INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Author: Lewis
Hackett Date: 1992
Industrialization: The
First Phase
Most products people in the industrialized
nations use today are turned out swiftly by the process of mass production, by
people (and sometimes, robots) working on assembly lines using power-driven
machines. People of ancient and medieval times had no such products. They had
to spend long, tedious hours of hand labor even on simple objects. The energy,
or power, they employed in work came almost wholly from their own and animals'
muscles. The Industrial Revolution is the name given the movement in which
machines changed people's way of life as well as their methods of manufacture.
About the time of the American Revolution,
the people of England began to use machines to make cloth and steam engines to
run the machines. A little later they invented locomotives. Productivity began
a spectacular climb. By 1850 most Englishmen were laboring in industrial towns
and Great Britain had become the workshop of the world. From Britain the
Industrial Revolution spread gradually throughout Europe and to the United
States.
Changes That Led to the Revolution
The most important of the changes that
brought about the Industrial Revolution were (1) the invention of machines to
do the work of hand tools; (2) the use of steam, and later of other kinds of
power, in place of the muscles of human beings and of animals; and (3) the
adoption of the factory system.
It is almost impossible to imagine what the
world would be like if the effects of the Industrial Revolution were swept
away. Electric lights would go out. Automobiles and airplanes would vanish.
Telephones, radios, and television would disappear Most of the abundant stocks
on the shelves of department stores would be gone. The children of the poor
would have little or no schooling and would work from dawn to dark on the farm
or in the home. Before machines were invented, work by children as well as by
adults was needed in order to provide enough food, clothing, and shelter for
all.
The Industrial Revolution came gradually. It
happened in a short span of time, however, when measured against the centuries
people had worked entirely by hand. Until John Kay invented the flying shuttle
in 1733 and James Hargreaves the spinning jenny 31 years later, the making of
yarn and the weaving of cloth had been much the same for thousands of years. By
1800 a host of new and faster processes were in use in both manufacture and
transportation.
This relatively sudden change in the way
people live deserves to be called a revolution. It differs from a political
revolution in its greater effects on the lives of people and in not coming to
an end, as, for example, did the French Revolution.
Instead, the Industrial Revolution grew more
powerful each year as new inventions and manufacturing processes added to the
efficiency of machines and increased productivity. Indeed, since World War I
the mechanization of industry has increased so enormously that another
revolution in production is taking place
Expanding Commerce Affects Industry
Commerce and industry have always been
closely related. Sometimes one is ahead and sometimes the other, but the one
behind is always trying to catch up. Beginning in about 1400, world commerce
grew and changed so greatly that writers sometimes use the term
"commercial revolution" to describe the economic progress of the next
three and a half centuries.
Many factors helped bring about this revolution
in trade. The Crusades opened up the riches of the East to Western Europe.
America was discovered, and European nations began to acquire rich colonies
there and elsewhere. New trade routes were opened. The strong central
governments which replaced the feudal system began to protect and help their
merchants. Trading firms, such as the British East India Company, were
chartered by governments. Larger ships were built, and flourishing cities grew
up.
With the expansion of trade, more money was
needed. Large-scale commerce could not be carried on by barter, as much of the
earlier trade had been. Gold and silver from the New World helped meet this
need. Banks and credit systems developed. By the end of the 17th century Europe
had a large accumulation of capital. Money had to be available before machinery
and steam engines could come into wide use for they were costly to manufacture
and install.
By 1750 large quantities of goods were being
exchanged among the European nations, and there was a demand for more goods
than were being produced. England was the leading commercial nation, and the
manufacture of cloth was its leading industry.
Organizing Production
Several systems of making goods had grown up
by the time of the Industrial Revolution. In country districts families
produced most of the food, clothing, and other articles they used, as they had
done for centuries. In the cities merchandise was made in shops much like those
of the medieval craftsmen, and manufacturing was strictly regulated by the guilds
and by the government. The goods made in these shops, though of high quality,
were limited and costly.
The merchants needed cheaper items, as well
as larger quantities, for their growing trade. As early as the 15th century
they already had begun to go outside the cities, beyond the reach of the
hampering regulations, and to establish another system of producing goods.
From Cottage Industry to Factory
Cloth merchants, for instance, would buy raw
wool from the sheep owners, have it spun into yarn by farmers' wives, and take
it to country weavers to be made into textiles. These country weavers could
manufacture the cloth more cheaply than city craftsmen could because they got
part of their living from their gardens or small farms.
