The Industrial The Industrial RevolutionRevolution

Definition

The shift from a traditional agriculturally based economy to one based on the mechanized production of manufactured goods in large-scale enterprises.

Origins of the RevolutionThe industrial

revolution began in England in the middle of the 18th century.

By 1850 it had spread to the European continent and the New World.

By the end of the 19th century Germany and the United States would surpass Britain in industrial output.

Why Great Britain?

The Agricultural Revolution led to a significant increase in food production.

The increase in food led to a decrease in prices, which meant that people could spend less of their income on food and so had money to buy manufactured goods.

The decrease in needed farm labor meant a surplus of labor available to work in factories.

Workers involved in the cottage industries could provide skilled textile workers.

Britain had an abundance of capital for investment, a well established banking system and good credit ratings.

The cottage textile industry had created a pool of wealthy entrepreneurs, willing to risk to a make a profit.

Britain had an abundant supply of important resources such as coal and iron.

Britain’s rivers provided transportation and the country invested in roads, bridges, canals and later railroads.

The government provided stability and passed laws favorable to industrial development – most importantly in the protection of property.

Britain put fewer restrictions on private enterprise than any other European nation.

Britain’s industry produced good, cheap products that were in high demand and its merchant marine brought them cheaply and safely to the world’s markets.

Technological Changes.The growth in

productivity was achieved by systematic application of scientific and practical knowledge to the manufacturing process.

The Cottage IndustryThe cottage industry in

textiles had increased production of cloth to the point there was a yarn shortage.

1768 – James Hargreaves invented the spinning Jenny.

1771 - Richard Arkwright invented the water frame powered spinning machine.

Samuel Crompton invented the mule - a combination water frame and jenny.

Edmund Cartwright

1787 the power loom increased the speed of the loom and by the 1820’s power looms would make the cottage textile industry obsolete.

By 1850 there will be 250,000 power looms in Great Britain.

Rise of Factory TownsEfficiency was also enhanced

when large agglomerations of enterprises were located within limited areas.

Thus, the Industrial Revolution involved urbanization, that is, the process of migration from rural to urban communities.

The Steam EngineThe invention of the Steam

Engine revolutionized the production of textile goods and created whole new industries.

The steam engine secured the triumph of the Industrial Revolution.

Coal MiningThe invention of the steam

engine was a by-product of the coal industry.

Coal was used in heating and in smelting iron.

The increase in demand for coal led to deeper mines.

The need to pump water from the mines led to the invention of a steam pump by Thomas Newcomen.

James WattWhile repairing a Newcomen

pump, James Watt developed a pump that ran more efficiently and pumped much more water.

In 1782, he developed an engine that could turn a shaft and drive machinery.

James Watt

These new steam engines were used to power the new machine looms and spinning machines of the textile factories.

This allowed the factories to be located almost anywhere.

“Steam is an Englishman”

By 1850, seven-eighths of the total power available to the entire British cotton industry was furnished by steam.

The Iron Industry

By the 18th century iron smelting had not changed much since the Middle Ages.

In the 1700s Coke replaced Charcoal as the principle fuel for smelting.

In the 1780s Henry Cort developed the process in iron smelting known as puddling whereby coke was used to make a better grade of iron.

By the 1852, England produced almost 3 million tons of high quality wrought iron – more than the rest of the world combined.

First Iron Bridge Iron Smelting

Transportation IndustryCheap, high quality iron

led to a revolution in transportation – mainly in the development of railroads.

England had led the way in building turnpikes and canals and was the leader in railroads as well.

The Iron Horse

The development of the iron railroad can be traced to the coal mines where first wooden and then iron rails were used in the moving of coal carts.

In 1804, Richard Trevithick developed the first steam powered locomotive in Wales.

George Stephenson

Stephenson and his son developed the Rocket, the first commercial locomotive for public transportation.

The Rocket reached speeds in excess of fifteen miles an hour.

