Industrial Revolution (approx. 1750-1850) Notes
Spielvogel Chapter 20
- Causes
- Agricultural revolution
- Feed more people at lower prices
- Gives disposable income
- Allows ability to purchase goods
- Surplus labor
- Central bank – gave credit
- Attitude that loved wealth & commerce, both individually and nationally
- Resources
- Rivers
- New roads & bridges
- Canals
- No internal customs barriers
- Stable government
- Laws that protected right to private property
- Markets, foreign & domestic
- Technological Changes
- Cotton industry
- Key items/players
- Spinning jenny – James Hargreave 1768
- Mule – Samuel Compton – combines water frame with spinning jenny
- Power loom – Edmund Cartwright 1787
- Efficiency of organizing labor together
- New towns were springing up
- Steam Engine
- Shortage of timber leads to increased coal mining
- Need to pump water out of deep mine
- James Watt (1736-1819) – created first true steam engine when he was required to fix a water pump
- Later developed the ability to turn a shaft, and therefore drive machinery
- Factories no longer had to be by rivers
- Iron industry
- Henry Cort – developed puddling, which used coke to burn away impurities in pig iron, resulting in very high quality iron
- Important because it allowed them to produce enough of the new machines
- Transportation
- Railways – originally used horses to transport
- Richard Trevithick built the first steam-powered locomotive
- First public railway, Liverpool to Manchester (32 miles), 1830
- 1840: G. Britain had 2,000 miles of railroads
- 1850: 6,000 miles
- Industrial Factories
- Started with cotton
- Move from cottage industry to factory system
- Required employee discipline, adjustment to regular hours and shifts
- Enforcement meant fines or dismissal for adults, & beatings for kids (not uncommon way to discipline children)
- Businesses aided by the new evangelical churches
- Preached that laziness was sinful & hard work was heavenly
- Workers would eventually form a powerful group, but not so at first
- At the beginning of the Indus. Rev., artisans or craftspeople remained the largest group of urban workers
- Conditions:
- 12-16 hour days, six days a week, ½ hour for lunch & dinner
- No employment security
- No minimum wage
- Unhealthy work conditions
- Consumption – lung diseases
- Included women & children
- Children:
- Had delicate touch for spinning
- Could crawl under machines to gather loose cotton
- Easier to control
- Cheap
- Pauper apprentices
- Abandoned by parents to local parish
- Cheapest labor
- Long hours
- Inadequate food & breaks
- Often had deformities from staying in unusual positions too long
- Great Exposition of 1851
- Crystal Palace – see page 560
- Symbol of British success
- Also of humanity domination of nature
- Shows that Britain is the first and richest industrial nation
- True: Britain produced ½ the world’s coal and manufactured goods
- In 1851, cotton industry in Britain was equal to the size of all industries in all other European countries combined
- Spread of Industrialization
- After Britain, Belgium, France, German states, & the U.S. were next to industrialize
- Problems with continental industrialization
- Toll stations on rivers & roads
- Guild restrictions
- Traditional business attitudes
- Upheavals from French Revolution & Napoleon’s rampage
- Governments had some control of businesses
- Government were responsible for building infrastructure
- Only Germany & Belgium had completed part of rail system by 1850
- Tariffs
- Lack of banks that lent credit
- Solved by creating join-stock investment banks
- Meant that they used thousands of different investors to supply capital
- Started in 1830s in Belgium (see banks listed on pages 562-3)
- Differences in cotton manufacture (Britain vs. Continentals)
- Disperse on continent; mostly together in Britain (in Lancashire & Glasgow areas)
- On continent, combined old & new (for example, might make thread on machine and then send to cottage industry to hand-weave)
- The United States
- Samuel Slater – smuggled knowledge of textile factories out of Britain
- The American system – utilized interchangeable parts – more efficient
- Control of colonies
- Attempt to force colonies to buy finished goods instead of making them
- At the same time, took raw materials from the colonies
- Social Impacts not already mentioned
- Census started in 1801 in Britain
- Population explosion
- Decline in death rates
- Less death from famine, epidemics & war
- General increase in food supply
- The Great Hunger
- Ireland was a backwoods area – mud hovels
- 1-2 acres of potatoes could feed a family (Irish married earlier & had kids earlier)
- Blight on potatoes – turning them black
- Over one million died of starvation & disease
- Over 2 million emigrated to the U.S. & Britain
- Traditional “safety valve” for population problems
- Ireland had only declining population in the nineteenth century
- Growth of Cities
- Urban areas for centers for manufacturing
- Access to transportation
- Access to workers
- Steam engine made it possible to build factories anywhere
- By 1850, over 50% of the British population lived in urban areas
- Living conditions
- Rapid urbanization – accompanying infrastructure/policing problems
- No tradition of care for poor
- Business owners were new class without established social morays
- City leaders didn’t feel it was their responsibility to care for the poor
- Overcrowded
- Poor sanitary conditions
- Streets used as sewers
- Smelly & unhealthy
- Deaths outnumbered births in cities
- Had to get more workers from the country to replace the dead
- Poisonous/dangerous substances were used as food additives
- Real wages actually increasing
- Which I’m sure was a nice thought for people as they died of consumption
- Urban Reformers
- Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890)
- Advocated modern sanitary reforms to help the lower classes
- His actions led to the creation of the National Board of Health by the Public Health Act, which formed local boards to improve sanitation
- People supported reforms because they feared cholera (bacterial infection from poor sanitary conditions & adulterated food – can lead to death by dehydration)
- The Middle Class Gains more Power by starting businesses
- Who were they?
- Diverse social origins – sometimes noble, sometimes not
- Often from dissenting religious minorities
- Came to rival landed aristocracy in power
- Evolution of the family
- After children’s employment declined, their places were taken by women
- Women were used to working – cottage industry
- Traditional types of female labor still predominant – household servants
- Factory acts that limited women’s hours led to separation of work/home
- Also led to division between men’s/women’s familial obligations
- Changes
- Unions
- Purposes
- Limit entry into trade
- Gain benefits from employers
- Combination Acts in 1799 and 1800 – no unions – workers shouldn’t come together like they did in French Revolution
- Didn’t work – dissolved after some strikes made Parliament realize they needed to have some legal recourse for workers
- National Unions – The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union
- Wanted to have a nationwide strike for eight hour working day
- Dissolved because it really didn’t have support of actual workers
- Luddites
- Skilled Midlands craftspeople
- Attacked the machines in 1812
- Never found – shows that locals supported them (12,000 troops were looking)
- Chartism
- Wanted a political democracy from 1838-1848
- Universal male suffrage
- Payment for Parliament
- Annual sessions of Parliament
- Never really affected the political establishment
- Important because it proved that it could organize millions of working-class men & women
- Factory Acts
- Series of acts that limited hours and ages of workers (also required schooling for minors)
- At first (early 1800s), only applied to cotton mills, and had bad enforcement
- 1847 Ten Hours Act
- Women & children limited to 10 hour workdays
- Coal Mines Act 1842
- No workers under 10
- No women
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