The SECOND Industrial Revolution & Its EFFECTS [AP Euro Review, Unit 6 Topic 3]

[0:00]So from 1870 to 1914, Europe experienced the second wave of industrialization, and the second wave was much like the first wave of industrialization only more so. So if you're ready to get them brain cells milked, let's get to it. So in the last video, we talked about the beginning of industrialization in Europe and how Great Britain was the first mover and shaker in this respect. We talked about the birth of the factory system which changed the way goods were made, like prior to this, goods were made by hand, but now they were mass produced in factories. And now we need to talk about how by 1914, the factory system became the dominant mode of production in Europe. And let me give you a couple examples of how this developed. And look, I'm not going to lie to you, there's a lot to digest in this video, so if you want to grab my note guides that go along with it, then check the link in the description. So first, let me introduce you to the Krupp family in Essen, Germany. Starting in the 16th century, they began manufacturing weapons and by the time of the Second Industrial Revolution, they had perfected the process of making steel. By 1870, states from all over Europe and the world were buying weapons from Krupp industries, and that led the Krupp family dominating the steel industry for a century. Second, you need to know about the first real industrial city, namely Manchester, England. It was here that the first industrial park was created, which was a designated area built specifically for manufacturers. They specialized in making machines that made other machines. But the point is, Manchester was a city that was built for industry and as a result, many of its inhabitants saw their standard of living rise and wealth came pouring in. Now, you also need to know some of the specific technologies that characterized the second wave of industrialization. First of all, electricity revolutionized the communications industry. In the 1840s, an American inventor named Samuel Morse invented the Telegraph, which was able to send communication across wires to distant places using short and long signals, which became known as Morse code. Eventually, in the 1870s, a Telegraph wire was laid across the Atlantic connecting Britain with the United States, and that had the effect of further linking the economies on both sides of the Atlantic. Second, chemical engineering led to improved materials for manufacturing. For example, vulcanization was a chemical process that made rubber harder and therefore more durable. And that was a big deal because rubber was used widely in factories to make machines turn, and it became an effective coating for electrical wires as well. Third, railroads revolutionized the transportation industry. Now, railroads were beginning to show up in significant ways in the first Industrial Revolution, but at this point, they began to dominate the landscape. Remember that when industrialization first took root, the dominant mode of transportation, both for raw materials and finished manufactured goods, was by water, which is to say rivers and canals and oceans. But during the second Industrial Revolution, thousands of new miles of railroad tracks were laid. This increased commerce by linking distant parts of a country into a national economy, and railroads also facilitated more people moving from the country into cities, a process known as urbanization. However, fourth, the internal combustion engine soon grew in dominance during the Second Industrial Revolution. Whereas the first revolution was mainly powered by steam, the second revolution would be increasingly powered by gasoline, which is how internal combustion engines ran. Eventually, this would lead to gas powered tractors for farming and automobiles for, you know, going places. With all these new innovations in transportation and communication technologies, new industries developed right alongside with them. The advent of the internal combustion engine created the occasion for the automobile industry, and the most significant mover on that front was the American Henry Ford. Now hold on, Heimler, this is AP European history.What are you doing talking about Henry Ford? Well, I wouldn't be, except remember Manchester, England, that bastion of European manufacturing. Well, Henry Ford established an automobile manufacturing site there and produced cars by the metric buttload. Additionally, with the growing use of streetcars which transported people through cities, which was an industry in and of itself, a new leisure travel industry began to rise as well. And finally, with the increasing availability of consumer goods at low prices, the advertising industry was born, and it's not hard to understand why. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, if you wanted, you know, like a chair, you just went down to Carl's house because he was the only chair maker around. But now with so many different companies producing similar goods at massive scales, advertising executives had to figure out ways to make their chair stand out from the rest. So let's talk about how they did that for a moment. In the last half of the 19th century, industrialization led to a significant increase in the demand for consumer goods, a phenomenon known as consumerism. Department stores sprang up, which were massive stores that carried a dizzying amount of clothing and furniture and toys and anything else a consumer might want. Like a person could spend hours in a department store and they often did. In this way, shopping became a leisure activity, especially among middle-class women of the time. And advertising was a key part of keeping people shopping, and the cycle went like this. The more advertising went out, the higher the demand for consumer goods, and the higher the demand for consumer goods, the more incentive for creating even more, and that meant more advertising was needed and on and on and on. Now, in the last quarter of the 19th century, both the United States and Western Europe, two giants of industrialization, experienced what became known as the long depression. One of the major causes of this depression was a scarcity of money. During that period, paper money was backed by gold, and that meant that governments only issued the amount of paper money that represented the gold in their national coffer. But because of wars and the increasing amount of money demanded by consumers to buy manufactured goods, money became scarce. And that led to banks refusing to loan out money to investors who wanted to build their factories, for example. And this further led to increasing unemployment and a global crisis that was long in correcting itself. And that's just the context for what you really need to know, which is how corporations and governments responded to this crisis, and let's start with corporations. To address this issue, some corporations attempted to create monopolies in their industry. That meant that corporations who could afford to do so, bought up all their competitors, and when they were the last corporation standing in a given sector, they could set their prices at wherever they deemed appropriate. And usually those prices were always benefiting the corporations and not consumers. On the other hand, governments addressed the economic crisis first with protective tariffs. Now, a tariff is a tax on imports, and when a country slaps those on imported goods, they do it so that foreign goods will be more expensive and people are more likely to buy cheaper goods made in their home country. And that is why they're called protective tariffs, they protect a country's domestic industries. However, when one country puts tariffs on another country's goods, that would often lead to a trade war in which protective tariffs were used in retaliation, and that was never good for consumers. So some states developed free trade agreements, which put the Kabash on protective tariffs between those two nations, and allowed them to trade without being taxed significantly. Now, the last piece of this second wave of industrialization we need to consider is the rapid industrialization of Prussia. And the reason it's significant is because the economic unification that occurred because of industrialization will later lead to the political unification of all the German states, but we'll save that juicy bit for Unit 7. Now remember that during this time, what we would call Germany was really just a collection of hundreds of states. At this point, the most powerful of those states was Prussia. Now, because of Prussia's massive deposits of coal and iron, it took to industrialization like white on rice and a glass of milk in a paper plate in a snowstorm. They got busy building railroads and metric butt loads of factories. But trade throughout the German states suffered because of political tension between them. So in order to rectify that situation, Prussia engineered something called the Zollverein Agreement in 1834. The effect of this agreement was to lower barriers to trade, barriers like tariffs and customs, and thus to unite the German states economically. Well, I'm happy to report it worked fantastically, and with the lowering of barriers, the wealth of industrialization only increased. The Prussian government also put in place something called the National System, which was engineered by an economist named Friedrich List. The idea here was that the nascent German industry needed to be protected from competition from those stanky Brits across the channel. They did this by imposing tariffs on imported goods, but there was a caveat. Those tariffs would only remain in place until their manufacturing sector could compete on equal footing with Britain's, and by the early 20th century, spoiler alert, they did. All right, click here to keep reviewing for unit 6 of the AP Euro curriculum. And click right here to grab my AP Euro review pack which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May. I'll catch you on the flip flop.