By 1850, railroad locomotives reached 50 miles an hour!

Entrance to Water Street Entrance to Water Street Station, ManchesterStation, Manchester

The Growth of IndustryThe development of

the railroads in the Industrial Revolution was important in increasing British supremacy in civil and mechanical engineering.

The new capital requirements led to the creation of joint-stock banking ventures and other investments by middle-class entrepreneurs.

The Self-Sustaining CycleCheaper and faster

transportation led to reduced prices of goods, larger markets, increased sales which led to more factories, more machinery and increase in the demand for labor.

The Brave New WorldEuropeans now began to

see themselves as the masters of nature and began to believe that it was God’s will that they conquer Nature.

The Industrial FactoryThe rise of the

industrial factory system deeply affected the lives and status of workers who now no longer owned the means of economic production and could only sell their labor for a wage.

The new set of values established by factory owners relegated the worker to a life of harsh discipline subject to the clock and the rigors of highly competitive wage labor.

 This in turn led in the nineteenth century to a general public acceptance of a regular work week measured in hours as a natural part of life.

Infractions of the rules and poor work habits could be reason for dismissal – something that would have meant disaster for the average worker.

The most frequent method employed to make the many very young boys and girls working in new British industries obey the owner's factory discipline was repeated beatings.

The Great Exhibition

In 1851, the British produced the world’s first industrial fair.

Housed in the Crystal Palace, built of iron and glass, it displayed to the world the wonders of the Industrial Revolution and proved Britain’s position as the leading industrial power.

Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations

The Crystal Palace

The Spread of IndustrializationThe Industrial

Revolution which began in Great Britain spread to the countries of Belgium and Germany on the continent and to the United States in the New World.

Limitations to Industrialization

Although still largely agrarian by 1815, Belgium, France and Germany had begun to experience many of the developments that favored industrialization.

They had high population growth, agricultural improvements, expanded cottage industries and growth in foreign trade.

But continental countries had fewer good roads, they had toll stations on rivers and tariffs between countries.

The guilds put restrictions on entrepreneurs and most Europeans lacked the competitive high-risk spirit of their British neighbors.

The Napoleonic Wars The era of Napoleon

also hurt the continent more than Britain.

The constant warfare caused the destruction of property and the loss of manpower, as well as the disruption of trade.

Napoleon’s Continental System actually helped to revitalize the French and Belgian woolen industry, but after 1815 they could no longer compete with cheap English goods.

Competition between Countries

Continental countries relied upon British technology and hired English mechanics and encouraged English entrepreneurs to build plants in their countries.

The British tried to maintain their competitive edge by restricting the transfer of technology that continental countries were relying on.

Old Slater Mill

The Continent eventually became technologically independent, developing government funded training schools and in some cases government funded factories.

Technische Universität München

Government InvolvementThroughout the

Continent governments built roads, canals and railroads that were state owned and operated.

Governments also used protective tariffs to help their nascent industries develop.

Friedrich List, in his National System of Political Economy, advocated the use of protective tariffs to protect industrialization in Germany.

Joint-Stock Investment Banks

Continental countries also differed from England in the use of Joint-Stock Banks.

These banks, first developed in Belgium, pooled in the deposits of thousands of investors from all walks of life to generate a supply of capital for investment.

Other countries followed with institutions like the Credit Mobilier in France and the Darmstadt Bank in Germany.

Centers of Continental IndustrializationThere were three major centers of

industrialization on the Continent between 1815 and 1850 – Belgium, France and Germany.

Cotton and textiles were important industries, but not as important as heavy industry.

In 1849, France used 64,000 tons of cotton, Belgium used 11,000, Germany 20,000 while Great Britain used 286,000 tons.

Continental cotton factories remained one generation behind Britain.

Belgium leaped ahead of Belgium leaped ahead of the other Continental the other Continental countries by modernizing countries by modernizing its cotton plants with the its cotton plants with the implementation of Steam implementation of Steam Engines.Engines.

