INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

1. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
UNIT 4
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
1. FIRST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
In the 1700s Europeans experienced not only political and social revolutions but also the
beginnings of an economic revolution. First Britain, then Europe, North America, and eventually other
parts of the world moved from economies based on agricultural production to economies based on
industrial production. Although the process took many years, it became known as the Industrial
Revolution.
It respresented a combination of many developments: a rise in population, more efficient food
production, a growing demand for manufactured goods, new attitudes toward the creation of wealth
and prosperity, and new technologies.
1. WHY DID THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BEGIN IN BRITAIN?
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain due to a unique combination of geographical and
historical features.

2. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
However, the inmediate reason for Industrial Revolution was a growing demand for
manufactured products, as a result of two main factors:
1. A rising population (thanks to agricultural improvements and overseas settlers), which meant
more goods were needed.
2. Lower food prices meant that people had more money to spend on clothes and manufactured
items. As demands of all these goods rose, many entrepeneurs realized that they could make
enormous profits by finding more efficient means of producing them.
2. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION?
The Agricultural Revolution was one of the most important factors for the Industrial Revolution
since it increased food productions and contributed to both population growth and the
commercialization of agriculture.
NEW FARMING METHODS: CROP ROTATION and ENCLOSURE
Until the 1700s people still practiced open-field farming, in which land was divided into strips
and worked by villagers. About one third of the land remained unplanted to be replenished with
nutrients (fallow land).
However, Netherlands farmers learned how to make their land produce more efficiently: they had
not only won farmland from the sea, the Dutch had learnt to use animal manure and new crops like
turnips and clover to restore the fertility of their soil.
The Bristish soon began to copy Dutch farming methods, and in the early 1700s, Lord Townshend,
a former British statesman, began to use the Dutch technique of crop rotation.
Crop rotation is a method of altherning different kinds of
crops to preserve soil fertility. Lord Townshend planted grains
one year and root vegetables, such as potatoes (come from
America) and turnips, the next. The root crops also made ideal
food for farm animals, which began to grow larger and
healthier.
Impressed by Townshend's success, others in England also
began to adopt a most scientific approach to farming like
Jethro Tull, who invented the seed mill.
In spite of new methods were certainly more profitable and
many landowers adopted them, but they found the old
open-field system to be a problem, so some of them started to enclosure their lands in order to take
better methods. By 1830s almost the entire English country side was enclosed by hedgerows or fences.
Enclosing required paying legal fees and planting extensives hedges to separate one farmer's
land from another's. These costs were often too high for small farmers to bear. As a result, many of
these small farmers were squeezed out and became landless laborers, while others gave up farming and
moved to the cities. In their place a new class of prosperous tenant farmers emerged. Both the land
owners and landless laborers now had to work for money rather than simply to produce enough crops to

3. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
feed their families. Agriculture, like trade, became a commercial interprise.
In addition, the greater availability of food meant that families could grow larger and improved
diets, so people lived longer. The result was an ever-increasing population.
3. HOW DID RISING DEMAND AND NEW TECHNOLOGY AFFECT THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY?
The textile industry was the first to feel the full impact of the Industrial Revolution. Since Middle
Ages, cloth had been produced through the domestic system. Under this system, people worked from
their homes. Merchants bought wool from a farmer and distributed it to villagers to clean, weave, or spin
into yarn, usually during the winter months. The merchant then collected the finished cloth and sold it
for a profit. This system was succesfull because productions costs were low. Most families already
owned spinning wheels and most villages had looms.
As demand for cloth began, the wool was not enough, the domestic system blocked and cotton
goods started to be demanded thanks it was cheaper and they had enough from American plantations
(worked by slaves).
Under the pressure of rising demand, the textile
industry used new technologies like the spinning jenny,
invented by James Hargreaves. Spinning jenny replaced the
spinning wheel because it was be able to spin eight cotton
threads at one time. But spinning jenny was quickly replaced
by a Richard Arkwright invention: the water frame. In 1785
Edmund Cartwright invented the first power loom, which
eventually drove the handweavers out of business. These
new machines were large and expensive, so they had to
locate them in large factories.
4. WHAT WERE THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF THE FIRST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?
While spinning and weaving machines were being developed to produce textiles, another device,
the steam engine, had emerged from the mining industry. The use of the steam engine would ultimately
change the world.
IRON AND COAL
By 1700s British forest had been cut down in order to build ships and provide fuel (charcoal), so
they were living a wood shortage which affected iron-making business. As the demand for iron rose in
the 1700s, the solution was found in coal when Abraham Darby discovered in 1709 that replacing
charcoal with coke (purified coal). He could see that coke made the smelting process more efficient and
economical.

4. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
THE STEAM ENGINE
Coal mines were dug deeper into the earth, and at
certain depth the mines would fill with water. Initially, they
removed water using buckets drawn to the surface by
people or animals. As early as 1698 Thomas Savery
invented a steam pumping machine to speed up water
removal, but in 1769 James Watt refined it and patented a
steam engine that worked efficiently with less fuel.
The new steam machine became the primary source of
power in several industries: textile, sugar, even china
industry. Most important of all, perhaps, steam engines
transformed the iron industry itself.
The application of steam power stimulated different
industries developing.
2. CONSEQUENCES OF INDUSTRIALIZATION
1. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF INDUSTRIALIZATION?
Industrial and Agriculture Revolution changed life conditions of everyone, but the economic
rise in prosperity was not applied to everyone. Life for many industrial workers remained difficult and
soon led to demands for reform. Most important changes were:
1. WORK IN FACTORIES: the introduction of steam-powered machinery to manufacturing changed
the way people worked. For the first time large number of people started to work in factories. In many
factories, laborers-men, women and children worked 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. The work was regulated
by the time clock, since machines never needed to rest, they worked all season.
2. INCREASE IN POPULATION: industrialization transformed the structure of society: better
farming methods allowed an increase in population. In the early 1800s, for example, the population of Britain
exploded. In 1801 the population was about 10,5 million, and by 1851 it had nearly doubled. Urbanization
therefore also increased, specially cities in manufacturing regions. Not all workers toiled in factories since
more jobs also became avalaible for the middle-class (bankers, merchants, lawyers, engineers) and new
nonindustrial workers, such as domestic servants .
3. WORKER'S CONDITIONS: as people streamed into the cities, conditions for workers were often
miserable at first: poors and migrants crowded into shoddy buildings. Open sewers ran through the slums,
garbage and human waste, and occasionally even dead animals. The danger of disease was so bad in London.
Despite such conditions many people preferred life in the cities, where they could find jobs, to life in the
countryside, where conditions could be even worse due to a high unemployment. Cities also provided
enterteinment: parks, soccer matches, free concerts, etc.

5. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
4. MIDDLE-CLASS' CONDITIONS: life for the middle-class was better and also improved more
rapidly than it did for workers. Middle-class (bourgeoisie) could afford to employ servants and send their
children to school.
2. WHAT POLITICAL THEORIES EMERGED IN THE INDUSTRIAL ERA AND HOW DID THEY
DIFFER FROM ONE TO ANOTHER?
In some ways the industrial revolution was an extension of the Scientific Revolution and the
Enlightenment, however many people began to develop new ideas about the structure of society and
the state. They hoped that industrialization would lead to greater prosperity for more of the population:
LIBERALISM
UTILITARISM
SOCIALISM
ADAM SMITH
JEREMY BENTHAM / JOHN STUART MILL
FOURIER / OWEN / MARX
NEW INDUSTRIAL BOURGEOISIE
MIDDLE CLASS (HIGH-MEDIUM BOURGUEISIE)
MIDDLE CLASS (MEDIUM BOURGUEISIE
AND WORKERS)
INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY: FOLLOW YOUR INSTITUTION AND LAWS SHOULD
OWN TRUE SELF INTEREST
USEFULNESS FOR ALL THE POPULATION
GOVERNMENT
ACTION
IS
NECESSARY → PRIVATE CAPITAL
BE SOCIAL EQUALITY:
ECONOMICAL
POLITICAL
AND
GOVERNMENT ACTION SHOULD PEOPLE'S STATE SHOULD TAKE CHARGE OF THE
NOT LIFE FREE, BUT IT MUST PROMOTE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTIONS (CAPITAL
GREATEST HAPPINESS OF THE GREATEST AND EQUIPMENT) AND USE IT FOR THE
NUMBER
COMMON GOOD OF ALL PEOPLE
DEMOCRACY (BUT ONLY MEN OF
PROPERTY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO
PARTICIPATE)
UNIVERSAL DEMOCRACY (MEN AND WOMEN).
NO EDUCATION FOR EVERYONE. ONLY
IF SOMEONE COULD AFFORD IT
GOVERNMENT SHOULD PROMOTE THE PUBLIC EDUCATION
UTOPIAN SOCIALISM
Charles Fourier created ideal communities where people could live and work
together in perfect harmony; they were called “phalansteries”.
In 1825, Robert Owen established several model communities in New
Harmony (Indiana), however New Harmony communities had run into serious
financial problems. Over the next 30 years, similar communities were built in
Europe and North America, but none of these communities lasted very long.
Eventually, socialists would turn to more practical methods in order to
achieve their goals.

6. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
3. HOW DID MANY WORKERS RESPOND TO INDUSTRIALIZATION?
While aristocratic and middle-class socialists theorized
about working-class problems, workers themselves pursued
more concrete actions. Industrialization threatened the old
guilds and artisans associations' bonds, causing early in the
industrial era some frustrated worker complaints such as
machine destruction (ludismo).
However, as the workers accepted the idea that
industrialization was here to stay, many eventually began to
organize themselves in groups known as trade unions. Trade unions gained members from all over the
country. The most effective weapon used to obtain their demands for higher wages or better working
conditions was the strike. The more workers the union could count on to strike, the more pressure they
could put on employers.
Organizing unions was difficult, however. In the early 1800s British, French and German
governments declared them illegal. These governments were in the hands of either conservatives or
liberals, who represented the interest of employers.
Nevertheless, workers eventually made some progress: in 1824 the British Parliament permited
workers to organize peacefully and to bargain for better wages and hours. Although the government
continued to put down strikes, union strenght slowly grew, providing workers with a new sense of
community and security.