Untitled Document Check for Understanding Why did the Industrial Revolution Start in England? By the end of the 19th century, the island of Great Britain, which is about the size of the state of Louisiana, controlled the largest empire in the history of the world—an empire that covered one quarter of the world’s land mass. You will learn more about this empire in the next chapter. But how did this little island come to rule an empire? How did Great Britain acquire so much military and economic power in the world? The answer, of course, is that it had an enormous commercial and technological head start over the rest of the world because the Industrial Revolution started in England. But why did the Industrial Revolution occur first in England and not somewhere else in the world? Historians describe a confluence—a coming together—of many factors and they do not agree on which are most important. Some of these factors we discussed earlier because they had their seeds in pre-industrial society. All of these factors came together in the late 18th century to create the unique conditions in England that culminated in the first-ever Industrial Revolution: The Agricultural Revolution discussed earlier resulted in increased food production and increased population in England first.

Population Growth, also discussed earlier, resulted in more people from the countryside being freed up to work for wages in the new cities,— and eventually increased demand for products such as clothing. Financial Innovations—such as central banks, stock markets, and joint stock companies—encouraged people, especially in Northern Europe, to take risks with investments, trade, and new technologies. The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution encouraged scholars and craftspeople to apply new scientific thinking to mechanical and technological challenges. In the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, Europeans gradually incorporated science and reason into their worldview. Some historians argue that these intellectual shifts made English culture, in particular, highly receptive to new mechanical and financial ideas. Navigable Rivers and Canals in Great Britain quickened the pace and cheapened the cost of transportation of raw materials and finished products. Adam Smith, the first modern economist, believed this was a key reason for England’s early success. In 1776, in his famous book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he wrote that “Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of the town.

They are upon that account the greatest of all improvements” (Weightman 43). Coal and Iron deposits were plentiful in Great Britain and proved essential to the development of all new machines made of iron or steel and powered by coal—such as the steam-powered machinery in textile factories, and the locomotive. Government Policies in England toward property and commerce encouraged innovation and the spread of global trade. The government created patent laws that allowed inventors to benefit financially from the “intellectual property” of their inventions. The British government also encouraged global trade by expanding the Navy to protect trade and granting monopolies or other financial incentives to companies so they would explore the world to find resources. World Trade gradually increased in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution and provided European countries access to raw materials and a market for goods. It also increased wealth that could then be loaned by banks to finance more industrial expansion in an upward spiral of economic growth. By 1500, Europe had a technological supremacy over the rest of the world in shipbuilding, navigation, and metallurgy (metal working). In successive years, European countries would use these advantages to dominate world trade with Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

The Cottage Industry, discussed earlier, served as a transition from a rural to an industrial economy. Like the later industrial factories, the cottage industry relied on wage labor, cloth production, tools and rudimentary machines, and a market to buy and sell raw materials (cotton) and finished products (clothes). The Large and Lucky Continent of Eurasia. Evolutionary Biologist Jared Diamond takes the long view to explain why the entire continent of Eurasia evolved to be so technologically advanced. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, Diamond argues that the good fortune of the entire continent of Eurasia was evident for thousands of years. Eurasia invented agriculture 12,000 years ago because large grains of rice and wheat just happened to originate and grow there. The efficiency of agriculture allowed various civilizations to grow population, free up labor for tasks besides food production, urbanize, invent writing, and create advanced technology. Diamond argues that the largest of continents was also blessed with the largest domesticated animals in the world—such as horses, donkeys, pigs, and cows. These animals served as beasts of burden in agriculture and also as a much-needed food source.

And so the health of Eurasian populations improved. These animals also brought epidemic diseases that killed millions of Eurasians over thousands of years. But, after the plague ran its course through the population, surviving Eurasians then had antibodies to these illnesses, which made them and their ancestors resistant to them. So these plagues became a horrifying stroke of good luck for invading Eurasians later on. People from the Americas had no medium to large domesticated animals (with the exception of the Alpaca which didn’t leave the Andes mountain area). As a result, they did not experience devastating animal-based plagues and diseases. That’s a good thing, right? Except that, unlike Europeans, the Americans did not then have the anti-bodies to resist the European illnesses. So, when Europeans invaded the Americas after 1492, people from the Americas were highly susceptible to Eurasian deadly viruses and diseases. But no plagues went the other direction from the Americas to Europe. The depopulation of the Americas made it easy for Europeans to conquer. In short, Diamond, contrary to many historians, sees the Industrial Revolution as an inevitable result of geography and evolutionary biology that played out not only in a burst of activity, but over many thousands of years.

The Big Industrial Innovations: How the Industrial Revolution Began in Great Britain We have learned many reasons why industrialization started in Europe and England. But which industry triggered the Industrial Revolution in England? Well, it all started with the textile (cloth) industry. Making cloth, by hand, for pants, shirts, socks, bedspreads and other domestic items had always required lots of skill and time. As population grew in England, more people needed and were willing to buy textile goods. The cottage industry showed how much people could produce in their homes through spinning and weaving cloth by hand. But this domestic production system could not keep up with the growing demands of England’s growing population. Instead, starting in the late 18th century, a series of innovations shifted textile production to a new factory system. And cotton led the way. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, cotton became the world’s most important non-food agricultural product-- and it remains so to this day. In the 1700s, cotton textiles had many production advantages over other types of cloth. The first textile factory in Great Britain was actually for making silk. But, since only wealthy people could afford the product, production remained very low.

Cotton, on the other hand, was far less expensive. It was also stronger and more easily colored and washed than wool or linen. One challenge of using cotton, however, was that the British did not grow any cotton plants because of their cold climate. So, they revved up trade with cotton producers far across the world, such as India and the Southern United States. Look at the table below of American cotton production during the first stage of the Industrial Revolution. Almost all of this raw cotton, processed by slave labor, was sold to England. This cotton production soared as new inventions made textile production increasingly inexpensive and efficient. American Production of Raw Cotton, 1790-1860 (in bales) Year Textile Inventions In 1733, James Kay, a clockmaker, invented a simple weaving machine called the flying shuttle. He built it, supposedly, with nothing more than a pocketknife as his tool. The flying shuttle improved on the old hand loom. A worker pulled a cord of rope back and forth to send a small piece of canoe-shaped wood, or shuttle, “flying” across a wood frame through threads to weave cloth.

