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Between 1870 and 1900 a decline in transport costs helped create a rapid expansion of global trade and growing economies. The standard of living rose between 17 and 25 percent in Britain and grew at a comparable rate in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and the standard of living increased also in southern Europe - according to the economic historian Theodore S. Hamerow in his book, Birth of a New Europe. [note] The higher standard of living for hired workers was measured in real income - what their wages bought from year to year. Using figures from a Marxist scholar, Jurgen Kuczynski, who was not likely to minimize the sufferings of labor, Hamerow described real wages in Britain as rising about 60 percent from 1816 to 1900, and climbing almost as steeply in France and Germany between 1860 and 1900. Europe's economies were advancing technologically, and workers in agriculture were producing more. Productivity in Austria rose 45 percent between 1840 and 1900, 50 percent in Belgium, 35 percent in France, 190 percent in Germany, 50 percent in Itay, 30 percent in Russia, 75 percent in Sweden, 90 percent in Switzerland, and an average of 75 percent from all of Europe. [note] Manufactured clothing was easier to buy, but it was agriculture that did much to improve standards of living. Food declined in cost. Diets improved and people had more money to spend elsewhere.
Working conditions and life for ordinary workers were poor compared to 21st century standards. There were economic booms and busts and periods of high unemployment. Factory and shop environments were dreadful. Many workers lived in tenements or slums. There was child labor. Trade unionism grew in response to these conditions, spreading from the skilled to the less skill occupations. Bourgeois interests in Britain got a bill through parliament that outlawed strikes. In Britain, France and Russia, military force was used against strikers. In 1887 in London, armed police attacked a march by unemployed men. Three of the marchers were killed and many more injured. In 1889 in Germany, infantry and cavalry attacked striking coal miners. In 1890 mass strikes took place in St. Petersburg, Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, where a decade of industrial growth was beginning. In 1892 in Russian ruled Poland, 46 workers were set upon and killed. That year 92 workers were killed in Sicily. And there were more strikes in Russia in 1894, '95 and '96.
Labor did win a reduction in work time. Before the year 1850 workers were putting in 12, 14 and 16-hour days, with work on Saturday and sometimes Sunday - from 70 to 100 hours per week. Hamerow describes a steady decrease in the workweek after the middle of the century for Europe as a whole. The average work week in Britain at the end of the century was 53.5 hours [note]
Despite the rise in real income, by the end of the century life was still hard for the average European, compared to 21st century European standards. In Britain the average male was dead at 51.5 years of age, the average woman at 55.4. In France these figures were 45.4 and 50, in Spain at 41 and 42.5. Figures for the Russians, available in 1895, have the average male dead at 31.4 years and the average woman at 33.3. [note]
Many felt too burdened by their work to get involved in politics, to attend meetings or, if they could, to read newspapers. Politics and reading continued more with those who had some leisure, except for those who belonged to labor unions. The labor movement united people into a greater force. Labor unions were political, and political parties were formed that were sympathetic to labor. In Germany, the Social Democrat Party supported labor and was socialist. Two attempts to assassinate the king, Wilhelm I, were made by those believed to be Social Democrats. Germany's chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, responded by promoting anti-socialist laws and outlawing the Social Democratic Party, driving its organization and its press underground.
Between 1881 and 1889, Bismarck promoted laws regarding social insurance and working condition, to prevent attraction by Germans for socialism. A law was passed compelling employers to insure their workmen in case of sickness or accident. Laws regulating working hours and working conditions were passed. Compulsory insurance against death and old age were introduced. Welfare was provided for widows and orphans. But the socialist movement continued to grow.
With a new king, Wilhelm II, and his dismissal of Bismarck in 1890, the Social Democratic Party in Germany began operating in the open again. Wilhelm II disagreed with what had been Bismarck's plan to renew the law making the Social Democratic Party illegal. The Social Democrats were becoming more popular, and Wilhelm II wished to be a ruler loved by all his subjects.
