The Revolution in Energy and Industry

Summary: The industrial Revolution took off around 1780 in Great Britain and began to influence continental Europe and the United States, and Non-European nations industrialised after 1860. Industrialisation changed much of the human experience: social class structure, the way people thought about class, international balance of power. The reason Industrial Revolution was revolutionary was because it inaugurated a period of sustained economic and demographic growth that has continued to present day. It helped ordinary people int he West gain a higher standard of living as widespread poverty decreased.

Focus Question: Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in Britain and how did it develop between 1780 and 1850?

Why Britain?

The Industrial revolution began in Great Britain (nation created in 1707, by Scotland, Wales, and England). Britain had a unique set of qualities: abundant coal, high wages, relatively peaceful and centralised government, developed financial systems, innovative culture, strong position in empire and global trade. This spurred people to adopt a efficient machine powered system of production. The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment gave way to a new-world view that embraced progress, the role of research and experimentation in understanding the natural world. Britains (intellectual) culture emphasised public knowledge.

ex: British Royal Society of Arts sponsored prizes for innovations.

Trade was good as they got money from the exportation of woollen cloth, the mercantilist colonial empire, and the transatlantic trade, this combined gave them raw materials for British manufactured goods. Agriculture was also a factor in the Industrial Revolution starting in Britain, as the farmers were continuously adopting new methods of farming. This resulted in bountiful amounts of crops and low food prices. Because of the increasing efficiency, landowners could produce more food with a smaller work load, leading to in the mid eighteenth century less the half of Britain population working in agriculture. The enclosure movement left many poor to work as agricultural labourers or in the cottage industry, thus leaving a lot of workers for the new factories. A lot of food and high wages left the average English family to spend money on manufactured goods, and send their kids to show leading Britain to have high literacy and numeracy levels compared to the rest of Europe. This trend reflected the increasing commercialization of the entire European community. Britain also has rich natural resources and well-developed infanstructure.

Beginning in the 1770’s a canal- building boom provided easy movement of Englands and Wales iron and coal resources. Because of Britains high wages and amount of coal it gave the people the incentive to develop technologies to use coal to increase workmen’s productivity. In other places such as India and China, the costs of mechanizations outweighed the potential gains in productivity. The remaining factor favoring British industrializations was the heavy hand of British state and it policies, the British parliamentary system taxed the population heavily, so it collected twice as much as the per capita then the France monarchy. They then spent this money on a navy to protect imperial commerce, and on the army that could be used to prevent uprisings by workers.

Technological Innovations and Early Factories

There was pressure to produce more goods for the growing market and to reduce the labor costs of manufacturing, thus leading to the first machine powered factories, in the British cotton textile industry, giving way to a mew system of production and social relationships.

putting out system: involved a merchant who loaned raw materials to cottage workers who processed the raw material in their homes and returned the finished products to the merchant

But there was a serious imbalance of textile production as there needed to be four or five spinners to keep one weaver employed and they constantly needed more thread and spinners, its growing demand, the limitations began to outweigh the advantages around 1760. Because the market for cloth mainly resided in Asia, new technologies were created to bring down labor costs. James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny about 1765. Richard Arkwright invented another spinning machine, the water frame, producing an explosion in the cotton textile industry.

Spinning Jenny: a simple, inexpensive hand-powering machine created by James Hargreaves in 1765

Water Frame: had a capacity of several hundred spindles and used waterpower, and therefore required a factory

The water frame could only a coarse strong thread, until a hybrid machine called the mule invented by Samuel Crompton was capable to spin very fine and strong thread in large quantities. Gradually all cotton spinning was concentrated in large-scale water-powered factories, allowing British manufactures to compete in international markets, gradually amking spinners the highest earning workers in England. Working conditions in the factories were poor, making people reluctant to work there leaving factory owners turning to children and orphans instead, exercising the authority of slave owners, as boy and girl workers were forced by law to work for their masters for 14 years, for 13-14 hours a day, with little to no pay.

The Steam Engine Breakthrough

18 century Europe relied on wood for energy and humans and animals to perform most of the work, this dependance meaning Europe and the rest of the world was poor in energy and power. Processed wood (charcoal) was the fuel used for the processes that eventually gave steel, cast iron, or wrought iron, leaving the irons industry appetite for wood enormous and by 1740 the British iron industry stagnating. Russia was the worlds leading producer of iron, due to its vast forests, much of which was exported to Britain. As wood became more scarce the British looked to coal, originally used as a source of heat in the Middle Ages, now used to produce mechanical energy and to power machinery.

