Interpretations of the Industrial Revolution
Thomas Menger
English Department
Peoria Notre Dame High School
NEH Seminar 2004
A useful analysis of the Industrial Revolution might reasonably begin with two questions
that analysts like the Hammonds, Berg, Burke, Morgan, and Ashton seem to have
considered and that Hobsbawm finally directly asks. Why Britain and why the eighteenth
century?
Thoughtful responders to these two queries might first gather, then evaluate, and
ultimately accept or reject key technical, scientific, social, political, and economic ideas
as important to the English industrial age. Finally, a useful synthesis of the English
Industrial Revolution should result.
Early in such a discussion, the Industrial Revolution reveals itself to have been a more
complex phenomenon than one more sequential step in a neatly linear progress of
civilization. In fact, rather than simply being listed as a mere step in some consecutive
sequence of history, the Industrial Revolution might be more usefully examined through
the appropriately kaleidoscopic lens of cause-and-effect analysis.
Applications of Cause-and-Effect Analysis

A single cause-and-effect analysis cannot include multiple causes and multiple
effects; such an analysis can include only one cause and multiple effects, or just
one effect and multiple causes.

Causes or effects can be either immediate or remote. Both should always be
considered, but some remote causes are too far removed to be of importance to an
observer trying to reach understanding. For example, one remote cause of the
British Industrial Revolution could be identified as the prehistoric formation of
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coal-forming tropical forests in the days before continental drift. But maybe one
James Michener was enough.

Logic problems arise when causes and effects are confused. The idea that God so
liked Nottingham that he put the Trent River here might stand as an example. The
suggestion that the Industrial Revolution resulted in certain developments whose
actual origins predate Industrialization could also be another such piece of
"evidence." Causes are initiating events; causes come first. Effects are results;
effects come afterward.

Related events sometimes simply do not occur and cannot be usefully explored as
consecutive, sequential strings. The rising population in England, the dynamic of
slavery in the United States, and eighteenth century scientific improvements in
British agriculture might be entirely unrelated except that each phenomenon is a
cause of the English Industrial Revolution. There may be no relationship between
a set of effects except that each springs from the same cause. There may be no
relationship between causes except that they contribute to the same effect.

There may be only a time relationship between otherwise entirely unconnected
events that some observers mistakenly interpret as a cause or an effect. Changes
coming to the world after the Industrial Revolution may be incorrectly attributed
to Industrialization simply because they happened later in time.

