The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [131]
Since a new era is dawning, we need to review what was going on around 1900.
Industrialism and the Machine Age
The years between 1880 and 1900 were an era of great prosperity and a belief in a glorious future. Progress was everywhere. Trains were moving people and goods faster than ever and at reduced prices. Transportation influenced prices on all kinds of goods and services so as transportation prices fell prices on nearly everything fell. Mass production became common, and this made textiles and a wide array of manufactured goods available at lower prices. At sea, fast ships traveling around the world brought goods to Europe and America from across the globe. As Europe thrived, the third world prospered by supplying the Europeans with their needs and wants which consistently grew. New factories were constructed, and new factories meant better machines and more competition, driving prices down. It also upped employment numbers. International trade was booming, and the future looked brilliant. Machines seemed to be the key to the future. They made everything better.
In terms of warfare, the last ninety years were good because very few large wars between major powers occurred. Since Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, European nations cooperated as never before in preventing war. If events in Europe appeared to be moving toward an armed clash, the ambassadors gathered and started working out terms to prevent a conflict.[153]
Overall, the world seemed to work well; however, underneath it all a growing angst presided. Philosophy started predicting an irrational world, one ruled by harsh reality, power, and greed. Art was coming undone. Reality evaporated, and modern painting started taking over wherein the minds of artists turned to images of wilting watches and fantastic scenes never glimpsed before. Even this degenerated into darker paintings of worlds without recognizable features. Literature followed suit with stories of meaningless existence overlain by horror. Music also echoed the tune of no rhyme or theme and began to declare there was no unity in music or in life. It all came together in science, where the world people thought they knew melted away with incomprehensible theories that failed to fit everyday experience. The theory of relativity (Einstein) told the world that the universe was a strange place where the speed of light never changed, and events changed depending on a person’s viewpoint in space. Plank’s quantum theory postulated a world of atoms where “certainty” was a calculation which stated only the possibilities—NOTHING was certain here. Freud displayed the power of hidden areas of the human mind and proved rational decisions were anything but rational. Decisions and ideas were not based on systematic thought (logic and reason), but on the emotional, and very irrational, part of the mind he called the subconscious. Freud made the mind irrational and thus the world irrational. Where could this be leading?
Little did anyone realize how close this placid Victorian world was to the ultimate irrationality; World War I.
Machines
By 1900, machines ran the modern Western world. Machines took jobs and created jobs. Machines ruled nearly every aspect of work and life. From the factories to the fields, machines performed more and more work under the oversight of humans. Trains made hauling people and possessions faster and cheaper. Railroads were crisscrossing continents other than Europe by 1900. From England to India, trains were the center of modern urban life and the center of economic life everywhere in Europe, America, and the colonial empires. Ships began running on coal-fired engines, and a new product—the automobile—ran on gasoline (mostly). The automobile became the foundation of the machine age when Henry Ford (1863-1947) introduced the Model T Ford October 1, 1908. Using assembly line methods he cut the cost of production making the vehicle affordable. The price was $825 when it rolled off the assembly line in 1908, and the price fell as Ford improved his manufacturing methods. The first