The machine only came into general use in the 1760s—after decades of trial-and-error improvements—but once adopted, this first big invention in the textile industry doubled worker productivity: one adult weaver could accomplish the work of two. The invention was a small improvement and was still powered by people rather than coal, wind, or water. Nonetheless it began the crucial process by which unskilled workers could produce more cloth with machines than skilled workers could produce by hand (Weightman 55). Watch a few moments of this video to see a hand shuttle moving slowing across the frame of a loom. This gives you a sense of how a shuttle works on a weaving loom. Now watch a few moments of this video to see somebody working a flying shuttle. With a flick of the wrist, they can make the shuttle "fly" back and forth through the weaving frames. Much quicker than hand weaving, eh? In the 1760s, spinning innovations finally caught up with the weaving capacity of the flying shuttle. The hardest part was to create a subtle mechanized device for pulling and twisting the cotton fiber just the right amount to create strong thread.

In 1764, James Hargreaves invented such a device, called a spinning jenny— “jenny” or “jen” was short for “engine.” So, think of it as a “spinning engine.” With eight spindles, the spinning machine immediately increased by eightfold the amount a worker could produce. The spinning jenny could fit into a small cottage and be operated by unskilled workers, including children. But some were not pleased with the innovation. Workers skilled at the old spinning wheel, and fearful that the new machine would take their jobs, marched over to Hargreaves’ house and destroyed twenty of the first new machines before they could be used. Worse still for Hargreaves, his patent claim on one of the most famous inventions of the Industrial Revolution was invalidated because he applied for it after he had already sold several machines (Rosen 222-224). The next big challenge for the industrial tinkerers was to engineer a way that these new machines could be powered by an energy source that was more efficient and powerful than human muscle.

In 1769, Richard Arkwright, a barber and wigmaker, figured out how to hook up a new spinning machine to a water wheel. It is possible that John Kay, a clockmaker that Arkwright met in a pub, might have had the original idea, but Arkwright made use of it and called it the water frame. Arkwright’s spinning factory opened in 1771 along the River Derwent. It was an immediate success, spinning strong, high-quality threads cheaply and better than those spun by hand or a spinning jenny. Arkwright’s cotton factory spun 24 hours a day, employing mostly women and children on 12-hour shifts. Each water frame spun 91 spools at a time, more than almost 100 people could spin on an old spinning wheel. Arkwright’s business took off in large part due to the assistance of the British Parliament, which, to protect the new English textile industry, outlawed the importation of superior cotton cloth from India (Ashton, 57-58). Another inventor, Samuel Crompton, combined the spinning and weaving process into one machine in 1774.

Raw cotton could be introduced in one end and produce cloth on the other. Crompton failed to patent his invention, but the enterprising Arkwright immediately incorporated it into his new factories. The invention was called a spinning “mule” because, like a mule, it was the offspring of two different types of parents. With Crompton’s mule, Arkwright now had the most productive textile mills in the world. Arkwright guarded his patents and charged extremely high royalties to use them. As a result, he dominated the early spinning industry and became fabulously wealthy. Ten years after giving up wigmaking and taking a risk to start his own factory, he employed 5,000 workers, including children as young as six (Rosen 228-233). Arkwright was not a great inventor. He borrowed most of his ideas from others. But he was one of the first and most successful entrepreneurs of the early Industrial Revolution; he understood the potential of these new textile inventions to produce inexpensive and high quality cloth. When others complained in court that he had stolen their ideas, Arkwright responded that “if any man has found a thing, and begun a thing, and does not go forwards. . .

another man has a right to take it up and get a patent for it” (233). He, perhaps more than any other single person, created the cotton industry that spurred the Industrial Revolution and created great wealth for himself and for England. From 1800 to 1850, cotton products accounted for the majority of monetary value for British exports (Stearns 29). In 1785, Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom, another game changer. Although it did not become widely used until after 1800, it was powered by steam and thus replaced the flying shuttle, which could not compete with the new loom’s weaving speed and efficiency. Cartwright explained his inspiration: As soon as Arkwright’s patent [for spinning] expired, so many mills would be erected and so much cotton spun that hands would never be found to weave it. . . . It struck me that as plain weaving can only be three movements which were to follow each other in succession, there would be little difficulty in producing them and repeating them. Full of these ideas I immediately employed a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect.

As soon as the machine was finished, I got a weaver to put in a warp, which was of such materials as sailcloths are usually made of. To my great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the product. (Rosen 239) Watch this video to see a powerloom in action. Cartwright’s invention took many years to refine because it was difficult for the loom to weave quickly and mechanically without the thread slackening or the shuttle moving too slowly or too rapidly. The first power looms were installed in a factory in Manchester, where they suffered a similar fate to the first spinning jennies. Some Manchester craft weavers, worried that they would lose their skilled jobs, threatened the first power loom factory and soon afterwards a fire mysteriously destroyed it (239). But the genie was out of the bottle—no other loom could compete. Like the spinning mule, the power loom and the steam engine that powered it could not fit into a cottage. All these big, heavy machines would need to be brought under one large roof. The cottage industry had died, but factories were just beginning to house industry.

And these larger machines and factories led to enormous growth in other industries, especially those of coal and iron. The Iron Industry In the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, the quality of iron and the process of refining it had changed little in Great Britain. Iron had been used for agricultural tools, chains, locks, bolts, nails, horse stirrups, scythes, sickles, and anchors. Through a laborious and very time-consuming process, master ironcrafters could even make steel, a form of processed iron, with fewer impurities, reserved for making knives, razors, swords, guns and small working parts for clocks and watches. In the 18th century, ironmongers began to experiment with ways to tease out more impurities from iron. They wanted to make their iron stronger and less expensive, and they also wanted to make the tedious process of iron-making more efficient (Weightman 28-33). Henry Cort, an ironmaster pursuing a way to refine iron,discovered two methods that changed the industry. He reheated bars of iron, melting them down to apaste, mixed the paste and heated it with coke (a substance burned off from coal), then stirred it so that carbon and many impurities burned off.