Hardly ever is there but a single cause for a significant effect. Too often, analysts
settle for immediate causes or causes too few or too insufficient to have produced
the named effect. A temptation for analysts of the Industrial Age, for example,
might be to attribute the Industrial Revolution too narrowly to the invention of
James Watt's steam engine. Complex effects tend to have multiple, sometimes
intertwined causes.
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Cause-and-Effect example
Cause-and-effect analysis can enable thoughtful people to unravel complex events. In
turn, this intellectual exploration can lead to a greater understanding of the events
themselves and their implications.
Each participant in the following scenario might characterize his or her role differently,
even should there be agreement about the actual set of events, but a careful cause-andeffect analyst will see that each person's involvement contributes importantly to the final
outcome.
A student has been entrusted with the family car on a snowy day. She walks into the
house an hour late, her shoes and pant cuffs wet with caked slush, her eyes red from
crying.
"What's the matter," her mother asks. "Where's the car?"
"It was the ice, Mom," whines the sixteen-year-old, fingering the pink summons stapled
to her driver's license. "I couldn't help it."
Patiently now, but having quickly determined there probably has been no injury, the
haggard woman continues her parental inquisition. "Where did it happen?"
"In the ditch up on Northmoor Road," sniffles the disheveled young lady, now doing
hangdog slouch as she drips muddy water on the kitchen floor.
Looking the girl quickly up and down, Mom wonders, "Are you alright?"
"Yes," continues the daughter. "But the car…"
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When her father gets home, he takes the daughter to recover the snowbound automobile.
Arriving at the scene, he gasps at how far off the road the car had traveled.
"I was hurrying to get home so you and Mom wouldn't worry about me," his companion
lamely explained.
Further exasperated in the enveloping darkness, Dad struggles down the embankment
with the keys. When he turns on the ignition at the instruction of the $95 tow truck driver,
the radio blares loudly in his ears.
"I'm sorry, Dad. That's the only way all seven of us could hear it."
Here, the young lady chooses to see only the snow as the cause of her problems. But
since not all cars passing that point that afternoon slipped off the road, there must have
been other factors in play, too. An observer like her father will conclude that excessive
speed, inexperience, a crowded car, and the fact that it was winter all played roles. But an
even more objectively distant cause-and-effect analyst might later draw conclusions that
the girl had not been well enough trained to drive on ice, that her parents shouldn't have
given an inexperienced driver the car on such a bad day, and perhaps that her parents had
lacked sufficient involvement in her life. Each of these factors contributed in turn to the
greater certainty of the outcome.
Here, a series of causes, none significant enough to produce the resulting effect by itself,
and none related directly to the others, can be seen to result in a foreseeable outcome.
Surprisingly often, through careful cause-and-effect analysis, what at first glance may
seem a random accident not only becomes predictable but also is revealed to have been
indeed inevitable.
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The Industrial Revolution As an Effect
Superficially linear analysis might suggest that Industrialization itself was the main
engine of eighteenth and nineteenth century British social change; the Industrial
Revolution might be viewed as the initiating incident. After careful cause-and-effect
analysis of available evidence, however, the Industrial Revolution should be identified as
an inevitable outcome of important social change. Almost certainly, a critical mass of
initiating incidents was already in place in Britain by the middle of the eighteenth
century.
1) The development of mechanical technology has been well explored and documented.
The machines and processes of industrialization have been subjected to intense study, in
part because of a fascinating, relatively attainable physical record. Industrialization itself
has left not only a paper trail, but tantalizing stone and iron artifacts as well. The lead and
coal mines, the Lancashire mills, and machines like the Don River Engine in Sheffield
still reflect tremendously high "Gee whiz!" factors.
The successive development of cast iron with a molecular structure like that of sugar;
wrought iron, with its more malleably linear molecular structure; and blister steel, with its
controlled carbon content follow a logical progression of development. Studies of these
and other inventions lend themselves to process analysis, a more straightforward
evaluation than the more daunting cause-and-effect analysis that must be applied to more
fully achieve an understanding of the whole scenario of Industrialization.
2) Eighteenth century English social class structure smoothed the way for the coming of
the Industrial Revolution. The British upper class of the period showed a greater
flexibility than was evident in Europe. Because of the unique British system of control of
families, titles, and land, English people tended not to "get up in arms" over issues that
seemed to inspire conflict in other nations. To a much broader degree than in other
advanced countries, by the middle of the eighteenth century a majority of the people of
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England were stakeholders. They had seen the French experience their revolution and had
little desire to repeat it in Britain.
3) Agricultural conditions in England made Industrialization less difficult. The system of
land control in Britain itself differed importantly from that of Europe and even Ireland;
England had never really had a peasant class. Unique English tenancy also resulted in a
fortunate combination of efforts. Landowners worked to improve land by liming acidic
soils, thereby increasing grain yields and reducing the amount of heather in pastures. At
the same time, tenant farmers worked to increase production by good animal husbandry
and careful selection and sowing of seed. As a result, after the middle of the eighteenth
century, there was generally a new abundance of food for the coming industrial
