Machines began to replace significantly human and animal power in the production and manufacturing of goods.
The use of the steam engine for producing textiles in the 1780s was the turning point.
Europe gradually transitioned from an agricultural and commercial society into a modern industrial society.
As late as the 1830s only a small fraction of British working people were employed in factories.
By mid-19th century, industrialism had spread all across Europe.
The economic changes of the “Industrial Revolution” did more than any other movement to revolutionize life in Europe and western civilization.
Not since the development of agriculture during Neolithic times had there been such a radical change in society.
Roots of the Industrial Revolution
Commercial Revolution (1500-1700)
Spurred great economic growth of Europe and brought about the Age of Exploration
“Price Revolution” (inflation) stimulated production as producers could get more money for their goods.
Bourgeoisie acquired much of their wealth from trading and manufacturing
Rise of Capitalism
Increased use of surplus money for investment in ventures to make a profit.
The middle class came to provide the leadership for the economic revolution (e.g. chartered companies and joint-stock companies).
Scientific Revolution produced the first wave of mechanical inventions and technological advances.
Increase in Europe’s population provided larger markets
Proto-industrialization: the Cottage Industry
Rural industry was a major pillar of Europe’s growing economy in the 18th century
Rural population eager to supplement its income
Merchants in cities sought cheap rural labor rather than paying guild members in towns higher fees
Thus, early industrial production was “put out” into the countryside: the “putting-out system”
Manufacturing with hand tools in peasant cottages came to challenge the urban craft industry
Cottage industry
Merchant-capitalist would provide raw materials (e.g. raw wool) to a rural family who produced a finished or semi-finished product and sent it back to the merchant for payment
Cottage workers were usually paid by the number of pieces they produced
Merchants would sell the finished product for profit
Wool cloth was the most important product
The Cottage industry was essentially a family enterprise.
Work of four or five spinners needed to keep one weaver steadily employed.
Husband and wife constantly tried to find more thread and more spinners.
Repeal of the Navigation Acts and the Corn Laws decreased mercantilism’s stifling effect in certain industries
A growing demand for textiles led to the creation of the world’s first large factories.
Constant shortage of thread in the textile industry focused attention on ways of improving spinning.
Inventions of proto-industrialization facilitated increased production
The steam engine’s application to textile production was perhaps the key event of the industrial revolution
1780s, Richard Arkwright used the steam engine to power the looms and required factory production of textiles.
1784, Edmund Cartwright invented a loom that was powered by horses, water, or steam.
Metallurgical industries flourished as they provided the machinery
Results of new technology
By 1790, new machines produced 10X as much cotton yarn as in 1770.
By 1800, production of cotton thread was England’s most important industry.
By 1850, England produced more than ½ world’s cotton cloth.
In 1820, cotton almost ½ of Britain’s exports
Cotton goods became much cheaper, and were enjoyed by all classes.
Poor people could now afford to wear cotton slips and underwear.
Steam engines and coal
The use of coal to power steam engines was one of the hallmarks of the industrial revolution.
This revolution in energy involved a transition from wood-burning to coal-burning.
Prior to 1780, processed wood (charcoal) was the fuel mixed with iron ore in the blast furnace to produce pig iron.
Much of England as well as parts of Europe were experiencing deforestation.
Coal
Provided steam power used in many industries.
By 1850, England produced 2/3 of world's coal.
The steam engine
Thomas Savory (1698) and Thomas Newcomen (1705) invented the steam pump to pump water out of mines.
Both engines were extremely inefficient.
Used to replace mechanical pumps powered by animals
James Watt in 1769 invented and patented the first efficient steam engine.
By the late 1780s, the steam engine was used regularly in production in England.
The steam engine was the most fundamental advance in technology.
Steam-power began to replace water power in cotton-spinning mills during the 1780s as well as other mills (e.g. flour, malt and flint)
Radical transformations occurred in manufacturing and transportation.
The iron industry was radically transformed by steam power.
