The Industrial Revolution was a period from 1750
to 1850 where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation,
and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural
conditions of the times. It began in Great
Britain, then subsequently spread throughout Western Europe, Northern America, Japan,
and eventually the rest of the world.
The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in
history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. Most
notably, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained
growth. In the two centuries following 1800, the world's average per capita
income increased over tenfold, while the world's population increased over
sixfold.[2] In
the words of Nobel Prize winner Robert
E. Lucas, Jr., "For the first time in history, the
living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo
sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has
happened before".[3]
Great Britain provided the legal and cultural foundations
that enabled entrepreneurs to
pioneer the industrial revolution.[4]
Key factors fostering this environment were: (1) The period of peace and
stability which followed the unification of England and Scotland; (2) no trade
barriers between England and Scotland; (3) the rule of law (respecting the
sanctity of contracts); (4) a straightforward legal system which allowed the
formation of joint-stock companies (corporations); and (5) a free market
(capitalism).[5]
Starting in the later part of the 18th century, there
began a transition in parts of Great Britain's previously manual labour and
draft-animal–based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. It started with
the mechanisation of the textile industries, the development of iron-making
techniques and the increased use of refined
coal.[6]
Trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads
and railways.[7]
With the transition away from an agricultural-based economy and towards
machine-based manufacturing came a great influx of population from the
countryside and into the towns and cities, which swelled in population.[8]
The critical manufacturing change that marks the
Industrial Revolution is the production of interchangeable parts. Lathes and
other machine tools of the Industrial Revolution enabled (1) high precision,
and (2) the mass reproduction of parts with that precision. Guns, for example,
had previously been made one at a time, with the parts filed to mate together
accurately on one gun, but they were not made to mate with any other gun. With
the repeatable precision of the Industrial Revolution, interchangeable parts
for guns or other products could be produced on a mass basis, which
dramatically reduced the price of the product.
The introduction of steam power
fuelled primarily by coal, wider utilisation of water
wheels and powered machinery (mainly in textile
manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in
production capacity.[7]
The development of all-metal machine tools in
the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more
production machines for manufacturing in other industries. The effects spread
throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually
affecting most of the world, a process that continues as industrialisation.
The impact of this change on society was enormous.[9]
The First Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th
century, merged into the Second
Industrial Revolution around 1850, when
technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of
steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the 19th century with the internal
combustion engine and electrical
power generation. The period of time covered by the
Industrial Revolution varies with different historians. Eric Hobsbawm
held that it 'broke out' in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until
the 1830s or 1840s,[10]
while T. S. Ashton
held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830.[11]
Some 20th-century historians such as John Clapham
and Nicholas Crafts
have argued that the process of economic and social change took place gradually
and the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate
among historians.[12][13] GDP
per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the
emergence of the modern capitalist
economy.[14]
The Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in
capitalist economies.[15]
Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial
Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the
domestication of animals and plants.[16]
Etymology
The earliest use of the term "Industrial
Revolution" seems to be a letter of 6 July 1799 by French envoy Louis-Guillaume
Otto, announcing that France
had entered the race to industrialise.[17] In
his 1976 book Keywords: A Vocabulary of
Culture and Society, Raymond Williams
states in the entry for "Industry": "The idea of a new social
order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey
and Owen,
between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in
the early 1790s and Wordsworth at
the turn of the [19th] century." The term Industrial Revolution
applied to technological change was becoming more common by the late 1830s, as
in Jérôme-Adolphe
Blanqui description in 1837 of la révolution
industrielle.[18] Friedrich Engels in
The Condition of the Working
Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an
industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of
civil society". Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee,
whose lectures given in 1881 gave a detailed account of it.[19]
Innovations
The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely
linked to a small number of innovations,[20] made in the second half of the 18th century:
- Textiles – Cotton spinning using Richard
Arkwright's
water frame, James Hargreaves's Spinning Jenny, and Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule (a combination of the Spinning
Jenny and the Water Frame). This was patented in 1769 and so came out of
patent in 1783. The end of the patent was rapidly followed by the erection
of many cotton mills. Similar technology was
subsequently applied to spinning worsted yarn for various textiles and flax
for linen. The cotton revolution began
in Derby, which has been known since this period as the "Powerhouse
of the North".
- Steam
power –
The improved steam engine invented by James Watt and patented in 1775 was at
first mainly used to power pumps for pumping water out of mines, but from
the 1780s was applied to power other types of machines. This enabled rapid
development of efficient semi-automated factories on a previously unimaginable
scale in places where waterpower was not available. For the
first time in history people did not have to rely on human or animal
muscle, wind or water for power. The steam engine was used to pump water
from coal mines; to lift trucks of coal to the surface; to blow air into
the furnaces for the making of iron; to grind clay for pottery; and to
power new factories of all kinds. For over a hundred years the steam
engine was the king of the industries.
- Iron
making
– In the Iron
industry,
coal was finally applied to all stages
of iron smelting, replacing charcoal. This had been achieved much
earlier for lead and copper as well as for producing pig iron in a blast furnace, but the second stage in the
production of bar iron depended on the use of potting
and stamping
(for which a patent expired in 1786) or puddling (patented by Henry Cort in 1784).
These represent three 'leading sectors', in which there
were key innovations, which allowed the economic take off by which the
Industrial Revolution is usually defined. This is not to belittle many other
inventions, particularly in the textile
industry. Without some earlier ones, such as the spinning
jenny and flying
shuttle in the textile industry and the smelting of
pig iron with coke, these achievements might have been impossible. Later
inventions such as the power loom
and Richard
Trevithick's high pressure steam
engine were also important in the growing
industrialisation of Britain. The application of steam engines to powering cotton mills
and ironworks
enabled these to be built in places that were most convenient because other
resources were available, rather than where there was water to power a watermill.
In the textile sector, such mills became the model for
the organisation of human labour in factories, epitomised by Cottonopolis,
the name given to the vast collection of cotton mills, factories
and administration offices based in Manchester.
The assembly line system greatly improved efficiency, both in this and other
industries. With a series of men trained to do a single task on a product, then
having it moved along to the next worker, the number of finished goods also
rose significantly.
Also important was the 1756 rediscovery of concrete
(based on hydraulic lime mortar)
by the British engineer John Smeaton,
which had been lost for 1300 years.[21]
Transfer of knowledge
Knowledge of innovation was spread by several means.
Workers who were trained in the technique might move to another employer or
might be poached. A common method was for someone to make a study tour,
gathering information where he could. During the whole of the Industrial
Revolution and for the century before, all European countries and America
engaged in study-touring; some nations, like Sweden
and France,
even trained civil servants or technicians to undertake it as a matter of state
policy. In other countries, notably Britain and America, this practice was
carried out by individual manufacturers eager to improve their own methods.
Study tours were common then, as now, as was the keeping of travel diaries.
Records made by industrialists and technicians of the period are an
incomparable source of information about their methods.
Another means for the spread of innovation was by the
network of informal philosophical societies, like the Lunar
Society of Birmingham,
in which members met to discuss 'natural philosophy' (i.e. science) and
often its application to manufacturing. The Lunar Society flourished from 1765
to 1809, and it has been said of them, "They were, if you like, the
revolutionary committee of that most far reaching of all the eighteenth century
revolutions, the Industrial Revolution".[22]
Other such societies published volumes of proceedings and transactions. For
example, the London-based Royal Society of Arts
published an illustrated volume of new inventions, as well as papers about them
in its annual Transactions.
There were publications describing technology. Encyclopaedias
such as Harris's Lexicon Technicum
(1704) and Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia
(1802–1819) contain much of value. Cyclopaedia contains an enormous
amount of information about the science and technology of the first half of the
Industrial Revolution, very well illustrated by fine engravings. Foreign
printed sources such as the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers
and Diderot's Encyclopédie
explained foreign methods with fine engraved plates.
Periodical publications about manufacturing and
technology began to appear in the last decade of the 18th century, and many
regularly included notice of the latest patents. Foreign periodicals, such as
the Annales des Mines, published accounts of
travels made by French engineers who observed British methods on study tours.
