Mass Society and Democracy Part 2

Mass Society and Democracy

The Emergence of Mass Society

The New Urban Environment

• By the end of the nineteenth century, the new industrial world had led to the

emergence of a mass society in which the condition of the majority-the lower
classes-was demanding some governmental attention.

• Governments now had to consider how to appeal to the masses, rather than just to

the wealthier citizens.
• Housing was one area of great concern.

•Crowded quarters could easily spread disease.
• An even bigger threat to health was public sanitation.

• Growth of Urban Populations

• With few jobs available in the countryside, people from rural areas migrated to

cities to find work in the factories or, later, in blue-collar industries.

• As a result of this vast migration, more and more people lived in cities.

• In the 1850s, urban dwellers made up about 40 percent of the English population, 15

percent in France, 10 percent in Prussia, and 5 percent in Russia.
•By 1890, urban dwellers had increased to about 60 percent in England, 25 percent in France, 30
percent in Prussia, and 10 percent in Russia.
• In industrialized nations, cities grew tremendously.

• Between 1800 and 1900, the population in London grew from 960,000 to 6,500,000.

Multiple Choice

Which class made up the majority of mass society?

• Upper

• Middle

• Lower

• Working

The New Urban Environment
• Improvements in Public Health and Sanitation

• Cities also grew faster in the second half of the nineteenth century because of

improvements in public health and sanitation.

• Thus, more people could survive living close together.

• Improvements came only after reformers in the 1840s urged local governments to do

something about the filthy living conditions that caused disease.
•FOR EXAMPLE, cholera had ravaged Europe in the early 1830s and 1840s.
• Contaminated water is the overcrowded cities had spread the deadly disease.

• On the advice of reformers, city governments created boards of health to

improve housingquality.

• Medical officers and building inspectors inspected dwellings for public health

hazards.
• Building regulations required running water and internal drainage systems for new systems.

• Clean water and an effective sewage system were critical to public health.

• The need for freshwater was met by a system of dams and reservoirs that stored the

water.
• Aqueducts and tunnels then created water from the countryside to the city and into homes.

•Gas heaters, and later electric heaters, made regular hot baths possible.

• The treatment of sewage was improved by building underground pipes that

carried raw sewage far from the city for disposal.

• A public campaign in Frankfurt, Germany, featured the slogan, “from the toilet to

the river in half an hour.”

Multiple Choice

What did city governments create on the advice of reformers to improve housing quality?

• Boards of Health

• Safe Houses

• Family Programs

• New Taxes

Social Structure

• After 1871, most people enjoyed a higher standard of living.

• Still, great poverty remained in Western society.

• Between the few who were rich and the many who were poor existed several middle-class

groups.

• The New Elite

• At the top of European society stood a wealthy elite.

• This group made up only 5 percent of the population but controlled 30 to 40 percent

of the wealth.
• During the 1800s, the most successful industrialists, bankers, and merchants-the wealthy

upper-middle class-had joined with the landed aristocracy to form this new elite.
•Whether aristocratic or upper-middle class in background , members of the elite became leaders in
the government and military.

• Marriage also served to unite the two groups.

• Daughters of business tycoons gained aristocratic titles, and aristocratic heirs gained

new sources of cash.
• FOR EXAMPLE, when wealthy American Consuelo Vanderbilt married the British duke of

Marlborough, the new duchess brought approximately $10 million to the marriage.

Multiple Select

Which THREE professions made up the wealthy upper-middle class?

• Industrialists

• Bankers

• Merchants

• Capitalists

Social Structure

• The Middle Classes

• The middle classes consisted of variety of groups.

• Below the upper-middle class, which formed part of the new elite, was a middle

group that included lawyers, doctors, members of civil service, business managers,
engineers, architects, accountants, and chemists.
• Beneath this solid and comfortable middle group was a lower-middle class of small

shopkeepers, traders, and prosperous farmers.

