In this unit, you’re examining changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, such as the rise of the proletariat class. This activity will introduce you to some economic theories that gained popular support amid industrial transformations in the late nineteenth century. The simulation will help you make foundational comparisons between economic systems.

Causation, comparison
You’ll be drawing comparisons between the principles and practices of economic systems. While considering the benefits and drawbacks of each system from the point of view of different groups in society, you’ll also be establishing causes for socialist-inspired reform movements and socialist revolutions.

In this activity, you will play two separate rounds of rock-paper-scissors. This quick simulation should help you reflect on principles of equity and fairness, as well as help you understand capitalism and socialism.

Round 1

You’re going to play rock-paper-scissors. Your teacher is going to give you some treats to use as part of the game (don’t eat them until your teacher tells you to!), and for each game you lose, you have to give your competitor one of your treats. If you win, you can collect one treat. However, if you run out of treats, you have to sit down. Start by pairing up with someone in your class and continue to play until your teacher tells you to stop.

Once time is up, as a class, tally how many of you ended up with lower, middle, and upper ranges of treats. Now, turn your treats into your teacher, take a couple of minutes to reflect, and answer the Round 1 questions on the Economic Systems Simulation Worksheet.

Round 2

Your teacher will redistribute the treats. This round, you can choose to keep your treats and have them later, or, you can play another round of the game and try to get more. Your teacher will start the timer, and once time is up, again tally how many in the class ended up with lower, middle, and upper ranges of treats, including anyone who chose not to play. Then, answer the Round 2 reflection questions on the worksheet. Be ready to discuss your answers with the class.

After you’ve had a class discussion, complete all of Part 3 of the worksheet. Again, be prepared to discuss your responses with the class. Make sure to ask questions if you are at all confused about the differences between capitalism and socialism, but by now, you’ve probably figured it all out! Your teacher will collect your worksheet to review your answers.

In Unit 4, you encountered the beginning of modern capitalism in the period before 1750. Industrial capitalism, in the era after 1750, was pretty different from mercantile capitalism, in scale and style. In Europe and across the oceanic empires, governments began to regulate their economies differently, and agricultural productivity meant that there was less of a need for farm workers and more of a demand for consumer goods—and the workers that make them. At the same time, farmers were looking for work. The end result was a major overhaul in the way things were made and consumed, while workers pushed for better conditions by forming unions or even revolution!

You’ve learned about capitalism in earlier articles, and this video builds on that knowledge and introduces you to some responses to capitalism, specifically socialism. Capitalism and socialism were both major engines of change that contributed to our modern world, so being able to understand these two systems and make comparisons between them and their effects will be crucial for dealing with Unit Problem. They’ll also help you understand later articles on child labor and responses to industrialization. Both capitalism and socialism still shape the world today, so you’ll be able to analyze patterns in your own society by better understanding them.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you want the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video.

1. What’s the difference between mercantile and industrial capitalism?
2. What role did food and agriculture play in the rise of industrial capitalism?
3. How did land ownership change in Britain in this period, and how did this affect labor systems?
4. In what ways is capitalism a “cultural system”?
5. What were some problems with industrial capitalism? What were two different responses to these problems?
6. What two types of socialism were there? How did they differ?
7. According to Marx, what is the significance of conflict and struggle?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. To what extent does this video explain the development of economic systems, ideologies, and institutions and how they contributed to change in the period from 1750 to 1900? What evidence does it provide?
2. At the end of the video, John Green raises the question of whether capitalism is natural. Using evidence from this video and earlier assets, make and defend a claim about whether capitalism is natural.
3. How would you use the evidence in this video to help you to respond to a question that asked you to evaluate continuity and change in this era?

People throughout history have had a sense of social and economic “classes”: peasants, merchants, intellectuals, and land-owning nobles, for example. However, industrialization created a new way of dividing people into classes, including a wage-earning urban working class (the proletariat) and a middle class (the bourgeoisie). Their lives were quite different, and as people became aware of their social class and this difference, they began to struggle against each other for rights and for power.

Changes in social organization are, in many ways, harder to understand than industrialization or political revolutions. This article describes how these two trends helped to create new social classes in the long nineteenth century, how people grew to feel like they were part of a class, and how some reformers tried to change how the working class lived. This will provide evidence for you to understand how industrialization and political transformations changed the way people worked, lived, and learned.

