The Rise of
Industry
How Did the Average European Live in 1750?
In 1750 …
• Worked as farmers using
handmade tools
• Lived in one-room cottages
in or around small villages
• Made their own clothes
• Grew their own food
• Only variety in goods was
through occasional trade in
the village
• Knew very little about the
world outside their own
village
• All travel was by foot or cart
How Did the Average European Live By 1850?
By 1850 …
• Worked in factories using
machinery
• Lived in crowded multifamily
apartment buildings in large
towns or cities
• Bought all of their clothes
• Bought all of their food
• Had a variety of options in
what they could buy from
stores
• Knew a great deal about the
outside world
• were able to travel rapidly by
train or steamship
Agricultural Revolution
• New chemical fertilizers
improved the quality of
the soil and crop yield
• The seed drill (a machine
which planted seeds in
even rows) was invented
• Practiced new forms of
crop rotation and
discovered which crops
replenish nutrients in the
soil the fastest (if you’re
curious, it’s turnips)
Agricultural Revolution
• Small farms disappeared
as they were bought up
by wealthier landowners
to create more efficient
large farms
– this increased farm output
and profitability
– it also left a lot of peasant
farmers homeless and
jobless; they were left with
no choice but to move into
the cities
Population Growth
• More efficient farms →
more food → more
people
– Population of England
grew from 5 million in
1700 to 9 million in 1800
– Grew mostly from
people living longer; no
longer had to worry
about starving to death
or being weak from
malnutrition
New Technologies
• Began to burn coal to
produce energy
• Invention of steam
powered engine, which
would power ships and
trains, by James Watt
• Learned how to make
higher quality metals,
specifically iron
Transportation Improvements
• Built new roads, canals,
better bridges and
harbors
• Railroads invented
around 1830;
thousands of miles of
tracks quickly laid
• Began to replace sailing
vessels with steamships
Industrial Revolution
•
Why did the Industrial Revolution
begin in Britain?
– Had lots of coal and iron deposits
– Had lots of workers available to
work in the mines and factories
– Had the many mechanics and
engineers necessary for
developing new inventions
– Had many people who had
grown wealthy from overseas
trade that were looking for
investments
– Had a stable government that
supported economic growth
The Textile Industry
• Textiles are cloth goods
• Had been produced using
the “putting-out” system
since about 1600:
– raw cotton was distributed to
peasant families who spun it
into thread and then wove
the thread into cloth
– the cloth was then sent into
towns where skilled artisans
finished and dyed the cloth,
making it ready for use
– this process was SLOW,
produced INCONSISTENT
quality, and was EXPENSIVE!
The Textile Industry
• In the mid-1700s, inventors
came up with a variety of
machines to perform the
spinning, weaving, finishing,
and dying processes
– this made the process of
making cloth much faster and
cheaper
– the machines were large and
heavy, however, and had to
be housed in factories –
rather than sending the work
out to the workers, the
workers now had to come to
the work