Chapter 20
In This Chapter
• The origins of the Industrial Revolution
• The early industrialization
• Reaction to the Industrial Revolution
• The Industrial Revolution expands
• The transformation of culture and industrialization
The Industrial Revolution that started in Great Britain during the late 1700s was the practical application of the knowledge gained from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. This revolution created and spread modernization to the world.
The Industrial Revolution Begins
Why did the Industrial Revolution start in Great Britain during the 1780s rather than elsewhere? The agricultural practices of Great Britain duringthe eighteenth century had changed, resulting in more food at lower prices. Ordinary families had more money with which to buy manufacturedgoods. More food also meant families had more children, resulting in a population surge that became a large labor force.
The trading policies of the British Empire based on Enlightenment ideas about free trade also helped. Many entrepreneurs had become wealthy off of commerce and wanted to invest that newfound wealth. The British Empire itself was a large untapped market for manufactured goods, which encouraged industrial development.Finally, natural resources such as coal and iron ore—used to fuel the Industrial Revolution—were abundant and easy to acquire in Great Britain.
Oh, So Soft
The cotton industry in Britain was originally a cottage industry, in which industrial production was actually done by individual families who produced cloth in their homes. The process of producing cotton was broken down into two parts: spinningand weaving. Spinning or making thread became faster with the invention of the spinning jenny by James Hargreaves in 1768. Weaving also became much faster with the flying shuttle and then the water-powered loom invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1787.
What in the World
James Hargreaves, who named his invention the spinningjenny after his wife, tried to keep the invention a secret but to no avail. Others became suspiciousof the large amounts of yarn his family produced. In anger they broke into his house and when they found his spinning jenny, the mob of workers destroyed it.
Soon cotton mills emerged near streams and rivers across Britain. Later with the invention of the steam engine by James Watt, looms and machinery did not need to be located near rivers and streams. The cotton industry had become quite profitable.Raw cotton was imported from the southern United States and India, made into cotton cloth, and exported throughout the world. By 1840, it was Britain’s most valuable export.
Black Coal and Iron Rails
With the invention of the coal-fired steam engine, coal had to be mined in Britain in large quantities. Additionally, iron was used to build the tools and machines of the mills. This industrial production also depended on coal mining. Thus the new industry of coal mining spread across Britain.
definition
Coke is the coal created after most of the gases have been removed from it by heating it. This form of coal burns with intense heat and little smoke.
Iron production also improved to keep pace with the demands of the cotton mills. The process of puddling was invented by Henry Cort. In this process,coke derived from coal was used to burn away the impurities found in crude iron. This allowed for the production of better quality iron. With better quality iron, the demand for iron increased and the iron industry grew exponentially in Britain.
With the expanding production and demand for cotton, coal, and iron, transportationbecame a priority. As a result in 1804, the first steam-powered locomotive operated on an industrial rail-line. By the mid-nineteenth century, there were over 5,000 miles of railroad in Britain.
The emergence of the railroad meant that it was less expensive to ship goods to the market, which helped lower prices across the board. Additionally, there were more and larger markets for goods, which meant more sales, which meant that the economy of Britain was booming.
The Spread of the Industrial Revolution
By industrializing first, Britain was producing one half of the world’s coal and manufacturedgoods. As a result, it became one of the richest and most powerful nations of the nineteenth century. The British wanted to keep the technology of industrializationto themselves, but they could not. During the early nineteenth century, Belgium, France, and the German states actively encouraged industrialization with strong government support for industry.
In due time, the Industrial Revolution spread to North America. Six out of seven workers were involved in agriculture at the start of the nineteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, only 50 percent of the workers in America were farmers.
The geographic center of this industrializationwas the northeast; eventually, roads and canals linked this region to the rest of the United States and the goods of industrialization became readily available to the whole population. Transportation of goods and people also improved with the invention of the wheel steamboat in 1807. Additionally by the mid-nineteenth century, there were over 30,000 miles of railroad in the United States. All of which allowed industrialization in the United States to catch up with Europe.
Notable Quotable
"By machines mankind are able to do that which their own bodily powers would never effect to the same extent. Machines are the produce of the mind of man; and their existence distinguishes the civilized man from the savage.”
—William Cobbett, “A Letter to the Luddites,” 1816
The Social Impact
The social impact of the Industrial Revolution was significant. The population of Europe and America exploded, doubling the world population from 1800 to 1850. There was a decline in death, wars, and diseases. People were well fed and more resistantto diseases. Famine in Europe and America virtually disappeared.