Technological developments
in Britain
Model
of the spinning jenny in
a museum in Wuppertal,
Germany. The spinning jenny was one of the innovations that started the
revolution
In the early 18th century, British textile manufacture
was based on wool which was processed by
individual artisans,
doing the spinning
and weaving on
their own premises. This system is called a cottage
industry. Flax
and cotton
were also used for fine materials, but the processing was difficult because of
the pre-processing needed, and thus goods in these materials made only a small
proportion of the output.
Use of the spinning
wheel and hand loom
restricted the production capacity of the industry, but incremental advances
increased productivity to the extent that manufactured cotton goods became the
dominant British export by the early decades of the 19th century. India was
displaced as the premier supplier of cotton goods.
Lewis Paul
patented the Roller Spinning machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing wool to
a more even thickness, developed with the help of John Wyatt in Birmingham.
Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their new rolling machine
powered by a donkey. In 1743, a factory was
opened in Northampton
with fifty spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. This operated
until about 1764. A similar mill was built by Daniel
Bourn in Leominster,
but this burnt down. Both Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn patented carding
machines in 1748. Using two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds,
it was later used in the first cotton spinning mill.
Lewis's invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright in
his water frame
and Samuel Crompton in
his spinning mule.
In 1764, James Hargreaves
invented the spinning jenny,
the first practical spinning frame with multiple spindles, in the village of
Stanhill, Lancashire.[23]
Other inventors increased the efficiency of the
individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling) so
that the supply of yarn increased greatly, which
fed a weaving industry that was advancing with improvements to shuttles
and the loom or 'frame'. The output of an individual labourer increased
dramatically, with the effect that the new machines were seen as a threat to
employment, and early innovators were attacked and their inventions destroyed.
To capitalise upon these advances, it took a class of entrepreneurs,
of which the most famous is Richard Arkwright.
He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by
people such as Thomas Highs
and John
Kay; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas,
financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill
which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed
the use of power—first horse power
and then water power—which
made cotton manufacture a mechanised industry. Before long steam power
was applied to drive textile machinery. Manchester
acquired the nickname Cottonopolis
during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of textile factories.[24]
Metallurgy
The
Reverberatory Furnace could produce wrought iron
using mined coal. The burning coal remained separate from the iron ore and so
did not contaminate the iron with impurities like sulphur. This opened the way
to increased iron production.
The major change in the metal industries during the era
of the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of organic fuels based on wood
with fossil fuel
based on coal. Much of this happened somewhat before the Industrial Revolution,
based on innovations by Sir Clement Clerke and others from 1678,
using coal reverberatory
furnaces known as cupolas. These were operated by the
flames, which contained carbon monoxide,
playing on the ore and reducing
the oxide to
metal. This has the advantage that impurities (such as sulphur) in the coal do not
migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead
from 1678 and to copper from 1687. It was also
applied to iron foundry work in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory
furnace was known as an air furnace. The foundry cupola is a different (and
later) innovation.
This was followed by Abraham
Darby, who made great strides using coke to fuel
his blast furnaces at
Coalbrookdale in
1709. However, the coke pig iron he
made was used mostly for the production of cast-iron goods such as pots and
kettles. He had the advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his
patented process, were thinner and cheaper than theirs. Coke pig iron was
hardly used to produce bar iron in forges until the mid-1750s, when his son Abraham Darby II
built Horsehay
and Ketley
furnaces (not far from Coalbrookdale). By then, coke pig iron was cheaper than
charcoal pig iron. Since cast iron
was becoming cheaper and more plentiful, it also became a major structural
material following the building of the innovative Iron Bridge in
1778 by Abraham Darby III.
Matthew Boulton helped James Watt to get his business off
the ground. he set up a massive factory called the Soho Factory, in the
midlands.
Bar iron
for smiths to forge into consumer goods was still made in finery forges,
as it long had been. However, new processes were adopted in the ensuing years.
The first is referred to today as potting
and stamping, but this was superseded by Henry Cort's puddling
process. From 1785, perhaps because the improved version of potting and
stamping was about to come out of patent, a great expansion in the output of
the British iron industry began. The new processes did not depend on the use of
charcoal at
all and were therefore not limited by charcoal sources.
Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used
considerable amounts of imported iron to supplement native supplies. This came
principally from Sweden from the mid-17th century
and later also from Russia from the end of the 1720s. However, from 1785,
imports decreased because of the new iron making technology, and Britain became
an exporter of bar iron as well as manufactured wrought
iron consumer goods.
An improvement was made in the production of steel,
which was an expensive commodity and used only where iron would not do, such as
for the cutting edge of tools and for springs. Benjamin
Huntsman developed his crucible
steel technique in the 1740s. The raw material for
this was blister steel, made by the cementation
process.
The supply of cheaper iron and steel aided the
development of boilers and steam engines, and eventually railways. Improvements
in machine tools
allowed better working of iron and steel and further boosted the industrial
growth of Britain.
Mining
Coal
mining in Britain, particularly in South Wales
started early. Before the steam engine, pits
were often shallow bell pits
following a seam of coal along the surface, which were abandoned as the coal
was extracted. In other cases, if the geology was favourable, the coal was
mined by means of an adit or drift mine
driven into the side of a hill. Shaft mining
was done in some areas, but the limiting factor was the problem of removing
water. It could be done by hauling buckets of water up the shaft or to a sough (a
tunnel driven into a hill to drain a mine). In either case, the water had to be
discharged into a stream or ditch at a level where it could flow away by
gravity. The introduction of the steam engine greatly facilitated the removal
of water and enabled shafts to be made deeper, enabling more coal to be
extracted. These were developments that had begun before the Industrial
Revolution, but the adoption of James Watt's more efficient steam engine from
the 1770s reduced the fuel costs of engines, making mines more profitable. Coal
mining was very dangerous owing to the presence of firedamp in
many coal seams. Some degree of safety was provided by the safety lamp
which was invented in 1816 by Sir Humphry Davy
and independently by George Stephenson.
However, the lamps proved a false dawn because they became unsafe very quickly
and provided a weak light. Firedamp explosions continued, often setting off coal dust explosions,
so casualties grew during the entire 19th century. Conditions of work were very
poor, with a high casualty rate from rock falls.
Steam power
The development of the stationary
steam engine was an essential early element of the
Industrial Revolution; however, for most of the period of the Industrial
Revolution, the majority of industries still relied on wind and water power as
well as horse- and man-power for driving small machines.
The first real attempt at industrial use of steam power
was due to Thomas Savery in
1698. He constructed and patented in London a low-lift combined vacuum and
pressure water pump, that generated about one horsepower
(hp) and was used in numerous water works and tried in a few mines (hence its
"brand name", The Miner's Friend), but it was not a success
since it was limited in pumping height and prone to boiler explosions.
The first safe and successful steam power plant was
introduced by Thomas Newcomen
before 1712. Newcomen apparently conceived the Newcomen
steam engine quite independently of Savery, but as the
latter had taken out a very wide-ranging patent, Newcomen and his associates
were obliged to come to an arrangement with him, marketing the engine until
1733 under a joint patent.[25][26]
Newcomen's engine appears to have been based on Papin's
experiments carried out 30 years earlier, and employed a piston and cylinder,
one end of which was open to the atmosphere above the piston. Steam just above
atmospheric pressure (all that the boiler could stand) was introduced into the
lower half of the cylinder beneath the piston during the gravity-induced
upstroke; the steam was then condensed by a jet of cold water injected into the
steam space to produce a partial vacuum; the pressure differential between the
atmosphere and the vacuum on either side of the piston displaced it downwards
into the cylinder, raising the opposite end of a rocking beam to which was attached
a gang of gravity-actuated reciprocating force pumps housed in the mineshaft.
The engine's downward power stroke raised the pump, priming it and preparing
the pumping stroke. At first the phases were controlled by hand, but within ten
years an escapement mechanism had been devised worked by a vertical plug
tree suspended from the rocking beam which rendered the engine self-acting.
A number of Newcomen engines were successfully put to use
in Britain for draining hitherto unworkable deep mines, with the engine on the
surface; these were large machines, requiring a lot of capital to build, and
produced about 5 hp (3.7 kW). They were extremely inefficient by
modern standards, but when located where coal was cheap at pit heads, opened up
a great expansion in coal mining by allowing mines to go deeper. Despite their
disadvantages, Newcomen engines were reliable and easy to maintain and
continued to be used in the coalfields until the early decades of the 19th
century. By 1729, when Newcomen died, his engines had spread (first) to Hungary in
1722, Germany, Austria,
and Sweden. A
total of 110 are known to have been built by 1733 when the joint patent
expired, of which 14 were abroad. In the 1770s, the engineer John Smeaton
built some very large examples and introduced a number of improvements. A total
of 1,454 engines had been built by 1800.[27]
A
fundamental change in working principles was brought about by James Watt.