The purified iron was rolled up into a puddled ball and finally rolled out to squeeze out any dross that remained. Cort called the process “puddling and rolling” and patented it in 1785. This iron-refining process allowed England to stop importing iron from northern Europe and instead to grow the largest iron industry in the world. This cheaper and stronger iron galvanized every major industry—construction, tools, shipbuilding, textile inventions, steam engines and railroads (54-55). Unfortunately, Cort later lost all the wealth he created for himself, including his patents, when it was discovered that he had embezzled money from the British Navy to buy his first iron forgery. (Rosen 56) Nevertheless, iron production in Great Britain skyrocketed. Amount of Iron Produced in Great Britain Periods (Cipollal Fontana Economic History of Europe) The Steam Engine The defining invention of the Industrial Revolution was most definitely the steam engine. The steam engine was the energy behind the most advanced textile inventions, such as the spinning mule and the power loom. It symbolized the transition from human power in homes to machine power in factories.

Moreover, the steam engine revolutionized transportation when it was applied to locomotives and ships. So how did this amazing invention come about? And how did it work? The steam engine was originally invented in England to pull water out of coal mines. For thousands of years, wood from local forests had been the main fuel in England, as well as the main material for shipbuilding and housing construction. By the end of the 17th century, however, few forests remained (Weightman 28-33). So the English sought to find an alternative energy source for heating. They turned to coal, which was in great supply. By the early 1700s, the easy-to-reach open coal pits were gone, and mine shafts as deep as 200 feet were dug to find it (27). In these deep shafts, groundwater would eventually seep in and flood the tunnels. This seepage was dangerous for miners and expensive for mine owners. Miners used pots, hand pumps and, occasionally, windmills to drain the water. Finally, in 1708, Thomas Newcomen invented a simple engine that used steam to pump water out of coalmines.

Here’s how his engine worked. Boiled water created steam, which entered a chamber or cylinder, which pushed a piston up. The piston lifted a pump. Watch this animation to see it in action. Newcomen’s steam engine worked—slowly. But it could only create a pumping motion and not a rotating motion that might be used to grind wheat or move machinery. In fact, it was so inefficient in its use of energy that nobody used it for any other purpose for over sixty years (30). In the 1760s, James Watt (1736-1819), a Scottish instrument maker, teamed up with professors from the University of Glasgow to improve Newcomen’s engine. In the old engine, as you can see from the animation, a piston moved up and down as steam was injected: this steam pushed the piston up the cylinder, then condensed on the down stroke (see animation here). The piston cylinder in Newcomen’s engine had to alternate between hot and cold temperatures, to expand or condense the steam—warm on the upstroke and cold on the downstroke.

But this resulted in a waste of energy and a waste of time, as the piston cylinder changed temperature and had to be constantly reheated. The burning question: how could the piston cylinder remain hot and cool at the same time? (35-36) In 1765, the twenty-nine-year-old Watt, strolling across the town square in Glasgow and reflecting on the inefficiency of Newcomen’s engine, had a flash of insight, an epiphany. “The whole thing was arranged in my mind,” he said. He suddenly understood that a separate cylinder—called a condenser—could be kept permanently cool while being connected to the piston cylinder, which would remain hot (35-36). Watt recalled, “The idea came into my mind, that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder” (Rosen 115). Putting the insight into practice, Watt added a second cylinder or chamber.

The steam would be sucked out of the piston chamber and into the new cylinder, cool off, condense, and thus form a vacuum that used atmospheric pressure to move the piston. Meanwhile, the cylinder with the moving piston remained hot as another injection of steam entered. (104 see photo on page 105) Watt patented the idea of this separate condenser in 1769. Known for this famous flash of insight, Watt was actually a relentless and careful experimenter, a student of the Scientific Revolution. In all his work, he used rigorous and precise scientific methods to test his ideas. Three minutes into this video below , there is a very clear animation and explanation of Newcomen's steam engine and what Watt did to make it so much more productive. After years of struggling on his own to make the new steam engine work correctly, Watt successfully teamed up with the largest and most famous factory in the world, Soho Manufactory, which made jewelry, silverware, and tools in Birmingham, England. The owner was looking for an energy source that was more powerful than water wheels. At Soho, Watt met and collaborated with the most skilled ironworkers and engineers in the country.

With their help, the new engine became four times as productive as Newcomen’s. Watt continued to tinker and improve it so that steam could be injected into both sides of the piston cylinder, creating a double-acting piston. In 1781, Watt pressed on further to adapt the engine from a reciprocal up-and-down motion to a turning or rotary motion. Now, the steam engine could supply consistent and cheap energy for all the latest textile inventions. At the insistence of one of his engineers, Watt patented a steam-powered carriage but didn’t think much would come of it. (Weightman 58-9) Watt’s rotary steam engine was being perfected just at the same moment that iron-working improved and textile inventions were becoming more powerful, greater in size, sizeable and in need of better, cheaper, and more reliable power sources. The new steam engine could be harnessed to all these new inventions. In 1782, the year after Watt perfected the rotary steam engine, there were only two cotton mill factories in Manchester. Twenty years later there were more than 50.

(Ashton 60) The Factory The idea for the first textile factory—a word derived from “manufactory,” the place where goods were manufactured—came from a British silk mill worker, John Lombe. He travelled to Northern Italy to steal designs for secret Italian machines that spun and wove the silk (it is worth noting here that the Chinese had been spinning and weaving silk with simple looms for thousands of years before the Italians.) In 1719, Lombe patented the ideas as his own in Great Britain and built a large building next to a river to use a water wheel to power the machines. The mill was five stories high and employed 200 men. Silk was a luxury item that most could not afford, and so few enterpeneurs followed in Lombe’s footsteps. But this silk factory came into mind years later when industrialists were looking for ways to power new textile inventions at one location. As textile inventions grew in size , they could no longer fit in cottages (Rosen 212-217; wikipedia article on factories).