With Britain’s economic boom, factories for different industries emerged across the country. These factories created new jobs and a new labor system. Workers were forced to work in shifts based on set hours and duties. Families, including women and children, went to work in the factories, which were not entirely safe. British society began to change as a result of this population shift.
An industrial middle class emerged—the people who built and managed the factories, bought the machines, and predicted the markets for goods. Another class also emerged, the working class. Men, women, and children typically worked in the factories, sometimes12 to 16 hours a day. Most were unskilled and replaceable.
In time, children and women were prevented from working excessive hours, but working class men continued the long hours well into the early twentieth century. Both classes of people flocked to the cities, most of which were unprepared for the population surge and became large, crowded, unclean, and unsafe.
The Industrial Revolution Reloaded
The Industrial Revolution advanced even further during the second half of the nineteenthcentury. From 1870 to 1914, steel replaced iron in industry. It was lighter and could be used in the production of faster machines, engines, railways, ships, and weapons.
Electricity was converted into heat, light, and motion. Factories became filled with conveyor belts and cranes, which sped up production. Electric light bulbs, invented by Thomas Edison, allowed factories to operate effectively night and day. The inventionof the telephone in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell and the use of radio waves by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901 improved communication and commerce.
Finally, the internal combustion engine powered not by steam but by oil and gasoline revolutionized transportation. Goods traveled to market faster and cheaper than ever before. The world suddenly grew smaller as more people traveled greater distances with the emergence of ocean liners, airplanes, and automobiles.
New Trends and Global Patterns
These new developments created new trends in Europe and America. There was a sharp increase in the use of manufactured products. People became more dependent on the work of others to provide food, clothing, and shelter. Wages for workers increased as production became more advanced and specialized. The price of production goods fell as transportation and production became cheaper. And finally, the first department stores emerged during the late nineteenth century as the population spent more money on more availably produced goods.
As a result of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America, a new global economicpattern emerged. Western Europe advanced industrially, while Eastern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula remained primarily agricultural. Additionally, Europeans received beef and wool from Argentina and Australia, coffee from Brazil, iron ore from Algeria, and sugar from Java. In exchange for these raw materials, the Europeans supplied those countries manufactured goods. In this exchange the Europeans received the most control and profit, making those countries dependent on Europe. So by the beginning of the twentieth century, Europe dominated the world market and as a result dominated the world politically.
Competing Philosophies
During the late nineteenth century in reaction to industrialization and its inequities, social parties, trade unions, and other more radical philosophies emerged in Europe and America. The negative results of the Industrial Revolution brought some creative and progressive responses.
Utopians Seek Perfection
Some people sought to create alternative, utopian societies based on the belief that humans would show their natural goodness if they lived in a cooperative environment. Robert Owen, a successful cotton manufacturer,was a prominent utopian socialist who sponsored two utopian communities. The community in New Lanark, Scotland, was a success, but his community in New Harmony, Indiana, was a failure.
definition
A utopian community is founded upon ideas envisioning perfection in social and political organization.These communities are generally considered to be very idealistic.
Workers Wake Up
Marxism was a radical movement that formed as the result of the inequalities of industrialization. It was based on the case for a new social system Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made in their joint work, The Communist Manifesto.
According to Marx and Engels, world history was a history of “class struggles” between the bourgeoisie, or middle class, and the proletariat, or working class. They believed that, eventually, the proletariat would revolt and take control of the means of production and see to it that resources and rewards were distributed evenly. The end result would be a classless society.
What in the World
Peasants in the Netherlands wore traditional wooden shoes called sabots to work. When they started to be employed in the factories, they were intimidated by the speed and efficiency of the machines. So the workers threw their sabots into the machines to destroy the machines. Later the act became known as sabotage.
The theory was that this was a natural process that might need a little push, in the form of a violent revolution. Not surprisingly, Marx and Engels were popular with the working class and not so popular with the middle class. Marxists tried to spread their ideas among the working class through newspapers and meetings and gained enough support to create political parties in the late nineteenth century.
Adherents to socialism were less radical than the Marxists and took a reformist approach to the inequalities of worldwide industrialization and capitalism.They believed in the equality of all people and wanted competition to be replaced with cooperation, but they wanted governmentto control the means of production to create equity. Socialist parties organized in the late nineteenth century in Europe. The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) worked to improve the conditions of the working class. By 1912, they held a majority of the seats in Germany’s parliament. The Second International was a group of several socialist parties who met in 1889.