• The Second Industrial Revolution produced a new group of white-collar

workers between the lower-middle class and the lower classes.

• This group included traveling salespeople, bookkeepers, telephone operators,

department store salespeople, and secretaries.
• Although not highly paid, these white-collar workers were often committed to middle-class

ideals.

• The middle classes shared a certain lifestyle with values that dominated much

of nineteenth centurysociety.

• Members of the middle class liked to preach their worldview both to their children

and to the upper and lower classes of their society.
• This was especially evident in Victorian Britain, often considered a model of middle-class

society.

Multiple Choice

Which class consisted of a variety of groups?

• Upper

• Middle

• Lower

• Peasants

Social Structure

• The Middle Class Cont.

• The European middle classes believed in hard work, which was open to

everyone and guaranteed to have positive results.

• Outward appearances were also very important to the middle classes.

• The etiquette book The Habits of Good Society was a best-seller.

• The Working Class

• Below the middle classes on the social scale were the working classes-also

referred to as the lower classes-which made up almost 80 percent of the
European population.

• These classes included landholding peasants, farm laborers, and sharecroppers,

especially in eastern Europe.

• The urban working class consisted of many different groups.

• They might be skilled artisans or semiskilled laborers, but many were unskilled day

laborers or domestic servants.
• In Britain in 1900, one out of every seven employed persons was a domestic servant.

•Most servants were women.

Multiple Choice

What did the European middle classes believe in?

• Slavery

• Taxing the Poor

• Shortened Hours

• Hard Work

Social Structure/
Women’s Experiences

• The Working Classes Cont.

• After 1870, urban workers began to live more comfortably.

• Reforms created better living conditions in cities.

• In addition, a rise in wages, along with a decline in many consumer costs, made it possible

for workers to buy more than just food and housing.
•Workers now had money to buy extra clothes or pay to entertain themselves in their few leisure
hours.
• Because workers had organized and conducted strikes, they had won the 10-hour workday with a

Saturday afternoon off.

• In 1800, women were mainly defined by their family and household roles.

• The vastmajority of women throughout Europe and the United States had no

legal identity apart from their husbands.

• Married women could not sit on a jury, could not hold property in their own names,

and could not write a will.
• Women in the early nineteenth century remained legally inferior and economically

dependent on men.
•In the course of the nineteenth century and during the Second Industrial Revolution, women
struggled to change their status.

Multiple Choice

What did reformers create in cities?

• Better Living Conditions

• New Professions

• Labor Unions

• More Factories

Women’s Experiences

• New Job Opportunities

• During much of the nineteenth century, working-class groups maintained the

belief that women should remain at home to bear and nurture children and
should not be allowed in the industrial workforce.

• The Second Industrial Revolution, however, opened the door to new jobs for

women.

• There were not enough men to fill the relatively low-paid, white-collar jobs being

created, so employers began to hire women.
• Both industrial plants and retail shops needed clerks, typists, secretaries, file clerks, and

salesclerks.

• The expansion of government services created some job opportunities for

women.

• Women could be secretaries and telephone operators, and also took jobs in

education, health, and social services.
• While some middle-class women held these jobs, they were mainly filled by the working

class who aspired to a better quality of life.

Multiple Choice

What opened the door for new jobs for women?

• First Industrial Revolution

• Second Industrial Revolution

• Third Industrial Revolution

• Fourth Industrial Revolution

Women’s Experiences

• The Marriage Ideal

• Many people in the nineteenth century believed in the ideal expressed in Lord

Tennyson’s The Princess, published in 1847:

•“Man for the field and woman for the hearth: Man for the sword and for the needle she: Man with
the head and woman with the heart: Man to command and woman to obey.”

• The view of the sexes was strengthened during the Industrial Revolution.

• As the chief family wage earners, men worked outside the home.

• Women were left to care for the family.

• Throughout the 1800s, marriage remained the only honorable and available

career for most women.

• There was also one important change.