In 1891, the Social Democratic Party advocated its Erfurt Program: the 8-hour day; prohibition of child labor under the age of 14; government regulation of working conditions; the abolitions of laws that restricted the right of people to assemble. The Erfurt program included calls for equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot; judges elected by the people; an end to laws that put women at a disadvantage as compared with men; a graduated income and property tax; free medical attention; a people's militia for defense rather than a professional army; secularized public education and no public money supporting religious institutions.
In Russia the Social Democratic Party was also a labor party, and it was illegal. In Russia the government formed it own trade union, to compete with an control the labor movement. In 1903, Russia's Social Democratic Party held a party congress in the safety of Britain, which was attended by representatives from a variety of pro-labor groups. At this congress a political organizer, Vladimir Lenin, temporarily swung a majority of the delegates to his side, creating those who would be called Bolsheviks - which in Russian means majority. Bolshevik's rivals among Russia's Social Democrats were called Menshiviks.
Between 1870 and 1900, more people in Europe became lawyers, school teacher, doctors and other professionals. Moscow had 24 lawyers in 1840 and 652 in 1897. It had 615 medical workers in 1840 and 3,178 in 1897. [note] But across Europe most of those going into the professions were not from the working poor. Most were from middleclass families. And some among the middle class were trying to imitate the manner of the aristocracy - which made bureaucratic clerks annoying.
Educational opportunities were increasing. England had 12 percent of its population in school in 1850 and 16 percent in 1887. Sweden had 15 percent of its population in school in 1887. Russia had 2 percent of its population in school in 1850 and 3 percent in 1887. [note] More people were learning to read, more so in prosperous and Protestant countries and urban areas - while academic training largely excluded common working people.
At the end of the century, Germany was benefiting from a literacy rate of 99.9 percent and education levels that provided Germany with its engineers, chemists, opticians, skilled workers for its factories, skilled managers, knowledgeable farmers and skilled military personnel. Literacy was not quiet so high in other European countries, but above 90 percent in Britain, France, Norway and Sweden, and Australia - one of the ingredients that gave Western societies an advantage in the world in economic advancement. Literacy was in the 70 to 90 percent range in the United States, Canada and Japan; 78 percent in Italy; 50 to 70 in the Balkans, 30 to 50 percent range in Russia; and below 30 percent in China, India, Africa and the Islamic countries. [note]
The owners of large estates in Russian, Germany, Hungary and other East European countries feared their peasants, however meek he might appear. They had feared that with freedom from serfdom or manorial obligations their peasants would reject all authority and turn to thievery and rampage. The owners of large estates gave up that control believing they would be compensated by new opportunities in selling their agricultural products. With industrialization and population growth had come a greater demand for agricultural commodities and improved methods of getting agricultural products off to market. The owners of big estates had turned to a more modern method of farming than could be provided by serfs or the manorial system.
The fears persisted, reflected in the attitude of Russia's leading aristocrat, Tsar Nicholas II, who spoke of the new mobility that took villagers father from their village than they had ever been. Railways he saw as necessary for trade and transporting troops, but a French diplomat heard him speak of "the filth," who had been quietly on the bottom, being stirred by the transformation and rising to the surface.
Across the last decades of the century the owners of large estates in Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, southern Italy and parts of Spain, managed to hold on to their traditional dominance over village and countryside. The freed peasant did not suddenly drop his submissive habits. These were mostly people with deep religious conviction and tied to their church, and the church was in alliance with the owners of estates in devotion to a conservative order - against the possibility of peasants losing control and going on rampages, as peasants had before.
In liberal Britain there were also fears of a loss of control by wealthy landowners. In 1888 the House of Commons debated a bill that would give justice of the peace appointments to locally elected boards. Critics described the bill as upsetting the arrangements of centuries and a "dethronement of squirearchy." The landed aristocracy in Britain was in decline relative to the rising economic power of the bourgeoisie, but was melding with the bourgeoisie, was willing to share power with the bourgeoisie and managed to hold on to political influence with its concept of public service. Adjusting to industrialized society allowed Britain's aristocracy to survive - except for the slaughter of its young men in World War I - long after the Russian aristocracy no longer had a place in Russia.
