Chapter 20: The Industrial Evolution and it's Impact on European Society
What major natural sources did Britain have available that helped it to industrialize early?
- coal and iron ore, needed in the manufacturing process, abundant rivers - both private and public investment poured into the construction of new roads, bridges, and, beginning in the 1750s and 1760s, canals. By 1780, roads, rivers, and canals linked the major industrial centers of the North, the Midlands, London, and the Atlantic.
How did the Continent develop the techniques and practices to industrialize?
- the continental countries could simply borrow British techniques and practices. - Already by 1825, there were at least two thousand skilled British mechanics on the continent, and British equipment was also being sold abroad, legally or illegally. - Gradually, the continent achieved technological independence as local people learned all the skills their British teachers had to offer. - By the 1840s, new generations of skilled mechanics from Belgium and France were spreading their knowledge east and south, playing the same role that the British had earlier. - continental countries, especially France and the German states, began to establish a wide range of technical schools to train engineers and mechanics.
how did the functions and populations of cities change from before and after the industrial revolution?
Before: centers for princely courts, government and military offices, churches, and commerce, lower population After: places for manufacturing and industry (locating plants in urban centers for access to unemployed people and transportation), higher population
When and in what place did the Industrial Revolution begin?
It began in Britain sometime after 1750. - By 1850, the Industrial Revolution had made Great Britain the wealthiest country in the world; it had also spread to the European continent and the New World. - In another fifty years, both Germany and the United States would surpass Britain in industrial production.
What was the most important single factor in promoting European economic progress in the 1830s and 1840s?
- railroads were the "most important single factor in promoting European economic progress in the 1830s and 1840s." Again, Britain was the leader in the revolution. - The railways got their start in mining operations in coal mines where small handcarts filled with coal were pushed along parallel wooden rails. The rails reduced friction, enabling horses to haul more substantial loads. - By 1700, some entrepreneurs began to replace wooden rails with cast-iron rails, and by the early nineteenth century, railways—still dependent on horsepower—were common in British mining and industrial districts.
What led to the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824?
- Bitter strikes were carried out by miners in Northumberland and Durham in 1810, hand-loom weavers in Glasgow in 1813, and cotton spinners in Manchester in 1818 - Such blatant illegal activity caused Parliament to repeal the Combination Acts in 1824, accepting the argument of some members that the acts themselves had so alienated workers that they had formed unions. Unions were now tolerated, but other legislation enabled authorities to keep close watch over their activities.
What were the Combination Acts? We often view Britain as rather economically liberal in the early days of industrialization, but how was Britain relatively conservative with respect to the Combination Acts?
- The British government, reacting against the radicalism of the French revolutionary working classes, had passed the Combination Acts in 1799 and 1800 outlawing associations of workers. - The legislation failed to prevent the formation of trade unions, however
Why were factories so much more efficient than the previous putting out system? (3 specific pieces of supporting evidence)
- The water frame, Crompton's mule, and power looms presented new opportunities to entrepreneurs. It was much more efficient to bring workers to the machines and organize their labor collectively in factories located next to rivers and streams, the sources of power for many of these early machines, than to leave the workers dispersed in their cottages. - The concentration of labor in the new factories also brought the laborers and their families to live in the new towns that rapidly grew up around the factories. - the subsequent expansion of the cotton industry and the ongoing demand for even more cotton goods created additional pressure for new and more complicated technology.
Explain why the population growth continued to explode in to the 19th century. (Hint, several factors at play)
(In the nineteenth century, governments began to take periodic censuses and systematically collect precise data on births, deaths, and marriages.) - This population explosion cannot be explained by a higher birthrate, for birthrates were declining after 1790. - The key to the expansion of population was the decline in death rates evident throughout Europe. attributed to: a drop in the number of deaths from famines, epidemics, and war.
What kind of emigration took place in the first half of the 19th century? Where did most emigrants come from? Where did they mostly go? (Not America)
- Between 1821 and 1850, the number of emigrants from Europe averaged about 110,000 a year. Most of these emigrants came from places like Ireland and southern Germany - Bad harvests in Europe in 1846-1847 (such as the catastrophe in Ireland) produced massive numbers of emigrants. In addition to the estimated 1.6 million from Ireland, for example, 935,000 people left Germany between 1847 and 1854 - More often than emigrating, however, the rural masses sought a solution to their poverty by moving to towns and cities within their own countries to find work.