Think about the following prompt as you read the article: Using evidence provided by the article, explain how industrialization caused change in existing hierarchies and standards of living. Write this prompt at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1 – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2 – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What are the two classes that were most impacted by industrialization and what was the impact?
2. What is class consciousness?
3. What does it mean to say that class is a social construct?
4. What was life like for the urban proletariat in the Long Nineteenth Century, according to the author?
5. What was life like for the bourgeoisie in the Long Nineteenth Century, according to the author?
6. What did Karl Marx believe was the natural relationship between the classes, and what did he argue would eventually happen?
7. How did the middle classes come to view the working classes, according to the author, and how did that shape their view of themselves?
8. How did the Marx’s ideas enter politics in this period?

Read 3 – Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Using evidence provided by the article, explain how industrialization caused change in existing hierarchies and standards of living.
2. This author describes the rise of two new (or enlarged) social classes over the course of the long nineteenth century, and argues that they had pretty different lives. Do you think reality was that simple? In other words, did these two classes lead entirely different lives? If not, what might be missing from this analysis? If so, what evidence convinces you?

The long nineteenth century saw the decline of some exploitative labor systems. Serfdom, slavery, and indentured servitude gradually diminished—not everywhere, and not rapidly, but overall. In their place, industrialization and capitalism created a class of workers who were paid wages for their labor. Was this an improvement? How did these workers experience the new economy, and how did they react? Those are the questions we look at in this article.

This article will help you respond to the Unit Problem by introducing the rise of the proletariat as one of the key transformations in the ways people lived and worked during the long nineteenth century. It will also help you think more critically about the impact of industrialization as the most important change within the economic systems theme for this unit.

Read 1 – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2 – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. According to the article, industrialists owned the means of production under industrial capitalism. What are the means of production, and how did controlling them make industrialists powerful?
2. Why did industrialists begin to hire women, and what were their experiences?
3. What were conditions like for workers overall?
4. What is the proletariat?
5. How, according to the author, did workers begin to organize into alliances like unions, and what were their principal tactics?
6. Why, according to the author, was there less union organizing in the colonies?

Read 3 – Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Describe the extent to which this article explains the causes and effects of calls for change in industrial societies from 1750 to 1900.
2. Does the author of this article seem more sympathetic towards workers or towards industrialists? Do you think their sympathies change how you understand this article?
3. This article defines and describes the proletariat class. Looking around your world today, do you think there is still a proletariat? If so, has it changed at all since the long nineteenth century? How?

In this unit, you will learn about how industrialization impacted different groups in society. This activity will allow you to experience a particular role through a manufacturing simulation. By doing so, you will develop an understanding and appreciation of both the positive and negative effects of industrialization (and specifically factory work) depending on your job and social class.

In this activity, you’re going to make greeting cards in an assembly line. Before getting started, watch a clip of assembly line production, such as this one from I Love Lucy, or you might look for the slightly more up-to-date Drake and Josh episode, “I Love Sushi.”

Once you’ve watched the clip, your teacher will assign you a role within a factory and will give you the opportunity to practice making one greeting card before starting. Once you’re ready, there will be three rounds of card making. Start by imagining the following:

The year is 1845 and you’ve moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, where there are a number of factories. Each factory pays about the same amount to its workers (about 37 cents per day) for a 13-hour shift with 2 breaks (30-minutes each) per day. But your pay can be docked for cards that do not meet quality control protocols. So, the more you mess up, the less pay you and your team will earn. Note that each card takes about 2 cents to make, and they are sold to the store owners for 4 cents, for a profit of 2 cents a card.

Round 1

You will have 4 minutes to complete as many cards as you can. Your group’s supervisor will check to see that the cards are completed successfully, and the factory owner is free to “encourage” you to work faster. After the 4 minutes are up, your group’s recorder will tally the results (the number of cards that were successfully completed). Then, the cards will be delivered to the store owners, and they will decide how many more they want and from which factory.

Before moving into Round 2, the factory owner and recorder should tally their profits from Round 1.