In 1880 70.7 percent of Europeans, excluding Russians, lived in rural areas. In 1900 this was 62.1 percent. Farm production was rising while more people were moving to urban areas. The increase in production of food was allowing the growth in urban areas and people spending less almost all of their income on survival. Agricultural production was making food cheaper and adding to the industrial revolution by increasing the ability of people to buy manufactured products.
Use of chemical in farming increased productivity, as was mechanization, which worked best on larger tracts of lands. Before the end of the century the United States had become a leader in mechanization. And it became the leader in the export of farm tools such as mowers and reapers. Exports of these in 1870 amounted to $66,000, in 1881 to $654,000, 2,093,000 in 1890 and $11,240,000 in 1890 (measured in constant dollars). Nations were increasing their production of wheat. Around 1850 world production of wheat was 3.1 metric tons. Around 1870 this rose to 62 million. Around 1910 it would be 102.9 million. [note]
Farm animals were increasing in number. The number of cattle in the Netherlands increased from 1,252,000 in 1860 to 2,027,000 in 1910. The number of pigs in Denmark rose from 442,000 in 1870 to 11,841,000 in 1910. The number of sheep in Italy rose from 6,975,000 in 1870 to 11,841,000 in 1910. [note]
Rising food production and an increase in real wages were not conditions conducive to political upheaval or to the revolution that Karl Marx had believed would one day come. Among the Social Democrats, traditionally Marxist, was movement aimed at winning gradual economic gains and political reforms. One representing this point of view was Eduard Bernstein. Those believing in overthrowing capitalism were losing to the reformers. Karl Marx adjusted his view on revolution after arriving in London in 1849. In 1852, in an article he wrote for the New York Daily Tribune, he wrote universal suffrage giving power to the British working class. In 1872 at the Hague in the Netherlands he said:
We know that the institutions, the manners and customs of various countries much be considered, and we do not deny that there are countries like England and America, and, if I understood your arrangements better I might add Holland, where the worker may attain his goal by peaceful means. But not in all countries is this the case.
With workers gaining economically rather than capitalism falling apart, a violent revolution, the kind that had overthrown dynasties in China, was not likely. The revolutions in China were often preceded by a catastrophe such as famine. In 1900 Europe was on a path toward another kind of catastrophe: a war made more terrible by industrialization and the new mass armies of modern times. And this would be bring revolution to the war's less economically advanced participant: Russia.
At the end of the century political constitutions and parliaments were common in Europe, but governments in western Europe tended to be run by parliaments while in central and eastern Europe, including Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, governments bypassed parliament and were authoritarian bureaucracies.
Germany at the end of the century was the continent's leading industrial power. France had been the leader in the production and sale of luxury items, but with the industrial revolution and heavy industry France did not maintain a leadership position. In 1880 it had only a 7.8 percent share of world manufacturing. France advanced it railways in the 1880s, and its industries were producing high quality goods, but by 1900 France's share of world manufacturing was down to 6.8 percent, the year that Germany's share was 13.2. Germany's production of steel and other items associated with heavy industry added to its military strength more than perfume and lady's hats helped France militarily. The French found little compensation in being world leaders in foreign investment. Despite being a great imperial power these investments were bringing little wealth back to France. France was largely a nation of small farmers on fertile soil, but its agriculture progressed slowly as farmers resisted change.
All of Austria-Hungary had only a 4.7 percent share of the world's manufacturing output. And Italy in 1900 had only a 2.5 percent share. Italy was divided between its more industrialized north and its more rural south. Seventy percent of Italy's population (34.4 million) was associated with agriculture, and many of Italy's peasants were impoverished. Its agriculture remained backward, with soil less fertile than France and some other countries, and it had less coal than Germany or Britain, Italy's importation of coal creating a drain on its balance of payments.
At the end of the century Romania remained less industrialized than Britain, Germany or France. Its banking and credit remained underdeveloped. Romania had moved from domination by an aristocratic, agrarian oligarchy to domination by an urban bureaucratic order. Romania was governed by an elite body of less than 3,000 men. In 1900, two percent of the population was employed as state functionaries, three percent were employed in the industrial sector of its economy, and more students were studying for a career as a government bureaucrat than suited the needs of an advancing economy.
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