Partly as an outgrowth of Marxist and socialist thought, the workers’ union movement gained strength during the second half of the nineteenth century. Helped by the abilityto strike, unions improved the working conditions for workers by shortening work hours and increasing wages.
This Is the Modern World
The push and pull of forces of progress and reform unleashed by the Industrial Revolutioncontinued to significantly change the urban landscape and social structure.
Cities and Societies
A new urban landscape emerged from the crowded industrialized cities. Society’s poor and working classes became a political concern like never before because, in dense urban populations, they were the key to political power. As a result, elected officials in city governments started to regulate housing and initiate the developmentof new city systems of aqueducts, tunnels, and pipes to improve sanitation. As a result, although cities grew at a fast rate, living conditions actually began to improve.
Social structures in industrialized countries also continued to change during the second half of the nineteenth century. A new elite class emerged at the top of the social structure. Five percent of the population controlled 40 percent of the wealth and included landed aristocrats, industrialists, bankers, merchants, and government leaders. Below the elite class were the middle class, who were hard working and usually followed a strict Christian morality. The upper middle class included the managers of industry, while the lower middle class were generally shopkeepers who provided goods and services. Finally, the working class, mostly skilled and unskilled factory workers and domestic servants, continued to grow. They made up close to 80 percent of the population of Europe, and thanks to the spread of democracy and Enlightenment reforms, they had better political and economic prospects than lower classes had ever enjoyed.
Improvements for Women
The Industrial Revolution also brought a change in the status of women in Europe and America. Traditional farms had needed lots of farmhands—kids—but, since most of the population migrated from the farm, the number of births per woman declined. This gave women a degree of freedom. Middle class women used this freedom to stay at home and raise the family. Working class women used this freedom to enter the work force as unskilled laborers, clerks, or domestic servants.
During the early nineteenth century, the feminist movement emerged from Europe possibly in response to new positions in society that women obtained. By 1870 in Great Britain, women received the right to own property and gained access to universities.Women also fought for political rights beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, women had acquired the right to vote. And although careers were still socially limited to women, they made initial steps in the career fields of education and nursing.
Yes, You Have to Go to School!
During the time of the Industrial Revolution, universal education for all citizens became a priority for several reasons. First, if children were in school, they weren’t running in the streets or working in unsafe factories. Additionally, there was a new need for skilled laborers in the factories of the late nineteenth century. Education created better skilled laborers.
Finally, education made informed citizens who could be trusted to vote and defend the interests of the nation. With these benefits in mind, governments financed primaryschools and forced children to attend from the ages of 6 to 12 at least. As a result, literacy rates in Europe and America rose dramatically. This also gave rise to the importance of newspapers in the late nineteenth century, which tended to be sensationalisticand easy to read. (Not much has changed!)
Too Much Time on Their Hands
The last development that resulted from the Industrial Revolution was the increase of leisure time among the population. People had more time available to them than ever before. Unions and technological developments gave the public evening hours, weekends, and sometimes even two weeks in the summer to enjoy. Electric lights allowed events and activities to go on all night. Tacky, colorful, and fun amusement parks sprouted up across Europe and America. Governments created nature parks for families to get away from urban crowding and stress.
Athletic events such as baseball, football, soccer, rugby, cricket, and basketball became popular to play. People also watched professionals play these games in the new stadiums being built in the cities. If those activities were not interesting, the public went to the theater in the evenings to see plays and musicals.
Mixed Reviews
In the end, the Industrial Revolution began the modernization of the world at first in Europe and the United States. This was a good thing. The quality of life increased with each passing year throughout the world. But this development allowed the West to continue its domination of global economics and politics. Most of the other countriesof the world were forced to play catch-up and be subservient to Western wishes. Resentment toward the West started to build while competition in the West also started to heat up. All of which led to a tumultuous twentieth century.
The Least You Need to Know
• The Industrial Revolution was the result of the practical application of the ideas of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.
• The Industrial Revolution spread from Great Britain to Europe and America during the first half of the nineteenth century.
• The industrialization of nations changed the nature of culture and society significantlyby the second half of the nineteenth century.
• Marxism, socialism, and unions represent some of the response to the inequalitiesof a new industrialized society.