Laissez-Faire
Boom or Bust?
Textile Inventions
•
1733 - Flying shuttle invented by John Kay - an improvement to looms that enabled
weavers to weave faster.
1742 - Cotton mills were first opened in England.
1764 - Spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves - the first machine to improve
upon the spinning wheel.
1764 - Water frame invented by Richard Arkwright - the first powered textile machine.
1769 - Arkwright patented the water frame.
1770 - Hargreaves patented the Spinning Jenny.
1773 - The first all-cotton textiles were produced in factories.
1779 - Crompton invented the spinning mule that allowed for greater control over the
weaving process.
1785 - Cartwright patented the power loom. It was improved upon by William Horrocks,
known for his invention of the variable speed batton in 1813.
1787 - Cotton goods production had increased 10 fold since 1770.
1789 - Samuel Slater brought textile machinery design to the US.
1790 - Arkwright built the first steam powered textile factory in Nottingham, England.
1792 - Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin - a machine that automated the separation of
cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fibre.
1804 - Joseph Marie Jacquard invented the Jacquard Loom that weaved complex
designs. Jacquard invented a way of automatically controlling the warp and weft threads
on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards.
1813 - William Horrocks invented the variable speed batton (for an improved power
loom).
1856 - William Perkin invented the first synthetic dye
Textile Inventions
Flying shuttle
Spinning Jenny
With the arrival of these inventions, yarn had effectively
become industrialized. By 1812, the cost of making cotton
yarn had dropped by nine-tenths and the number of workers
needed to turn wool into yarn had been reduced by four-fifths.
The addition of these inventions to the work force moved the
stress from the production to the supply of raw cotton. Within
just a 35 year period, more than 100,000 power looms with
9,330,000 spindles were put into service in England and
Scotland Britain took advantage of the Americas' available
new cotton, using it to help absorb the demand. By 1830, the
importation of raw cotton had increased to eight times its past
rate and half of Britain's exports were refined cotton. At this
point, the demand was high enough to provide inspiration for
what is probably the most well known invention of the
Revolution: the steam engine.
Thomas Newcomen built a steam engine to pump water
from the Cornish tin mines. His engines were also used in
the 18th century to increase the supply of drinking water.
•James Watt improved
on this design setting
the stage for the
Industrial Revolution in
Britain, Europe, the
U.S. and the world.
•Patented in 1769
http://www.dcs.exeter.ac.uk/water/newcomen.htm
Steamboat
• In 1807, Robert Fulton used
steam power to create the first
steamboat, an invention that
would change the way and the
speed in which materials could
be moved between the colonies
of Britain. In the beginning, the
ship was more expensive to
build and operate than sailing
vessels, but the steamship had
some advantages. It could take
off under its own power and it
was more steadfast in storms
Steam Trains
Finally, in 1814, Stephenson used the steam engine to create a
steam powered train, which would eventually allow increased
communication and trade between places before deemed too far.
Soon, the steam-powered train had become an icon of success
throughout the world
The Rocket
Modern Railway Age
• the most important of which
was the Liverpool and
Manchester line of 1830
• ability to haul its train at over
30 miles per hour
• set the standard for locomotive
design
• A railway boom and mania
followed during the 1840s
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/industrialisation/victorian_technology_03.shtml
Lithograph by Currier & Ives depicts four of
the major inventions of the nineteenth century
Can you name them?
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/web04/images/img_intro.jpg
Coal and Clay mining in the
Rochdale Area - Britain
www.rochdale.gov.uk/ living/libraries.asp?url=...
Child labor in mines, 19th century
It was cheaper to hire children than risk mules, horses in
the mines. Why?
http://library.fes.de/library/netzquelle/bilder/bergwerk.jpg
Child Labor
http://hogwild.net/images/Misc/industrial-revolution-children-labor.jpg
A New Age
• The Great Exhibition
of 1851
• How did this New Age
show consumerism?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/industrial_revolution/
The advertisement of Thomas
Wood
An Advertisement for a
Cake Maker
•What clues can you find about British
society in this advertisement?
•Gender
•Work
•Class systems
•Think Victorian values
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/industrialisation/so
urce_workshop_02.shtml
The advertisements of
Frederick Willey
• What clues are
available in this
advertisement?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/industrialisation/sour
ce_workshop_03.shtml
Utopia?
A representation of the Great Exhibition of 1851
held at the Crystal Palace
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/lj/victorian_britainlj/industry
_invention_1.shtml?site=history_victorianlj_industry
in Hyde Park, London
Changes in Occupational
Structure in the Victorian Age
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/lj/victorian_britainlj/earning_a_living_3.shtml?site=history_victorianlj_earning
Death in the city
“Large towns were...
desperately unhealthy,
with levels of death at
a level not seen since
the Black Death.”
• The census of 1851 recorded
half of the population of Britain
as living in towns
• towns offered a better chance of
work and higher wages than the
countryside
• A baby born in a large town
with a population of more than
100,000 in the 1820s might
expect to live to 35; in the
1830s, life expectancy was
down to miserable 29.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/lj/victorian_britainlj/smell_of_success_1.shtml?site=history_victo
rianlj_sour
Packing in the People
•Cities became more densely packed
•In Liverpool, in the early 1840s,
perhaps ten per cent lived in cellars.
•commissioners appointed to enquire
into the cholera outbreak in Newcastleupon-Tyne found that about 50 per cent
of families had only a single room
•Most houses did not have an
independent water supply or privy, and
what was shared was often the
responsibility of no one
•low life expectancy of babies born
into such conditions is easily explained
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/lj/victorian_britainlj/smell_of_success_5.shtml?site=history_victorianlj_sour
Paradox of Economic Growth
•Conditions did improve from the 1870s
•Public Health Act of 1875 required local
authorities to implement building
regulations
•At the same time, the income of most
working class people started to rise at an
unprecedented rate
•A prosperous economy with factories and
houses pumping smoke into the air
contributed to a high death rate from
respiratory diseases
King Smoke (Punch, 1854)
•The courts were clear that they should not
penalise industrialists for causing nuisances
with their fumes, for the result would
simply be to destroy the industry of many
towns
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/lj/victorian_britainlj/smell_of_success_6.shtml?site=history_victorianlj_sour
Education
A Punch cartoon from 1847.
Note that the boy has fallen through the
gap between 'voluntary education' and
'state education'
• In 1833, Parliament voted the
first grant to support education
for the poor
• 1870 Education Act, which
developed local board schools
• Compulsory elementary
education followed in 1881 and
the opportunity for almost all
children to receive free
elementary education without
payment of any fees was
provided by 1891
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/lj/victorian_britainlj/laissezfaire_
7.shtml?site=history_victorianlj_laissez
The First Nanny State?
• Despite the belief that
state intervention
worked against
individual self-reliance
this was a period of
increasing state
intervention.
Victorian advertisements at
Charing Cross Sation, 1874
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/lj/victorian_britainlj/laissezfaire_1.sht
ml?site=history_victorianlj_laissez
A Possible Answer
The 19th Century state intervened to
prevent those greater evils which might
threaten the efficiency of a free-trade
economy and not to provide positive
benefits for its citizens. Also, the burden of
provision rested overwhelmingly with local
authorities and not with central
government.