Chapter 11: Reaction Versus
Progress, 1815-1848
11.52: The Industrial Revolution in Britain
Today’s Agenda
• Collect Homework
• Return and go over Quiz
• 11.52 slide show
Industrial Revolution
Treaty
of Paris
end 7
Years’
War
1763
1769
James
Watt
invents
Steam
Engine
Hargreave’s
invents
Spinning
Jenny (1765)
List’s
National
System of
Political
Economy
-Mines Act
(1842)
Industrial
Revolution
Begins
Luddites
Revolt
1775
1780
Population
explosion
begins in GB
American
Revolution
Begins
1798
1812
Malthus,
Essay on
the
Principle of
Population
1830
Industrial
Rev. begins
on
Continent
(1815)
Great
Exhibition
in Crystal
Palace
1841
1851
Factory
Act (1833)
Why did it begin in Great Britain?
• Atlantic Economy
– Vast colonial empire (raw materials,
markets)
– Controlled slave trade (colonial labor)
• Geography
– No part of GB further than 20 miles from
H2O
– Canal network enhanced water
transportation (after 1770s)
• Natural Resources
– Iron & coal deposits
• No internal tariffs
• Agriculture Revolution
– Low prices for food
– More disposable income
• Strong Central Bank and Credit
• Stable government
• Laissez Faire
– Allowed for innovation, person initiative
• Large mobile labor force
– Enclosure acts
The Industrial Revolution In Britain
•
Work was done with hand tools until
1800
Industrial Revolution is the process of
shifting from hand labor to machine
labor
Shift occurred gradually (and is still
occurring)
What brings about this change?
•
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IE.People are by nature conservative
•
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Government
•
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Soviet government was form of state
pressure (motivating force) to mobilize
population
Mobile population is important prerequisite for industrialization
•
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don’t just alter their lives, where they live,
ect. Without a strong motivator.
Britain experienced a long trend of moving
toward a mobile labor class
Agricultural base
The Agricultural Revolution in Britain
•
•
•
•
•
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Landowners were in control of
Parliament
push for experiments in
agriculture which reduced labor
demands
Population density required
most efficient farming
Adopted enclosure, crop
rotation, heavy manuring by mid
1600s
Urban growth offered markets to
farmers
English learned about swamp
drainage
Jethrow Tull
–
Advocated drilling seed
–
Better husbandry of horses
By 1870 English farmer
produced 300% more than 1700
The Agricultural Revolution in Britain
• Enclosure Acts (18th and 19th Centuries)
– joining the strips of the open fields to make
larger compact units of land. These units
were then fenced or hedged off from the
next person's land. In this way a farmer had
land in one farm, rather than in scattered
strips.
– Between 1760 and 1780, some 900
Enclosure acts were passed
– farmers enclose land in order to produce a
greater amount, thereby earning bigger
profits. Also, where land was enclosed,
landlords could charge tenants higher rents
• ending the commons and communal cultivation
• Fencing in large tracts of land (fences, walls,
hedges)
• More efficient, more productive
• yielded more meat, cereals
• food supply increased with smaller % of the
population needed
• Freed labor and created a more mobile class of
workers
Industrialization in Britain: Incentives and
Inventions
•
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England had new colonial markets,
control of seas
Profit, Profit, Profit fueled the search for
more rapid methods of production
–
Ie. Woolen had been a staple export
–
but more production possibilities
were limited
Cotton held huge possibilities
Wealthy land owners (from enclosure)
could afford to divert some profits to
experimenting with industry
Only a country already wealthy from
commerce and agriculture could have
been the first to initiate the machine age
Wealth from commercial activity fueled
the growth of industrialism in England
First Factories
• Cottage Industry
• Plagued by constant thread shortages
• James Hargreaves
– Invented cotton spinning jenny (1765
Inventions in textiles
•
•
•
•
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flying shuttle
•
John Kay in 1733 made machine that
required 1 not 2 to weave cloth on loom
•
created strong demand for yarn
spinning jenny
–
invented in 1760s allowed yarn production to
increase
–
James Hagreaves (hand powered)
–
Richard Arkwright in 1769 harnessed water
power to operate jennies
–
A female dominated job
–
jennies overwhelmed loomers with yarn
Took place in mill (factory) near water source
power looms allowed them to catch up
–
this production put a strain on supply of raw
cotton
cotton gin
–
Eli Whitney was a Conn tutor on plantation in
Georgia in 1790
–
1820 it makes up half of British exports (cotton
textiles)
The ‘water frame’ for spinning cotton,
designed by British inventor Richard
Arkwright in 1768. Although so-called
because it was water-powered, it was
originally driven by mule. From 1790
onwards it was powered by steam engine.