Like Lombe’s old silk factory, the first textile factories were located on rivers so that a water wheel could provide a reliable and consistent rotating power for the new inventions. Arkwright built his first cotton mill just away from a river and dug out a channel or millrace, so that the water wheel benefitted from the current, as well as the gravity of water coming down hill and into a narrow chute (Rosen 230). But, the invention of Watt’s rotary steam engine changed everything. Textile factories no longer had to be built right next to a river. However large buildings were required for the new large steam engines, spinning mules, and power looms. In 1790, Arkwright used steam power to run his spinning mule factory. Workers, along with their families, congregated at these new factories. Their need for stores, churches and the like resulted in the formation of small communities, which became towns and cities. Another important result of the factory was specialization of labor. In 1776, Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, wrote the all-time most influential and famous economics book: Wealth of Nations.

For Smith, the key to the efficiency, productivity, and quality control of a factory was the division of labor. This was a process by which the key tasks in manufacturing were identified and assigned to individual workers to specialize, perfect and repeat with dispatch. *********Add sentence about effects/relevance of this approach or at least how “revolutionary”/different it was from before or how it fueled growth. Railroads The steam engine, it turns out, also sparked innovative methods of transportation. Railways were not new in pre-industrial Britain. There were over 1,000 railways by 1800, most of them connected to an iron pit or a coal mine with a canal or river. But all of these railways were drawn by horses (Weightman 118). In fact, horses were the best form of land transportation in Eurasia since the beginning of time; the only other option was to walk. Steam would change all that. The first full-scale steam-powered locomotive took its maiden voyage down the main street of Camborne, England on Christmas Eve in 1801. The Cornish “puffer” drove like a car without rails and was the brainchild of Richard Trevithick.

After the first run, the inventor parked it in a shed and went to celebrate his success. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn the boiler off and the entire shed and locomotive were destroyed in a fire. But Trevithick got another chance. An ironworks owner built a nine-mile railway to compete with a canal. Horses pulled cars full of iron and coal along the rails. In a competition, Trevithick’s Cornish “puffer” succeeded in hauling ten tons of bar iron and seventy passengers along rails at a speed of five miles per hour. Sadly, Trevithick could never turn the invention into financial success: he died in Peru failing in his attempt to seek his fortune in silver mines (Weightman 48-49, 58-9). A young self-taught engineer, George Stephenson, picked up where Trevithick left off. Stephenson was raised in coalfields, where his family worked. He took jobs there, first working in the mines with a pick and then working on an old Newcomen steam engine that pumped water out of mine shafts.

Stephenson grew up illiterate, like the rest of his family, but, as a teenager, taught himself to read and hired a tutor to teach him basic math. To make extra money, he learned to repair watches. At 22 years old, Stephenson was put in charge of running a Watt steam engine at a spinning factory. Over the following years, he taught himself mechanical engineering by taking apart steam engines and other machines,putting them back together. He took out patents on a steam engine locomotive and iron rails in 1816. He succeeded in improving upon Trevithick’s puffer, but his big break came as the result of the fast-growing cotton industry in Manchester (Rosen 298- 305). In 1825, Stephenson was commissioned to construct a 30-mile railway line from Liverpool to Manchester. Manchester was the largest industrial town in the world, and merchants needed to transport lots of cotton and finished cloth. Despite its young age, Liverpool, as the port for the Manchester cotton industry, handled one third of the world’s trade (Rosen 298- 305). Stephenson surveyed the route and built the railway.

He set the distance between the two tracks at four feet, eight and a half inches, because it happened to be the width of some coal-mining cars—and this would become the worldwide standard railroad gauge. In 1829, the railway owners sponsored a contest to find out who could make the fastest and most reliable locomotive to run on the newly built Manchester-to-Liverpool railway. Most contestants entered steam-powered vehicles, but one underdog participant actually used a horse trotting on a treadmill attached to a car. A man named George and his son, Robert, called their locomotive the Rocket. They defeated five competitors and reached average speeds of at least 29 miles per hour. On the day the Manchester-to-Liverpool railroad was opened to the public, a member of Parliament and a supporter of the railway was accidently killed by the Rocket. In a failed attempt to save the gentleman’s life, Stephenson opened up the throttle to top speed and made a heroic dash to a hospital in the next town—and he averaged 35 mph for 15 miles. The competition garnered much attention in England and Europe; Stephenson and other top competitors took offers for their new locomotives from as far away as Russia.

In 1831, just two years after the race, the Liverpool-to-Manchester railway carried 450,000 passengers, 43,000 tons of cotton, and 11,000 tons of coal. By 1835, the railway carried 120,000 tons of coal (Weightman 132-134; Rosen 301 to 310) This silent movie used a replica of Stephenson's Rocket. It gives you a sense of the size and speed of the famous train. Stephenson’s success was a culmination of over a century of industrial innovation. The Rocket had incorporated the steam engines of Newcomen and Watt, Cort’s iron-refining innovations, and Trevithick’s original locomotive. But, it also would not have occurred were it not for the rising cotton industry that created the need for the railroad in the industrial town of Manchester. And, of course, the new railroads used coal as the main fuel source. The ultimate triumph of the Industrial Revolution, railroads moved people, raw materials, and finished goods rapidly around England.

This interaction brought people to the new industrial cities; gradually increased trade within England, Europe, and the world; and helped turn England into the wealthiest nation on earth. Growth of British Railroads in Miles of Track Year (history home web site) Capitalism: The Free Market In the previous economic system during the Middle Ages, peasants typically worked the land and in exchange they would perform services or labor for a noble lord. In many parts of Europe, peasants were tied to the land as serfs. As we saw in our earlier discussion of pre-industrial society, the introduction of financial innovations such as stock markets, joint stock companies, and national banks were all instruments for a new free-market economic system that had been evolving over centuries. The feudal system gradually eroded , and during the Industrial Revolution, the free market took its place. The innovations during the Industrial Revolution accelerated the rise of an economic system called the free market, also known as capitalism (some people use the French phrase “laissez faire,” meaning “let them act”) All these terms imply pretty much the same thing: in a pure free market, buyers and sellers (private business owners) satisfy their own interests by voluntarily agreeing to exchange money for a product, without the interference of the government.

