23.
1 The Industrial Revolution
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN GREAT BRITAIN
- Began in great Britain in 1780s
- Contributing Factors:
- Agricultural Revolution
- Changed agricultural practices in the 18th century
- Expansion of farmland + good weather + improved transportation + new crops
(potato) = increased food supply
- More people could be fed at lower cost + less labor
- Many can buy manufactured goods
- Increased Food Supply
- Population grew
- Parliament passed enclosure movement laws (landowners fence off common
land) -> peasants move to town -> created labor supply for factories
- Ready supply of money (capital) to Invest in new Machines & Factories
- Entrepreneurs found new business opportunities & ways to profit
- Plentiful Natural Resources
- Rivers -> water power for new factories & transporting raw materials and finished
products
- Abundant in coal and iron ore
- Supply of Markets gave Manufacturers a ready outlet for their goods
- Vast colonial empire & British ships could transport goods anywhere
- Population growth + cheaper food = increased domestic markets
- Growing demand for cotton -> British manufacturers had to look for ways to
increase production
COTTON PRODUCTION AND NEW FACTORIES
- Manufacture of Cotton Goods = 2 step process:
- Spinners made cotton thread from raw cotton
- Weavers wove the cotton thread into cloth on looms
- This production was a cottage industry (rural) -> made inefficient by a series of technological
advancements:
- Spinning Jenny
- (1764)James Hargreaves
- Made spinning process much faster than weavers could even use it
- Water-powered Loom
- (1787)Edmund Cartwright
- Made it possible for the weaving to catch up with the spinning
- More efficient to bring new workers to new machines & work in factories near
streams & rivers (power source)
- Steam Engine
- (1760 & 1782)James Watt
- Cotton industry became even more productive
- Enabled to drive machinery -> steam power used to spin and weave
- Cotton mills using steam popularized in Britain
- Needn’t be located near rivers (powered by coal)
- 1760: Britain imported 2.5 mil pounds of raw cotton to produce cloth -> 366 mil pounds in 1840
- Cotton cloth was Britain’s most valuable product, sold around the world, and produced in factories
- Important Element = Factory
- Created new labor system
- Workers work in shifts to produce at steady rate
- Discipline for regular hours and repetitive tasks
COAL,IRON, AND RAILROADS
- Steam Engine was crucial to Britain’s Industrial Revolution
- Depended on coal for fuel which seemed to be unlimited -> led to expansion in coal production
and iron industry
- Iron Ore
- Large in natural resources
- Better quality in 1780 from Henry Cort using puddling (burn away impurities using
coke from coal in crude or pig iron to make it higher quality)
- Iron industry boomed
- High quality iron was used to build machines especially trains
- Railroads
- More efficient means of moving goods and resources
- Important to the success of the Industial Revolution
- 1st steam Locomotive created by Richard Trevithick in 1804
- Rocket was used on the 1st public railway line from cotton-manufacturing town
Manchester to thriving port of Liverpool
- Building railroads created new jobs for farm laborers and peasants
- Less expensive transportation ->lower priced goods -> larger markets
- More sales = more demand = more factories = more machinery
- Owners could reinvest in new equipment adding to the growth of the economy
- Regular ongoing economic growth = industrial economy
SPREAD OF INDUSTRIALIZATION
- (mid 19th century) Britain had become the richest and world’s 1st industrial nation = it produced
half of the world’s coal and manufactured goods
- Spread to rest of Europe at different times and speed
- Belgium, France, and German States
- 1st to be industrialized in continental Europe
- Governments encouraged development and provided funds to build roads,
canals, and railroads
- (1850) Network of iron rails spread across Europe
- United States
- First half of 19th century
- Most were farmers but they moved to the cities and only half stayed farmers
- Needed good transportation system to move goods across the nation
- Roads and canals were built from east to west
- (1807)1st paddle-wheel steamboat, Clermont, made transportation easier on
waterways of US
- Railroad
- Was most important
- Turned country into a single massive market for manufactured goods produced in
the Northeast
- Labor came from farmers
- Females were majority in cotton and wool factories
SOCIAL IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION
- Cities grew & 2 new social classes: industrial middle class & industrial working class
POPULATION GROWTH AND URBANIZATION
- Growth was due to decline in death rates, wars, & major epidemic diseases (smallpox & plague)
- Increase in food = better fed people with more resistance to disease
- Famine (Irish potato) and poverty spurred migration to the US
- Industrialization = move from country to city for factory work
- Britain had 1 major city : London in 1800; more than half of population lived in cities
- Rapid growth of cities led to pitiful living conditions -> urban reformers called for local government
to clean up city
NEW SOCIAL CLASSES
- Rise of Commercial Capitalism : based on trade
- Rise of Industrial Capitalism : based on industrial production -> produced industrial middle class
- Bourgeois(Middle Class) : town dweller, merchants, officials, artisans, lawyers, intellectuals,
teachers, doctors, bankers -> people who built factories, bought machines, and developed
markets (initiative, ambition, greed)
- Industrial Working Class had bad working condition: 12-16 work hours for 6 days, no job security,
no minimum wage
- Harsh and dangerous coal mine conditions led to workers’ deformed bodies and ruined lungs
- Worst condition in cotton mills: dirty, dusty, dangerous, and unhealthy
- Mostly women and children -> Factory Act of 1833 -> women were half of all labor in textile &
paid half or less than what men received
- Men earn more for family by working outside home & women take care of family, have low paying
jobs that can be done at home
EARLY SOCIALISM
- Pitiful conditions of Industrial Revolution -> Socialism = government owns and controls means of
production (factories & utilities)
- Robert Owen, british cotton manufacturer, was a utopian socialist = humans show their natural
goodness if they live in a cooperative environment
- Transformed New Lanark, Scotland
- New Harmony, Indiana US failed