Rising supplies of coal boosted iron production and gave rise to heavy industry: the manufacture of machinery and materials used in production
Iron makers switched over rapidly from charcoal to coke in smelting of pig iron.
Henry Cort, in 1780s, developed the puddling furnace, which allowed pig iron to be refined in turn with coke.
Cort also developed heavy-duty steam-powered rolling mills capable of shaping finished iron into any shape or form.
By 1850, England produced more than half of world’s iron.
Transportation Revolution
Made possible by steam power.
Necessary to distribute finished goods as well as deliver raw materials to factories.
New canal systems
Duke of Bridgewater important in development.
Canals important in completing basic needs of related interdependent industries: railroad, steel, coal industries
Construction of hard-surfaced roads pioneered by John McAdam (1756-1836)
Significantly improved land travel
1807, Robert Fulton’s steamboat, the Clermont, traveled up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany.
Used an imported Boulton and Watt steam engine.
Made 2-way river travel possible and travel on the high seas faster.
1838, first steamship crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
Railroad
1803, first steam wagon was used on streets of London
1812, steam wagon was adapted for use on rails.
1825, George Stephenson made railway locomotive commercially successful.
By 1829, the locomotive was widely used in England.
In 1830, his locomotive, the Rocket, traveled the Liverpool-Manchester Railway at 16mph.
World’s first important railroad as it was in heart of industrial England.
Many private companies were quickly organized to build more rail lines in the 1840s
Impact of the railroad:
Greatly reduced cost of shipping freight on land
Resulted in growing regional and national market spurring increased industrial productivity to meet larger demand.
Facilitated the growth of urban working class who came from the countryside.
Many cottage workers, farm laborers, and small peasants worked building railroads.
After rail lines were built, many traveled on railroads to towns looking for work.
Great Britain in 1850
Produced 2/3 of world’s coal.
Produced more than ½ of world’s iron.
Produced more than ½ of world’s cotton cloth.
GNP rose between 1801 and 1850 350%
100% growth between 1780 and 1800.
Population increased from 9 million in 1780 to almost 21 million in 1851.
Per capita income increased almost 100% between 1801 and 1851.
Economy increased faster than population growth creating higher demand for labor.
The Crystal Palace was built for the 1851 international exhibit.
It was intended to signify Britain’s industrial, economic and military power.
It is about 1/3 mile long and about 800,000 square feet inside the structure.
Continental Europe began to industrialize after 1815.
Parts of the Continent were not far behind Britain industrially in the 1780s.
Cottage industry thrived in certain regions
Some British manufacturing techniques were copied by certain Continental countries
The Napoleonic wars hindered the industrial growth of continental European nations.
Disrupted trade, created runaway inflation, and reduced consumer demand.
Continental access to British machinery and technology was reduced.
By 1815, the continental countries lagged much further behind industrially than in 1789.
Britain dominated world markets during the wars.
British technology too advanced for most continental engineers and skilled technicians to understand.
Technology of steam power was expensive and required large amounts of capital.
Continental entrepreneurs struggled to acquire large amounts of capital.
Shortage of factory workers.
Landowners and gov’t officials did little to encourage industrial growth.
After 1815, continental Europe began catching up to Britain
Studied Britain’s costly mistakes during early industrialization and avoided them.
Industrialization differed in each country after 1815
Belgium, Holland, France, and U.S. began their industrial revolutions in the 2nd decade of the 19th century.
Germany, Austria, and Italy in mid-19th century.
By 1900, Germany was the most powerful industrial country in Europe
Eastern Europe and Russia industrialized near the end of the 19th century.
Borrowed British technology, hired British engineers, and gained British capital.
Used power of strong sovereign central governments and banking systems to promote native industry.
Belgium: in 1830s, pioneered the organization of big corporations with many stockholders.
Banks used money to develop industries and thus became industrial banks.
Banks in France and Germany became important in the 1850s in developing railroads and companies in heavy industries.
Crédit Mobilier of Paris was the most famous.
Helped build railroads all over France and Europe.
Britain was unsuccessful in maintaining a monopoly on technical advances.