workforce.
Despite the Clearances and Enclosure Acts, there was apparently never the sometimescited disruptive migration to cities of farm workers to become a new urban working class.
After the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws, agricultural pursuits became more challenging;
nevertheless, the literature abounds with references to the need for factory owners in the
industrial north to recruit workers who were still disinclined to leave the farm.
4) The Industrial revolution was made possible in part by the policies of the Crown
toward free trade and the empire. The British government protected domestic markets
and encouraged exports. English farms, mills and mines were not subjected by their
government or tradition to the "tyranny of free trade."
The British navy controlled the seas. French efforts to impede British trade with Europe
during the Napoleonic Wars instead served to encourage the expansion of what was to
become the British Empire with its worldwide customer base and intercontinental sources
of raw materials. The importing of raw materials was encouraged. Foreign manufactures
such as inexpensive textiles from India were discouraged by government policy from
English markets. The export of manufacturing machinery was not commonly permitted
until after the middle of the nineteenth century.
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Capital was widely available in Britain from the middle of the eighteenth century;
investment opportunities were in demand. The construction of canals, railroads, and
impressive public edifices was made possible with the influx of fresh capital earned by
the new industrialists.
A significant burst of interest in investment came with new laws limiting the financial
liability of businesses.
5) The Industrial revolution in England was fueled in part by population growth. While
there is not full agreement about why, England showed a significant increase in
population early in the eighteenth century. Before the beginning of the Industrial Age,
English life had been lived on a smaller scale. Now, there were many more people to
serve not only as workers in the new industries but also as consumers of the new
industrial products. London had become the largest city - and the largest market - in
Europe.
Once the Industrial Revolution was well under way, the theories of Malthus ceased to
cause the fear of a population outstripping the food supply. Delayed marriage, new social
patterns of people who "lived in," and the new work structure of the factory system
served to slow the birth rate to a sustainable level.
6) Not to be underestimated in the growth of English Industrialization is the influence of
Evangelical Movements. By the mid-eighteenth century, membership in the Church of
England was declining both by numbers of parishioners and in importance to society. The
new Methodism of John and Charles Wesley with its emphasis on personal responsibility
gained influence with Charles' journeys around England, Scotland, and even Ireland to
establish chapels and other outposts. To the chorus of new songs like Wesley's own
"Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," whole congregations of "middle class strivers" adopted
the values that would hold them in good stead as new industrialists; hard work, careful
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living according to established standards, and the resulting financial success were direct
signs of their eventual acceptance into the ready arms of God.
7) The Industrial Revolution introduced the factory system into England, and it certainly
expanded the scale of manufacturing, but a proto-industrial system actually had been in
place in Britain since Roman times. The idea of small-scale industrialization was not new
in any of Europe, but in Britain were fond readily available trees for charcoal, limestone
for sweetening soils and to serve as a catalyst in smelting, and accessible quantities of
sufficiently high-grade iron ore. Together with a supply of capital and the growing
demands of markets like London for manufactures, the availability of these raw materials
and a ready workforce seems to have helped to ripen the proto-industrial age in England
for the coming of a full-blown Industrial Revolution.
Of course, even after sound cause-and-effect analysis, some problems remain.
For example, the lives of nineteenth century coal miners seem difficult to us, but by their
neighbors perhaps these laborers were envied.
As twenty-first century people, we can be quick to criticize the employment of women
and children in dangerous work, but here, too, further questions might arise. Was what
seems through twenty-first century eyes to have been a high rate of infant mortality
perhaps an accepted norm? Isn't there a possibility that because of increasing prosperity
and a declining birthrate that twenty-first century society might seem to people of the
Industrial Age to be a "cult of the child"? As the Hammonds and others suggest, perhaps
our tremendous sympathy with children is a Victorian instinct not paralleled in an earlier
time. As Hobsbawm casually suggests, maybe, in part because the infant mortality rate of
the Industrial Age was so high, limited value was placed on individual children.
Other sets of events unfolding simultaneously with or previous to physical
Industrialization may have had equal or greater importance among its causes.
Nevertheless, some remain little noted and unexplored, at least partially because of the
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difficulties experienced by twenty-first century scholars, historians, and archaeologists in
examining them. Writings about even relatively approachable aspects of the Industrial
Age are rife with complaints about the "inadequacy of records" and the occasionally
disparaging remark about the need to rely on "local history."
Conclusion
Why the eighteenth century and why England? The preceding partial exploration of these
two critically important questions clearly indicates the benefit of cause-and-effect over
linear reasoning to seek origins of the English Industrial Revolution.
As difficult as such an effort may be, it is essential for us to try to ground the English
Industrial Revolution within our own experience. Indeed, perhaps conducting such a
successful analysis of the Industrial Age can equip us to better understand and judge our
own current circumstances as twenty-first century Americans