The Second Industrial Revolution - Assignment Example

The Second Industrial Revolution produced some of the greatest change in human society in all of its history. Though it had a great deal of impact on what one would call “progress,” it also had a great deal of downsides and in some ways helped lead to the great depression. The Second Industrial Revolution culminated in the development of assembly lines and mass production of products. There were a wide array of consequences of the development of mass production, but two of the largest downsides are not often considered.

One is somewhat coincidental: a massive toll of human life through World War I. Because the First World War came immediately after the Second Industrial Revolution, no one really understood the effect that mass production could have on warfare. The result was that developments of mass production, such as an unlimited supply of bullets, machine guns and semiautomatic weapons which were machined to exact standards through assembly lines, allowed a single soldier to kill countless more than ever previously in history.

The Second Industrial Revolution, by making the production of all human devices, including weapons, more efficient, allowed governments in war to kill each other on an unprecedented scale. The Revolution also had economic downsides. It allowed economic ‘bubbles’ to build up on scaled previously unseen, the bursting of which had a part to play in the great depression. Furthermore, the mechanization of production tasks meant that a lot of things that used to need several people to accomplish could now be done by one, leading to unemployment.

The solution to this, brought around in part by Roosevelt’s New Deal, was a shift of the workforce from production to services, leading to a better quality of life overall. The Second Industrial Revolution was just as influential as the first, but in very different ways. And also like the First Industrial Revolution, the progress it brought on came with significant costs. Human society often need significant time to adapt to technical advancements.