Round 2

The factory owners are excited about the orders, but the profit margins are low, so the assembly line workers need to move faster this time. For this round, the workers will only have 3 minutes to fill the order, with the supervisor and factory owner ensuring efficient work. The factory owner and supervisor may decide to create rules for their workers, such as no talking while they’re working. Once again, results will be tallied by the recorder, and products delivered. The store owners can choose whether to stick with one factory or another and whether or not to place another order. The recorders should share how much they made after Round 2, and see how this compares to other groups.

Round 3

The factory owner needs more money—they want to build a new house. This time, workers will only have 2 minutes to fill the order, with the supervisor and factory owner ensuring efficient work. The supervisor and factory owner can create even more rules for their workers for this round. Once they’re done, results will be tallied and products delivered. Recorders should calculate final profits.

Finish the activity with a class discussion:

• What did you experience during the simulation?
• Did you have positive emotions, negative emotions, or both?
• Was there anything particularly difficult or easy about this simulation?
• How do you think the workers of the Industrial Revolution felt about being on the assembly line?
• Why do you think business owners used this method of production?
• If you had a production business, would you use an assembly line? If not, what else could you do?

Ottilie Baader was the daughter of a factory worker. She received a few years of schooling, but she spent the majority of her life as an industrial worker. Her experiences inspired her to use her education to become a leader of labor reform movements.

Ottilie Baader’s biography provides unique insights into the life of a factory worker, giving you some perspective to frame your thinking about the Unit 5 Problem: “How did different parts of the world experience the revolutionary transformations of the period c. 1750 to 1900?” Using the economic systems and social interactions and organization themes, you will be able to think critically about the impacts of the Industrial Revolution on smaller and larger scales.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. When was Ottilie Baader born, and how old was she when she began school? What did she learn there?
2. When did Ottilie begin working, and why? What were her days like at that age?
3. What was Ottilie’s job in the wool factory like?
4. Why did Ottilie become a labor organizer around 1871?
5. How does the artist use design to depict Baader’s life as a factory worker, but also her attempt to change her condition?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in this unit of the course. On the bottom of the tool, record what you learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what you’re learning.

1. To what extent does this article explain the causes and effects of social and economic changes in industrial societies?
2. What evidence does Ottilie Baader’s story provide about industrialization as an engine of change in people’s lives?
3. How does it support, extend, or challenge what you have already learned about the impact of the Industrial Revolution?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

Although it had developed over hundreds of years, capitalism became the economic system that dominated the global economy during the long nineteenth century. This was also the century that saw the Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery in the Americas hit their peak, and then be abolished in country after country. How did these two systems—slavery and capitalism—coexist? Did capitalism help lead to the abolition of slavery? Or did slavery help capitalism to spread? This article presents contrasting views on these questions.

The Unit Problem asks you to explore how the ways people lived and worked changed across the period covered by the unit. The abolition of slavery and the growth of capitalism were two of the most transformative events in the long nineteenth century. Both helped to create the working class which, for better or worse, characterizes most of the world’s population today. This article explores the relationship between these changes and will help you to respond to the Unit Problem.

Read 1 – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2 – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Why does the author argue that the relationship between capitalism and slavery has meaning today?
2. Why, according to some theories cited by the author, does capitalism theoretically promote free rather than enslaved labor?
3. What evidence, from the United States, is cited to support the argument that enslaved labor was an inefficient system for the owners of businesses?
4. How does the author connect abolitionism to industrialists?
5. What evidence does the author present that the Atlantic slave trade may have helped to stimulate industrialization and capitalism?

Read 3 – Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. To what extent does this article explain the development of economic systems, ideologies, and institutions and how they contributed to change in the period from 1750 to 1900?
2. This article claims that slavery helped create industrial capitalism and that capitalism helped to end slavery. What evidence from the article supports these claims? Do you agree that the author proves both of these claims?

Harriet Forten Purvis (1810 – 1875) was an African-American women of mixed heritage. She was one of the organizers of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and later an activist for women’s suffrage. Along with her sisters, her husband, and allies, she pioneered strategies that would be used by later civil rights movements. She has received little credit for her work.