How important was child labor to the industrial expansion of the time? Why were they a sought after group? (Should be a multi-faceted response)
- Children had an especially delicate touch as spinners of cotton. Their smaller size made it easier for them to crawl under machines to gather loose cotton. children were more easily broken to factory work. children represented a cheap supply of labor. - children made up a particularly abundant supply of labor, and they were paid only about one-sixth to one-third of what a man was paid. In the cotton factories in 1838, children under eighteen made up 29 percent of the total workforce; children as young as seven worked twelve to fifteen hours per day, six days a week, in cotton mills. - pauper apprentices (orphans) were apprenticed to local factories for cheap labor, long hours, strict discipline, no recreation. They became deformed
Many historians have argued that industrialization improved the peoples' diets. According to Spielvogel, what other effect did industrialization have on food?
- Consumers were defrauded in a variety of ways: alum was added to make bread look white and hence more expensive; beer and milk were watered down; and red lead, despite its poisonous qualities, was substituted for pepper. The government refused to intervene - It was not until 1875 that an effective food and drug act was passed in Britain.
Why was factory work so different from the work performed by agricultural laborers?
- Employers hired workers who no longer owned the means of production but were simply paid wages to run the machines. - Factory owners could not afford to let their expensive machinery stand idle. Workers were forced to work regular hours and in shifts to keep the machines producing at a steady pace for maximum output. (massive adjustment for early factory laborers, Agricultural laborers had always kept irregular hours; hectic work at harvest time might be followed by weeks of inactivity)
How did Russia operate during the age of industrialization?
- Even in eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. - Russia remained largely rural and agricultural, and its autocratic rulers kept the peasants in serfdom. There was not much of a middle class, and the tsarist regime, fearful of change, preferred to import industrial goods in return for the export of raw materials, such as grain and timber. - Russia would not have its Industrial Revolution until the end of the nineteenth century.
Describe how the working (or laborer) class of Britain and other places was actually a myriad of different groups. What variety of different kinds of work did these laborers perform in particularly the first half of the 19th century?
- Factory workers would eventually form an industrial proletariat, but in the first half of the century, they did not constitute a majority of the working class in any major city, even in Britain - According to the 1851 census, there were 1.8 million agricultural laborers and 1 million domestic servants in Britain but only 811,000 workers in the cotton and woolen industries. And one-third of these were still working in small workshops or at home.
Which segment of the population benefited most from the industrialization in America? What do historians say about the remainder of the population?
- In the Northeast, the most industrialized section of the country, per capita income was 40 percent higher than the national average. - Diets, it has been argued, were better and more varied - the richest 10 percent of the population in the cities held 70 to 80 percent of the wealth, compared to 50 percent in 1800. - while the rich got richer, the poor, thanks to an increase in their purchasing power, did not get poorer.
What happened to the skilled craftspeople (and artisan guilds) as the industrial revolution marched onward? Why is this significant in terms of the overall economy?
- In the cities, artisans or craftspeople remained the largest group of urban workers during the first half of the nineteenth century. - worked in numerous small industries, such as shoemaking, glovemaking, bookbinding, printing, and bricklaying. Some craftspeople, especially those employed in such luxury trades as coach building and clock making, formed a kind of aristocracy of labor and earned higher wages than others - Fearful of losing out to the new factories that could produce goods more cheaply, artisans tended to support movements against industrialization. Industrialists welcomed the decline of skilled craftspeople
What changed in the process of making iron during the Industrial Revolution that made British iron so desirable?
- In the early eighteenth century, new methods of smelting iron ore to produce cast iron were devised, based on the use of coke or "courke" that was made by slowly burning coal. Coke could heat iron ore at a faster rate than charcoal, thus yielding higher amounts. - a better quality of iron was not possible until the 1780s, when Henry Cort developed a process called puddling in which coke was used to burn away impurities in pig iron (the product of smelting iron ore with coke) to produce an iron of high quality called wrought iron. Wrought iron, with its lower carbon content, was malleable and able to withstand strain. A boom then ensued in the British iron industry. - The high-quality wrought iron produced by the Cort process made it the most widely used metal until the production of cheaper steel in the 1860s.
Who were the Darbys and Lloyds / Barclays and Lloyds
- Members of dissenting religious minorities were often prominent among the early industrial leaders of Britain - The Darbys and Lloyds, who were iron manufacturers; the Barclays and Lloyds, who were bankers; and the Trumans and Perkins, who were brewers, were all Quakers. - expensive trades and depended on the financial support that coreligionists in religious minorities provided for each other. - Legally excluded from many public offices, they directed their ambitions into the new industrial capitalism.