Thomas Newcomen and Thomas Savery produced the first primitive steam engine as animal power was expensive and bothersome. Both engines burned coal to produce steam, which was then sued to operate a pump. Though inefficient, by the early 1770’s were operating successfully in english and Scottish mines. In 1763 James Watt was called to repair a Newcomen engine and saw that the engines waste of energy could be reduced by adding a separate condenser. This was patented in 1769 greatly increased the efficiency of the steam engine. Support from partnerships and the purchase of precision parts from allowed him to create an effective vacuum in the condenser and regulate a complex engine. By the late 1780’s the firm of Boulton and Watt made the steam engine a practical and commercial success in Britain.

The coal burning steam engine of Watt and his followers was the Industrial Revolutions most fundamental advancement in technology. The steam-power plant began to replace waterpower in cotton-spinning factories, flour mills, malt mills, and flint mills. The economic consequence of these technical advances was a great boom in the British iron industry: coke (a smokeless and hot burning fuel produced by heating coal to rid it of water and other impurities) to smelt iron, puddling furnace (allowed pig iron to be refined in turn with coke). Once expensive iron became the cheap basic indispensable building block of the British economy.

Steam-Powered Transportation

The first steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick. George Stephenson acquired glory for his locomotive named Rocket.

Rocket: locomotive first tested in 1829 on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at 35 miles per hour

The line from Liverpool to Manchester was financial and technical success and many private companies began to build more rail lines. The arrival of the railroad reduced the cost and uncertainty of shipping freight over land. Previously markets were small and local but as high transportation cost was lowered, markets became larger and even nationwide. Larger markets encouraged larger factories with more sophisticated machinery in a growing number of industries. These factories could make goods more cheaply and the construction of railroads created a strong demand for unskilled labor and contributed to the growth of class of urban workers.

Steam engine also transformed water travel, French engineers completed the first steam ships, and the first commercial steam ships in North America several decades later.

Industry and Population

In 1851 London hosted an individual fair called the Great Exhibition in the newly built Crystal Palace.

Crystal Palace: the location of the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London; an architectural masterpiece made entirely of glass and iron

Sponsored by the British Royal Family, it celebrated the new era of industrial technology and the kingdoms role as world economic leader. It produced 2/3 of the worlds coal and more then half of all iron and cotton cloth, Britain claiming it self workshop of the world. Britain produced 20% of the ENTIRE worlds output of industrial goods, increasing Britains economy significantly. The population of Britain also drastically increased form about 9 million to 21 million. Rapid population growth was key to industrial development as more people meant a more mobile labor force, more young workers in need of employment and ready to go where job were.

Many contemporaries worried that the rapid growth of population would lead to disaster, Thomas Malthus saying the only hope of warding off such disasters as famine and disease was to have young men and women marrying late in life. Economist David Ricardo spelled out the pessimistic implications of Malthus’s thought in Ricardo’s iron law of wages.

Iron Law of Wages: Theory proposed by Ricardo suggesting that the pressure of population growth prevents wages from rising above the subsistence level (wages would be just high enough to keep workers from starving)

They both were proved wrong because industrializations improved productivity beyond what they could imagine.

INDUSTRIALIZATION IN EUROPE AND THE WORLD

Focus Question: How did countries in Europe and around the world respond to the challenge of industrialization?

Industrialization in Continental Europe

When the pace of British industry accelerated, continental industries emulated the new methods. They faced many challenges; British goods were being produced very economically and these goods dominated the world markets, British technology had also become so advanced that few engineers outside of Britain understood it. Technology of steam power had grown much more expensive, with larger investments of the iron and coal industries and after 1830, in railroads. Continentals had a hard time gathering the money the new methods demanded, and laborer’s resisted the move to working in factories.

But western Europe had a number of advantages to combat these challenges. First most had rich traditions of putting-out empire, merchant capitalists, and skilled urban artisans. These assets gave their firms the ability to adapt and survive in the face of new market conditions. Second, continental capitalists did not need to develop their own advanced technology. Instead they borrowed the new methods developed in Great Britain. There final asset was they had strong, independent governments that did not fall under foreign political control. These governments would use the power of the state to promote industry and catch up with Britain. Most continental businesses adopted factory technology slowly and handicraft methods lived on.

Agents of Industrialization

The British realized the great value of their discoveries and tried to keep their secrets to themselves. Until 185, it was illegal for artisans and skilled mechanics to leave Britain; until 1843 the export of textile machinery and other equipment was forbidden, but many workers slipped out of the country illegally and introduced the new methods abroad. William Cockerill was a Lancashire carpenter, and he and his sons built cotton-spinning equipment. In 1817 the most famous son, John Cockerill built a large industrial empire which produced machinery, steam engines, and railway locomotives. Cockerill’s plants became a center for the gathering and transmitting of industrial information across Europe, thus showing British technicians were a powerful source in the spread of early industrialization. A second agent was the entrepreneurs, like Fritz Harkrot, who set up shot building steam engines.

National government played an even more important role in supporting industrialization, one support being Tariff Protection.