In close collaboration with Matthew Boulton,
he had succeeded by 1778 in perfecting his steam
engine, which incorporated a series of radical
improvements, notably the closing off of the upper part of the cylinder thereby
making the low pressure steam drive the top of the piston instead of the
atmosphere, use of a steam jacket and the celebrated separate steam condenser
chamber. All this meant that a more constant temperature could be maintained in
the cylinder and that engine efficiency no longer varied according to atmospheric
conditions. These improvements increased engine efficiency by a factor of about
five, saving 75% on coal costs. Bolton and Watt opened the Soho Foundry,
for the manufacture of such engines, in 1795.
Nor could the atmospheric engine be easily adapted to
drive a rotating wheel, although Wasborough and Pickard did succeed in doing so
towards 1780. However by 1783 the more economical Watt steam engine had been
fully developed into a double-acting rotative type, which meant that it could
be used to directly drive the rotary machinery of a factory or mill. Both of
Watt's basic engine types were commercially very successful, and by 1800, the
firm Boulton & Watt
had constructed 496 engines, with 164 driving reciprocating pumps, 24 serving blast furnaces,
and 308 powering mill machinery; most of the engines generated from 5 to
10 hp (7.5 kW).
The development of machine tools,
such as the lathe, planing and shaping
machines powered by these engines, enabled all the metal parts of the engines
to be easily and accurately cut and in turn made it possible to build larger
and more powerful engines.
Until about 1800, the most common pattern of steam engine
was the beam engine,
built as an integral part of a stone or brick engine-house, but soon various
patterns of self-contained portative engines (readily removable, but not on
wheels) were developed, such as the table engine.
Around the start of the 19th century, the Cornish engineer Richard
Trevithick, and the American, Oliver Evans
began to construct higher pressure non-condensing steam engines, exhausting
against the atmosphere. This allowed an engine and boiler to be combined into a
single unit compact enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives
and steam boats.
In the early 19th century after the expiration of Watt's
patent, the steam engine underwent many improvements by a host of inventors and
engineers.
Chemicals
The large scale production of chemicals
was an important development during the Industrial Revolution. The first of
these was the production of sulphuric acid by
the lead
chamber process invented by the Englishman John Roebuck (James Watt's
first partner) in 1746. He was able to greatly increase the scale of the
manufacture by replacing the relatively expensive glass vessels formerly used
with larger, less expensive chambers made of riveted
sheets of lead. Instead of making a small
amount each time, he was able to make around 100 pounds (50 kg) in each of
the chambers, at least a tenfold increase.
The production of an alkali on
a large scale became an important goal as well, and Nicolas Leblanc
succeeded in 1791 in introducing a method for the production of sodium carbonate.
The Leblanc process
was a reaction of sulphuric acid with sodium chloride to give sodium sulphate
and hydrochloric acid.
The sodium sulphate
was heated with limestone (calcium carbonate)
and coal to give a mixture of sodium carbonate
and calcium sulphide.
Adding water separated the soluble sodium carbonate from the calcium sulphide.
The process produced a large amount of pollution (the hydrochloric acid was
initially vented to the air, and calcium sulphide was a useless waste product).
Nonetheless, this synthetic soda ash
proved economical compared to that from burning specific plants (barilla)
or from kelp,
which were the previously dominant sources of soda ash,[28]
and also to potash (potassium
carbonate) derived from hardwood ashes.
These two chemicals were very important because they
enabled the introduction of a host of other inventions, replacing many
small-scale operations with more cost-effective and controllable processes.
Sodium carbonate had many uses in the glass, textile, soap, and paper
industries. Early uses for sulphuric acid included pickling (removing rust)
iron and steel, and for bleaching cloth.
The development of bleaching powder (calcium
hypochlorite) by Scottish chemist Charles Tennant in
about 1800, based on the discoveries of French chemist Claude
Louis Berthollet, revolutionised the bleaching processes in
the textile industry by dramatically reducing the time required (from months to
days) for the traditional process then in use, which required repeated exposure
to the sun in bleach fields after soaking the textiles with alkali or sour
milk. Tennant's factory at St Rollox, North Glasgow,
became the largest chemical plant in the world.
In 1824 Joseph Aspdin, a
British bricklayer
turned builder, patented a chemical process for making portland cement
which was an important advance in the building trades. This process involves sintering a
mixture of clay and limestone to
about 1,400 °C (2,552 °F), then grinding it
into a fine powder which is then mixed with water, sand and gravel to
produce concrete.
Portland cement was used by the famous English engineer Marc
Isambard Brunel several years later when constructing the Thames Tunnel.[29]
Cement was used on a large scale in the construction of the London
sewerage system a generation later.
After 1860 the focus on chemical innovation was in
dyestuffs, and Germany took world leadership, building a strong chemical
industry.[30]
Aspring chemists flocked to German universities in the 1860-1914 era to learn
the latest techniques. British scientists by contrast, lacked research
universities and did not train advanced students; instead the practice was to
hire German-trained chemists.[31]
Machine tools
The Industrial Revolution could not have developed
without machine tools,
for they enabled manufacturing machines to be made. They have their origins in
the tools developed in the 18th century by makers of clocks and watches and
scientific instrument makers to enable them to batch-produce small mechanisms.
The mechanical parts of early textile machines were sometimes called 'clock
work' because of the metal spindles and gears they incorporated. The
manufacture of textile machines drew craftsmen from these trades and is the
origin of the modern engineering industry.
Machines were built by various craftsmen—carpenters
made wooden framings, and smiths and turners made metal parts. A good example
of how machine tools changed manufacturing took place in Birmingham, England,
in 1830. The invention of a new machine by pen manufacturers, Joseph Gillott,
William Mitchell and Josiah Mason,
allowed mass manufacture of robust, cheap steel pen
nibs.[32]
Because of the difficulty of manipulating metal and the lack of machine tools,
the use of metal was kept to a minimum. Wood framing had the disadvantage of
changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the various joints
tended to rack (work loose) over time. As the Industrial Revolution progressed,
machines with metal frames became more common, but they required machine tools
to make them economically. Before the advent of machine tools, metal was worked
manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and
chisels. Small metal parts were readily made by this means, but for large
machine parts, production was very laborious and costly.
Apart from workshop lathes
used by craftsmen, the first large machine tool was the cylinder boring
machine used for boring the large-diameter cylinders
on early steam engines. The planing
machine, the slotting machine
and the shaping machine
were developed in the first decades of the 19th century. Although the milling machine
was invented at this time, it was not developed as a serious workshop tool
until somewhat later in the 19th century.
Military production, as well, had a hand in the
development of machine tools. Henry Maudslay,
who trained a school of machine tool makers early in the 19th century, was
employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich,
as a young man where he would have seen the large horse-driven wooden machines
for cannon
boring made and worked by the Verbruggans. He later worked for Joseph Bramah on
the production of metal locks, and soon after he began working on his own. He
was engaged to build the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in
the Portsmouth
Block Mills. These were all metal and were the first
machines for mass production
and making components with a degree of interchangeability.
The lessons Maudslay learned about the need for stability and precision he
adapted to the development of machine tools, and in his workshops he trained a
generation of men to build on his work, such as Richard
Roberts, Joseph
Clement and Joseph
Whitworth.
James
Fox of Derby had a healthy export trade
in machine tools for the first third of the century, as did Matthew Murray of
Leeds. Roberts was a maker of high-quality machine tools and a pioneer of the
use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement.
Gas lighting
Another major industry of the later Industrial Revolution
was gas lighting.
Though others made a similar innovation elsewhere, the large scale introduction
of this was the work of William Murdoch,
an employee of Boulton and Watt,
the Birmingham steam engine
pioneers. The process consisted of the large scale gasification of coal in
furnaces, the purification of the gas (removal of sulphur, ammonia, and heavy
hydrocarbons), and its storage and distribution. The first gas lighting
utilities were established in London between 1812-20. They soon became one of
the major consumers of coal in the UK. Gas lighting had an impact on social and
industrial organisation because it allowed factories and stores to remain open
longer than with tallow candles or oil. Its introduction allowed night life to
flourish in cities and towns as interiors and streets could be lighted on a
larger scale than before.