Describe the kinds of women that worked as laborers in terms of demographics. In what ways did women's working patterns NOT change during the industrial revolution?
- Men migrating from the countryside to industrial towns and cities took their wives and children with them into the factory or into the mines. - throughout the nineteenth century, traditional types of female labor still predominated in the women's work world. In 1851, fully 40 percent of the female workforce in Britain consisted of domestic servants. In France, the largest group of female workers, 40 percent, worked in agriculture. In addition, only 20 percent of female workers in Britain labored in factories, and only 10 percent did so in France. - Regional and local studies have also found that most of the workers were single women. - Few married women worked outside the home.
What role did Richard Trevithick and George Stephenson each play in the industrial revolution? What were their innovations used for (hint, it served many purposes)?
- Richard Trevithick: pioneered the first steam-powered locomotive on an industrial rail line in southern Wales. It pulled 10 tons of ore and seventy people at 5 miles per hour. - George Stephenson: (and his son): built better locomotives, and it was in their workshops in Newcastle-upon-Tyne that the locomotives for the first modern railways in Britain were built. George Stephenson's Rocket was used on the first public railway line, which opened in 1830, extending 32 miles from Liverpool to Manchester. Rocket sped along at 16 miles per hour.
What wow the sanitary conditions like in the cities? Who is Charles Dickens? Summarize his description of urban England.
- Sanitary conditions in these towns were appalling. Due to the lack of municipal direction, city streets were often used as sewers and open drains - Unable to deal with human excrement, cities in the new industrial era smelled horrible and were extraordinarily unhealthy. The burning of coal blackened towns and cities with soot - Charles dickens was an English author - "A long suburb of red brick houses—some with patches of garden ground, where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and coarse rank flowers; and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace."
How was religion used to improve the efficiency of factories?
- The efforts of factory owners in the early Industrial Revolution to impose a new set of values were frequently reinforced by the new evangelical churches. - Methodism, in particular, emphasized that people "reborn in Jesus" must forgo immoderation and follow a disciplined path. Laziness and wasteful habits were sinful. The acceptance of hardship in this life paved the way for the joys of the next. Evangelical values paralleled the efforts of the new factory owners to instill laborers with their own middle-class values of hard work, discipline, and thrift.
Socially, how did the labor reform laws change how family units operated from the beginning of industrialism to the later parts of the 19th century? Outside of work, how are children raised during this time?
- The factory acts that limited the work hours of children and women also began to break up the traditional kinship pattern of work and led to a new pattern based on a separation of work and home. - Men came to be regarded as responsible for the primary work obligations as women assumed daily control of the family and performed low-paying jobs such as laundry work that could be done in the home. Domestic industry made it possible for women to continue their contributions to family survival. - Beatings, for example, had long been regarded, even by dedicated churchmen and churchwomen, as the best way to discipline children.
How was the path to the industrialization different in America than that of Britain? What was so revolutionary absolute the idea of interchangeable parts on the musket production?
- The initial application of machinery to production was accomplished, as in continental Europe, by borrowing from Great Britain. - Samuel Slater, established the first textile factory using water-powered spinning machines in Rhode Island in 1790. - By 1813, factories were being established with power looms copied from British models. Soon thereafter, however, Americans began to equal or surpass British technical inventions. - The Harpers Ferry arsenal built muskets with interchangeable parts. Because all the individual parts of the muskets were identical, the final product could be put together quickly and easily; this enabled Americans to avoid the more costly system in which skilled workers fitted together individual parts made separately. - The so-called American system reduced costs and revolutionized production by saving labor, important to a society that had few skilled artisans.
What invention does Spielvogel say was the most important in revolutionizing cotton production and why? What was the original usage of this device? Who invented it?
- The invention that pushed the cotton industry to even greater heights of productivity was the steam engine. - it allowed the factory system to spread to other areas of production, thereby securing whole new industries. - in the 1760s, James Watt created an engine powered by steam that could pump water from mines three times as quickly as previous engines. In 1782 he developed a rotary engine that could turn a shaft and thus drive machinery. Steam power could now be applied to spinning and weaving cotton, and before long, cotton mills using steam engines were multiplying across Britain. -Because steam engines were fired by coal, they did not need to be located near rivers - By 1840, fully 366 million pounds of cotton—now Britain's most important product in value—were imported. British cotton goods sold everywhere in the world. And in Britain itself, cheap cotton cloth made it possible for millions of poor people to wear undergarments, long a luxury of the rich - unlike horses, the steam engine was a tireless source of power and depended for fuel on a substance—coal—that seemed unlimited in quantity.
