10.5 Regulation, Reform, and Revolutionary Ideologies

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Analyze the effectiveness of government regulation of the industrial workplace and of city life
• Analyze nineteenth- and early twentieth-century labor and social reform movements
• Describe the development of socialism as a means of addressing industrial workers’ needs

Industrialization and urbanization offered opportunities to many people and improved their lives in many ways. However, they also brought much suffering and discontent. The period of the Second Industrial Revolution gave birth to a number of reform movements and legal efforts to eliminate the problems that urbanization and industrialization caused. Some efforts were successful; many were not. When things did not change—or did not change fast enough—people sometimes turned to violent conflict and threatened revolution.