• The number of children born to the average woman began to decline-the most significant

development in the modern family.
•This decline in the birthrate was tied to improved economic conditions, as well as, to increased use of
birth control.
• In 1882, Europe’s first birth control clinic was founded in Amsterdam.

Multiple Choice

Throughout the 1800s, what remained the only honorable and available career for most women?

• Doctors

• Wife

• Teachers

• Lawyers

Women’s Experiences
• The Family Ideal

• The family was the central institution of middle-class life.

• With fever children in the family, mothers could devote more time to child care and

domestic leisure.
• The middle-class family fostered an ideal of togetherness.

•The Victorians created the family Christmas with its Yule log, tree, songs, and exchange of gifts.
• By the 1850s, Fourth of July celebrations in the United States had changed from wild celebrations

to family picnics.

• The lives of working-class women were different from those of their middle-

class counterparts.

• Most working-class women had to earn money to help support their families.

• While their earnings averaged only a small percentage of their husbands’ earnings, the

contributions of working class women made a big difference in the economic survival of
their families.
•Daughters in working-class families were expected to work until they married.
• After marriage, many women often did small jobs at home to support the family.

• For working-class women who worked away from the home, child care was a

concern.

• Older siblings, other relatives, or neighbors often provided child care while the

mother’s worked.
• Some mothers sent their children to dame schools in which other women provided in-home

child care, as well as some basic literacy instruction.

Multiple Choice

What was the central institution of middle-class life?

• Work

• Church

• Education

• Family

Women’s Experiences

• The Family Ideal Cont.

• For the children of the working classes, childhood was over by the age of 9 to

10.

• By this age, children often became apprentices or were employed in odd jobs.

• Between 1890 and 1914, however, family patterns among the working class

began to change.

• Higher-paying jobs in heavy industry and improvements in the standard of living

made it possible for working-class families to depend on the income of husbands
alone.

• By the early twentieth century, some working-class mothers could afford to

stay at home, following the pattern of middle-class women.

• At the same time, working-class families aspired to buy new consumer products,

such as sewing machines and cast-iron stoves.

• Women’s Rights

• Modern feminism, or the movement for women’s rights, had its beginnings

during the Enlightenment.

• At this time, some woman advocated equality for women based on the doctrine of

natural gas.

Multiple Choice

What was the movement for women's rights called?

• Modern Feminism

• Civil Rights

• Women's Movement

• Ladies Adventure

Women’s Experiences

• Women’s Rights Cont.

• In the 1830s, a number of women in the right of women to own property and

to divorce.

• By law, a husband had almost complete control over his wife’s property.

• These early efforts were not very successful, however.

•Married women in Great Britain did not win the right to ownsome property until 1870.

• The fight for property rights was only the beginning of the women’s movement.

• Some middle-and upper-middle class women fought for and gained access to

universities.
• Others sought entry into occupations dominated by men.

• Though training to become doctors was largely closed to women, some entered

the medical field by becoming nurses.

• In Germany, Amalie Sieveking was a nursing pioneer who founded the Female

Association for the Care for the Poor and Sick in Hamburg.
• More famous is the British nurse Florence Nightingale.

•Her efforts during the Crimean War (1853-1856), combined with those if Clara Barton in the U.S. Civil
War (1861-1865), transformed nursing into a profession of trained, middle-class “women in white.”

Multiple Choice

Who transformed the nursing profession into the trained, middle-class "women in white?"

• Amalie Sieveking

• Sally Tomkins

• Florence Nightingale

• Juniper Knowles

Women’s Experiences

• Women’s Rights Cont.

• By the 1840s and 1850s, the movement for women’s rights expanded as women

called for equal political rights.

• They believed that suffrage, the right to vote, was the key to improving their overall

position.
• Members of the women’s movement, called suffragists, had one basic aim: the right of

women to full citizenship in the nation-state.

• The British women’s movement was the most active in Europe.