What kind of transportation developments were crucial to the success of American industrialization?
- The lack of a good system of internal transportation seemed to limit American economic development by making the transport of goods prohibitively expensive. - the introduction of the steamboat and the railroad as well as the construction of roads and canals - thousands of miles of roads/canals, steamboat facilitated transportation on the Great Lakes, Atlantic coastal waters, and rivers (especially important to the Mississippi valley) - Most important of all in the development of the American transportation system was the railroad. This transportation revolution turned the United States into a single massive market for the manufactured goods of the Northeast, the early center of American industrialization.
What ripple effect did railway/locomotives have on the rest of the economy in terms of employment, cost of goods, etc?
- The new experience of railway transportation changed perceptions of time, space and nature. - new companies were formed to build additional railroads as the infant industry proved successful financially as well as technically. Railroads created an entirely new industry, creating new jobs in upholstery, carriage-making, and glass production, while the engineering required to build bridges strong enough to support heavy trains prompted new engineering innovations. - The railroad's demands for coal and iron furthered the growth of those industries (furthering Britain) - The huge capital demands necessary for railway construction encouraged a whole new group of middle-class investors to invest their money in joint-stock companies - Railway construction created new job opportunities, especially for farm laborers and peasants - a cheaper and faster means of transportation had a rippling effect on the growth of an industrial economy. By reducing the price of goods, larger markets were created; increased sales = more factories and more machinery, which reinforced the self-sustaining nature of the Industrial Revolution, which marked a fundamental break with the traditional European economy. - The great productivity of the Industrial Revolution enabled entrepreneurs to reinvest their profits in new capital equipment, further expanding the productive capacity of the economy. Continuous, even rapid, self-sustaining economic growth came to be seen as a fundamental characteristic of the new industrial economy.
Why was Ireland so opposed in this era? Describe the life of many Irish peasants. What was this Potato Famine of 1845 all about?
- The predominantly Catholic peasant population rented land from mostly absentee British Protestant landlords whose primary concern was collecting their rents. They lived in desperate poverty, in mud hovels - potatoes were nutritious, relatively easy to grow (only an acre or two sufficient) and produced three times as much food per acre as grain. It enabled Irish peasants to survive and even expand in numbers - significant population growth due to earlier marriages - In the summer of 1845, the potato crop in Ireland was struck by blight due to a fungus that turned the potatoes black. Between 1845 and 1851, the Great Famine decimated the Irish population. - More than a million died of starvation and disease, and almost 2 million emigrated to the United States and Britain. Of all the European nations, only Ireland had a declining population in the nineteenth century.
What was the Poor Law Act of 1834? What did it do? What was the common attitude towards impoverished populations at this time?
- The problem of poverty among the working classes was also addressed in Britain by government action in the form of the Poor Law Act of 1834, which established workhouses where jobless poor people were forced to live. - The intent of this policy, based on the assumption that the poor were responsible for their own pitiful conditions, was "to make the workhouses as like prisons as possible ... to establish therein a discipline so severe and repulsive as to make them a terror to the poor." - 200,000 poor people were locked up in workhouses, where family members were separated, forced to live in dormitories, given work assignments, and fed dreadful food. Children were often recruited from parish workhouses as cheap labor in factories.
What kinds of regulations and disciplinary measures did factory owners and managers have to put in place to maintain the efficiency of their factories?
- They had to create a system of time-work discipline that would accustom employees to working regular, unvarying hours during which they performed a set number of tasks over and over again as efficiently as possible. - Adult workers were fined for a wide variety of minor infractions, such as being a few minutes late for work, and dismissed for more serious misdoings, especially drunkenness. - Employers found that dismissals and fines worked well for adult employees; in a time when great population growth had led to large numbers of unskilled workers, dismissal could be disastrous. Children were less likely to understand the implications of dismissal, so they were sometimes disciplined more directly—by beating.
How did Chartists attempt to secure labor reforms?
- Two national petitions incorporating the Chartist demands gained millions of signatures and were presented to Parliament in 1839 and 1842. Chartism attempted to encourage change through peaceful, constitutional means - In 1842, Chartist activists organized a general strike on behalf of their goals, but it had little success.
Why was urban reform an issue that proved to be increasingly concerning to wealthier British business owners and politicians?
- Were not these masses of workers, sunk in crime, disease, and immorality, a potential threat to their own well-being? Might not the masses be organized and used by unscrupulous demagogues to overthrow the established order? - Some observers were less arrogant, however, and wondered if the workers should be held responsible for their fate.
