The Second Industrial Revolution
▪ The so-called Second Industrial Revolution took place
between 1870 and 1914.
▪ It began in the United States and Germany, and was based on
the use of new energy sources and changes in work
organisation which promoted new industrial sectors.
▪ ELECTRICITY was used for lighting and to drive engines,
especially since the invention of the accumulator and the
transformer (1897), which allowed energy to be transported
and ended the need to locate industries next to energy
sources.
▪ OIL was used to move engines which worked with oil
derivatives, such as gasoline and diesel
New industries
▪ Metallurgy: This industry
progressed thanks to the
generalised use of the Bessemer
converter in 1856, which enabled
steel to be obtained from iron.
▪ It also incorporated new metals
such as copper, which was used in
the electrical industry, and
aluminium which was obtained by
using electricity.
New industries
▪ The chemical industry: This
sector elaborated many new
petroleum products such as
plastics, dyes, pharmaceuticals,
synthetic fibres and explosives.
▪ Other industries were: those
related to electronic equipments
and mechanics-typewriters,
bicycles, locomotives, cars and
the first aeroplanes. Also textiles
and food industry.
New means of transport and
communication
• Electricity was applied to • They improved thanks to the • Inventions such as the
railways (Siemens, 1879), completion of the Panama telephone (Meucci,
trams and the Canal (1914), which cheapened 1860), the phonograph
underground, and the transport between the Atlantic (Edison, 1876), the
internal combustion and the Pacific oceans. The cinematograph (the
engine enabled the birth extension of the railway Lumière Brothers,
of the car (Benz, 1886; network promoted the 1895) and the radio
Diesel, 1893), improved expansion of the United States (Tesla, 1897).
navigation and the towards the west, and of
beginning of aviation Russia to the east.
(the Wright Brothers,
1903).
New ways of working
▪ a) TAYLORISM: applied by
Frederick Taylor, aimed to achieve
maximum work efficiency. To this
end, the exact way of carrying out
each task was determined, the
time needed for each task was
clocked, and production incentives
were granted.
▪ “This task specifies not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing
it. And whenever the workman succeeds in doing his task right, and within the time limit specified, he
receives an addition of from 30 per cent to 100 per cent to his ordinary wages”.
F. W. Taylor (1911)
New ways of working
▪ b) FORDISM: applied by Henry Ford in his
automobile factory initiated mass production
and the need for enormous factories. In these
factories, work was organised in assembly
lines: each worker performed only one task
in the manufacturing process of the product
which was placed in front to him by a
conveyor belt. By avoiding the movement of
workers, performance was increased and the
products could be sold at lower price.
▪ “We now have two general principles in all operations-that a man shall never have to take more than one
step, if possibly it can be avoided, and that no man need ever stop over (...). The net result of the application
of these principles is the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker and the reduction
of his movements to a minimum”. H. Ford, My Life and Work,1925
Development of Finance Capitalism
▪ The increasing size of companies and the large
sums of money needed for financing brought
about a new period in Capitalism called “Finance
Capitalism”
▪ FINANCIAL CONCENTRATION led to the
emergence of large banks like the Crédit Lyonnais
(France), Deutsche Bank (Germany) and Lloyd’s
Bank (Great Britain). These institutions intensified
their relationship with industrial enterprises,
granting them loans or participating in them as
shareholders.
▪ CORPORATE CONCENTRATION set out to
dominate the market by eliminating competition
amongst companies. To this end, different kinds
of concentration were created: the cartel, the
trust, and the holding.
Trade unions and political parties
In the context of the II Industrial Revolution, when Kark Marx published “The
capital” (1867), trade unions and political parties started to be founded.
Trade unions will appear (firstly in
England and Germany) to defend
worker’s rights such as:
▪ Minimum wages
▪ Maximum hours
▪ Hygienic conditions of working
▪ Prohibition of child labour
▪ Wage equality for women
▪ One day off a week
▪ Right to strike
▪ Etc. (“Suffraguettes”, trailer). The fight of women to vote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056FI2Pq9RY
Trade unions and political parties
The first political parties to support labour
demands and social rights were founded:
▪ In Spain, the first one to be founded, 1879,
was the PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero
Español), sep up in a clandestine way by
Pablo Iglesias Posse in Casa Labra, a bar in
Tetuán street, an ally at the corner of
Puerta del Sol, in Madrid.
▪ It was the second of Europe after the
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
(SPD) (Partido Socialdemócrata Alemán,
1863).
