Western Civilization II / Unit 9 WC2 0833 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Classifying a Reform: Franchise, Tariff, Labor, Union
The idea
The exam names a British reform and asks what it changed, or describes a change and asks which reform made it. Four kinds answer four questions: who votes, what bread costs, how long the young and women work, and whether workers may combine. Ask which question a measure answers.
In practice
Six cases. Rotten boroughs abolished and urban middle-class men enfranchised: the franchise, the Reform Bill of thirty-two. Six points demanding manhood suffrage and a general strike: the franchise demanded and refused, Chartism. Tariffs on imported grain ended: bread, repeal in forty-six. Children under nine barred from textile mills: labor, the Factory Act of thirty-three. Women and boys under ten barred from underground: labor, the Mines Act of forty-two. Combinations of workers made lawful: unions, eighteen seventy-one.
Where people slip
The trap is Chartism, which sought the franchise and won none of it, while the Reform Bill it followed had already given the vote to the class above. And the Corn Laws' repeal was a middle-class victory over landlords, not a workers' one, though workers ate cheaper. The Reform Act of eighteen sixty-seven belongs to this table and is missing from every source; the course discloses it rather than teaching it.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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