So, for example, when Apple Computer, a private company, sells an iPad to a customer, that’s the free market at work. Apple makes a product it thinks consumers want, and the buyer chooses to use his or her money to buy the iPad. Business owners compete in a free market to make the best product or service at a price that will attract the most buyers. The successful businesses grow larger and employ more workers, thereby growing the economy. Unsuccessful businesses go out of business. The government does not intervene. Proponents of the free market believe that this system encourages innovation, high quality goods, and increases the wealth of countries. The government does as little as possible in a free market economic system. In its purest form, governments should protect private property, improve infrastructure such as roads, and maintain a stable rule of law for trade. That’s about it. According to pure capitalism, healthcare, education, retirement benefits and other social services should be provided by private businesses rather than the government. You should recognize this system because it is mostly the type of economy we have today in the United States, though the role of the government in the free market remains a consistent subject of national political debate.

It’s also important to keep in mind that capitalism is an economic system, but it’s also supported by a cultural belief system. The United States, like England, generally believes in hard work, individual rights, respect for time, self-discipline, and an entrepreneurial spirit of innovation and risk-taking (Grasby 68). This now widely embraced idea of a free market system came to fruition during the Industrial Revolution. We have read about how private individuals took risks to create technologically innovative products—such as the flying shuttle or the power loom—and then tried to sell them or use them to make a profit. This spirit of invention was not new, but during the Industrial Revolution it was relentless and occurred on a scale that was unprecedented. When the Industrial Revolution was in its infancy, in 1776, Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, wrote the most influential and famous economics book ever, entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He argued that when individuals pursue their self-interest in a free market, they benefit society as a whole because the competition keeps prices low while encouraging quality and innovation. Free market capitalism also has it critics.

Later in this chapter, we will learn about the most famous critic, Karl Marx, and his idea of Socialism, an economic system that prizes the public good and equality over individualism and competition. Untitled Document Wealth and Income Now that we have looked at how and why the Industrial Revolution occurred, it’s time to consider its effects on people. We learned that industrial production increased tremendously, bringing wealth and power to Great Britain throughout the 19th century. But we have yet to explore the effects of industrialization on society, on the daily living and the working conditions of common people. What was life like for the average industrial worker? Was living in a new industrial city and working in a factory an improvement over life in the countryside? Did the new factory life change for the better the roles of family members, including women and children? Were people healthier? In general, did the Industrial Revolution improve life for most people? To answer these questions, we’ll look at various primary source accounts to gather evidence from the people that actually lived through this time period. Since the Industrial Revolution was so new at the end of the 18th century, there were initially no laws to regulate new industries.

For example, no laws prevented businesses from hiring seven-year-old children to work full time in coal mines or factories. No laws regulated what factories could do with their biohazard waste. Free-market capitalism meant that the government had no role in regulating the new industries or planning services for new towns. And those who controlled the government liked it that way—only a small minority of people, the wealthiest, could vote in England at this time. So during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, between 1790 and 1850, British society became the first example of what happens in a country when free-market capitalism has no constraints. You will learn about the effects of the Industrial Revolution on living and working conditions, urbanization (the growth of cities), child labor, public health, working class family life, the role of women, the emerging middle class, and economic growth and income. You will be asked to reflect about what role, if any, the government should have taken to improve life in the new industrial cities. Working conditions What were the working conditions like during the Industrial Revolution? Well, for starters, the working class—who made up 80% of society—had little or no bargaining power with their new employers.

Since population was increasing in Great Britain at the same time that landowners were enclosing common village lands, people from the countryside flocked to the towns and the new factories to get work. This resulted in a very high unemployment rate for workers in the first phases of the Industrial Revolution. Henry Mayhew, name his title or role, studied the London poor in 1823, and he observed that “there is barely sufficient work for the regular employment of half of our labourers, so that only 1,500,000 are fully and constantly employed, while 1,500,000 more are employed only half their time, and the remaining 1,500,000 wholly unemployed” (Thompson 250). As a result, the new factory owners could set the terms of work because there were far more unskilled laborers, who had few skills and would take any job, than there were jobs for them. And since the textile industries were so new at the end of the 18th century, there were initially no laws to regulate them.

Desperate for work, the migrants to the new industrial towns had no bargaining power to demand higher wages, fairer work hours, or better working conditions. Worse still, since only wealthy people in Great Britain were eligible to vote, workers could not use the democratic political system to fight for rights and reforms. In 1799 and 1800, the British Parliament passed the Combination Acts, which made it illegal for workers to unionize, or combine, as a group to ask for better working conditions. Many of the unemployed or underemployed were skilled workers, such as hand weavers, whose talents and experience became useless because they could not compete with the efficiency of the new textile machines. In 1832, one observer saw how the skilled hand weavers had lost their way and were reduced to starvation. “It is truly lamentable to behold so many thousands of men who formerly earned 20 to 30 shillings per week, now compelled to live on 5, 4, or even less” (284). For the first generation of workers—from the 1790s to the 1840s—working conditions were very tough, and sometimes tragic.

Most laborers worked 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, with no paid vacation or holidays. Each industry had safety hazards too; the process of purifying iron, for example, demanded that workers toiled amidst temperatures as high as 130 degrees in the coolest part of the ironworks (Rosen 155). Under such dangerous conditions, accidents on the job occurred regularly. A report commissioned by the British House of Commons in 1832 commented that "there are factories, no means few in number, nor confined to the smaller mills, in which serious accidents are continually occurring, and in which, notwithstanding, dangerous parts of the machinery are allowed to remain unfenced" (Sadler). The report added that workers were often "abandoned from the moment that an accident occurs; their wages are stopped, no medical attendance is provided, and whatever the extent of the injury, no compensation is afforded" (Sadler). As the Sadler report shows, injured workers would typically lose their jobs and also receive no financial compensation for their injury to pay for much needed health care. Life in the factory was most challenging for the first generation of industrial workers who still remembered the slower and more flexible pace of country life.