Glass making
A new method of producing glass, known as the cylinder
process, was developed in Europe during the early
19th century. In 1832, this process was used by the Chance Brothers to
create sheet glass. They became the leading producers of window and plate
glass. This advancement allowed for larger panes of glass to be created without
interruption, thus freeing up the space planning in interiors as well as the
fenestration of buildings. The
Crystal Palace is the supreme example of the use of sheet
glass in a new and innovative structure..
Paper machine
A machine for making a continuous sheet of paper on a
loop of wire fabric was patented in 1798 by Nicholas Louis Robert who worked
for Saint-Léger
Didot family in France. The paper machine is
known as a Fourdrinier after the financiers, brothers Sealy and Henry Fourdrinier,
who were stationers in
London. Although greatly improved and with many variations, the Fourdriner
machine is the predominant means of paper production today.
Effects on agriculture
The invention of machinery played a big part in driving
forward the British Agricultural Revolution. Agricultural improvement began in
the centuries before the Industrial revolution got going and it may have played
a part in freeing up labour from the land to work in the new industrial mills
of the 18th century. As the revolution in industry progressed a succession of
machines became available which increased food production with ever fewer labourers.
Jethro
Tull's seed drill
invented in 1701 was a mechanical seeder which distributed seeds efficiently
across a plot of land. Joseph Foljambe's Rotherham plough of
1730, was the first commercially successful iron plough.[33] Andrew Meikle's threshing machine of
1784 was the final straw for many farm labourers, and led to the 1830
agricultural rebellion of the Swing Riots.
Transport in Britain
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, inland transport
was by navigable rivers and roads, with coastal vessels employed to move heavy
goods by sea. Railways or wagon ways were used for conveying coal to rivers for
further shipment, but canals had not yet been constructed. Animals supplied all
of the motive power on land, with sails providing the motive power on the sea.
The Industrial Revolution improved Britain's transport
infrastructure with a turnpike road network, a canal and waterway network, and
a railway network. Raw materials and finished products could be moved more
quickly and cheaply than before. Improved transportation also allowed new ideas
to spread quickly.
Canals
Canals began to be built in the late 18th century to link
the major manufacturing centres across the country. The first successful canal
was the Bridgewater Canal in
North
West England, which opened in 1761 and was mostly funded
by The 3rd Duke of Bridgewater.
From Worsley to
the rapidly growing town of Manchester
its construction cost £168,000 (£23,997,480 as of 2012),[34][35]
but its advantages over land and river transport meant that within a year of
its opening in 1761, the price of coal in Manchester fell by about half.[36]
This success helped inspire a period of intense canal building, known as Canal Mania.[37]
New canals were hastily built in the aim of replicating the commercial success
of the Bridgewater Canal, the most notable being the Leeds
and Liverpool Canal and the Thames
and Severn Canal which opened in 1774 and 1789 respectively.
Canals were the first technology to allow bulk materials
to be easily transported across the country, coal being a common commodity. A
single canal horse could pull a load dozens of times larger than a cart at a
faster pace. By the 1820s, a national network was in existence. Canal
construction served as a model for the organisation and methods later used to
construct the railways. They were eventually largely superseded as profitable
commercial enterprises by the spread of the railways from the 1840s on. The
last major canal to be built in the United Kingdom was the Manchester
Ship Canal, which upon opening in 1894 was the largest ship canal in
the world,[38]
and opened Manchester as a port.
However it never achieved the commercial success its sponsors had hoped for and
signalled canals as an dying mode of transport in an age dominated by railways,
which were quicker and often cheaper.
Britain's canal network, together with its surviving mill
buildings, is one of the most enduring features of the early Industrial
Revolution to be seen in Britain.
Roads
Much of the original British road system was poorly
maintained by thousands of local parishes, but from the 1720s (and occasionally
earlier) turnpike
trusts were set up to charge tolls and maintain some roads. Increasing numbers
of main roads were turnpiked from the 1750s to the extent that almost every
main road in England and Wales was the responsibility of some turnpike trust. New engineered roads were
built by John Metcalf, Thomas Telford
and most notably John
McAdam, with the first 'macadamised'
stretch of road being Marsh Road at Ashton Gate, Bristol in 1816.[39]
The major turnpikes radiated from London and were the means by which the Royal
Mail was able to reach the rest of the country. Heavy goods transport on these
roads was by means of slow, broad wheeled, carts hauled by teams of horses.
Lighter goods were conveyed by smaller carts or by teams of pack horse.
Stage coaches carried the rich, and the less wealthy could pay to ride on carriers carts.
Painting
depicting the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in
1830, the first inter-city railway in the world and which spawned Railway Mania
due to its success.
Wagonways for moving coal in the mining areas had started
in the 17th century and were often associated with canal or river systems for
the further movement of coal. These were all horse drawn or relied on gravity,
with a stationary steam engine to haul the wagons back to the top of the
incline. The first applications of the steam locomotive
were on wagon or plate ways (as they were then often called from the cast-iron
plates used). Horse-drawn public railways did not begin until the early years
of the 19th century. Steam-hauled public railways began with the Stockton and Darlington Railway in
1825.
On 15 September 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway
was opened, the first inter-city railway in the world and was attended by Prime
Minister, the Duke of Wellington.[40]
The railway was engineered by Joseph Locke
and George Stephenson,
linked the rapidly expanding industrial town of Manchester
with the port town of Liverpool.
The opening was marred by problems,
due to the primitive nature of the technology being employed, however problems
were gradually ironed out and the railway became highly successful,
transporting passengers and freight. The success of the inter-city railway,
particularly in the transport of freight and commodities, led to Railway Mania.
Construction of major railways connecting the larger
cities and towns began in the 1830s but only gained momentum at the very end of
the first Industrial Revolution. After many of the workers had completed the
railways, they did not return to their rural lifestyles but instead remained in
the cities, providing additional workers for the factories.
Social effects
In terms of social structure, the Industrial Revolution
witnessed the triumph of a middle class of
industrialists and businessmen over a landed class of nobility and gentry.
Ordinary working people found increased opportunities for employment in the new
mills and factories, but these were often under strict working conditions with
long hours of labour dominated by a pace set by machines. As late as the year
1900, most industrial workers in the United States still worked a 10-hour day
(12 hours in the steel industry), yet earned from 20 to 40 percent less than
the minimum deemed necessary for a decent life.[41]
However, harsh working conditions were prevalent long before the Industrial
Revolution took place. Pre-industrial society was very static and often cruel—child labour,
dirty living conditions, and long working hours were just as prevalent before
the Industrial Revolution.[42]
Factories and urbanization
Industrialisation led to the creation of the factory.
Arguably the first was John Lombe's water-powered
silk mill at Derby,
operational by 1721. However, the rise of the factory came somewhat later when
cotton spinning was mechanised.
The factory system was largely responsible for the rise
of the modern city, as large numbers of
workers migrated into the cities in search of employment in the factories.
Nowhere was this better illustrated than the mills and associated industries of
Manchester,
nicknamed "Cottonopolis",
and the world's first industrial city.[43]
For much of the 19th century, production was done in
small mills, which were typically water-powered and built to serve local
needs. Later each factory would have its own steam engine and a chimney to give
an efficient draft through its boiler.
The transition to industrialisation was not without
difficulty. For example, a group of English workers known as Luddites
formed to protest against industrialisation and sometimes sabotaged
factories.
In other industries the transition to factory production
was not so divisive. Some industrialists themselves tried to improve factory
and living conditions for their workers. One of the earliest such reformers was
Robert Owen,
known for his pioneering efforts in improving conditions for workers at the New
Lanark mills, and often regarded as one of the key
thinkers of the early socialist movement.
By 1746, an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near
Bristol.
Raw material went in at one end, was smelted into brass and was turned into
pans, pins, wire, and other goods. Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood
and Matthew Boulton
(whose Soho Manufactory
was completed in 1766) were other prominent early industrialists, who employed
the factory system.