How did transformations like the abolition of slavery and voting rights for women come about? Who made these reforms happen, and how were they connected? You have read some high-level articles on this subject. The biography of Harriet Forten Purvis provides evidence from an individual’s life to help you to answer these questions.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What was Harriet Forten Purvis’ family and community like as a child?
2. What was the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery society, and what happened when they organized a national conference in 1838?
3. How else did Purvis and her husband fight against slavery and discrimination?
4. What other reform movement did Purvis work for, and what were the results of their struggle?
5. The first letter of Purvis’ name in the title is formed by two women, one African-American, one white, holding hands. These same women are shown in the last panel, but separated. What is the artist trying to tell us?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in this unit of the course. On the bottom of the tool, record what you learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what you’re learning.

1. To what extent does this article explain how revolutionary changes of this era impacted social hierarchies?
2. How does this biography of Harriet Forten Purvis support, extend, or challenge what you have learned about social transformations and their limits during the long nineteenth century?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

Industrial capitalism changed how people worked and lived, and it affected people of different ages, genders, classes, and occupations. People with diverse experiences had various responses to industrialization, but many fought for reforms. Women fought for equal rights, and many activists pushed for protections for children. Workers called for better working and living conditions. The fight didn’t end during this era, but it certainly got off to a good start.

In this unit, you’re asked to evaluate continuity and change over time. You have already seen how economic systems changed during this era, changing with them the lives of workers, women, and children. In this article, you’ll take a look at how people responded to these changes and pushed for reforms. You’ll read about how specific groups and individual activists were able to contribute to changes.

Think about the following question as you read the article: Prepare an argument that explains how industrialization caused change in existing hierarchies and standards of living. Use evidence from the article to support your answer. Write this question at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1 – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2 – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. How did Evangelical Christianity inspire some reformers?
2. What was the connection between the anti-slavery movement and the women’s rights movement?
3. What were some effects of industrialization which Upton Sinclair highlighted in his book?
4. What was life like in the tenements, according to the author?
5. What were some of the successes of the reform movement?

Read 3 – Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Prepare an argument that explains how industrialization caused change in existing hierarchies and standards of living. Use evidence from the article to support your answer.
2. You have learned about changes in people’s lives due to the Industrial Revolution from several articles and videos in this unit. Now we want to ask you who determined what changes happened and how. Were the wealthy and powerful the only people who could make change? How much change could individual or everyday people make happen?

In this activity, you’ll continue to develop your sourcing skills by analyzing a set of primary source excerpts related to global responses to industrialization. Assessing the point of view and intended audience of a source is essential to understanding how to evaluate the credibility of the source and the motives of its author. You will further develop your sourcing skills by working in groups to answer a prompt, incorporating elements of historical context, audience, and point of view in your answer.

Claim testing, contextualization, causation
Your claim-testing skills will be put to use as you evaluate the documents based upon your intuition, logic, the authority of the source, and historical evidence to establish the context in which the document was written and determine the credibility of the source. You will also use causal reasoning to determine how different states responded to industrialization.

In this activity, you’ll read excerpts from two primary sources, complete the Sourcing Tool focusing on historical context, audience, and point of view, and write a response to a prompt based on your analysis of the texts. Note that the Sourcing Tool and the source excerpts are included in the Sourcing – Reactions to Industrialization worksheet.

First, your teacher will hand out or have you download the Sourcing – Reactions to Industrialization worksheet. Then, your teacher will assign half the class the “Islāhat Fermāni” excerpt and the other half “On the Manufacture of Weapons.” You’ll read your assigned excerpt and complete the Sourcing Tool for your reading. As you read, think about this question: How are these sources representative of different nations’ reactions to industrialization and imperialism?

After you’ve finished reading, complete the Sourcing Tool for your assigned excerpt, focusing on the Historical Context, Audience, and Point of View rows of the tool. Then, write a brief summary (two to three sentences) of your source and responses. Next, you’ll pair up with an “expert” who sourced a different excerpt than you and you’ll share your summaries with each other.

After each expert has shared their summary for their source, you’ll write a paragraph, either in your pairs or on your own, that answers these questions: To what extent were these documents similar? Which response do you think was most successful? Why? Your paragraphs should make specific reference to the Historical Context, Audience, and Point of View rows of the tool, but can include other categories as well.

Next, you’ll share your paragraph with the class and discuss how these texts supported, extended, or challenged the information you’ve learned thus far in the course.

As an extension, your teacher may ask you to answer the questions in the Why? (Importance) row of the tool on your own to turn in as an exit ticket.

Your teacher will collect your worksheets and responses to evaluate how your sourcing skills are progressing.