Tariff Protection: a government way of supporting and aiding its own economy by laying high taxes on imported goods from other countries

Custom agreements emerged from some German states creating a customs union, allowing goods to move between member states without tariffs, while erecting a single uniform tariff against other nations.

After 1815 continental governments bore the cost of building roads, canals, and railroads to improve transportation. Belgium led way and built rapidly as a unified network. Belgiums state-owned railroads stimulated the development of heavy industry, and made the country a early industrial leader. Banks played a larger role on the continent then in Britain. Previously almost all banks were private and due to the possibility of unlimited financial loss, the partners of private banks were more conservative and happy with a few rich clients and a few rich merchants. In the 1830’s two important Belgium banks to establish themselves as corporations enjoying limited liability. If the banks went bankrupt stock holders would lose only their original investment in the banks common stock and they could not be forced by the courts to pay for any additional losses out of other properties they owned. Limited liability attracted investors, they mobilized impressive resources for investment in big companies, became industrial banks and successfully promoted industrial development.

Usually working in collaboration with governments, corporate banks established and developed many railroads and many companies working in heavy industry, which were increasingly organized as limited liability corporations.

The Global Picture

The industrial Revolution did not have a transformative impact beyond Europe (except Japan and the United States) prior to the 1860’s despite efforts to adopt the technologies and methods of production, because they fell short of transitioning to an industrial economy. Both Russia and Egypt fell back on agricultural exports after attempts fell short for modernization due to people remaining in rural servitude and competition with lower-priced European imports.

Regions such as in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America tried to monopolize colonial markets as sources of raw materials and consumers instead of encouraging the spread of industrialization, as well as could not respond to low-cost imports by raising tariffs because they were controlled by imperial powers that didn’t allow them to do so.

Latin American companies were disrupted by the early nineteenth century wars of independence, and as there economies recovered they adopted steam power for sugar and coffee processing and transportation, supporting increased agricultural production for export and only later drove domestic industrial production. As in India the arrival of cheap British cottons destroyed the pre-existing textile industry that had employed many people. '

The rise of industrialization in Britain, western Europe and the United States left many other regions economically dependent and instead deindustrialized due to imperialism and economic competition. In China it continued as a market-based, commercial society with a massive rural structure and industrial production based on traditional methods. China faced widespread uprising drained its resources into the military.

NEW PATTERN OF WORKING AND LIVING

Focus Question: How did work evolve during the Industrial Revolution and how did daily life change for working people?

Work in Early Factories

The first factories of the Industrial Revolution was cotton-mills, along rivers and streams and were located in sparsely populated areas. Cottage workers were accustomed to the putting-out systems. In factories they had to follow the relentless tempo and show up everyday on time and then work long hours under constant supervision and were punished if they broke work rules. Comparing to setting their own pace, allowed to interrupt their work if they wished and Saturday night as a time for relaxation. Early factories also resembled English poorhouses increasing cottage workers dear of factories and their hatred of factory discipline, leading the mill owners to turn to children for labor.

Working Families and Children

In the 1790’s the pattern began ti change and pauper apprentices declined and in 1802 it was forbidden by the Parliament. More textile factories were being built in urban areas where they could sue steam power and could attract a work force more easily then in the countryside in some cases workers carried over familiar working traditions: families came to the mills or mine together where the mill or mine owner bargained with the head of the family and them for the efforts of the whole family, children worked for their mother and father and collect scraps and piecing broken threads together or in the mines sorted coal and worked the ventilation equipment.

Many urban workers in Britain were from Ireland because they were pushed out by population growth and deteriorating economic conditions, leading to most of the workers in Glasgow cotton mills Irish and in 1851 1/6 of the population of Liverpool Irish. However technical changed made it less likely that workers could continue to labor in a family groups as adult workers protested against inhumane conditions on behalf of the children. These efforts resulted in a series of British Factory Acts from 1802-1833.

Factory Acts: limited the workday of child laborers and set minimum hygiene and safety requirements.

This installed a system of full-time professional inspectors to enforce the provisions of previous acts. The Factory Acts presented significant progress in exploitation of children.

The New Sexual Division of Labor

The restriction of child labor and the collapse of the family work pattern in the 1830’s came. a new sexual division of labor. By 1850 the man was emerging as the primary wage earner, while the married woman found limited job opportunities.

Separate Spheres: a gender division of labor with the wife at home as a mother and homemaker and the husband as wage earner

Studies agree that married woman from the working class were much less likely to work full-time for wages, beside the earned small amounts of doing putting-out handcrafts at home and taking in boarders. Second when married women did work for wages they came from the poorest family. Third the poor married or widowed women joined young unmarried women who worked full time but only in textile factories, laundering, and domestic service. Fourth all women were confined to low-paying, dead end jobs.

Several factors brought about this new sexual division of labor. New and unfamiliar discipline of the clock and the machine was hard on married women, relentless factory discipline conflicted with child care.