The
Industrial Revolution

1750-1850

What is the Industrial Revolution?

Origins:

•

Francis Bacon believed that science could be applied to the solution of practical problems. He wondered how man could enjoy freedom if he had to constantly work for the things necessary for his survival. His solution?      

MACHINES

•

To him, their labor would allow man to work in other areas.                 

 “Knowledge is Power.”

•
  • Occurred when new inventors began to develop factories, ending the Domestic System that had previously guided manufacturing. But it’s more than machines, factories, increased productivity and an increased standard of living.
  • It transformed European society. Everyone was touched in some way – peasant and noble, parent and child, artisan and captain of industry.
  • It made the European working- and middle-classes. Men were no longer treated as men, but rather as a commodity to be sold on the open market

What happened during the Industrial Revolution?

  • Invention of new machinery
  • Consumer demands met, new ones created (marketing, style changes…)
  • Standard of Living raised
  • Environmental/ Living / Working Problems

What made Britain ideal?

  • Population (Agric. Rev.)

            -- Increased birth rate (nutrition)

            -- Migration to cities for jobs due to the EnclosureMovement

  1.         
  • Sustained Economic Growth
            -- 1st time that the economy of Europe had managed to expand at an almost uninterrupted pace –

            -- Before, economy had grown until it hhit a plateau

 

Great Britain – Industry’s Home

  • Maintained the industrial leadership of Europe until the 19th c.
  • What caused this?

            -- Britain led the Consumer Revolution<

                      -- It was the center of fashion and tasste
                      --– Newspapers (advertising)
                      -- The Social Structure allowed for imitation
                      -- –Had many colonies to furnish raw materials and act as markets for manufactured goods
                      -- –Technical know-how due to Scientific Revolution
                    –  -- Largest Free-Trade Area of Europe
                      -- •Good roads & Waterways
                    •  -- Rich deposits of coal and iron ore
                    •  -- Stable political structure
                    •  -- Sound banking system (had capital to invest)
                    •  -- Heavy, but fair, indirect taxation
                    –  -- British society was mobile
                    •  -- Persons with money could rise socially
                    •  -- None of these alone caused the Revolution. Added to the progress made in agriculture, it gave Britain an advantage over    other countries
Textile Production
  • •Textile production pioneered the Ind. Rev.
  • •Most of the early industrial change took place in the countryside, not the cities
  • –The peasant family was the means of production
–Putting Out System
  • •Textile merchants took wool and unfinished fibers to peasant homes to be spun into thread. It was then given to other peasants to weave it into the finished product. Thousands had spinning wheels or hand looms.

 

The “Spinning Jenny”
  • •More thread was needed for the weavers
  • •1765 – James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny
  • •Initially allowed 16 spindles of thread to be spun, but by the end of the 18th c., it had increased to 120 spindles
      The Water Frame
  • •Patented in 1769 by Richard Awkwright
  • •This was the invention that took cotton textile manufacture out of the home and put it into the factory
  • •A water-powered device that produced a purely cotton fabric, rather than cotton w/linen fibers (durability)
  • •Factories sprang up in countryside near streams to provide the water power
  • •Cotton output   by 800% btw. 1780 and 1800; made up over 50% of Britain’s domestic import values (1830)
Other important textile inventions…
  • Flying Shuttle
        -- –John Kay (1733)

–        -- Allowed one weaver to operate a loom rather than two

  • •Crompton’s Mule
-- –Samuel Crompton (1779)

-- –Combined the best features of the spinning jenny and the water frame

  • Power Loom
–                    -- Edmund Cartwright (1785)
  • Cotton Gin

–-- Eli Whitney (1793)

-- Removed the seeds from cotton fibers. The demand for raw cotton grew, but removing the seeds from the cotton made it difficult to meet the demand.
  • Standardized, interchangeable parts
        This Sounds Great! However…
  •                 The social ramifications of industrialism did not occur immediately
                        –Why?
  •             The first cotton mills used water power, were located in the country, and rarely employed more than 2 dozen     workers

What new invention from the late 18th century will finally combine urbanization and industrialism????

 

The Steam Engine

  • Development:
                –1700: Thomas Savery built a practical steam pump
                –1712: Thomas Newcomen built as steam engine to pump water from a coal mine (problem: wasted fuel)
•                1769: James Watt patented a more efficient version of the Newcomen engine (much less fuel)
  • •It provided a steady and potentially unlimited source of energy
  • •Powered by coal, it provided a portable source of industrial power that did not fail or falter as seasons changed, unlike those engines powered by water or wind
  • •Could be applied to transportation as well as industrial uses
Iron
  • •Traditionally, iron was smelted in extremely hot ovens fueled by charcoal
  • •However, by the 18th c., Britain was devoid of forests, and the resultant lack of charcoal limited the production of iron
  • •Abraham Darby discovered a new means of smelting iron using coal
  • •As a result, more productive machinery made of iron replaced those previously made from wood
Railroads
  • •The development of the steam engine and improvements in the quality of iron led to the creation of railroads
                •1825 – George Stephenson first to develop an economically successful locomotive
  • •Boom in RR construction

                1830: only a few miles in operation

–      1870: ~900,000 miles of European railway
What were the Impacts of Industrialization?

It Changed life in Europe

  • •How?
–                By fueling the growth and development of new cities
•                Problems!
  • –By affecting the family structure
•                Problems!
Growth of Cities & Population Areas
  • •Britain -- 1st country to have more people in cities than countryside
  • •Between 1600 and 1750, the cities that grew most vigorously were capitals and ports
                –Why? Overseas Trade
  • •Mid-18th c. – Growth rate of existing large cities declined, while new cities began to grow
–            Why?
                    •Overall population increase
  • •The early Ind. Rev. fostered growth of small towns and cities near the factories
  • •Factory organization led to new concentrations of population
  • •Agriculture – cities grew up near by market towns
Impact on Working Women
  • •Before the Ind. Rev., women worked with spinning wheels. However, large spinning jennies required a factory setting run by men. Women spinners now out of work / without a traditional source of income
  • •They turned to domestic or cottage industries (knitting, button making, etc.) Considered inferior and were poorly paid.
  • •Thousands became domestic servants

•Results?

  1. – Women’s work becomes associated with the home
  2. –People assume only women can do that type of work
  3. –Assumed women worked only to supplement spouse’s income
Problems!
  • •The new cities were awful places for the working poor
  • –Factory Conditions
•        -- Poor ventilation and sanitation
        -- •12-18 hour days
–
  • Living Conditions
         -- •Overcrowding, Slums
–
  • Child Labor
•         -- Women & Children cost less than men
  • –High Mortality Rates
          -- •Working Conditions
•          -- Disease (Cholera)
Responses to Industrialization
  • •Workers began to form illegal trade unions
  • •Many went on strike or rioted
  • –Some blamed the machine industry for their low wages and unemployment.
  • •Socialism

       -- –Some believed a complete overhaul to an oppressive society was necessary

            –Karl Marx and scientific socialism
 

The Luddites (1811-1816)

  • •In the early months of 1811, workers, upset by wage reductions and the use of unapprenticed workmen, began to break into factories at night to destroy the new machines that the employers were using. In a three-week period over two hundred stocking frames were destroyed.
  • •In 1812, 8 men in Lancashire were sentenced to death, 13 transported to Australia for attacks on cotton mills, while another 15 were executed at York. This was followed by further sporadic outbreaks of violence, but by 1817 the Luddite movement had ceased to be active in Britain.
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