Factory employers demanded a complete change of pace and discipline from the village life. Workers could not wander over to chat with their neighbors or family as they would have done while working in the country. They could not return to the village during harvest time to help their families, unless they wanted to lose their jobs. Instead, they were no longer their own bosses; foremen and overseers supervised a new working culture to insure that workers’ actions were focused and efficient. A few workers were able to improve their lot by going into business for themselves or winning a job as a supervisor, But the majority saw very little social mobility. What role, if any, do you think the government should have taken to improve working conditions in the new industrial factories, mills, and coal mines? Choose the answer that best represents your point of view and record your response in your notes: a. The government should not intervene in the free market to improve working conditions. Workers are not forced to work. They choose to take jobs in the factories and mills, and it is their responsibility to watch out for their own safety. They are free to decide what jobs are best for them.

If the government regulates factory owners, it will increase the cost of doing business for all these new growing industries and decrease economic growth and jobs. b. The government should establish a commission to investigate working conditions in the new factories and mills. If there are unsafe conditions, it is the government’s responsibility to look out for the safety of its citizens and set minimum safety standards. The government should also consider passing a law setting tenhours as the maximum number of hours that workers should be allowed to work each day. The government should also repeal the Combination Acts, which prevented workers from organizing in unions. Living conditions Working in new industrial cities had an effect on people’s lives outside of the factories as well. As workers migrated from the country to the city, their lives and the lives of their families were utterly and permanently transformed. For many skilled workers, the quality of life decreased a great deal in the first 60 years of the Industrial Revolution. Skilled weavers, for example, lived well in pre-industrial society as a kind of middle class. They tended their own gardens, worked on textiles in their homes or small shops, and raised farm animals. They were their own bosses.

One contemporary observer noted, “their dwelling and small gardens clean and neat, —all the family well clad, —the men with each a watch in their pocket, and the women dressed in their own fancy, —the Church crowded to excess every Sunday, —every house well furnished with a clock in elegant mahogany or fancy case. . . . Their little cottages seemed happy and contented. . . . it was seldom that a weaver appealed to the parish for a relief. . . . peace and content sat upon the weaver’s brow” (Thompson 269). But, after the Industrial Revolution, the living conditions for skilled weavers significantly deteriorated. They could no longer live at their own pace or supplement their income with gardening, spinning, or communal harvesting. For skilled workers, quality of life took a sharp downturn: “A quarter [neighborhood] once remarkable for its neatness and order; I remembered their whitewashed houses, and their little flower gardens, and the decent appearance they made with their families at markets, or at public worship. These houses were now a mass of filth and misery“ (269).

In the first sixty years or so of the Industrial Revolution, working-class people had little time or opportunity for recreation. Workers spent all the light of day at work and came home with little energy, space, or light to play sports or games. The new industrial pace and factory system were at odds with the old traditional festivals which dotted the village holiday calendar. Plus, local governments actively sought to ban traditional festivals in the cities. In the new working-class neighborhoods, people did not share the same traditional sense of a village community. Owners fined workers who left their jobs to return to their villages for festivals because they interrupted the efficient flow of work at the factories (Stearns 73-74). After the 1850s, however, recreation improved along with the rise of an emerging the middle class. Music halls sprouted up in big cities. Sports such as rugby and cricket became popular. Football became a professional sport in 1885. By the end of the 19th century, cities had become the places with opportunities for sport and entertainment that they are today (Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire 164).

During the first 60 years of the Industrial Revoltuion, living conditions were, by far, worst for the poorest of the poor. In desperation, many turned to the “poorhouses” set up by the government. The Poor Law of 1834 created workhouses for the destitute. Poorhouses were designed to be deliberately harsh places to discourage people from staying on “relief” (government food aid). Families, including husbands and wives, were separated upon entering the grounds. They were confined each day as inmates in a prison and worked every day. One assistant commissioner of the workhouses commented, “Our intention is to make the workhouses as much like prisons as possible.” Another said, “Our object is to establish a discipline so severe and repulsive as to make them a terror to the poor and prevent them from entering” (Thompson 267). Yet, despite these very harsh conditions, workhouse inmates increased from 78,536 in 1838 to 197,179 in 1843 (268). This increase can only be viewed as a sign of desperation amongst the poorest of the poor.

What role, if any, do you think the government should take to improve living conditions in the new industrial cities? Choose the answer that best represents your point of view: The government should intervene as little as possible to improve living conditions for the working class. If the government gives handouts to the poor, there will be no incentive for them to find work on their own. Therefore, poorhouses must pay for themselves through the work of the poor. The free market has proven that hand weavers cannot compete with new textile machines, so they need to find new jobs in the new industrial economy. The longer they wait to do so, the worse it will be for them. Capitalism rewards those who work hard, persevere, and look for opportunities to succeed. The government should at least help provide training for skilled workers, such as hand weavers, who lost their jobs to new industrial machines. By helping workers make the transition to new industrial jobs, governments will prevent workers from having to end up at poor houses or on parish relief. Urbanization One of the defining and most lasting features of the Industrial Revolution was the rise of cities. In pre-industrial society, over 80% of people lived in rural areas.

As migrants moved from the countryside, small towns became large cities. By 1850, for the first time in world history, more people in a country—Great Britain—lived in cities than in rural areas. As other countries in Europe and North America industrialized, they too continued along this path of urbanization. By 1920, a majority of Americans lived in cities. In England, this process of urbanization continued unabated throughout the 19th century. The city of London grew from a population of two million in 1840 to five million forty years later (Hobsawm, Industry and Empire 159). The small town of Manchester, England also grew rapidly and famously to become the quintessential industrial city. Its cool climate was ideal for textile production. And it was located close to the Atlantic port of Liverpool and the coalfields of Lancashire. The first railroads in the world later connected the textile town to Liverpool. As a result, Manchester quickly became the textile capital of the world, drawing huge numbers of migrants to the city. In 1771, the sleepy town had a population of 22,000 .

