EARLY INDUSTRIAL EUROPE
Population: Sharp rise after 1730. France – 50%
in 50 years; Britain and Prussia 100% in 50 years
Poverty: Especially France and Italy. 25% of the
population of Bologna begged for a living
Enclosures (England)
Cottage industry and wage labor
Inventions and innovations: 1760s – steam
engine; 1780s – puddling; use of coal/coke as
fuel, development of railways (from 16 miles/hour
in 1830 to 50 miles/hour in 1850).
Rise of factory system: Concerns of British
labor, new values of punctuality and hard work,
worker resistance, surge in production (cotton
textile production in Britain tripled between
Conservatism in the early 19th century:
Metternich and the Concert of Europe
Waning of mercantilism, rise of free trade
philosophy
Deindustrialization in the colonies
Gustave Dore: London, 1872
MANCHESTER IN 1750
A new urban landscape
Manchester, 1847. Left: except the cathedral, all the buildings
are industrial. Right: cotton warehouse
REDHILL STREET MILL,
MANCHESTER
Commissioned in 1790 and constructed
in 1818 as a spinning mill.
One writer, Alexis de Tocqueville,
described Redhill Street Mill in 1835 as
"...a place where some 1500 workers,
labouring 69 hours a week, with an
average wage of 11 shillings, and where
three-quarters of the workers are women
and children".
Eight storeys high, it was the tallest ironframed building in the world in its day.
In 1865 the building was altered by the
new owner, Sir William Fairbairn, to install
larger automated spinning mules. By this
time it was the biggest mill in the
Manchester region.
Further buildings were added in 1868
and 1912 to cope with the demand for
increased output.
http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/history/victorian/mills.html
http://www.lookingatbuildings.org.uk/default.asp?Document=3.T.7&image=70
Royal Exchange, Manchester
Industrial accidents, early 1800s
Boiler explosion
http://www.millikin.edu/history/202/images/minergirl.jpg
http://myweb.cableone.net/leahryan/Coal/pbl/England/pre42lan.htm
URBAN PROBLEMS: PUBLIC HEALTH & POVERTY
Left: a London sewer.
Centre: scavenger at sewer.
Right: vagrants
Number
Weekly
Wages
MALES
1
1000
pounds
per
year
Mill manager (also got 3 per cent of the profits)
26
15s-32s
Overseers and clerks
6
17s-25s
Mechanics and engine drivers
3
14s-21s
Carpenters and blacksmiths
1
15s
16
14s-15s
Power loom machinery attendants and steamers
18
10s-15s
Mill machinery attendants and loom cleaners
5
5s-12s
Spindle cleaners, bobbin stampers and packers, messengers, sweepers
-
7s-10s
Watchmen
-
5s-10s
Coachmen, grooms and van driver
38
2s-4s
Winders
114
This is an 1860 chart of the
workforce of the Courtauld Silk
Mill, built in 1825 in Halstead,
Essex (southeast England).
Wages are in shillings.
Lodge keeper
Before the industrial revolution,
Halstead was an agricultural
community with a cottage
industry producing woolen
cloth.
Total Males
Number
Weekly
Wages
FEMALES
4
10s-11s
Gauze examiners
4
9s-10s
Female assistant overseers
16
7s-10s
Warpers
9
7s-10s
Twisters
4
6s-9s
Wasters
589
5s-8s
Weavers
2
6s-7s
Plugwinders
83
4s-6s
Drawers and doublers
188
2s-4s
Winders
899
Total Females
1013
GRAND TOTAL WORK FORCE
In Halstead, as elsewhere in
England, unemployment among
depressed farming households
and former wool workers forced
people to find work outside the
home. Because their labor was
cheap, women more than men
were recruited into the textile
factories that sprang up all over
Britain in the 19th century.
http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/textile.html
WORKING CLASS RESPONSE
Leeds Woollen Workers’ Petition, 1786
Luddites, early nineteenth century (myth of Ned Ludd)
Poster published in 1911
Urban migration: Population of London by 1850: 2.4
million
Trade unions: Britain tried to outlaw workers’
organizations in 1800. Use of methods like strikes. Led to
moderate reforms in 1832 (only 1/30 of population
represented in Parliament; existence of laws like Poor
Law, which forced people to find work)
Reforms: Edwin Chadwick’s report in 1842, more decisive
reforms in 1867. Repeal of Corn Laws motivated by free
trade philosophy rather than concern for poor.
Chartist movement (late 1830s to 1848): radical
demands - universal male suffrage, remuneration for
Members of Parliament, annual sessions of Parliament
Manifesto of the Communist Party: class struggle, role
of the bourgeoisie, relations of production, global nature of
industrial economy, overproduction, constantly expanding
markets, alienation of labor, rise of proletariat, revolution,
internationalism
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRluddites.htm
Producing the raw material of the first industrial revolution
Free trade? Or “drain of wealth”?
NORTH
AMERICA
BRITAIN
LATIN
AMERICA
Plantation
economy
Import of
manufactures
EUROPE
CHINA
Impoverishment
Addiction
Weakened army
Opium Wars;
“unequal treaties
INDIA
Death of Indian textile
industry; loss of
employment
Indians forced to buy
British goods—no
investment or
industrialization
Heavy taxes on even
the poorest peasants
Famines, deaths
By 1851, Britain produced one
half of the world’s coal and
manufactured goods.
THE WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD
British cotton textile exports to various parts of the world
300
290
280
270
260
250
240
230
220
210
200
190
180
170
160
150
140
130
120
110
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
279
1820
Britain’s cotton textile industry
produced as much as that of
all other European countries
put together
1840
200
Production of cotton textiles
tripled between 1780 and 1850
145
128
75
56
32
30
24
USA
Spanish
America
Europe
10
11
Africa
East
Indies
30
17
3
China
Various
http://www.knightsbridge.net/history/great-exhibition.html
THE GREAT EXHIBITION, LONDON, 1851
On May 1, 1851, Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition of Works of Industry of
All Nations in London's Hyde Park. The first world's industrial fair, the exhibition brought
together the best manufactured products of 77 nations. The building in which it was held,
nicknamed the "Crystal Palace," was itself a technological marvel of iron and glass
devised by Joseph Paxton. More than six million people from many nations visited the
exhibition during its five and a half-month run.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/british/brit-5.html