The Industrial Revolution

of overcrowding. A good example of urban planning and transportation was the rebuilding of Paris, which laid the foundations of modern urbanism all around Europe. The appearance of the city and the quality of life in it greatly improved by the end of the 19th century. But, living conditions in the city during the Industrial Revolution were pretty bad, a factor that greatly contributed to the bad plight of the working class at that time. As urban civilization was starting to prevail over rural life, changes in the structure of the society and in family life became inevitable. Urban society became more diversified while the classes lost a great part of their unity. Economic specialization produced many new social groups. It created a vast range of jobs, skills and earnings, which intermingled with one another creating new subclasses. Thus the very rich and the very poor were separated by the vast space occupied by these new strata. Urban society resembled the society from the age of agriculture and aristocracy by one thing. The economic gap between rich and poor remained enormous and income distribution stayed highly unequal with one fifth of society receiving more than the remaining four fifths. With the emergence of the factory owners and industrial capitalists, he relations between the middle and the working class changed. But did the new industrial middle class ruthlessly exploit the workers? I believe that at the begging this was certainly the case. People were coming to the city as "family units" and as such worked in the factories. "In the early years some very young kids were employed solely to keep the family together" (Mckay 718). The conditions of work were appalling. An excerpt from Parliamentary Papers in England named "Evidence Before the Sadler Committee", mirrors the quite dark side of life in the factories. In this testimony several people who worked at factories in different industries and towns in England draw a vivid picture of the factory reality. Both children and grownups were made to work fourteen to sixteen hours a day with only an hour brake and a salary that was hardly intended to compensate the tremendous load of work. Children were "strapped" "severely" if they lagged and deteriorated their work. The sight of the workers reflected their sad plight. "Any man …must acknowledge, that an uglier set of men and women, of boys and girls, taking them in the mass it would be impossible to imagine…Their complexion is sallow?Their sature low…Their limbs slender and playing badly and ungracefully?Great numbers of girls and women walking lamely or awkwardly, with raised chests and spinal flexures" (Gaskell, 1). Miserable life and poverty allowed people few recreational outlets and money to spend. For this reason a process of corruption and degradation of morals spread among working class people. An illustration of this is the proliferation of prostitution at the time. The continuing distance between rich and poor made for every kind of debauchery and sexual exploitation. Important factor in the degradation of morals that spread through urban society and the working classes in particular was the diminishing role that religion played in daily live. Urban society became more secular and more and more people started to regard the church as conservative institution that defended social order and custom. As a result of this illegitimacy and sexual experimentation before marriage triumphed during the 19th century. Women's actively entering the labor force was a new development spurred by the Industrial Revolution. In the preindustrial world women did leave home at an early age in search for work but their opportunities were limited. The service in another family's household was by far the most common. The employment of girls and women in factories had an important effect on their stereotypic role of household carers. It weaned them away from home and the domestic tasks. "Shut up from morning till night, except when they are sent home for their meals, these girls are ignorant of and unhandy at every domestic employment" ("Observations on the Loss of Woolen Spinning, 1794"). However, the plight of the urban working class changed as the growth of modern cities approached the end of the 19th century. The average real income raised substantially. The practice of employing children from an early age was abandoned. Less and less women were working in sweated industries. Instead men were the primary wage earners while women stayed at home taking care of the household and the children. The early practice of hiring entire families in the factory disappeared. Family life became more stable, as mercenary marriages were substituted by romantic love. Sex roles in urban society became highly distinct. The most distressing changes brought to urban society -overcrowding, lack of urban planning, unsanitary conditions, unemployment and poverty -were eventually offset by the compensation and remedy of economic growth. Urban society not only change for the better. This change was a remarkable step for humanity. For one thing, the city promoted diversity and creativity. It was the uncontested home of new ideologies, ideas, movements, crucial scientific discoveries, customs, fashions, developments in art and literature.