Over the next fifty years, Manchester’s population exploded and reached 180,000 ( “A History of Manchester”). Many of the migrants were destitute farmers from Ireland who were being evicted from their land by their English landlords. In Liverpool and Manchester roughly 25 to 33 percent of the workers were Irish. (Thompson 429). This process of urbanization stimulated the booming new industries by concentrating workers and factories together. And the new industrial cities became, as we read earlier, sources of wealth for the nation. Despite the growth in wealth and industry urbanization also had some negative effects. On the whole, working-class neighborhoods were bleak, crowded, dirty, and polluted. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French traveller and writer, visited Manchester in 1835 and commented on the environmental hazards. “From this foul Drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows.

Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilization works its miracles and civilized man is turned almost into a savage.” (Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 44) Click on the links of these two primary source accounts of the urban pollution in Manchester and London. Watch this video from PBS Newshour about urbanization today in less developed countries. What role, if any, do you think the government should take to improve conditions in the new industrial cities? Choose the answer that best represents your point of view: The government should not intervene in the free market to regulate industrial pollution or the filth in working-class neighborhoods. The government did not force migrants to come to the cities; they came of their own free will. As the economy grows, the workers will earn better wages and have the resources to improve their neighborhoods or move to better ones. The government should establish a commission to investigate the negative effects of industrialization on urban life. It is the government’s responsibility to look out for the common good; polluted rivers and neighborhoods have an effect on all citizens.

Public Health and Life Expectancy In the first half of the 19th century, urban overcrowding, poor diets, poor sanitation, and essentially medieval medical remedies all contributed to very poor public health for the majority of English people. The densely packed and poorly constructed working-class neighborhoods contributed to the fast spread of disease. As we read in Engels’ first hand account of working-class areas in Manchester, these neighborhoods were filthy, unplanned, and slipshod. Roads were muddy and lacked sidewalks. Houses were built touching each other, leaving no room for ventilation. Perhaps most importantly, homes lacked toilets and sewage systems, and as a result, drinking water sources, such as wells, were frequently contaminated with disease. Cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, and influenza ravaged through new industrial towns, especially in poor working-class neighborhoods. In 1849, 10,000 people died of cholera in three months in London alone ("Public Health Timeline"). Tuberculosis claimed 60,000 to 70,000 lives in each decade of the 19th century (Robinson).

People who received medical treatment in the first half of the 19th century likely worsened under the care of trained doctors and untrained quacks. Doctors still used remedies popular during the Middle Ages, such as bloodletting and leeching. They concocted toxic potions of mercury, iron, or arsenic. They also encouraged heavy use of vomiting and laxatives, both of which severely dehydrated patients and could contribute to early death, especially among infants and children whose bodies would lose water dangerously fast (Robinson). Even though there were more doctors in the cities, life expectancy was much lower there than in the country. Poor nutrition, disease, lack of sanitation, and harmful medical care in these urban areas had a devastating effect on the average life expectancy of British people in the first half of the 19th century. The Registrar General reported in 1841 that the average life expectancy in rural areas of England was 45 years of age but was only 37 in London and an alarming 26 in Liverpool (Haley).

These are life-long averages that highlight a very high infant mortality rate; in the first half of the 19th century, 25 to 33% of children in England died before their 5th birthday (Haley). What role, if any, do you think the government should take to improve public health in the new industrial cities? Choose the answer that best represents your point of view: The government should not intervene in the free market to improve public health. Citizens are free to hire a doctor, go to a hospital, or seek their own medical remedies, as they have for centuries. Government has not been and should not be in the business of building houses for poor people. If the government were to provide free housing, medical care, and water, it would have to raise taxes enormously on businesses and citizens, which would hurt the economy a great deal. For the benefit of the common good, the government should establish a commission to investigate public health in new industrial cities. The government should then set standards and regulations to ensure that drinking water is safe. It should start by making sure that cities have safe sewage systems that do not infect drinking water. This job is too large for members of the working class to fix on their own.

Child Labor Child labor was, unfortunately, integral to the first factories, mines, and mills in England. In textile mills, as new power looms and spinning mules took the place of skilled workers, factory owners used cheap, unskilled labor to decrease the cost of production. And, child labor was the cheapest labor of all. Some of these machines were so easy to operate that a small child could perform the simple, repetitive tasks. Some maintenance tasks, such as squeezing into tight spaces, could be performed more easily by children than adults. And, children did not try to join workers unions or go on strike. Best of all, they were paid 1/10 of what men were paid. It’s not surprising, then, that children were heavily employed in the first factories in history. In 1789, in Richard Arkwright’s new spinning factory, two-thirds of 1,150 factory workers were children. (Ashton 93) The tedious and dangerous factory work had negative effects on the health of children. Doctor Turner Thackrah described the children leaving the Manchester cotton mills as “almost universally ill-looking, small, sickly, barefoot and ill-clad. Many appeared to be no older than seven.

The men, generally from sixteen to twenty-four, and none aged, were almost as pallid and thin as the children” (Thompson 329) Observations such as these slowly made their way to the British government. In the 1830s, the British Parliament began investigating the conditions in factories for children. One Member of Parliament, Michael Sadler, started a committee, in 1832, to send investigators out to factories to interview children and gather evidence about their working conditions. Sadler sought to pass a bill through Parliament to decrease child labor and regulate all factories to have a 10-hour work day. The transcripts from these investigations survive today as some of the best primary source evidence of child labor. Read the following accounts. Primary Source: Matthew Crabtree, interviewed in 1832. (Del Sol) Watch these short documentary videos to learn about the millions of children working as laborers today in countries around the world. What role, if any, do you think the government should take to regulate child labor? Choose the answer that best represents your point of view: The government should not intervene in the free market to regulate child labor.