Most Continental manufacturing was more geographically dispersed than Britain and relied longer on the old hand driven looms.

Heavy IndustryWhile the cotton industry on the

Continent lagged behind Britain the Iron and coal industries came to dominate the Continent.

After 1850, great deposits of coal and iron were discovered in Germany’s Ruhr Valley.

The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution

Population GrowthPopulation began to explode in

the 19th century – by 1850 the population of Europe exceeded 250,000,000

The growth was due to an decrease in the death rate, as birth rates were beginning to decline in the 1800s.

Declining Death RateThe decline in the death rate was

due to a decrease in the number of deaths due to war, famine and epidemic diseases.

The increase in the overall food supply led to people being better fed and therefore less susceptible to disease.

Overpopulation in rural areas led to increased hardship for rural poor and gave rise to an increasing mass of landless peasants.

This problem led to one of the greatest disasters of the 19th century.

The Irish Potato Famine

The Irish farmers were one of the most oppressed people in Europe.

Irish peasants were Catholic serfs to the mostly absentee Protestant English landlords.

The Irish survived on potatoes as their main staple – this allowed for enough nutrition to lead to a population increase.

The Irish population doubled between 1781 and 1845 – with half of the population relying solely on the potato for survival.

The Great Hunger

In 1845 a fungus blight struck the potato crop turning them black and inedible.

Over one million died of starvation and 2 million migrated to the United States or Britain.

Much of the loss of life was due to English disregard for the problem and a lack of effective assistance to the suffering.

An Gorta Mór

An Gorta Mór

Famine in SkibbereenFamine in Skibbereen

Migration PatternsThis pattern of emigration

would continue throughout Europe during the 1800s and early 1900s – whenever there were economic or political problems the U.S. acted a safety valve.

Rural problems also led to a massive rural to urban migration.

The Growth of CitiesUrbanization in the first half of the nineteenth century was a phenomenon directly tied to industrialization.

By 1850 one half of Britain’s population lived in cities of over 50,000 people.

London’s population exceeded 2.3 million.

The Continent, as in industry, also lagged behind Britain in the rise of urbanization.

By 1850, Paris would have 1 million people and Vienna 247,000.

Urban Living Conditions

The wealthy insulated themselves from the urban blight by living in affluent enclaves within the cities, while the new middle class moved to the suburbs to escape the urban poor.

The conditions in the industrialized cities were appalling, with filthy sanitary conditions that were exacerbated by the city authorities' denial of responsibility for public health.

`Affordable food in

the cities was often adulterated and government regulation was nonexistent – Britain did not pass a Food and Drug Act until 1875. Bangers n mash

Edwin Chadwick published a study of the living conditions of the urban poor and advocated modern sanitary reforms that resulted in Britain's first Public Health Act.

John Snow’s Study of Cholera

The New Industrial Middle Class

Most prominent among the new industrial entrepreneurial class in the Industrial Revolution was the Bourgeoisie.

Members of this new industrial entrepreneurial class were usually resourceful individuals with diverse social backgrounds – with many coming from the mercantile trades.

Many of them were in the religious minorities such as the Quakers.

 These early industrial entrepreneurs often had to single-handedly control the entire factory and were pressured to constantly expand in order to feel secure.

The new found wealth will afford these bourgeois industrialists much prestige and an increase in political power.

The New Industrial Laboring Class

Despite the rise of industrialization in the first half of the 19th century, Agricultural workers still out numbered factory workers 2 to 1.

The largest group of urban workers in the first half of the nineteenth century was composed of artisans and craftsmen.

These skilled craftsmen were organized in guilds and were able to demand a higher wage than the workers in the factories.

These craftsmen and their guilds fought against the rise of industrialization.

Working Conditions in the Factory

The new social class of industrial workers in the early Industrial Revolution worked under appallingly dangerous conditions for incredibly long hours at the mercy of profit-maximizing bosses.