What were the working conditions like for the industrial laborers? In your response, refer to both the psychological and physical effects it had upon the laborers.
- Work hours ranged from twelve to sixteen hours a day, six days a week, with a half hour for lunch and for dinner. There was no security of employment and no minimum wage - cotton mill temperatures were especially debilitating - Mills were also dirty, dusty, and unhealthy - men still bore the burden of digging the coal out while horses, mules, women, and children hauled coal carts on rails to the lift. Dangers abounded in coal mines; cave-ins, explosions, and gas fumes - cramped tunnels and constant dampness resulted in deformed bodies and ruined lungs
What kinds of reforms were made in the form of legislation from the government of Britain to improve the misery that Industrialization had caused for an increasing portion of the population?
- a series of factory acts passed between 1802 and 1819 limited labor for children between the ages of nine and sixteen to twelve hours a day; the employment of children under nine years old was forbidden. children were to receive instruction in reading and arithmetic during working hours. But these acts applied only to cotton mills, not to factories or mines where some of the worst abuses were taking place. - Just as important, no provision was made for enforcing the acts through a system of inspection. - The Factory Act of 1833 - All textile factories were now included. Children between the ages of nine and thirteen could work only eight hours a day; those between thirteen and eighteen, twelve hours. Factory inspectors were appointed with the power to fine those who broke the law. - Another piece of legislation in 1833 required that children between nine and thirteen have at least two hours of elementary education during the working day. - In 1847, the Ten Hours Act reduced the workday for children between thirteen and eighteen to ten hours. Women were also now included in the ten-hour limit. - In 1842, the Coal Mines Act eliminated the employment of boys under ten and women in mines. Eventually, men too would benefit from the move to restrict factory hours.
What are tariffs? Why might they be adopted by a nation? What did Friedrich List argue about the use of tariffs?
- a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports. - governments on the continent used tariffs to encourage industrialization (high tariffs to protect fledgling industries from British goods flooding markets) - Friedrich advocated a rapid and large-scale program of industrialization as the surest path to develop a nation's strength. He felt that a nation must use protective tariffs. If countries followed Britain's policy of free trade, then cheaper British goods would inundate national markets and destroy infant industries
Describe the life of a successful entrepreneur. What made their lives difficult in a different way from the urban poor?
- constructed the factories, purchased the machines, and figured out where the markets were - resourcefulness, single-mindedness, resolution, initiative, vision, ambition, and often, of course, greed - had to superintend an enormous array of functions that are handled today by teams of managers; they raised capital, determined markets, set company objectives, organized the factory and its labor, and trained supervisors who could act for them - Only through constant expansion could one feel secure, so early entrepreneurs reinvested most of their initial profits. Fear of bankruptcy was constant, especially among small firms. Furthermore, most early industrial enterprises were small. - Many of the most successful came from a mercantile background.
In what two ways did cotton manufacturing in Britain versus the Continent differ all the way into the mid-19th century?
- cotton plays an important role in Britain, but was not as significant as heavy industry - France was the continental leader in the manufacture of cotton goods but still lagged far behind Great Britain. - Continental cotton factories were older, used less efficient machines, and had less productive labor. In general, continental technology in the cotton industry was a generation behind Great Britain. - With its cheap coal and scarce water, Belgium gravitated toward the use of the steam engine as the major source of power and invested in the new machines. - Unlike Britain, where cotton manufacturing was mostly centered in Lancashire (in northwestern England) and the Glasgow area of Scotland, cotton mills in France, Germany, and, to a lesser degree, Belgium were dispersed throughout many regions. - Noticeable, too, was the mixture of old and new. The old techniques of the cottage system, such as the use of hand looms, held on much longer. - As traditional methods persisted alongside the new methods in cotton manufacturing, the new steam engine came to be used primarily in mining and metallurgy on the continent rather than in textile manufacturing.
How were the governments of the continental countries different in their approach to the economy from Britain?
- governments in most of the continental countries were accustomed to playing a significant role in economic affairs. - They provided for the costs of technical education, awarded grants to inventors and foreign entrepreneurs, exempted foreign industrial equipment from import duties, and even financed factories - governments acutely bore much of the cost of building roads and canals, deepening river channels, and constructing railroads
What makes the Crystal Palace an important symbol of British industrial might? Describe when and where it was displayed and its overall purpose.