If parents do not want their children to work in factories, then they should not send them there. It is the responsibility of the parents to find a suitable living or working environment for their children. If the government regulates factory owners, it will increase the cost of doing business for all these new growing industries and decrease economic growth and jobs. The government should establish a commission to investigate child labor in the new factories and mills. If there are unsafe conditions, it is the government’s responsibility to look out for the safety of its children and set and enforce minimum safety standards. The government should also consider passing child labor laws that set a maximum number of hours that children should be allowed to work each day. The government should also consider investing in a public school system to educate its citizens. Working Class Families and The Role of Women The Industrial Revolution completely transformed the role of the family. In traditional, agricultural society, families worked together as a unit of production, tending to fields, knitting sweaters, or tending to the fire. Women could parent and also play a role in producing food or goods needed for the household. Work and play time were flexible and interwoven. Industrialization changed all that.

The same specialization of labor that occurred in factories occurred in the lives of working-class families, and this broke up the family economy. Work and home life became sharply separated. Men earned money for their families. Women took care of the home and saw their economic role decline. While many factory workers were initially women, most of them were young women who would quit working when they married. In stark contrast to the various changing tasks that a farmer performed in pre-industrial society, factory workers typically completed repetitive and monotonous tasks for 10 to 14 hours each day. Industrial working-class families, though not working together, did serve an economic purpose of raising money to support each other. As we have seen, children often worked to earn some income for the family. In difficult circumstances, mothers struggled to make ends meet and keep the family out of the poorhouses. Jane Goode, a working-class mother, testified before the British Factory Commission in 1833. The history of her family shows the worries and stresses of a mother struggling to survive. Her life shows the unfortunately common death rate of infants. Jane Goode had twelve children, but five died before the age of two: I have had five children that have all worked at the factory.

I have only one that works there now. She is sixteen. She works in the card-room. She minds the drawing-head. She gets 5 shillings 9 pence. She pays it all to me. She has worked there nine years. She has been at the drawing-head all the while. She got 2 shilling when she first went. She was just turned seven. . . . Mary did not work here [at the factory] long. She went in about fourteen or fifteen. She was married last summer. She is thirty next June. She went on working at Elliot and Mill’s and other factories till she married. Anne was just turned seven; she worked here four years, then she went to Mr Elliot’s, and worked there till she was married, two years ago. She is nineteen next June. John was not eight when he went in; he is now twenty-two. . . . I have had twelve children altogether. I thought you were asking only of those who worked at the mill. There were five that died before they were a quarter of a year old. . . . Mr Samuel Wilson (now dead) came to Derby to get my hand, and I engaged with him with my family.

I did it to keep my children off the parish [welfare]. (Frader 87-88) Betty Wardle, interviewed by the parliamentary commission on women in mines in 1842, illustrates the incredible challenges of being a mother and a worker in coal mines: Q: Have you ever worked in a coal pit? Wardle: Ay, I have worked in a pit since I was six years old Q: Have you any children? Wardle: Yes. I have had four children; two of them were born while I worked in the pits. Q: Did you work in the pits while you were in the family way [pregnant]? Wardle: Ay, to be sure. I had a child born in the pits, and I brought it up the pitshaft in my skirt. (Frader 88) What role, if any, do you think the government should take to improve the lives of working-class families? Choose the answer that best represents your point of view: The government should not intervene in the private family life of its citizens. The government was right to establish a commission to investigate the treatment of women and child in factories and mills.

If there are unsafe conditions, it is the government’s responsibility to look out for the safety of its citizens and set minimum safety standards. The government should also consider passing a law that creates a five-day work week, instead of six. The government should also consider investing in a public school system to educate its citizens. The Emerging Middle Class Gradually, very gradually, a middle class, or “middling sort”, did emerge in industrial cities, mostly toward the end of the 19th century. Until then, there had been only two major classes in society: aristocrats born into their lives of wealth and privilege, and low-income commoners born in the working classes. However new urban industries gradually required more of what we call today “white collar” jobs, such as business people, shopkeepers, bank clerks, insurance agents, merchants, accountants, managers, doctors, lawyers, and teachers. [Middle-class people tended to have monthly or yearly salaries rather than hourly wages.] One piece of evidence of this emerging middle class was the rise of retail shops in England that increased from 300 in 1875 to 2,600 by 1890 (Ashton page #?).

Another mark of distinction of the middle class was their ability to hire servants to cook and clean the house from time to time. Not surprisingly, from 1851 to 1871, the number of domestic servants increased from 900,000 to 1.4 million. (Ashton *** need to find page #) This is proof of a small but rising middle class that prided themselves on taking responsibility for themselves and their families. They viewed professional success as the result of a person’s energy, perseverance, and hard work. In this new middle class, families became a sanctuary from stressful industrial life. Home remained separate from work and took on the role of emotional support, where women of the house created a moral and spiritual safe harbor away from the rough-and-tumble industrial world outside. Most middle-class adult women were discouraged from working outside the home. They could afford to send their children to school. As children became more of an economic burden, and better health care decreased infant mortality, middle-class women gave birth to fewer children. What role, if any, do you think the government should take to improve the lives of middle-class families?

Choose the answer that best represents your point of view: The government should not intervene in the private family lives of its citizens. The middle class is doing fine. Leave it alone. The government should invest in a public school system to educate its citizens and encourage the continued rise of the middle class. Wealth and Income Historians disagree about whether life improved for the working class in the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, from 1790 to 1850. E.P. Thompson argued in The Making of the English Working Class that life clearly did not improve for the majority of British people: “ The experience of immiseration came upon them in a hundred different forms; for the field labourer, the loss of his common rights and the vestiges of village democracy; for the artisan, the loss of his craftsman’s status; for the weaver, the loss of livelihood and of independence; for the child the loss of work and play in the home; for many groups of workers whose real earning improved, the loss of security, leisure and the deterioration of the urban environment” (Thompson 445). Historians do not even agree if real wages increased for workers during this time period. E.P.

Thompson argues that they did not. However, most agree that real wages adjusted for inflation stayed basically steady from 1790 to 1840. Thompson argues that this fails to account for the vast numbers of unemployed. But, after 1840 or 1850, as England entered the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, it appears that real wages began to increase. For example, one study showed that real wages, adjusted for inflation, increased 50% between 1830 and 1875 (Feinstein).

Question: What city became, by 1835, "the first and greatest industrial city in the world"?
Answer: Manchester