• The Women’s Social and Political Union, founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst

and her daughters, used unusual publicity stunts to call attention to its demands.
• Its members pelted government officials with eggs, chained themselves to lampposts,

burned railroad cars, and smashed the windows of fashionable department stores.
•British police answered with arrests and brutal treatment of leading activists.

• Before World War I, demands for women’s rights echoed throughout Europe

and the United States.

• Before 1914, however, women had the right to vote in only a few nations, such as

Norway and Finland, along with some American states.
• It took the upheaval of World War I to make male dominated governments give in on this

basic issue.

Multiple Choice

What is the right to vote called?

• Emancipate

• Suffrage

• Litigate

• Manumission

Education and Leisure
• Universal education was a product of the mass society of the late nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries.

• Before that time, education was reserved mostly for the elite and the wealthier

middle class.
• Between 1870 and 1914, however, most Western governments began to finance a system of

primary education.
•Boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12 were required to attend these schools.
• States also took responsibility for training teachers by setting up teacher-training schools.

• Public Education

• Why did Western nations make the commitment to public education?

• One reason was industrialization.

• In the first Industrial Revolution, unskilled labor was able to meet factory needs.

•The new firms of the Second Industrial Revolution, however, needed trained, skilled workers.
• Boys and girls with an elementary education had now had new job possibilities beyond their

villages or small towns.
• These included white-collar jobs in railways, post offices, schools, and hospitals.

• The chief motive for public education, however, was political.

• Giving more people the right to vote created a need for better-educated voters.

• Even more important was the fact that primary schools instilled patriotism.

•As people lost their ties to local regions and even to religion, nationalism gave them a new faith.

Multiple Select

What were the TWO reasons why western nations committed to education?

• Industrialization

• Political

• Family

• History

Education and Leisure

• Public Education Cont.

• Compulsory elementary education created a demand for teachers, and most of

them were women.

• Many men saw teaching a part of women’s “natural role” as nurtures of children.

• Women were also paid lower salaries than men, which in itself was a strong incentive for

states to set up was a strong incentive for states to set up teacher-training schools for
women.
•The first women’s colleges were really teacher-training schools.

• Once literacy expanded, a mass media developed.

• Newspapers sprang up to appeal to this new reading public.

• In London, papers such as the Evening News (1881) and the Daily Mail (1896) sold millions

of copies each day.
•These newspapers were all written in an easily understood style.
• They were also sensationalistic-that is, they provided gossip and gruesome details of crime.

• New Forms of Leisure

• People read this new kind of newspaper in their leisuretime.

• There were other new forms of leisure, too.

• Amusement parks, dance halls, and organized team sports, FOR EXAMPLE, became

enjoyable ways for people to spend their leisure hours.

Multiple Choice

What expanded as a result to literacy expansion?

• Education

• Politics

• Religion

• Mass Media

Education and Leisure

• New Forms of Leisure Cont.

• These forms of leisure were new in several ways.

• First, leisure was now seen as what people did for fun after work.

• In an older era, work and leisuretime were not so clearly defined.

•During the era of cottage industries, family members might chat or laugh while they worked on cloth
from their homes.
• Now free time was more closely scheduled and more often confined to evening hours, weekends,

and perhaps a week in the summer.

• Second, the new forms of leisure tended to be passive, not participatory.

• Instead of doing a folk dance on the town square, a young woman sat in a Ferris

wheel and was twirled around by a huge machine.
• Instead of playing a game of tug-o-war at the town fair, a young man sat on the sidelines at a

cricket match and cheered his favorite team to victory.

• A third change in leisure during this era was that people more often paid for

many of their leisure activities.

• It cost money to ride a merry-go-round or Ferris wheel at Coney Island.

• This change was perhaps the most dramatic of all.

•Business entrepreneurs created amusement parks and professional sports teams in order to make a
profit.
• Whatever would sell, they would promote.

Multiple Select

What are the THREE reasons why reading grew in popularity?

• Passive

• Leisure

• Cheap

• Many Options