Working conditions were probably worse in the cotton mills with their high temperatures and hazardous air.

Coal mines were also exceptionally bad places to work, with the constant danger of cave-ins, explosion and death by asphyxiation.

Women and ChildrenChildren were

often used as workers in the cotton mills as the low-paid children could more easily move around large industrial equipment.

Many of the children in the work force were paupers apprentices – orphans who were placed in the factories by parish orphanages to save on the cost of upkeep.

The Factory Act of 1833 limited the work hours of children from the ages of nine and thirteen to only eight hours a day.

Children between the ages of 13 and 18 could not work longer than 12 hours a day.

The Factory Act led to an increased reliance on women in the factories and between 1830 and 1870 women came to make up 50% of the workforce.

Women were paid one half of the wages of a man in a comparable position.

Social Transformation?Women who worked in

the early factories did not cause a significant transformation in female working patterns – as most women continued to fill domestic jobs or work in agriculture

and because whole families often worked together in the factories they did not instigate a dramatic change in pre-industrial kinship patterns.

The Effects of the Factory Acts

The passage of the Factory Acts did cause changes in the traditional kinship patterns as men began to take on the primary work obligation and women assumed the daily control of the family.

Standards of LivingA major question regarding the

Industrial Revolution is its impact on the standard of living.

Over the long run living standards increased dramatically in the form of higher per capita incomes and greater consumer choices.

But did the first generations of industrial workers experience a decline in their standard of living?

Some argue that industrialization required great capital investments necessitating low wages.

What is well known is that the 19th century saw a widening gap between the rich and the poor.

Wages and prices tended to fluctuate between good times and bad times; and periodic recessions caused hardships.

In some cases unemployment among factories workers reached 60%.

Would the lower class have been better off without the industrial revolution or would the increased population have caused a Great Hunger everywhere?

For the most part, the real winners in the first half of the 19th century were the middle class, while the laboring lower classes would have to wait for another 50 years to benefit from industrialization.

Efforts at Change

Early Labor UnionsDespite efforts to limit

associations of workers with laws like the Combination Acts, British skilled workers organized unions to protect workers by limiting entry into the trade and to gain benefits from employers.

The use of strikes (sometimes violent strikes) led to the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824, which effectively legalized trade unions in Britain.

PETERLOO MASSACRE - 1819PETERLOO MASSACRE - 1819

Robert OwenThe utopian

social reformer, Robert Owen, advocated the creation of new national unions throughout England.

                   

     

New Lanark, Scotland

He organized the Great National Consolidated Trades Union which called for a general strike for the eight hour day.

The lack of real working class support led to its total collapse.

The union movement reverted to trade unions for individual crafts.

The Luddites

The Luddites were skilled craftsmen that attacked the industrial machines that destroyed their livelihood.

While most see them as naive, the popular support that prevented them from being captured by the 12,000 troops sent to arrest them, attests to the intense feelings against unrestrained industrial capitalism.

The Chartist

The Chartist Movement has been called the first “important political movement of working men organized in the nineteenth century.

The aim of the Chartists was to achieve political democracy.

A People’s Charter was drawn up in 1838 demanding universal, male suffrage, payment for members of Parliament and annual sessions of Parliament.

Parliament ignored the demands of the Chartist’s petitions, but the the Chartist movement gave millions of men and women a sense of working-class consciousness, which was to ultimately lead to the acceptance of their ideas in the future.

Government ReformInvestigations into the conditions of

factory workers, especially children led to a series of reform laws.

The Factory Acts were aimed at limiting the hours that children worked in the mines and later the textile factories.

A law in 1833 required that children have at least two hours of elementary education during the work day.

The Ten Hours Act reduced the work day for women and children to 10 hours.

The Coal Mines Act in 1842 eliminated all women and boys under the age of ten from the mines.

Men would eventually gain shorter working hours as well.