Its increased efficiency allowed Arkwright's
factories to successfully compete with Indian
calico manufacturers.
Early Factory Workers
• Orphaned or abandoned
children
• Parish officers “apprenticed”
them out
• 5-6 years of age
• Food, shelter, “schooling”
provided
• 14 hour days with no pay
• Brutal discipline
• Robert Owens Testimony (see
page 746)
Other Innovations
Steam
•
Alternative source of power was needed
•
Medieval forests were depleted
•
because of a lack of hydropower (started
to experiment with steam power in
1700s)
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Coal used to heat homes since 1640
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•
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•
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English inventor Thomas Newcomen
built the first successful steam engine
in 1712. It was used to pump water out
of mines.
coal difficult to get because of deep shafts
filled with water
Thomas Newcomen 1705 coal mine
pump engine (a coal guzzler)
James Watt of Un. Of Glascow 1763
more efficient engine for factories
Still engines were quite cumbersome
and stationary only
1807 Fulton 1800 created a steam boat
on Hudson from Bolton and Watt engine
BBC - History 'Stephenson's Rocket'
Animation
Railroads
• Horse/canals had been used for
heavy freight
– Slow, expensive, limited market potential
• Rails had been used in mines to
reduce friction
• George Stephenson 1829
– Created the “Rocket” locomotive on
Liverpool and Manchester Railway that
only reached 16 mph
• Significance
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Reduced cost of shipping
Broadened markets
Encouraged larger factories
Workers who built RR usually settled in
city and became factory workers
• Factory system
– England is still rural but factory system
(especially in textiles) is growing by 1780 Joseph MW Turner (1775-1851)
Some Social Consequences of Industrialism
in Britain
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Changes in population
Grew from 10 mil in 1750 to 30
mil in 1850 (England and
Ireland)
Change in Location
•
used to be concentrated in
southern England
•
with coal and iron in Midlands
and north new cities rose
Change in Growth (urbanization)
•
1785 only 3 cites had 50 thou or
more
•
1845 31 this size
Manchester
• 1772 25,000 by 1851 455,000
• No legal status (had no legal method of
incorporating cities until 1835)
• This created problems providing public
services to rapidly growing urbanization
• Dirty, dark, sooty, drab, cloudy climate anyway
• Tenements, entire families in 1 room,
swarming with ragged children (who had
nicknames only)
• Factories only needed unskilled laborers
• Unskilled labor devalued former trades people
• Child labor- work so mechanical that children
as young as 6 worked
• Women
• 14 hour work days of tedious regimented
conditions
• very few holidays except layoffs were often
• workers had little in common and were not
unionized
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Cotton Lords
first industrialists
often self-made, intelligent
not ostentatious
hard working thought that landed
gentlemen were idlers and poor
lazy
believed that they did poor a favor
by hiring them
detested public regulation of their
business
1802 Factory Act tried to regulate
conditions of pauper children in
textiles by England had to class of
trained, paid administrators to
check
conscientious and independent
TABLE 4
STARTING AGE OF WORK IN COTTON
MILLS
(Manchester cotton workers starting work
1816-18)
ages
males (%)
females
(%)
10 & under
70.8
39.3
11-13
17.8
17.3
14-19
5.8
24.2
20-29
3.6
14.7
30 & over
2.0
4.5
# of obs
445
491
Source: Lords
Report (1818, 1819, appendices).
Classical Economics: Laissez-Faire
Manchester School
•
Economic philosophy of Thomas R. Malthus
and David Ricardo (both were Adam Smith
followers)
•
Free hand of the market and free trade
(Smith)
•
in free market regulation comes from natural
laws (law of supply and demand, diminishing
returns)
•
all people should follow their own
enlightened self interests which will generate
general welfare and liberty of all
•
govs job is to preserve security of life and
property (reasonable laws, reliable courts)
•
no tariffs
•
Population growth (Malthus) & Iron law of
wages (Ricardo)
–
when workers earn more than
subsistence wage they breed more
children who eat up the excess and
reduce working class to subsistence level
Thomas R. Malthus
Experiences of the workers
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Hard labor was not new
Concentration of labor made
needs of labor more evident
in cities workers obtained
more knowledge of world
and developed a sense of
solidarity (led to collective
bargaining)
Britain was unchallenged in
for most of a century
began to “export” capital
London became the world’s
financial clearing house
A Punch cartoon of 1844 entitled Capital and
Labour contrasts the luxurious life of a
mineowner with the harsh working conditions in
the pits. Although the Industrial Revolution
brought Britain as a whole greater material
prosperity, it also caused massive social
upheavals