Child labour
The Industrial Revolution led to a population increase,
but the chances of surviving childhood did not improve throughout the
Industrial Revolution (although infant mortality rates were reduced
markedly).[45][46]
There was still limited opportunity for education, and children were expected
to work. Employers could pay a child less than an adult even though their
productivity was comparable; there was no need for strength to operate an
industrial machine, and since the industrial system was completely new there
were no experienced adult labourers. This made child labour the labour of
choice for manufacturing in the early phases of the Industrial Revolution
between the 18th and 19th centuries. In England and Scotland in 1788,
two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-powered cotton
mills were described as children.[47]
Child labour
had existed before the Industrial Revolution, but with the increase in population
and education it became more visible. Many children were forced to work in
relatively bad conditions for much lower pay than their elders,[48] 10-20% of an adult male's wage.[49]
Children as young as four were employed.[49]
Beatings and long hours were common, with some child coal miners
and hurriers
working from 4 am until 5 pm.[49]
Conditions were dangerous, with some children killed when they dozed off and
fell into the path of the carts, while others died from gas explosions.[49]
Many children developed lung cancer
and other diseases and died before the age of 25.[49] Workhouses
would sell orphans and abandoned children as "pauper apprentices",
working without wages for board and lodging.[49]
Those who ran away would be whipped and returned to their masters, with some
masters shackling
them to prevent escape.[49]
Children employed as mule scavenger by
cotton mills
would crawl under machinery to pick up cotton, working 14 hours a day, six days
a week. Some lost hands or limbs, others were crushed under the machines, and
some were decapitated.[49]
Young girls worked at match factories, where phosphorus fumes would cause many
to develop phossy jaw.[49]
Children employed at glassworks
were regularly burned and blinded, and those working at potteries
were vulnerable to poisonous clay dust.[49]
Reports were written detailing some of the abuses,
particularly in the coal mines[50] and textile factories[51]
and these helped to popularise the children's plight. The public outcry,
especially among the upper and middle classes, helped stir change in the young
workers' welfare.
Politicians and the government tried to limit child
labour by law, but factory owners resisted; some felt that they were aiding the
poor by giving their children money to buy food to avoid starvation,
and others simply welcomed the cheap labour. In 1833 and 1844, the first
general laws against child labour, the Factory Acts,
were passed in England: Children younger than nine were not allowed to work,
children were not permitted to work at night, and the work day of youth under
the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. Factory inspectors supervised the
execution of the law, however, their scarcity made enforcement difficult.[49]
About ten years later, the employment of children and women in mining was
forbidden. These laws decreased the number of child labourers; however, child
labour remained in Europe and the United States up to the 20th century.[52]
Housing
Living conditions during the Industrial Revolution varied
from the splendour of the homes of the owners to the squalor of the lives of
the workers. Poor people lived in very small houses in cramped streets. These
homes would share toilet facilities, have open sewers and would be at risk of
developing pathologies associated with persistent dampness.
Disease was spread through a contaminated water supply. Conditions did improve
during the 19th century as public health acts were introduced covering things
such as sewage, hygiene and making some boundaries upon the construction of
homes. Not everybody lived in homes like these. The Industrial Revolution
created a larger middle class of professionals such as lawyers and doctors.
Health conditions improved over the course of the 19th century because of
better sanitation; the famines that troubled rural areas did not happen in
industrial areas. However, urban people—especially small children—died due to diseases
spreading through the cramped living conditions. Tuberculosis (spread in
congested dwellings), lung diseases from the mines, cholera
from polluted water and typhoid were also common.
A description of housing of the mill workers in England
in 1844 was given by Friedrich Engels, a
co-founder of Marxism.[53] In
the introduction of the 1892 edition of Engels (1844) he notes that most of the
conditions he wrote about in 1844 had been greatly improved.
Luddites
The rapid industrialisation of the English economy cost
many craft workers their jobs. The movement started first with lace
and hosiery
workers near Nottingham
and spread to other areas of the textile industry owing to early
industrialisation. Many weavers also found themselves suddenly unemployed since
they could no longer compete with machines which only required relatively
limited (and unskilled) labour to produce more cloth than a single weaver. Many
such unemployed workers, weavers and others, turned their animosity towards the
machines that had taken their jobs and began destroying factories and
machinery. These attackers became known as Luddites, supposedly followers of Ned Ludd, a
folklore figure. The first attacks of the Luddite movement began in 1811. The
Luddites rapidly gained popularity, and the British government took drastic
measures using the militia or
army to
protect industry. Those rioters who were caught were tried and hanged, or transported
for life.
Unrest continued in other sectors as they industrialised,
such as agricultural labourers in the 1830s, when large parts of southern
Britain were affected by the Captain Swing
disturbances. Threshing machines were a particular target, and rick burning was
a popular activity. However, the riots led to the first formation of trade unions,
and further pressure for reform.
Organisation of labour
The Industrial Revolution concentrated labour into mills,
factories and mines, thus facilitating the organisation of combinations
or trade unions to
help advance the interests of working people. The power of a union could demand
better terms by withdrawing all labour and causing a consequent cessation of
production. Employers had to decide between giving in to the union demands at a
cost to themselves or suffering the cost of the lost production. Skilled
workers were hard to replace, and these were the first groups to successfully
advance their conditions through this kind of bargaining.
The main method the unions used to effect change was strike action.
Many strikes were painful events for both sides, the unions and the management.
In England, the Combination Act
forbade workers to form any kind of trade union from 1799 until its repeal in
1824. Even after this, unions were still severely restricted.
In 1832, the year of the Reform
Act which extended the vote in England but did not grant
universal suffrage, six men from Tolpuddle in
Dorset founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers to protest
against the gradual lowering of wages in the 1830s. They refused to work for
less than 10 shillings a week, although by this time wages had been reduced to
seven shillings a week and were due to be further reduced to six shillings. In
1834 James Frampton, a local landowner, wrote to the Prime Minister, Lord
Melbourne, to complain about the union, invoking an
obscure law from 1797 prohibiting people from swearing oaths to each other,
which the members of the Friendly Society had done. James Brine, James Hammett,
George Loveless, George's brother James Loveless, George's brother in-law
Thomas Standfield, and Thomas's son John Standfield were arrested, found
guilty, and transported to Australia. They became known as the Tolpuddle martyrs.
In the 1830s and 1840s the Chartist
movement was the first large scale organised working class political movement
which campaigned for political equality and social justice. Its Charter
of reforms received over three million signatures but was rejected by
Parliament without consideration.
Working people also formed friendly
societies and co-operative societies as
mutual support groups against times of economic hardship. Enlightened
industrialists, such as Robert Owen
also supported these organisations to improve the conditions of the working
class.
Unions slowly overcame the legal restrictions on the
right to strike. In 1842, a General Strike
involving cotton workers and colliers was organised through the Chartist
movement which stopped production across Great Britain.[54]
Eventually effective political organisation for working
people was achieved through the trades unions who, after the extensions of the
franchise in 1867 and 1885, began to support socialist political parties that
later merged to became the British Labour
Party.
Standards of living
The history of the change of living conditions during the
industrial revolution has been very controversial, and was the topic that from
the 1950s to the 1980s caused most heated debate among economic and social
historians.[55] A
series of 1950s essays by Henry
Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins later set the academic
consensus that the bulk of the population, that was at the bottom of the social
ladder, suffered severe reductions in their living standards.[55]
Chronic hunger and malnutrition were the norm for the
majority of the population of the world including England and France, until the
latter part of the 19th century. Until about 1750, in large part due to
malnutrition, life expectancy in France was about 35 years, and only slightly
higher in England. The U.S. population of the time was adequately fed, were
much taller and had life expectancies of 45–50 years.[56] A
vivid description of living standards of the mill workers in England in 1844
was given by Friedrich Engels.[53]
Population increase
According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, the
population
of England and Wales, which had remained steady at 6
million from 1700 to 1740, rose dramatically after 1740. The population of
England had more than doubled from 8.3 million in 1801 to 16.8 million in 1850
and, by 1901, had nearly doubled again to 30.5 million.[60] As
living conditions and health care improved during the 19th century,[citation needed]
Britain's population doubled every 50 years.[61][62] Europe’s
population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900.[63]
Other effects
The application of steam power to the industrial
processes of printing
supported a massive expansion of newspaper and popular book publishing, which
reinforced rising literacy and demands for mass political participation.
