 and 1900
– Conditions in the city improved
• City medical officers, building inspectors, new
water and drainage systems
• Social Structure
– New Elite class: landed aristocrats,
industrialists, bankers, merchants – they
became the wealthy upper middle class
– Middle class
• Lawyers, doctors, business managers, engineers,
architects, accountants, etc… made up the middle
middle class
• The lower middle class consisted of small
shopkeepers, traders, peasants
– New white-collar class: salespeople,
bookkeepers, telephone operators,
secretaries – they were not highly paid but
they followed the middle class ideals –
believed in hard work and were concerned
with the right way of doing things
**end of notes**
– Working Class: peasants, farm laborers, and
sharecroppers, urban working class (skilled
artisans and semi-skilled laborers), and the
unskilled laborers
• Women in Society
– The 2nd Industrial Revolution offered new job
opportunities for women
• Industrial plants and retail shops needed clerks,
typists, secretaries, and sales clerks
• They found jobs in the fields of education, health,
and social services
– Women began having fewer children because
of improved economic conditions and
increased use of birth control.
• Women’s Rights
– Women began fighting for equality
– Early efforts were not very successful;
however, they did gain access to universities
and occupations dominated by men
• Women entered the medical field by becoming
nurses
– Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton transformed
nursing into a profession of trained, middle-class women
– During the 1840s and 1850s, women also wanted the
right to vote
• This would not become a possibility in most areas until after
World War I
• Education
– Between 1870 and 1914, most countries began
establishing state-funded primary schools
• Factories needed trained workers
• Better-educated voters
– This led to increased literacy which would lead to the
rise of newspapers.
• New forms of leisure
– People now had shorter work days, weekends
off, and some time off during the summer
– Amusement parks and team sports became
popular forms of entertainment
**end of notes**
Section 3: National State
and Democracy
• Western Europe
– Great Britain: 2 party parliamentary system
• Liberal Party and the Conservative Party
– both were ruled by upper-middle class business people
– Passed laws that expanded the right to vote (all males
over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30)
• Labour Party would emerge, dedicated to the
interests of workers
– Helped bring about benefits for workers during sickness
and unemployment
– France: Third Republic
• Set up by a constitution
• Had a president and a 2 house legislature
• Failed to set up a successful parliamentary system
– Italy
• Lacked a sense of unity
– Poverty-stricken south and industrialized north
– Widespread corruption among government officials
• Eastern Europe
– Germany: Imperial government with twohouse legislature
• Chancellor Otto von Bismarck disagreed with a
democracy
– Austria-Hungary: dual monarchy
• Austria – constitutional legislature but the emperor,
Francis Joseph, largely ignored it
• Hungary – working parliament that was controlled
by the landowners
– Russia: absolute power of the tsar (czar)
• Nicholas II wanted to maintain complete power
– Increase in industrialization led to a revolution in 1905
» Workers went to St. Petersburg to present a petition
of grievances
» Troops opened fire on the peaceful demonstration
» Called “Bloody Sunday” (January 22, 1905)
– He created a legislative body called the Duma but
eventually their power was shortened
• North America
– United States
• 13th Amendment – abolished slavery
• 14th Amendment – gave African-Americans
citizenship
• 15th Amendment – gave African-American males
the right to vote
• By 1900, the U.S. was the world’s richest nation
• Expanded territory
– Samoan Islands, Hawaiian Islands (annexed in 1898),
Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines
– Canada
• By 1870, consisted of four provinces: Quebec,
Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick
– In 1871, Manitoba and British Columbia would be added
• Unity was difficult because the French speaking
and English speaking people didn’t trust each
other
– It wouldn’t be until 1896 that these two groups would
reconcile
**end of notes**
Section 4: Toward the Modern
Consciousness
• Reason, science, and progress were still
important ideals.
– Universe was seen as a large machine,
composed of solid material bodies called
atoms.
• Marie Curie discovered that radium gave off
energy and that atoms were little “active worlds”
• Albert Einstein provided a new theory of the
universe – relativity: space and matter are not
absolute but relative to the observer.
• Sigmund Freud raised questions about the
nature of the human mind.
– He believed that human behavior was
strongly determined by past experiences and
internal forces that the individual was
unaware of. These hidden feelings influence
behavior because they are a part of the
unconscious. He developed psychoanalysis
which allows the individual to probe into one’s
memory to explain behaviors.
• Anti-semitism is the hostility and
discrimination of Jews. Since the Middle
Ages they have been mistreated because
they have been portrayed as the
murderers of Christ.
– In Russia, for example, they were forced to
live in certain regions.
– Organized massacres, pogroms, occurred
throughout eastern Europe.
• During the 2nd Industrial Revolution, writers and
artists would rebel against the traditional styles.
– The changes they called for resulted in an artistic
movement known as modernism.
– Painting
• Impressionism: began when a group of artists rejected the
traditional studios and worked outside.
– Claude Monet sought to capture the interplay of light, water,
and sky.
– Other impressionist painters: Pierre Auguste Renoir and Berthe
Morisot
• Postimpressionism: interested in color and form
over the naturalistic impressionism.
– Vincent Van Gogh, a famous postimpressionist painter,
believed that the artist should paint what he feels.
• Cubism was started by Pablo Picasso, who used
geometric shapes and designs to recreate reality in
the viewer’s mind.
– Architecture
• Modernism in architecture gave rise to a principle
called functionalism: idea that the buildings should
be functional/useful and free from unnecessary
ornamentation.
– U.S. led the way in this idea with two architects: Louis
Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.