Second Wave Industrialization and Its Effects

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Describe how technological innovation during the Industrial Revolutions reshaped European economies and societies (Skill 5.A; LO C).
• Account for industrialization's influence on European economic and political development from 1815 to 1914 (LO D).
• Account for KC-3.1.III: how the second industrial revolution (c. 1870-1914) expanded industrial activity into more of Europe and grew larger in scale and complexity.
• Account for KC-3.1.III.A and KC-3.1.III.B: how mechanization, the factory system, and new transportation and communication technologies produced integrated national economies and a global economic network.
• Account for KC-3.2.IV: how second-wave industrialization produced a heightened consumer culture through mass marketing, department stores, and new consumer goods.
• Account for KC-3.1.III.C: how volatile late-nineteenth-century business cycles drove firms and governments to manage markets through monopolies, banking practices, and tariffs.

Topic 6.3 covers the second phase of European industrialization, conventionally dated from roughly 1870 to 1914. Where the first phase (Topics 6.1 and 6.2) was British-led and centered on textiles, coal, iron, and the railroad, the second phase was led by Germany and the United States and centered on a different cluster of technologies: cheap steel, synthetic chemicals, electricity, the internal combustion engine, and mass-production methods. The second phase produced larger industrial firms, more integrated national economies, the foundations of consumer culture, and a more volatile business cycle. The CED dual-themes Topic 6.3 (TSI primary, ECD secondary) and dual-LOs it (LO C and LO D) because both the technological and the economic-political consequences need treatment.

The new technologies. KC-3.1.III captures the result: during the second industrial revolution, industrial activity expanded across more of Europe and grew larger in scale and complexity. Five technological clusters drove the change.

Cheap steel. Henry Bessemer's 1856 process and the Siemens-Martin open-hearth process of the 1860s reduced the cost of steel by an order of magnitude and made it a viable structural material for railways, ships, buildings, and machinery. By 1900 European and American steel output exceeded forty million tons per year, more than ten times the 1870 level. The Krupp firm at Essen, the Vickers firm in Sheffield, the Schneider firm at Le Creusot, and the Carnegie Steel Company in Pittsburgh became the dominant steel producers. Steel rails replaced iron on most major rail networks by 1880, allowing heavier trains and faster service. Steel-framed buildings made multi-story commercial construction practical (the first true skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, 1885). Steel-hulled ships replaced wooden vessels in the merchant marine and the navies.

Chemicals. The synthetic-dye industry began with William Henry Perkin's 1856 discovery of mauveine (the first synthetic aniline dye) and grew rapidly under German leadership. Friedrich Bayer (founded 1863), BASF (founded 1865), and Hoechst (founded 1863) became the world's leading chemical firms by 1900. Synthetic fertilizers (the Haber-Bosch nitrogen-fixation process from 1913) increased agricultural yields. Pharmaceuticals produced new drugs (aspirin commercialized by Bayer in 1899, Salvarsan by Paul Ehrlich in 1909). The chemical industry was capital-intensive, knowledge-intensive, and tightly linked to research universities — a model that became typical of second-wave industries.

Electricity. Thomas Edison's incandescent lamp (1879) and his Pearl Street power station in New York (1882) launched commercial electric lighting. George Westinghouse's alternating-current systems (from 1886, building on Nikola Tesla's polyphase motor) enabled long-distance transmission. Werner von Siemens's electric motor (1866) and the Siemens-Halske firm built the European electrical-equipment industry. Electric streetcars (from 1881 in Berlin), electric subway systems (from 1890 in London), and electric factory machinery transformed urban life and industrial production. By 1914 most European industrial cities had electric lighting and streetcar systems.

The internal combustion engine. Nikolaus Otto's four-stroke engine (1876), Gottlieb Daimler's first motorcycle (1885), Karl Benz's first practical automobile (1885-1886), and Rudolf Diesel's compression-ignition engine (1892) launched the European automotive industry. Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie. (later merged into Daimler-Benz in 1926) led early German automobile production. The Peugeot family in France (from 1889) and Renault (from 1898) led French production. By 1914 the European automobile industry was producing about half a million vehicles per year, with the U.S. Ford Motor Company's moving-assembly-line Model T (1908) inaugurating the mass-production era.

Mass production. The factory system of the first industrial revolution had relied on skilled operatives tending machines. The mass-production methods of the second relied on standardized interchangeable parts, specialized machine tools, and the moving assembly line. Frederick Winslow Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management (1911) systematized the approach. Henry Ford's Highland Park assembly line (1913) reduced the time required to assemble a Model T from twelve hours to ninety minutes. European firms imported the methods unevenly — Germany earlier and more thoroughly than France or Britain — but mass production became the dominant model of twentieth-century manufacturing.