- in 1851, the British organized the worlds first industrial fair at Kensington in London, at the Crystal Palace. It was made entirely out of glass and iron (representing British engineering skills), covering 19 acres, had 100,000 exhibits that displayed the wide variety of products created by the Industrial Revolution. Six million people visited the fair in six months. - The Great Exhibition displayed Britain's wealth to the world; it was a gigantic demonstration of British success. - also represented British imperial power. Goods from India were a highlight of the exhibition, and the East India Company drew attention to its role in India with exhibits of cotton, tea, and flax. - the display of Indian silks, jewels, shawls, and an elephant canopy captured the attention of the British press and visitors. - many British commentators characterized the Indian handmade goods as typical of a system in which "tens of thousands" worked for a few despots. Moreover, these goods were examples of the "wasteful and ridiculous excess" of the labor-intensive production practices in the East, which could not compare to enlightened British labor practices
What effects did industrialization have on the standard of living over the course of time?
- in the long run, the Industrial Revolution improved living standards dramatically in the form of higher per capita incomes and greater consumer choices. - Some historians have argued that industrialization increased employment and lowered prices of consumer goods, thereby improving the way people lived. However, they also maintain that household income rose because families became more industrious, sending multiple members of the family into wage-paying jobs. - Other historians argue that wage labor made life worse for most families during the first half of the nineteenth century. They maintain that employment in the early factories was highly volatile and uncertain as employers dismissed workers whenever demand declined. Wages were not uniform, and inadequate housing in cities forced families to live in cramped and unsanitary conditions - Most historians do agree, however, that the gap between rich and poor increased substantially in the first half of the nineteenth century.
What effect did population growth have on particularly peasants in rural areas?
- industrialized areas did experience a change in the composition of the population, but the actual pockets of industrialization in 1850 were small and decentralized - This minimal industrialization in light of the growing population meant severe congestion in the countryside, where ever-larger numbers of people divided the same amount of land into ever-smaller plots, and also gave rise to an ever-increasing mass of landless peasants. - Overpopulation, especially noticeable in parts of France, northern Spain, southern Germany, Sweden, and Ireland, magnified the already existing problem of rural poverty.
Did Britain's government support or restrict capitalist economic principles. How so?
- it played a significant role in the process of industrialization. Parliament contributed to the favorable business climate by providing a stable government and passing laws that protected private property. - Britain was remarkable for the freedom it provided for private enterprise. It placed fewer restrictions on private entrepreneurs than any other European state.
What was the Agricultural Revolution (which came before the Industrial Rev.)? Name a few ways the agricultural revolution eventually caused the beginnings of industrialism.
- it was characterized by changes in the methods of farming and stock breeding - it led to a significant increase in food production (British agriculture could now feed more people at lower prices with less labor) - rapid population growth in the second half of the eighteenth century provided a pool of surplus labor for the new factories of the emerging British industry. - Rural workers in cottage industries also provided a potential labor force for industrial enterprises.
Describe the demographics of textile factories of the Northeast. What made this so? What did the labor force of industrial America have in common?
- labor primarily came from rural areas - did not have. A large number of craftspeople but did have a rapidly expanding farm population - While some of this excess population, especially men, went west, others, mostly women, found work in the new textile and shoe factories of New England. women made up more than 80 percent of the labor force in the large textile factories - factory owners sought entire families, including children, to work in their mills - When a decline in rural births threatened to dry up this labor pool in the 1830s and 1840s, European immigrants, especially poor and unskilled Irish, English, Scots, and Welsh, appeared in large numbers to replace American women and children in the factories - Women, children, and immigrants had one thing in common as employees: they were largely unskilled laborers. - Unskilled labor pushed American industrialization into a capital-intensive pattern. Factory owners invested heavily in machines that could produce in quantity at the hands of untrained workers
How did Parliament respond to the potion of the Peoples' Charter? Can Chartism be described generally as a success or failure? Why?
- members of Parliament, who were not at all ready for political democracy, rejected both national petitions. As one member said, universal male suffrage would be "fatal to all the purposes for which government exists" and was "utterly incompatible with the very existence of civilization." - After 1848, Chartism as a movement had largely played itself out. It had never really posed a serious threat to the British establishment, but it had not been a total failure either. Its true significance stemmed from its ability to arouse and organize millions of working-class men and women, to give them a sense of working-class consciousness that they had not really possessed before.
What were the living conditions like in urban areas? Where did wealthier, middle-class folks live? How did the two populations (laborers vs middle-class) housing differ?