During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of
children increased dramatically. The percentage of the children born in London
who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730–1749 to 31.8% in
1810–1829.[45]
The growth of modern industry from the late 18th century
onward led to massive urbanisation
and the rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then
in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of migrants from
rural communities into urban areas. In 1800, only 3% of the world's population
lived in cities,[64] a figure that has risen to nearly 50% at the
beginning of the 21st century.[65] In
1717 Manchester
was merely a market town of 10,000 people, but by 1911 it had a population of
2.3 million.[66]
The greatest killer in the cities was tuberculosis
(TB).[67]
According to the Harvard University Library, "By the late 19th
century, 70 to 90% of the urban populations of Europe and North America were
infected with the TB bacillus, and about 80% of those individuals who developed
active tuberculosis died of it. About 40% of working-class deaths in cities
were from tuberculosis."[68]
Continental Europe
The Industrial Revolution on Continental
Europe came a little later than in Great Britain.
In many industries, this involved the application of technology developed in
Britain in new places. Often the technology was purchased from Britain or
British engineers and entrepreneurs moved abroad in search of new
opportunities. By 1809 part of the Ruhr Valley in
Westphalia was called 'Miniature England' because of its similarities to the
industrial areas of England. The German, Russian and Belgian governments all
provided state funding to the new industries. In some cases (such as iron),
the different availability of resources locally meant that only some aspects of
the British technology were adopted.
Belgium
Renowned for its coal and steel, Belgium
has experienced strong industrial growth since the Middle Ages. For many years,
heavy industry was the driving force behind the region's economy. Belgium was
the second country, after England, in which the industrial revolution took
place and the first on continental Europe:
Before railway construction on the Continent demanded
huge quantities of maleable iron mainly for rails, for which low quality iron
sufficed, Wallonia was the only Continental region to follow the British model
successfully. Since the middle of the 1820s, numerous works comprising coke
blast furnaces as well as puddling and rolling mills were built in the coal
mining areas around Liège
and Charleroi. Excelling
all others, John Cockerill's factories at Seraing
integrated all stages of production, from engineering to the supply of raw
materials, as early as 1825.[69]
Wallonia came to be regarded as an example of the radical
evolution of industrial expansion. Thanks to coal (the French word
"houille" was coined in Wallonia),[70] the region geared up to become the 2nd industrial
power in the world after England. But it is also pointed out by many
researchers, with its Sillon industriel,
'Especially in the Haine, Sambre
and Meuse
valleys, between the Borinage
and Liège,
(...) there was a huge industrial development based on coal-mining and
iron-making...'.[71]
Philippe Raxhon wrote about the period after 1830: "It was not propaganda
but a reality the Walloon regions were becoming the second industrial power all
over the world after England."[72]
"The sole industrial centre outside the collieries and blast furnaces of
Walloon was the old cloth making town of Ghent."[73]
Michel De Coster, Professor at the Université
de Liège wrote also: "The historians and the
economists say that Belgium was the second industrial power of the world, in
proportion to its population and its territory (...) But this rank is the one
of Wallonia where the coal-mines, the blast furnaces, the iron and zinc
factories, the wool industry, the glass industry, the weapons industry... were
concentrated" [74]
Demographic effects
Wallonia was also the birthplace of a strong Socialist
party and strong trade-unions in a particular sociological landscape. At the
left, the Sillon industriel, which runs from Mons in
the west, to Verviers in
the east (except part of North Flanders, in another period of the industrial
revolution, after 1920). Even if Belgium is the second industrial country after
England, the effect of the industrial revolution there was very different. In
'Breaking stereotypes', Muriel Neven and Isabelle Devious say:
The industrial revolution changed a mainly rural society
into an urban one, but with a strong contrast between northern and southern Belgium.
During the Middle Ages
and the Early Modern Period, Flanders was characterised by the presence of
large urban centres (...) at the beginning of the nineteenth century this
region (Flanders), with an urbanisation degree of more than 30 per cent,
remained one of the most urbanised in the world. By comparison, this proportion
reached only 17 per cent in Wallonia, barely 10 per cent in most West European
countries, 16 per cent in France and 25 per cent in England. Nineteenth century
industrialisation did not affect the traditional urban infrastructure, except
in Ghent
(...) Also, in Wallonia the
traditional urban network was largely unaffected by the industrialisation
process, even though the proportion of city-dwellers rose from 17 to 45 per
cent between 1831 and 1910. Especially in the Haine, Sambre
and Meuse
valleys, between the Borinage
and Liège,
where there was a huge industrial development based on coal-mining and
iron-making, urbanisation was fast. During these eighty years the number of
municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants increased from only 21 to more
than one hundred, concentrating nearly half of the Walloon population in this
region. Nevertheless, industrialisation remained quite traditional in the sense
that it did not lead to the growth of modern and large urban centres, but to a
conurbation of industrial villages and towns developed around a coal-mine or a
factory. Communication routes between these small centres only became populated
later and created a much less dense urban morphology than, for instance, the
area around Liège where the old town was there to direct migratory flows.[75]
France
The industrial revolution in France was a particular
process for it did not correspond to the main model followed by other
countries. Notably, most French historians argue that France did not go through
a clear take-off.[76]
Instead, France's economic growth and industrialisation process was slow and
steady along the 18th and 19th centuries. However, some stages were identified
by Maurice Lévy-Leboyer :
- French
Revolution and Napoleonic wars (1789–1815),
- industrialisation,
along with Britain (1815–1860),
- economic
slowdown (1860–1905),
- renewal
of the growth after 1905.
Germany
Based on its leadership in chemical research in the
universities and industrial laboratories, Germany became dominant in the
world's chemical industry in the late 19th century. At first the production of
dyes based on aniline
was critical.[77]
Germany's political disunity—with three dozen states—and
a pervasive conservatism made it difficult to build railways in the 1830s. However,
by the 1840s, trunk lines linked the major cities; each German state was
responsible for the lines within its own borders. Lacking a technological base
at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from Britain, but
quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the railways. In many
cities, the new railway shops were the centres of technological awareness and
training, so that by 1850, Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the demands
of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth
of the new steel industry. Observers found that even as late as 1890, their
engineering was inferior to Britain’s. However, German unification in 1870
stimulated consolidation, nationalisation into state-owned companies, and
further rapid growth. Unlike the situation in France, the goal was support of
industrialisation, and so heavy lines crisscrossed the Ruhr and other
industrial districts, and provided good connections to the major ports of
Hamburg and Bremen. By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives pulling 43,000
passengers and 30,000 tons of freight, and pulled ahead of France[78]
Sweden
During the period 1790-1815 Sweden experienced two
parallel economic movements: an agricultural revolution with larger
agricultural estates, new crops and farming tools and a commercialisation of
farming, and a protoindustrialisation, with small industries being
established in the countryside and with workers switching between agricultural
work in the summer season and industrial production in the winter season. This
led to economic growth benefiting large sections of the population and leading
up to a consumption revolution starting in the 1820s.
In the period 1815-1850 the protoindustries developed
into more specialized and larger industries. This period witness increasing
regional specialisation with mining in Bergslagen,
textile mills in Sjuhäradsbygden and forestry in Norrland.
Several important institutional changes took place in this period, such as free
and mandatory schooling introduced 1842 (as first country in the world), the
abolishment of a previous national monopoly on trade in handicrafts in 1846,
and a stock company law in 1848.
During the period 1850-1890 Sweden witnessed a veritable
explosion in its export sector, with agricultural crops, wood and steel being
the three dominating categories. Sweden abolished most tariffs and other
barriers to free trade in the 1850s and joined the gold standard in 1873.
During the period 1890-1930 the second industrial
revolution took place in Sweden. During this period new industries developed
with their focus on the domestic market: mechanical engineering, power
utilities, papermaking and textile industries.
United States
The United States originally used horse-powered machinery
to power its earliest factories, but eventually switched to water power, with
the consequence that industrialisation was essentially limited to New England
and the rest of the Northeastern
United States, where fast-moving rivers were located.
Horse-drawn production proved to be economically challenging and a more
difficult alternative to the newer water-powered production lines. However, the
raw materials (cotton) came from the Southern
United States. It was not until after the Civil
War in the 1860s that steam-powered manufacturing overtook
water-powered manufacturing, allowing the industry to fully spread across the
nation.