Economic consequences. KC-3.1.III.A: by 1914, mechanization and the factory system had become the dominant mode of production in the most industrialized regions of Europe. KC-3.1.III.B: new technologies for communication and transport — railroads, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone — knitted together more integrated national economies, accelerated urbanization, and produced a genuinely global economic network. The European railway network grew from roughly 23,000 km in 1850 to roughly 350,000 km in 1914. The Suez Canal (opened 1869) shortened the European-Asian sea route by roughly 7,000 km. The first transatlantic telegraph cable (1866) reduced communication time between London and New York from ten days to a few minutes. By 1914 the global economy of trade, capital flows, and labor migration was probably more integrated than at any point before the late twentieth century.

KC-3.2.IV: a heightened consumer culture took shape during the second industrial revolution. KC-3.2.IV.A: industrialization and mass marketing expanded both the supply of and demand for new consumer goods — clothing, processed foods, labor-saving devices — while opening new leisure opportunities. KC-3.2.IV.B: faster, more efficient transportation and other innovations spawned new industries, improved goods distribution, fueled consumerism, and raised living standards. The institutional infrastructure of modern retail emerged in this period: the department store (Aristide Boucicaut's Bon Marche in Paris from 1838 was the first true department store; Macy's in New York from 1858, Whiteley's in London from 1863, Selfridges from 1909, Wertheim in Berlin from 1875), the mail-order catalog (the German firm Quelle from 1927 was a later example, but Sears Roebuck in the U.S. began catalog operations in 1893), and standardized brand-name advertising.

KC-3.2.II.A: better harvests from commercialized agriculture combined with industrialization to drive population growth, longer life expectancy, and lowered infant mortality. European population grew from roughly 270 million in 1850 to roughly 480 million in 1914, despite substantial out-migration to the Americas and Australia (an estimated 50 million Europeans emigrated overseas between 1850 and 1914). Life expectancy in industrialized regions rose from roughly forty years in 1850 to roughly fifty years by 1914. The shift was driven by better nutrition (cheaper grain after 1870, better preservation through refrigeration), improved public health (the post-Chadwick reforms of Topic 6.9), and the demographic transition from high to low fertility.

The volatile business cycle. KC-3.1.III.C: volatile late-nineteenth-century business cycles pushed firms and governments to manage markets through monopolies, banking practices, tariffs, and similar tools. The Long Depression of 1873-1896 — triggered by railway and banking failures in Vienna and New York — produced more than two decades of falling prices and uneven growth across Europe and the United States. Firms responded by consolidating into large vertically integrated combines (the German chemical firms merged into IG Farben after 1925; U.S. Standard Oil consolidated nearly all American refining; the German steel sector formed the Stahlverein cartel in 1904). Governments responded with protective tariffs (Bismarck's 1879 tariff, the U.S. McKinley tariff of 1890, the French Meline tariff of 1892) and central-bank reform (the German Reichsbank from 1876, the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1913). The combination produced a model of organized industrial capitalism that would dominate the twentieth century: large integrated firms, protective national-market policies, central-bank monetary management, and state-business coordination.

Three sources framing the second industrial revolution: Bessemer on his steel-making process, an early electric-light enthusiast on Edison's lamp, and an account of the Bon Marche department store as the new model of retail.

1. (Causation, Skill 5.A) Account for the second industrial revolution. What distinguished it technologically from the first phase, and what made it possible at that historical moment?
2. (Causation) Account for KC-3.1.III: how did the second wave expand industrial activity into more of Europe and grow industrial processes in scale and complexity? Identify three new technologies and explain how each changed industrial production.
3. (Causation) Account for KC-3.1.III.B: how did new transportation and communication technologies (steel railways, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone) produce more integrated national economies and a global economic network?
4. (Causation) Account for KC-3.2.IV: how did second-wave industrialization produce a heightened consumer culture? Cite the department store, the mail-order catalog, and the rise of mass marketing.
5. (Causation) Account for KC-3.1.III.C: how did the volatile late-nineteenth-century business cycle drive firms and governments to manage markets? Cite specific examples of cartels, tariffs, and central-bank reforms.

Draft alignment — pending educator review. AP European History codes correspond to the official College Board Course and Exam Description (Effective Fall 2023, V.1). Statements below are paraphrased in the CountryReports voice; refer to the College Board's published CED for verbatim wording.