- miserable living conditions, the rapid urbanization associated with the Industrial Revolution intensified the problems and made these wretched conditions all the more apparent, ash and sooty fumes, smoke in air, pollution, human waste, small and overcrowded rooms - Wealthy, middle-class inhabitants, as usual, insulated themselves as best they could, often living in suburbs or the outer ring of the city, where they could have individual houses and gardens. - In the inner ring of the city stood the small row houses, some with gardens, of the artisans and the lower middle class. - located in the center of most industrial towns were the row houses of the industrial workers
The example of india
- newly industrialized European states pursued a deliberate policy of preventing the growth of mechanized industry. - In the eighteenth century, India had been one of the world's greatest exporters of cotton cloth produced by hand labor - it fell under the control of the British East India Company, and they limited the industrialization of India by cutting off credit, increasing land and rent prices, and raising transportation costs on goods that were not approved by British authorities. - With British control came inexpensive British factory-produced textiles, and soon thousands of Indian spinners and hand-loom weavers were unemployed. - British policy encouraged Indians to export their raw materials while buying British-made goods. In 1815, India imported less than one percent of cotton goods from Britain; by the early twentieth century, India was importing 40-50 percent of all cotton cloth produced in Lancashire
Who was Edwin Chadwick? What kinds of problems did he outline as being the most harmful to urban living? What kinds of reforms did he suggest to fix these problems?
- one of the best of a new breed of urban reformers, with a background in law - became obsessed with eliminating the poverty and squalor of the metropolitan areas, became a civil servant, appointed to a number of government investigatory commissions - As secretary of the Poor Law Commission, he initiated a passionate search for detailed facts about the living conditions of the working classes. - "the various forms of epidemic, endemic, and other disease" were directly caused by the "atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close overcrowded dwellings [prevailing] amongst the population in every part of the kingdom." - advocating a system of modern sanitary reforms consisting of efficient sewers and a supply of piped water. - Six years after his report and largely due to his efforts, Britain's first Public Health Act created the National Board of Health, empowered to form local boards that would establish modern sanitary systems.
Who was Robert Owen? What movement did he attempt to put forth in terms of trade unions?
- one of the leaders in the union movement - He was a well-known cotton magnate and social reformer - came to believe in the creation of voluntary associations that would demonstrate to others the benefits of cooperative rather than competitive living - plans emerged for the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, which was formed in February 1834 who's primary purpose was to coordinate a general strike for the eight-hour working day. Rhetoric, however, soon outpaced reality, and by the summer of that year, the lack of real working-class support led to the federation's total collapse, and the union movement reverted to trade unions for individual crafts. - The largest and most successful of these unions was the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, formed in 1850. Its provision of generous unemployment benefits in return for a small weekly payment was precisely the kind of practical gains these trade unions sought.
Who were the Luddites and what did they believe?
- skilled craftspeople in the Midlands and northern England who in 1812 attacked the machines that they believed threatened their livelihoods - failed to stop the industrial mechanization of Britain and have been viewed as utterly naive. Some historians, however, have also seen them as an intense eruption of feeling against unrestrained industrial capitalism. - The inability of 12,000 troops to find the culprits provides stunning evidence of the local support they received in their areas.
How did Britain's global presence enable it to industrialize? What factors pertaining to wars and colonization helped Britain to expand production?
- supply of markets gave British industrialists a ready outlet for their manufactured goods - In the course of its eighteenth-century wars and conquests, Great Britain had developed a vast colonial empire at the expense of its leading continental rivals, the Dutch Republic and France. Britain also possessed a well-developed merchant marine that was able to transport goods anywhere in the world. - ability to produce cheaply the articles most in demand abroad. - And the best markets abroad were in the Americas, Africa, and the East, where people wanted sturdy, inexpensive clothes rather than costly, highly finished luxury items. Britain's machine-produced textiles fulfilled that demand. - Britain had the highest standard of living in Europe and a rapidly growing population. - This demand from both domestic and foreign markets and the inability of the old system to fulfill it led entrepreneurs to seek and adopt the new methods of manufacturing that a series of inventions provided. In so doing, these individuals initiated the Industrial Revolution.
What was Chartism, also known as "the Peoples' Charter"? It had 6 major demands... what were they?
- the "first important political movement of working men organized during the nineteenth century." Its aim was to achieve political democracy. Chartism took its name from the People's Charter, a document drawn up in 1838 by the London Working Men's Association. - demanded universal male suffrage, payment for members of Parliament, the elimination of property qualifications for members of Parliament, and annual sessions of Parliament. - Although some women were quite active in the movement, they were fighting to win political rights for their husbands, not for themselves, as the Chartist platform did not include the right to vote for women.
Why was entrepreneurship widespread in Britain? What made it a particularly risky endeavor?