Thomas Somers
and the Cabot Brothers
founded the Beverly
Cotton Manufactory in 1787, the first cotton mill in America,
the largest cotton mill of its era,[79]
and a significant milestone in the research and development of cotton mills in
the future. This cotton mill was designed to utilise horse-powered production,
however the operators quickly learned that the economic stability of their
horse-drawn platform was unstable, and had fiscal issues for years after it was
built. Despite the losses, the Manufactory served as a playground of
innovation, both in turning a large amount of cotton, but also developing the
water-powered milling structure used in Slater's Mill.[80]
Samuel Slater
(1768–1835) is the founder of the Slater Mill.
As a boy apprentice in Derbyshire,
England, he learned of the new techniques in the textile industry and defied
laws against the emigration of skilled workers by leaving for New York in 1789,
hoping to make money with his knowledge. Slater founded Slater's
Mill at Pawtucket,
Rhode Island, in 1793. He went on to own thirteen textile
mills.[81] Daniel Day
established a wool carding mill in the Blackstone
Valley at Uxbridge,
Massachusetts in 1809, the third woollen mill established
in the U.S. (The first was in Hartford,
Connecticut, and the second at Watertown,
Massachusetts.) The John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley
National Heritage Corridor retraces the history of
"America's Hardest-Working River', the Blackstone. The Blackstone River
and its tributaries, which cover more than 45 miles (72 km) from Worcester to
Providence,
was the birthplace of America's Industrial Revolution. At its peak over 1100
mills operated in this valley, including Slater's mill, and with it the
earliest beginnings of America's Industrial and Technological Development.
While on a trip to England in 1810, Newburyport
merchant Francis Cabot Lowell
was allowed to tour the British textile
factories, but not take notes. Realising the War
of 1812 had ruined his import business but that a
market for domestic finished cloth was emerging in America, he memorised the
design of textile machines, and on his return to the United States, he set up
the Boston
Manufacturing Company. Lowell and his partners
built America's second cotton-to-cloth textile mill at Waltham,
Massachusetts, second to the Beverly
Cotton Manufactory After his death in 1817, his associates
built America's first planned factory town, which they named after him. This
enterprise was capitalised in a public
stock offering, one of the first uses of it in the United
States. Lowell,
Massachusetts, utilising 5.6 miles (9.0 km) of canals
and ten thousand horsepower delivered by the Merrimack
River, is considered by some to be a major
contributor to the success of the American Industrial Revolution. The
short-lived utopia-like Lowell
System was formed, as a direct response to the poor
working conditions in Britain. However, by 1850, especially following the Irish
Potato Famine, the system had been replaced by poor
immigrant labour.
The industrialisation of the watch industry started 1854
also in Waltham, Massachusetts, at the Waltham
Watch Company, with the development of machine tools,
tools, gauges and assembling methods adapted to the micro precision required
for watches.
Japan
The industrial revolution began about 1870 as Meiji period
leaders decided to catch up with the West. The government built railroads,
improved roads, and inaugurated a land reform program to prepare the country
for further development. It inaugurated a new Western-based education system
for all young people, sent thousands of students to the United States and
Europe, and hired more than 3,000 Westerners to teach modern science, mathematics,
technology, and foreign languages in Japan (O-yatoi
gaikokujin).
In 1871 a group of Japanese politicians known as the Iwakura Mission
toured Europe and the USA to learn western ways. The result was a deliberate
state led industrialisation policy to enable Japan to quickly catch up. The Bank of Japan,
founded in 1877, used taxes to fund model steel and textile factories.
Education was expanded and Japanese students were sent to study in the west.
Modern industry first appeared in textiles, including
cotton and especially silk, which was based in home workshops in rural areas.[82]
Second Industrial
Revolution
Bessemer
converter
Steel is often cited as the first of several new areas
for industrial mass-production, which are said to characterise a "Second
Industrial Revolution", beginning around 1850, although a method for mass
manufacture of steel was not invented until the
1860s, when Sir Henry Bessemer
invented a new furnace which could convert wrought iron
into steel in large quantities. However, it only became widely available in the
1870s after the process was modified to produce more uniform quality.[83][84]
This second Industrial Revolution gradually grew to
include the chemical industries, petroleum
refining and distribution, electrical
industries, and, in the 20th century, the automotive
industries, and was marked by a transition of
technological leadership from Britain to the United States and Germany.
The introduction of hydroelectric
power generation in the Alps
enabled the rapid industrialisation of coal-deprived northern Italy, beginning
in the 1890s. The increasing availability of economical petroleum products also
reduced the importance of coal and further widened the potential for
industrialisation.
By the 1890s, industrialisation in these areas had
created the first giant industrial corporations with burgeoning global
interests, as companies like U.S. Steel, General Electric, Standard Oil
and Bayer AG
joined the railroad companies on the world's stock
markets.
Intellectual paradigms and
criticism
Capitalism
The advent of the Age
of Enlightenment provided an intellectual framework which
welcomed the practical application of the growing body of scientific
knowledge—a factor evidenced in the systematic development of the steam engine,
guided by scientific analysis, and the development of the political and sociological
analyses, culminating in Adam Smith's The
Wealth of Nations. One of the main arguments
for capitalism, presented for example in the book The Improving State of the World,
is that industrialisation increases wealth for all, as evidenced by raised life
expectancy, reduced working hours, and no work for children and the elderly.
Socialism
Socialism emerged as a critique of capitalism. Marxism
began essentially as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution.[85]
According to Karl Marx,
industrialisation polarised society into the bourgeoisie
(those who own the means
of production, the factories and the land) and the much
larger proletariat
(the working class who actually perform the labour
necessary to extract something valuable from the means of production). He saw
the industrialisation process as the logical dialectical
progression of feudal economic modes, necessary for the full development of
capitalism, which he saw as in itself a necessary precursor to the development
of socialism
and eventually communism.
Romanticism
During the Industrial Revolution an intellectual and
artistic hostility towards the new industrialisation developed. This was known
as the Romantic movement. Its major exponents in English included the artist
and poet William Blake
and poets William
Wordsworth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron and Percy
Bysshe Shelley. The movement stressed the importance of
"nature" in art and language, in contrast to "monstrous"
machines and factories; the "Dark satanic mills" of Blake's poem
"And did those feet in ancient time".
Mary Shelley's
novel Frankenstein
reflected concerns that scientific progress might be two-edged.
Causes
The causes of the Industrial Revolution were complicated
and remain a topic for debate, with some historians believing the Revolution
was an outgrowth of social and institutional changes brought by the end of feudalism in
Britain
after the English Civil War in
the 17th century. As national border controls became more effective, the spread
of disease was lessened, thereby preventing the epidemics
common in previous times.[86]
The percentage of children who lived past infancy rose significantly, leading
to a larger workforce. The Enclosure
movement and the British Agricultural Revolution
made food production more efficient and less labour-intensive, forcing the
surplus population who could no longer find employment in agriculture into cottage industry,
for example weaving,
and in the longer term into the cities and the newly developed factories.[87]
The colonial expansion of
the 17th century with the accompanying development of international trade,
creation of financial markets
and accumulation of capital
are also cited as factors, as is the scientific
revolution of the 17th century.[88]
Until the 1980s, it was universally believed by academic
historians that technological innovation was the heart of the Industrial
Revolution and the key enabling technology was the invention and improvement of
the steam engine.[89]
However, recent research into the Marketing Era has challenged the
traditional, supply-oriented interpretation of the Industrial Revolution.[90]
Lewis Mumford
has proposed that the Industrial Revolution had its origins in the Early Middle Ages,
much earlier than most estimates.[91] He
explains that the model for standardised mass
production was the printing
press and that "the archetypal model for the
industrial era was the clock". He also cites the monastic
emphasis on order and time-keeping, as well as the fact that medieval
cities had at their centre a church with bell ringing at regular intervals as
being necessary precursors to a greater synchronisation necessary for later,
more physical, manifestations such as the steam engine.
The presence of a large domestic market should also be
considered an important driver of the Industrial Revolution, particularly
explaining why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as France,
markets were split up by local regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs on
goods traded amongst them.[92]
Internal tariffs were abolished by Henry
VIII of England, they survived in Russia till 1753, 1789 in
France and 1839 in Spain.