Until 1825, it was illegal for artisans and skilled mechanics to leave Britain.
Until 1843, export of textile machinery and other equipment forbidden.
Yet, many emigrated illegally and introduced new methods abroad.
Tariff policies were used to protect native industries on the continent.
France responded by enacting high tariffs on many British imports.
France had been flooded by inexpensive and superior British goods
1834, the Zollverein was a German tariff on non-German imports established to encourage capital investment in German industry
Established a free trade zone among member states and a single uniform tariff was levied against foreign countries.
Most significant result was increased production and availability of manufactured goods.
Social implications of the Industrial Revolution.
Replaced the traditional social hierarchy with a new social order.
19th century became the golden age of the middle class.
A new class of factory owners emerged in this period: the bourgeoisie.
Two levels of bourgeoisie existed:
Upper bourgeoisie: great bankers, merchants and industrialists who demanded free enterprise and high tariffs.
Lower bourgeoisie (“petite bourgeoisie”): small industrialists, merchants, and professional men who demanded stability and security from the government.
New opportunities for certain groups emerged.
Artisans and skilled workers who were highly talented achieved significant success.
Certain ethnic and religious groups became successful
Quakers and Scots in England.
Protestants and Jews dominated banking in Catholic France.
As factories grew larger, opportunities for advancement declined in well-developed industries.
Capital-intensive industry made it harder for skilled artisans to become wealthy manufacturers
Formal education thus became more important as a means of social advancement (but the cost was often prohibitive to those below the middle class)
In England by 1830 and Germany in 1860, leading industrialists were more likely to have inherited their businesses.
Proletariat wage earners
Factory workers emerged as a new group in society and the fastest-growing social class: the “proletariat”
During the first century of the industrial revolution a surplus of labor resulted in poor conditions for workers.
Hours in factories as much as 14 hours a day, occasionally more; few holidays.
Working conditions were often brutal and unsafe
Low wages, particularly for women and children
Poorhouses emerged to provide work to those who were unemployed
Poorhouse conditions were often intentionally oppressive.
A major goal was to persuade workers to leave the poorhouse and find work elsewhere
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) lashed out at the middle classes in his The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844).
Future revolutionary and colleague of Karl Marx who believed the capitalist middle class ruthless exploited the proletariat
“I charge the English middle classes with mass murder, wholesale robbery, and all the other crimes in the calendar.”
For workers and ordinary families, the long-term impact of the Industrial Revolution was more favorable than negative.
Significant advancement from pattern of pre-industrial life
Material prosperity in England increased due to availability of cheaper high-quality goods and because increased consumption led to more jobs.
Wages:
Between 1820 and 1850, real wages and consumption of the average worker rose by almost 50%.
Only 5% between 1780 and 1820.
Skilled British workers earned about twice that of unskilled workers in agriculture.
However, the average work week increased
Workers ate better and quality and quantity of clothing improved
Housing did not improve for working people and in fact, may have deteriorated somewhat.
Until 1850, workers as a whole did not share in the general wealth produced by the Industrial Revolution.
Economic conditions of European workers improved after 1850.
Luddites
A violent group of irate workers who blamed industrialism for threatening their jobs
Beginning in 1812 and continuing thereafter, attacked factories in northern England destroying new machines they believed were putting them out of work.
Union Movement
Certain leaders began organizing groups of workers to resist exploitation of the proletariat by business owners
Combination Acts (1799)
Parliament prohibited labor unions
Reaction to fear of radicalism in the French Revolution.
Widely disregarded by workers.
Repealed in 1824 and unions became more tolerated after 1825.
Robert Owen (1771-1858) in 1834, organized the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union.
Scottish industrialist who pioneered industrial relations by combining firm discipline with a concern for the health, safety, and work hours of workers.
After 1815, experimented with utopian cooperative/socialist communities
His and other unionization efforts failed and British labor movement moved once again after 1851 in the direction of craft unions.
Craft unions won benefits for their members.
Means were fairly conservative and became accepted part of industrial scene.