- the British were "fascinated by wealth and commerce, collectively and individually." - the English revolutions of the seventeenth century had helped create an environment in Britain, unlike that of the absolutist states on the continent, where political power rested in the hands of a group of progressive people who favored innovation in economic matters. - Fortunes were made quickly and lost just as quickly. Early firms had a fluid structure. An individual or family proprietorship was the usual mode of operation, but entrepreneurs also brought in friends to help—and just as easily jettisoned them.
What law decreased the number of children employed in factories. Who took their place? How were they treated by comparison to the men performing the same jobs?
- the number of children employed declined after the Factory Act of 1833 - their places were taken by women - mostly unskilled labor and were paid half or less of what men received. Excessive working hours for women were outlawed in 1844, but only in textile factories and mines; not until 1867 were they outlawed in craft workshops.
What were early inventions of the early industrial revolution that allowed for the rapid factory production of textiles? Who were the inventors of these machines?
- the spinning Jenny, created by James Hargreaves, perfected in 1768, enabled spinners to produce yarn in greater quantities - Richard Arkwright's water frame spinning machine, powered by water or horse, and Samuel Crompton's so-called mule, which combined aspects of the water frame and the spinning jenny, increased yarn production even more. - Edmund Cartwright's power loom, invented in 1787, allowed the weaving of cloth to catch up with the spinning of yarn.
What are trade unions? Who had the greatest edge in these unions? What two major purposes did they serve?
- these new associations were formed by skilled workers in a number of new industries, including the cotton spinners, ironworkers, coal miners, and shipwrights. These unions served two purposes. One was to preserve their own workers' position by limiting entry into their trade; the other was to gain benefits from the employers. These early trade unions had limited goals. They favored a working-class struggle against employers, but only to win improvements for the members of their own trades.
Why did continental Europe lag behind Britain in industrialization? Name at least a few barriers to industrialization that continental Europe faced that were not an issue for Britain. Which places in continental Europe did the spread of industrialization reach first?
- they lagged behind because they did not share some of the advantages that had made Britain's Industrial Revolution possible (lack of good roads, problems with river transit, tolls on important ribeyes and customs barriers along state boundaries increased the costs and prices of goods, guild restrictions, continental entrepreneurs were generally less enterprising than their British counterparts and tended to adhere to traditional business attitudes, such as a dislike of competition, a high regard for family security coupled with an unwillingness to take risks in investment, and an excessive worship of thriftiness, lack of technical knowledge (British artisans prohibited from leaving country, export, etc) - First to be industrialized on the continent were Belgium, France, and the German states; the first in North America was the new United States. Not until after 1850 did the Industrial Revolution spread to the rest of Europe and other parts of the world.
What is capital and what is it used for? Why did Britain have more capital than say, France, or other European nations?
Capital: material wealth used or available for use in the production of more wealth. - Britain used their capital for investment in the new industrial machines and the factories that were needed to house them - had profits from trade and cottage industry, and had an effective central bank and well-developed, flexible credit facilities (nowhere else were people so accustomed to paper instruments for capital transactions)
Describe Britain in the year of the Great Exhibition
Great Britain had become the world's first industrial nation and its wealthiest. Britain produced one-half of the world's coal and manufactured goods; its cotton industry alone in 1851 was equal in size to the industries of all other European countries combined. The quantity of goods produced was growing at three times the rate in 1780. Britain's certainty about its mission in the world in the nineteenth century was grounded in its incredible material success.
Which part of Europe eclipsed British industrial power by the 2nd half of the 19th century?
- By the mid-1840s, Belgium had the most modern cotton-manufacturing system on the continent. - Before 1850, Germany lagged significantly behind both Belgium and France in heavy industry, and most German iron manufacturing was still based on old techniques. Not until the 1840s was coke-blast iron produced in the Rhineland. At that time, no one had yet realized the treasure of coal buried in the Ruhr valley.
How did the role of a "bourgeois" member of society change from the pre-industrial era to the industrial era?
Pre-Industrial Era: burgher or town dweller, active as a merchant, official, artisan, lawyer, or scholar, who enjoyed a special set of rights from the charter of the town Industrial Era: quite willing to support public health reforms (bc of fear of cholera, rampant in crowded cities), As wealthy townspeople bought land, the original meaning of the word bourgeois became lost, and the term came to include people involved in commerce, industry, and banking as well as professionals, such as lawyers, teachers, physicians, and government officials at various levels. At the lower end of the economic scale were master craftspeople and shopkeepers.