Western Civilization II / Unit 9 WC2 0804 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Population, Calories, and a Surplus of Hands
Captions available
The idea
Rising population, sanitation lowering infant mortality, the end of the Little Ice Age, and commercial agriculture, a disaster for peasants but more calories overall, produced by eighteen hundred what the anchor, quoting Dickens's Scrooge, calls a surplus population.
In practice
The factory's labor force was made in the countryside.
Where people slip
Surplus is Scrooge's word, quoted, not the anchor's own.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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