744 Ch. 19 • Rapid Industrialization and Its Challenges
Many workers now had a little money and time left over for leisure activ
ities. Bicycles, sports, and, early in the new century, movies became part of
the lives of millions. Nonetheless, in many regions—including much of
southern Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia, and the Balkans—wrenching poverty
remained common, and mobility into the middle class remained excep
tional at the turn of the century.
Emigration to other countries emerged as one of the most significant
social phenomena of the age, particularly during the depression that lasted
from 1873 into the mid-1890s. Peasants and laborers, in particular, left
Europe in hope of economic opportunity in the United States, Canada,
and Latin America. Great Britain, Germany, and Ireland had provided most
of the earlier waves of emigrants—for example, during the “hungry forties”
marked by the Irish potato famine. Now Italians, in particular, headed
overseas in great numbers, along with Scandinavians.
The last years of the nineteenth century—the fin de siecle—would be
remembered after World War I as the “Belle Epoque”—the “good old days”—
a period of material progress and cultural innovation. New inventions like the
telephone and automobile promised an even better life ahead.
The Second Industrial RevolutionSteel led the Second Industrial Revolution. Then electricity accelerated
European economic growth, providing, in the century's last two decades,
power for industry. The Second Industrial Revolution brought a stunning
variety of technological innovations that ultimately improved the everyday
lives of most Europeans. In large cities, subways and, increasingly, auto
mobiles made people more mobile. At the same time, new discoveries in
the physical sciences—particularly chemistry—and the development of
germ theory and bacteriology led to advances that improved agriculture, as
well as public health, making possible longer lives.
The Second Industrial Revolution seemed impervious to an economic
depression that began in 1873 and lasted until the mid-1890s. It was
marked by falling prices and punctuated by financial panics, although not
by prolonged unemployment or economic stagnation. Following a fever of
speculation, particularly in Germany, banks failed in Vienna. The speed
with which the crisis spread to other financial capitals reflected the extent
to which improvements in transportation and communication had extended
the links of an increasingly global economy. British foreign investment dou
bled between 1900 and 1914, and within Europe the volume of trade
increased by twenty-five times between 1820 and 1913. Increasingly, the
price of grain and other essential commodities became more constant with
the development of a global market for foodstuffs. Agricultural prices fell
virtually everywhere in Europe, in part because imported grain from the