Chapter 22. Industrial Revolution
Continental advantages
1. Could steal British tech. 2. Strong, independent governments determined to catch up to England. Governments raise tariffs to protect their infant industries from foreign competition, build roads, canals, and railroads, and believe that "to promote industry was to defend the nation." (Friedrich List)
Continental disadvanages
1. English technology way ahead. 2. A lot of capital had to be found for equipment and infrastructure. 3. Shortage of skilled labor. 4. Suspicions of powerful landowners stopped it for awhile.
"Satanic mills"
Because manufacturers did whatever they pleased without government interference, they tried to maximize profit by minimizing costs. This led to horrible working conditions in the factories.
No wars on home soil.
Britain was not invaded during the Napoleonic wars.
Great Exhibition of 1851/Crystal Palace
Britain was the "workshop of the world." It showed off its industrial power in 1851 in a crystal palace made entirely of cast-iron and plate-glass. Over 14,000 exhibitors showed off the newest technological achievements. The building was 1/3 of a mile long and 128 feet tall!
Raw materials
Cheap cotton from America and a ready domestic supply of iron and coal.
Capital availability
England had a central bank. Entrepreneurs could get loans to start businesses or improve their equipment.
The Condition of the Work Class in England
Friedrich Engels
National System of Political Economy
Friedrich List
George Stephenson
He built the first practical steam locomotive in 1825. It was named the Rocket, and whipped down the tracks at an astonishing 16 miles per hour! The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was then built - the first railroad in the world (the Baltimore and Ohio was built in 1830 in the US). Within 20 years, locomotives could reach 50 mph.
Robert Underwear
He invented cotton undergarments in 1808, further driving demand for cotton textile production.
Robert Fulton
He invented the Clermont, the first steamboat, in 1807. Before the steamboat, barges were pushed up river by poles at a whopping 1-mile per hour!
Eli Whitney
He invented the cotton gin in 1793. The inventions of better spinning and weaving devices put a strain on the supply of cotton. The problem with cotton is that it is loaded full of seeds tangled in the cotton fibers. This invention combs the seeds out of the cotton, doing the work of fifty people. Slaves had been used to pick the seeds out of the cotton, now they aren't needed for this. The end of slavery, right? Wrong. Now, slaveholders could plant more cotton, and slaves were used for the backbreaking work of planting and harvesting the cotton.
John Kay
He invented the flying shuttle in 1733. This invention allowed weaving to take place much more rapidly. It was the invention that created a demand for more thread, leading to the spinning jenny. Weavers made lots of cash until...
Edmund Cartwright
He invented the power loom in 1785. This device wove thread into cloth mechanically. Now there is little use for skilled weavers because weaving takes place in a factory.
Henry Cort
He invented the puddling process for iron production. Coal, instead of wood, was used to make iron, solving England's deforestation problem. Unfortunately, iron is brittle. Vibration breaks it apart - not good for machinery!
James Hargreaves
He invented the spinning jenny in 1765. The machine spun cotton into thread. It used 6-24 spindles, depending on the model. He named the device after his wife, Jenny! Aww...
Samuel Crompton
He invented the spinning mule in 1790. It was called the mule because, like a donkey and a horse, it combined the best features of the jenny and the water frame. This invention marked the beginning of the end for the domestic (putting out) system, and replaced it with the factory system. Soon, all spinning work was done in factories.
Richard Arkwright
He invented the water frame in 1768. This machine spun cotton into a course thread that was then put out to small cottage jennies. The water frame had several hundred spindles! Its weakness was that it had to be located near water for power. Also, the thread it produced was too coarse to be used immediately for weaving, so the thread still had to be sent out to cottages to be reworked into finer thread. The water frame created the first real mills.
David Ricardo
He proposed the "Iron Law of Wages." As population goes up, as it inevitably will (see Malthus), wages will be depressed. Any government attempts to raise wages will only harm workers because then they'll just have more kids!
Friedrich List
He was a German who wrote National System of Political Economy. He created the Zollverein. he denounced free trade as dangerous to the health of a nation's ability to be productive and as a threat to national security. He once said, "to promote industry was to defend the nation."