Liberalism

The process of industrialization in England and on the Continent created an enlargement of the middle classes, e.g. the merchants, bankers, etc. Therefore, it became increasingly difficult for the conservative landowning aristocrats and monarchs to retain their power over society. The term liberalism was first used in England in around 1819. Liberal ideas of freedom of trade, freedom of speech etc. were largely shaped by the French Revolution, as were most other political doctrines. Both the advancement of the political doctrine of liberalism and the political ideas themselves were different in every country of Europe. The liberals of Britain and France were the most influential, therefore, I shall focus this essay predominantly on their influence, until the year 1832, on their respective countries in order to answer the question to what extent their influence was different. In the first chapter, I will deal with the political and economical ideologies 'all' liberals have in common. The next chapter will elaborate to what extent those liberalist ideas influenced society in France, until 1830. In the third, I will discuss the influence of liberalism in Britain up to the year 1832. Classical Liberalism: The ideologies of liberalism varied extensively in Europe from country to country, but there were also many similarities in their views of society. Liberals viewed men to be desirous for increasingly more property and respect of others, because liberals believed that the only way to get ahead in life was to gain property and respect, for the more property the better position in society. Liberals recognized that there was a need for some minimum form of government, otherwise there would be the inconvenience of every man having to be his own judge and policeman, but it would not need to be a very strong government. Government was only to restrain occasional transgressors; it was to protect the propertied against the non-propertied. Since the people also needed to be protected from an arbitrary or absolutist government, the government should be under the ultimate control of the propertied. Therefore, there should remain the power to remove or alter the legislative power, when it acts contrary to the trust that was placed in it. In other words, liberals believed in the ability of self-government and self-control, because they considered man to be rational in that man was capable of making independent decisions about his life. However, they did acknowledge the need for a weak government. This government was to be a constitutional monarchy, in which freedom of the press, freedom of speech, free rights of assembly, religion, and freedom to dispose over private property would be preserved in the best possible way. They were convinced that the legislative and the executive branch of government should be separate and that their actions should be mutually restrictive (based on the idea of "checks and balances" by John Locke). As stated previously, they were also convinced of the idea that only male property owners should be allowed to vote, because they had a stake in society. How much property was needed to be eligible to vote was a hot topic of debate amongst liberals all over Europe. Liberals were not democrats in that they supported the idea of universal male suffrage, for they feared the excesses of mob rule. However, they did believe that every adult male should have the opportunity to accumulate property to become eligible to vote and that all men were equal before the law. A liberal slogan was that careers should be open to the talents. None of the liberals in Europe was in favor of the unification of laborers into labor unions for it would be an artificial interference with the natural laws - supply and demand, diminishing returns - of the market. Moreover, liberals advocated an economy of "laissez faire", i.e. free trade; to be achieved by getting rid of or at least lowering the tariffs. They were of the opinion that free trade would be beneficial to all the countries involved, for with free trade, it would be easier to exchange goods. Consequently, each country would produce what it was most suited for, thereby increasing the country's standard of living and general wealth. The doctrine of liberalism was generally supported by men of business, bankers, merchants, the new capitalists ("the cotton lords"), who owed their position to their own hard work and intelligence; they were "self-made" men, who would do anything to increase their property within the means proved by the law, but not beyond. Some progressive landowners that wanted to improve their property joined these mostly 'new' classes in their support of liberalism. Contrary to what one might think, most liberals were, to a certain extent, concerned with the situation of the workers. They created several possibilities for the workers to obtain their own property: "savings banks, mutual benefit societies, and institutions of technical and vocational education" (Sperber; p66). There was one field, however, in which the liberals did favor strong governmental activity: the field of public education. They believed that well organized effective public education would create a strong society of male property owners who had a voice in public affairs. The influence of liberalism in France: In France, problems arose when Charles X became king in 1824. The reforms that were instituted after the constitution of 1814 were reversed. The Catholic clergy started to reclaim their rights to the control of public education. Sacrilegious behavior became increasingly more prohibited by law; e.g. sacrilege in church buildings became punishable by death. A strong opposition began to rise against these extreme actions by the reactionary government. In March 1830, the Chamber of Deputies - led by Lafitte and Casimir-Pйrier - passed a vote of no confidence in the government. The king retorted by proclaiming that new elections were to be held after he had dissolved the Chamber. According to the result of the new elections, previous actions made by the king were to be rejected. On his own authority king Charles, infuriated by this outcome, now issued four decrees, on July 26 1830. The first ordinance contained the order to dissolve the newly elected Chamber immediately, before its first meeting. The second proclaimed the institution of governmental censorship on all forms of press. Another reduced the right to vote in such a way that none of the bourgeois classes retained their suffrage. It concentrated all the political power back into the hands of the conservative aristocrats. The last decree called for new elections on the basis of the previous three decrees. On July 27, 1830, the July Revolution broke out in Paris. It were the republicans, mostly consisting of students, other intelligentsia, and working-class leaders, that undertook action, because they saw their chance to achieve their ideal of universal male suffrage. Strangely, it was not the upper-middle class that acted although they were the ones brutally deprived of their right to vote the day before. For three days, Paris was the stage of popular revolt. Charles X stepped down and fled to England, because he did not want to be taken captive by the angry revolutionists, the army refused to defend him against. After the abdication of Charles X, the liberals still wanted to continue with the existing system of constitutional monarchism, but with a king they could trust, which is completely in line with their view of government of constitutional monarchism, shown in the first chapter. However, they did liberalize it in that there was to be no more absolutism, the Chamber of Peers would be no longer be hereditary, and the Chamber of Deputies would be elected by a doubled electoral body (from 100,000 to 200,000). The Chambers agreed that the new king would be the Duke of Orlйans, proposed by Marquis de Lafayette, who was crowned on August 7, 1830. The upper-bourgeoisie - merchants, bankers, and industrialists - benefited most from the new system. To them, this new system was to be the end of political progress. After the revolution of 1830, liberalism became the governmental doctrine that was only interested to preserve the status quo. Liberalism in Britain: In England the Tory government had already begun to liberalize in the decade preceding the July Revolution in