The Rise of Industrial Cities and the Labor Movement in 19th Century Europe
1. The Growth of Industrial Cities
1.1. Urban Expansion
The great capitals of Europe experienced dramatic growth due to rural emigration driven by economic changes. Many new towns emerged directly from industrial activity, with workers housed near factories, creating industrial neighborhoods. Most urban centers expanded from established cities with traditional market functions, port activities, administrative roles, or communication hubs.
1.2. Social Inequality in Cities
The occupation of city centers by the bourgeoisie and suburbs by the working class created urban planning needs. Neighborhoods were segregated by social class, reflected in housing types, living standards, dress, and cultural habits, leading to distinct social identities. The city became a stage for social, political, and cultural confrontations between the affluent and the working population.
1.3. Urban Reforms and Services
Cities saw the introduction of public services like water, markets, transportation, banks, public buildings, and theaters.
2. The Bourgeois Lifestyle
2.1. A New Way of Living
The rising bourgeoisie, including industrialists, bankers, and entrepreneurs, drove urban transformations, introducing new habits and social values. The middle class consisted of shop owners and mid-level employees. The upper classes interacted in spaces that defined bourgeois society.
2.2. The Private Sphere: The Home
The house symbolized social status and achievement, representing the owner’s wealth.
2.3. Dress and Social Differentiation
Dress, like the house, reflected bourgeois conventions and formalism, designed to hide the body and differentiate from the lower classes. The bourgeoisie displayed elaborate clothing, while women’s attire was even more complex.
2.4. Education and Social Cohesion
Education, from primary school to university, was viewed as essential for strengthening social cohesion. Free public primary education was established.
2.5. Leisure and Sports
Urban life led to a rediscovery of nature and the rise of sports as part of the bourgeois ideal.
3. The Working Class
3.1. A New Class of Workers
Industrial capitalism created a working class dependent on wages, characterized by job insecurity.
3.2. Workers’ Quarters
in the industrial areas was desirable that dwellings were near the factories. Thus arose the working class districts, which extend through the suburbs of major cities, growing wildly without minimum services. Industrial colonies in remote areas of cities, neighborhoods it was for employees of the company, built next to industrial buildings.
3.3. The work and daily working wage was declining over from the XIX century, during the early years of the XXth century, the main claim of the workers’ organizations and was the 8h day. working 6days x week. Women and children constituted a large part of the workforce in the early stages of industrialization. Wages were very low and were too tight to meet the minimum needs of workers (housing and food). Child labor was much worse paid, as well as for women.
3.4. Food and living standards The early stages of industrialization brought a terrible quality of life for new workers. At the end of XIX century, the situation was more favorable, in part because of declining agricultural prices and also the social coquistas. The principal food was the flour and potatoes. The leisure center for men was the tavern. The washed trbajadores more than the bourgeois, mostly by necessity.
4.1. The origins of the labor movement with the abolition of AR, peasants and artisans were free of feudal dues and union ties. These workers started showing up in increasing numbers to the factories and jobs offered by the development of cities. The workforce was abundandte, so the conditions of employment and wage levels were unfavorable for the workers. Thus arose constant source of social conflict, thus favoring the emergence of stable organizations, in order to defend their rights as trabjadores smallest. The social unrest was directed toward the improvement of working conditions, recucción working hours and wage increases and political rights.
4.2. The first workers’ associations Initially, these organizations were banned, because it is believed ran counter to free enterprise and of contract. The right of association and assembly was one of the first demands raised by workers, and GB was the first country to recognize that right in 1824. The first and most abundant were the Friendly Societies, which were aimed at assisting its partners in case of accident, illness or death. The key driver asociace worker was the collective defense of wage and working conditions of a craft as well as claims of improving these. The strike was often the main instrument of pressure. The term syndicate of French origin, means from the late nineteenth century founded the association of workers to defend their interests.
4 .3. The first workers’ actions: Ned Ludd Luddism, a legendary knitter who allegedly had been the first to break the frame of her loom. This figure was derived the name of Luddism, referring to the activities organized by the British workers who, between 1779 and 1802 that destroyed machines stripped of their posts trabjajo. One of the most characteristic reactions of the workers was the destruction of the new machines acquired businesses to improve productivity of their factories.
4.4. The political struggle Chartism Chartism was a major mass movement, whose heyday was between 1838-48, and was proposed to achieve political rights for workers. The Workers’ Association in London, led by cabinetmaker William Lovett drafted the People’s Charter, which is claimed, universal male suffrage, the establishment of secret balloting and the creation of equal electoral districts. Chartism successfully mobilized most trbajadores and classes with a specific political goal: the democratization of the state. The Chartist movement was weakened without achieving its objectives. But its existence forced the British state to undertake the regulation of labor relations. Chartism was a historical fact of extraordinary importance because it anticipated the actions of social reform, from the last decades of XIX century, were to promote workers’ parties from parliament or from their participation in government.