Chartists sought political democracy.
Organized in the face of Owen’s national trade union collapse.
Demanded that all men have the right to vote.
Sought to change what they saw as an oppressive economic system of exploitation.
Unions campaigned for 10 hour days and to permit duty-free imports of wheat into Britain to secure cheap bread (in response to the oppressive Corn Laws that were passed in 1815).
Union action, combined with general prosperity and a developing social conscience, led to improved working conditions, better wages, and reduced work hours.
Skilled labor benefited earlier and to a larger extent than unskilled labor.
Changes in working conditions
Factory work meant more discipline and lost personal freedom.
Work became impersonal
Cottage workers reluctant to work in factories even for decent wages because the environment was so different from what they were used to.
1785, only 3 cities with more than 50,000 people existed in England and Scotland.
By 1820, 31 British cities had 50,000 or more.
Role of the city changed in the 19th century from governmental and cultural centers, to industrial centers.
Although living conditions did not differ much from those on farms, the concentration of the population made them appear worse.
Workers began to unite for political action, to remedy their economic dissatisfaction.
Reformers sought to improve life in cities
Working class injustices, gender exploitation and standard-of-living issues became the 19th century’s great social and political dilemmas.
Family structure and gender roles within the family were altered.
Families as an economic unit were no longer the chief unit of both production and consumption
New wage economy meant that families were less closely bound together than in the past.
Productive work was taken out of the home
As factory wages for skilled adult males rose, women & children were separated from the workplace.
Gender-determined roles at home and domestic life emerged slowly.
Married women came to be associated with domestic duties, while men tended to be the sole wage earner.
Women were now expected to create a nurturing environment to which the family members returned after work.
Married women worked outside the home only when family needs, illness or death of a spouse required them to do so.
Single women and widows had much work available, but that work commanded low wages and low skills and provided no way to protect themselves from exploitation.
Irish workers increasingly came to Great Britain and became urban workers.
Many Irish were forced out of rural Ireland by population growth and increasingly poor economic conditions.
The Industrial Revolution may have stemmed human catastrophes resulting from population growth.
Overpopulation and rural poverty most severe in Ireland.
Ireland did not industrialize in 19th century and stands as an example of what may have occurred in other parts of Europe.
Irish Potato Famine
Most of the population was Irish Catholic peasants.
Rented land from a tiny minority of Anglicans, many of whom lived in England.
Most lived in abject poverty around 1800.
Protestant landlords did not improve agriculture in Ireland.
Disease in potato crop continued to increase along with accompanying fever epidemics.
In 1845 & 46 and again in 1848 & 1851, the potato crop failed in Ireland and much of Europe.
Higher food prices, widespread suffering, and social unrest ensued.
Result of the Great Famine
At least 1.5 million people died or went unborn.
1 million fled Ireland between 1845 and 1851; 2 million left between 1840 and 1855.
Most went to U.S. or Britain.
By 1911, Irish population only 4.4 million compared with 8 million in 1845.
British government response to crisis inadequate.
Rapid population growth, as in Ireland, without industrialization may have led to similar results in other parts of Europe as in Irish potato famine.
e.g. Central Russia, western Germany, and southern Italy were vulnerable: overpopulation, acute poverty, and reliance on the potato.
A historical debate on the industrial revolution
Capitalists view it as a positive step toward fulfilling human wants and needs.
The Industrial Revolution provided power to replace back-breaking human labor.
Wealth available for human consumption increased.
Vast amounts of food, clothing and energy were produced and distributed to the workers of the world.
Luxuries were made commonplace.
Life-expectancy increased
Leisure time made more enjoyable.
Human catastrophe, like Ireland, was largely avoided in areas experiencing industrialization.
Socialists and communists view it as the further exploitation of the have-nots by the haves.
Workers did not begin to share in dramatic increase in standard of living until 2nd half of 19th century due to low wages, poor working conditions, etc.
During 1st century of industrialism the wealth created went almost exclusively to the entrepreneur and the owner of capital—the middle class.
