Growth of Rural industry

Turnip Townshend

His remaining years were passed at Raynham, where he interested himself in agriculture. He died at Raynham on 21 June 1738.[1] He promoted adoption of the Norfolk four-course system, involving rotation of turnips, barley, clover, and wheat crops. He was an enthusiastic advocate of growing turnips as a field crop, for livestock feed.[6] As a result of his promotion of turnip-growing and his agricultural experiments at Raynham, he became known as "Turnip Townshend". (Alexander Pope mentions "Townshend's turnips" in Imitations of Horace, Epistle II.) Townshend is often mentioned, together with Jethro Tull, Robert Bakewell, and others, as a major figure in England's "Agricultural Revolution", contributing to adoption of agricultural practices that supported the increase in Britain's population between 1700 and 1850.

cottage industry

A stage of industrial development in which rural workers used hand tools in their homes to manufacture goods on a large scale for sale in a market. Peasants worked with hand tools in their cottages and work sheds. The pressures of rural poverty led many poor villagers to seek additional work and far-reaching changes for daily rural life were set in motion.

competitive advantage of putting out system

First, there were many underemployed labor and poor peasants and landless laborers would work for low wages. Second, since production in the countryside was unregulated, workers and merchants could change procedures and experiment as they saw fit. Third, because workers did not need to meet rigid guild standards, cottage industry became capable of producing many kinds of goods. This system did not spread evenly throughout Europe. It succeeded in England for spinning and weaving of woolen cloth. Most continental countries with the exception of Flanders and the Dutch Republic, developed rural industry more slowly.

Merchant role in textile industry

For merchants capitalist's point of view, the problem was not low wages but maintaining control over the labor force. Cottage workers were scattered across the countryside and their work depended on the agricultural calendar. In spring and late summer, planting and haymaking occupied all hands in the rural village, leading to shortages in the supply of thread. Merchants bitterly resented their lack of control over rural labor because their own livelihood depended on their ability to meet orders on time. They falsely accused women worker of being lazy, drunkenness and immorality. If workers failed to produce enough thread, they reasoned, it must be because their wages were too high and they had little incentive to work hard. Merchants thus insisted on maintaining the lowest possible wages to force the "idle" poor into productive labor. They also lobbied for, and obtained, new police powers over workers. Imprisonment and public whipping became common punishments for pilfering small amounts of yard or cloth. For poor workers, their right to hold on to the its and pieces left over in the production process was akin to the traditional peasant right of gleaning in common lands. With progress came the loss of traditional safeguards for the poor.

Putting out system

The eighteenth- century system of rural industry in which a merchant loaned raw materials to cottage workers, who processed them and returned the finished products to the merchant. The merchant capitalist loaned or "put out" raw materials to cottage workers who processed the raw materials in their own homes and returned the finished products to the merchant. As industry grew in scale and complexity, production was often broken into many stages. For example, a merchant would provide raw wool to one group of workers for spinning into thread. He would then pass then pass the thread to another group of workers to be bleached, to another for dyeing and to another for weaving into cloth. The merchant paid outworkers by the piece and proceeded to sell the finished product to regional, national or international markets. This system grew because it had competitive advantages.

Industrial Revolution

The shift that occurred as families in northwestern Europe focused on earing wages instead of producing good for household consumption; this reduced their economic self-sufficiency but increased their ability to purchase consumer goods. It took place in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. This occurred as households reduced leisure time, stepped up the pace of work and most important redirected the labor of women and children away from the production of goods for household consumption and toward wage work. In the countryside, the spread of cottage industry can be seen as one manifestation of the industrious revolution. In the cities there was a rise in female employment outside the home. By working harder and increasing the number of wageworkers, rural and urban households could purchase more goods, even in a time of stagnant or falling wages. Some historian believe that these changes allowed poor families to make decisions based on their own self-interests. With more finished goods available at lower prices, households sought cash income to participate in an emerging consumer economy. Industrial Revolution created households in which all members worked for wages rather than in a family business and in which consumptions relied on market-produced rather than homemade goods. In the mid-19th century with rising industrial wages that a new model emerged in which the male "breadwinner" was expected o earn enough to support the whole family and women and children returned to domestic duties. Now with 40% of women in the workforce, we are in a second industrious revolution in a similar climate of stagnant wages and increased demand for consumer good.

Textile workers

Until 19th century, the industry that employed the most people in Europe was textiles. Handloom weaving was a family enterprise. All members of the family helped in the work. Operating the loom was usually considered a man's job reserved for the male head of the family. Women and children worked at auxiliary tasks: they prepared the warp (vertical) threads and mounted them on the loom, wound threads on bobbins for the weft (horizontal) threads. Sometimes operated the warp frame while the father passed the shuttle. The work of 4-5 spinners were needed to keep one weaver steadily employed. So the merchants hired the wives and daughters of agricultural workers who took on spinning work in their spare time. In England, many widows and single women also became :Spinsters: so many in fact that the word became a synonym for an unmarried woman. In parts of Germany, spinning employed whole families and was not reserved for women. The relationship between merchants and cottage workers were often in conflict. There were constant disputes over the weights or materials and the quality of finished work. Merchants accused workers of stealing raw materials and weavers complained that merchants delivered underweight bales. Suspicion abounded. For women, they did not get the same wages as men because they were not considered the family's primary wage earner. In England's Yorkshire wool industry, male wool comber earned a good wage of 12 shillings or more a week, while a female spinner could hope for only 3 1/2 shillings

The role of women and girls in Industrial Revolution

When women entered the labor market, they almost always worked at menial, tedious jobs for very low wages. Women used their own wages for household necessities, items for food and clothing they could no longer produce now that they worked full-time but sometimes they could spent few shillings left over for ribbons or a new pair of stockings for themselves. women's use of their surplus income thus helped increase the rapid growth of the textile industries in which they labored so hard.