Social Sciences and History / Unit 6 SSH 0530 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reform, Unions, and Socialisms: Classifying a Response
The idea
The exam asks who answered industrialization's problems and how, and the anchor's section sorts the answers. Governments: laws abolishing child labor, insuring workers, requiring safe housing, curbing pollution, regulating prostitution. Middle-class reformers: personal behavior, morality, temperance, and often women's rights. Workers: unions to force shorter hours, higher wages and safer conditions; a trade union organized one craft, a labor union all workers. Socialists: holding that capitalism's destruction would cure social ills, social democrats built parties that organized unions and forced protective legislation through democratic means; other socialists, and some anarchists, urged violent overthrow.
In practice
Given "a law limiting a factory's hours for children", government regulation. Given "a campaign to close saloons", middle-class reform. Given "a strike for an eight-hour day", union. Given "a party contesting elections to legislate for workers", social democrat. Given "a bomb aimed at the ruling elite", anarchist or revolutionary socialist. Ask who acts and by what means: law, persuasion, bargaining, ballot, or force.
Where people slip
The trap is putting all socialists under revolution; the anchor's social democrats chose democratic means. The second trap is trade union for labor union; the anchor's key terms separate one craft from all workers.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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