Robert Owen
He was an industrialist and founder of British socialism! He rejected laissez-faire. He established a utopia at New Lanark, Scotland. He believed that the people's character was completely shaped by the environment. Improve the environment, improve the people. Get rid of competition and replace it with cooperation. He gave his workers fair wages and good working conditions. He wrote A New View of Society, arguing that education makes the difference between those who are judges and those who are sentenced to be hanged! He built a large educational complex at New Lanark, called the Institute for the Formation of Character. It included the first nursery school in Britain. No child was forced to do anything against his wishes and there was no punishment for misbehavior. His plan was to build communities of 500 to 2000 people. These communities would be self-sufficient. All major buildings would be in a quadrangle (a big rectangle, like on most college campuses) to let in air and light. Profit was prohibited! Goods would be distributed based upon need. Each community would be totally self-governing. Finally, he was the guy behind the formation of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (GNCTU), the first national trade union ever. It began after the Combination Acts were repealed in 1824.
Thomas Malthus
He wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). He explained that the masses of people weren't benefitting from industrialization because they bred like rabbits!
Friedrich Engels
He wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England. His book demonstrated the terrible conditions in England's mills, including child labor, 18-20 hour workdays, and numerous disfigurements and deaths. He contended that the middle and upper classes (capitalist class/bourgeoisie) exploited the workers (proletariat). He condemned the Industrial Revolution for this. No matter what material gains were made, it wasn't worth the human price.
James Watt
In 1763, while tinkering with an old Newcomen engine, he improved it and developed an efficient, reliable steam engine. This gave industry a cheap supply of energy. He declared, "Steam is an Englishman." Only the English had this technology for about 50 years, giving England a huge head start on industrialization.
Richard Trevithick
In 1804, he developed the first working steam locomotive, after developing the high-pressure steam engine. But, it broke down constantly, so another guy also gets credit for the steam locomotive...
Henry Bessemer
In 1856, he developed the Bessemer Process to make steel.
William Siemens
In 1866, he improved the Bessemer Process and could use scrap iron to make steel. This really advanced railroad construction.
The Agricultural Revolution
It was a series of innovations in farm production that started in the Low Countries and quickly spread to England. From clover and turnips to potatoes and the seed drill, England found a way to feed its people. England's landowners also enclosed the farmlands (The Enclosure Movement) with fences and kicked out the peasants. The peasant moved to the cities, where they provided a cheap, semiskilled labor supply.
Labor supply
Many of the workers in the cities were skilled because of the domestic system.
England's geography
No part of England is more than 60 miles from the ocean or 20 miles from a navigable waterway. They had good canals and better roads than on the Continent (still God-awful, but better!).
Stable government
No violent revolutions occurred in England. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had been bloodless, and it left England with a constitutional monarchy and a strong Parliament.
No Internal tariffs
Products were not taxed as they crossed county lines.
Luddites
Skilled workers, frustrated at losing their jobs to machines, attacked machinery with sledgehammers! Needless to say, they didn't make much of a dent in the progress of industrialization.
Laissez-faire
The English government allowed businesses to do whatever they pleased, while working overtime to forbid workers from forming unions.
Combination Acts of 1799-1800
The English government forbade workers to organize. So, they did nothing to stop monopolies, enclosures, or deaths in factories, but they were determined to stop workers from organizing! Numerous uprisings, like the Luddites and the Peterloo Massacre, eventually convinced the government to make some reforms.
Why England?
The Industrial Revolution - the replacement of man and animal power with mechanical power - began in England in the 1770s or 1780s. It had 10 main parts; 1. Commercial Revolution 2. England geography 3. No internal tariffs 4. The Agriculture Revolution 5. Labor supply 6. Capital availability 7. Stable government 8. Raw materials. 9. Laissez-faire 10. No wars on home soil.
Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen
They built the first steam engine in 1705 to pump water out of mines. It was more efficient than having horses walk in circles all day! Still, it was only 1% efficient! It could not be used as a power supply for industry.
Factory Act of 1833
This law banned child labor under the age of 9. 9 to 13 year olds could only work up to 8 hours per day. 14-18 year olds say their work day limited to a mere 12 hours because some namby-pamby liberals thought that kids working 100 hours a week might harm children. Wimps!
An essay on the Principle of Popultaion
Thomas Malthus
Commercial Revolution
With the discovery of the New World and its riches in gold, silver, tobacco, furs, sugar, and cotton, trade routes shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. This was ideal for England. In addition, the CR created a class of middle-class merchants who were willing to take risks to make cash. These capitalists were willing to invest and innovate to make money.
A New View of Society
Written by Robert Owen
Credit Mobilier
a famous French bank that helped finance industrialization in France.
Zollverein
a tariff union among the German Confederation (which had replaced the Confederation of the Rhine). It agreed not to tax imports from member states, keeping German products cheaper at home). They also taxed the crap out of foreign products, making them more expensive.