Governments' grant of limited monopolies to
inventors under a developing patent system (the Statute
of Monopolies 1623) is considered an influential factor. The
effects of patents, both good and ill, on the development of industrialisation
are clearly illustrated in the history of the steam engine, the key enabling
technology. In return for publicly revealing the workings of an invention the
patent system rewarded inventors such as James Watt by
allowing them to monopolise the production of the first steam engines, thereby
rewarding inventors and increasing the pace of technological development.
However, monopolies bring with them their own inefficiencies which may
counterbalance, or even overbalance, the beneficial effects of publicising
ingenuity and rewarding inventors.[93]
Watt's monopoly may have prevented other inventors, such as Richard
Trevithick, William
Murdoch or Jonathan
Hornblower, from introducing improved steam engines,
thereby retarding the industrial revolution by about 16 years.[94][95]
European
17th century colonial expansion, international trade, and creation of financial
markets produced a new legal and financial environment, one which supported and
enabled 18th century industrial growth.
One question of active interest to historians is why the
industrial revolution occurred in Europe and not in other parts of the world in
the 18th century, particularly China, India,
and the Middle East,
or at other times like in Classical
Antiquity[96] or
the Middle Ages.[97]
Numerous factors have been suggested, including education, technological
changes[98]
(see Scientific
Revolution in Europe), "modern" government,
"modern" work attitudes, ecology, and culture.[99]
The Age
of Enlightenment not only meant a larger educated population
but also more modern views on work. However, most historians contest the
assertion that Europe and China were roughly equal because modern estimates of
per capita income on Western Europe in the late 18th century are of roughly
1,500 dollars in purchasing
power parity (and Britain had a per capita income of
nearly 2,000 dollars[100])
whereas China, by comparison, had only 450 dollars.
Some historians such as David
Landes[101]
and Max Weber
credit the different belief systems in China and Europe with dictating where
the revolution occurred. The religion and beliefs of Europe were largely
products of Judaeo-Christianity,
and Greek
thought. Conversely, Chinese society was founded on men like Confucius, Mencius, Han
Feizi (Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism),
and Buddha (Buddhism).
Whereas the Europeans believed that the universe was governed by rational and
eternal laws, the East believed that the universe was in constant flux and, for
Buddhists and Taoists, not capable of being rationally understood.[citation needed]
Other factors include the considerable distance of China's coal deposits,
though large, from its cities as well as the then unnavigable Yellow River
that connects these deposits to the sea.[102]
Regarding India, the Marxist historian Rajani Palme Dutt
said: "The capital to finance the Industrial Revolution in India instead
went into financing the Industrial Revolution in England."[103] In
contrast to China, India was split up into many competing kingdoms, with the
three major ones being the Marathas, Sikhs
and the Mughals.
In addition, the economy was highly dependent on two sectors—agriculture of
subsistence and cotton, and there appears to have been little technical
innovation. It is believed that the vast amounts of wealth were largely stored
away in palace treasuries by totalitarian monarchs prior to the British take
over. Absolutist
dynasties in China, India, and the Middle East failed to encourage
manufacturing and exports, and expressed little interest in the well-being of
their subjects.[104]
Causes for occurrence in
Britain
As
the Industrial Revolution developed British manufactured output surged ahead of
other economies. After the Industrial Revolution, it was overtaken later by the
United States.
There were two main values that really drove the
industrial revolution in Britain. These values were self-interest and an
entrepreneurial spirit. Because of these interests, many industrial advances
were made that resulted in a huge increase in personal wealth. These
advancements also greatly benefitted the British society as a whole. Countries
around the world started to recognize the changes and advancements in Britain
and use them as an example to begin their own industrial revolutions.[105]
The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution
also concerns the massive lead that Great
Britain had over other countries. Some have stressed
the importance of natural or financial resources that Britain received from its
many overseas colonies or
that profits from the British slave
trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel
industrial investment. However, it has been pointed out that slave trade and
West Indian plantations provided only 5% of the British national income during
the years of the Industrial Revolution.[106]
Even though slavery accounted for minimal economic profits in Britain during
the Industrial Revolution, Caribbean-based demand accounted for 12% of
England's industrial output.[107]
Instead, the greater liberalisation of trade from a large
merchant base may have allowed Britain to produce and use emerging scientific
and technological developments more effectively than countries with stronger
monarchies, particularly China and Russia. Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as
the only European nation not ravaged by financial plunder and economic
collapse, and having the only merchant fleet of any useful size (European
merchant fleets were destroyed during the war by the Royal Navy[108]).
Britain's extensive exporting cottage industries also ensured markets were
already available for many early forms of manufactured goods. The conflict
resulted in most British warfare being conducted overseas, reducing the
devastating effects of territorial conquest that affected much of Europe. This
was further aided by Britain's geographical position—an island separated from
the rest of mainland Europe.
Another theory is that Britain was able to succeed in the
Industrial Revolution due to the availability of key resources it possessed. It
had a dense population for its small geographical size. Enclosure of
common land and the related agricultural revolution made a supply of this
labour readily available. There was also a local coincidence of natural
resources in the North of England,
the English Midlands, South Wales
and the Scottish Lowlands.
Local supplies of coal, iron, lead, copper, tin, limestone and water power,
resulted in excellent conditions for the development and expansion of industry.
Also, the damp, mild weather conditions of the North West of England provided
ideal conditions for the spinning of cotton, providing a natural starting point
for the birth of the textiles industry.
The stable political situation in Britain from around
1688, and British society's greater receptiveness to change (compared with
other European countries) can also be said to be factors favouring the
Industrial Revolution. Peasant resistance to industrialisation was largely
eliminated by the Enclosure movement, and the landed upper classes developed
commercial interests that made them pioneers in removing obstacles to the growth
of capitalism.[109]
(This point is also made in Hilaire Belloc's The Servile State.)
Britain's population grew 280% 1550-1820, while the rest
of Western Europe grew 50-80%. 70% of European urbanisation happened in Britain
1750-1800. By 1800, only the Netherlands was more urbanised than Britain. This
was only possible because coal, coke, imported cotton, brick and slate had
replaced wood, charcoal, flax, peat and thatch. The latter compete with land
grown to feed people while mined materials do not. Yet more land would be freed
when chemical fertilisers replaced manure and horse's work was mechanised. A
workhorse needs 3 to 5 acres (1.21 to 2.02 ha)
for fodder while even early steam engines produced 4 times more mechanical
energy.
In 1700, 5/6 of coal mined worldwide was in Britain,
while the Netherlands
had none; so despite having Europe's best transport, most urbanised, well paid,
literate people and lowest taxes, it failed to industrialise. In the 18th
century, it was the only European country whose cities and population shrank.
Without coal, Britain would have run out of suitable river sites for mills by
the 1830s.[110]
Protestant work ethic
Another theory is that the British advance was due to the
presence of an entrepreneurial
class which believed in progress, technology and hard work.[111]
The existence of this class is often linked to the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber)
and the particular status of the Baptists
and the dissenting Protestant sects, such as the Quakers
and Presbyterians
that had flourished with the English Civil War.
Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of
the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable
financial market there based on the management of the national debt by
the Bank of England,
contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private financial investment
in industrial ventures.
Dissenters
found themselves barred or discouraged from almost all public offices, as well
as education at England's only two universities at
the time (although dissenters were still free to study at Scotland's four universities). When the restoration of
the monarchy took place and membership in the official Anglican
Church became mandatory due to the Test Act,
they thereupon became active in banking, manufacturing and education. The Unitarians,
in particular, were very involved in education, by running Dissenting
Academies, where, in contrast to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and
schools such as Eton and Harrow, much attention was given to mathematics and
the sciences—areas of scholarship vital to the development of manufacturing
technologies.
Historians sometimes consider this social factor to be
extremely important, along with the nature of the national economies involved.
While members of these sects were excluded from certain circles of the
government, they were considered fellow Protestants, to a limited extent, by
many in the middle class,
such as traditional financiers or other businessmen. Given this relative
tolerance and the supply of capital, the natural outlet for the more
enterprising members of these sects would be to seek new opportunities in the
technologies created in the wake of the scientific revolution of the 17th
century.
Social Plugin