The merchants would then collect the cloth
and give it out again to finishers and dyers. Thus they controlled clothmaking
from start to finish. Similar methods of organizing and controlling the process
of manufacture came to prevail in other industries, such as the nail, cutlery,
and leather goods.
Some writers call this the putting-out
system. Others call it the domestic system because the work was done in the
home ("domestic" comes from the Latin word for home). Another term is
cottage industry, for most of the workers belonged to the class of farm
laborers known as cotters and carried on the work in their cottages.
This system of industry had several
advantages over older systems. It gave the merchant a large supply of
manufactured articles at a low price. It also enabled him to order the
particular kinds of items that he needed for his markets. It provided
employment for every member of a craft worker's family and gave jobs to skilled
workers who had no capital to start businesses for themselves. A few merchants
who had enough capital had gone a step further. They brought workers together
under one roof and supplied them with spinning wheels and looms or with the
implements of other trades. These establishments were factories, though they
bear slight resemblance to the factories of today.
Why the Revolution Began in England
English merchants were leaders in developing
a commerce which increased the demand for more goods. The expansion in trade
had made it possible to accumulate capital to use in industry. A cheaper system
of production had grown up which was largely free from regulation.
There also were new ideas in England which
aided the movement. One of these was the growing interest in scientific
investigation and invention. Another was the doctrine of laissez-faire, or letting
business alone. This doctrine had been growing in favor throughout the 18th
century. It was especially popular after the British economist Adam Smith
argued powerfully for it in his great work 'The Wealth of Nations' (1776).
For centuries the craft guilds and the
government had controlled commerce and industry down to the smallest detail.
Now many Englishmen had come to believe that it was better to let business be
regulated by the free play of supply and demand rather than by laws. Thus the
English government for the most part kept its hands off and left business free
to adopt the new inventions and the methods of production which were best
suited to them.
The most important of the machines that
ushered in the Industrial Revolution were invented in the last third of the
18th century. Earlier in the century, however, three inventions had been made
which opened the way for the later machines. One was the crude, slow-moving
steam engine built by Thomas Newcomen (1705), which was used to pump water out
of mines. The second was John Kay's flying shuttle (1733). It enabled one
person to handle a wide loom more rapidly than two persons could operate it
before. The third was a frame for spinning cotton thread with rollers, first
set up by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt (1741). Their invention was not
commercially practical, but it was the first step toward solving the problem of
machine spinning.
Inventions in Textile Industry
As the flying shuttle sped up weaving, the
demand for cotton yarn increased. Many inventors set to work to improve the
spinning wheel. James Hargreaves, a weaver who was also a carpenter, patented
his spinning jenny in 1770. It enabled one worker to run eight spindles instead
of one.
About the same time Richard Arkwright
developed his water frame, a machine for spinning with rollers operated by
water power. In 1779 Samuel Crompton, a spinner, combined Hargreaves' jenny and
Arkwright's roller frame into a spinning machine, called a mule. It produced
thread of greater fineness and strength than the jenny or the roller frame.
Since the roller frame and the mule were large and heavy, it became the
practice to install them in mills, where they could be run by water power. They
were tended by women and children.
These improvements in spinning machinery called
for further improvements in weaving. In 1785 Edmund Cartwright patented a power
loom. In spite of the need for it, weaving machinery came into use very slowly.
First, many improvements had to be made before the loom was satisfactory.
Second, the hand weavers violently opposed its adoption because it threw many
of them out of work. Those who got jobs in the factories were obliged to take
the same pay as unskilled workers. Thus they rioted, smashed the machines, and
tried to prevent their use. The power loom was only coming into wide operation
in the cotton industry by 1813. It did not completely replace the hand loom in
weaving cotton until 1850. It was not well adapted to the making of some
woolens. As late as 1880 many hand looms were still in use for weaving woolen
cloth.
Many other machines contributed to the
progress of the textile industry. In 1785 Thomas Bell of Glasgow invented
cylinder printing of cotton goods. This was a great improvement on block
printing. It made successive impressions of a design "join up" and
did the work more rapidly and more cheaply. In 1793 the available supply of
cotton was increased by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. In 1804 J.M.
Jacquard, a Frenchman, perfected a loom on which patterns might be woven in
fabrics by mechanical means. This loom was later adapted to the making of lace,
which became available to everyone
Watt's Steam Engine
While textile machinery was developing,
progress was being made in other directions. In 1763 James Watt, a Scottish
mechanic, was asked to repair a model of a Newcomen steam engine. He saw how
crude and inefficient it was and by a series of improvements made it a
practical device for running machinery.
Wheels turned by running water had been the
chief source of power for the early factories. These were necessarily situated
on swift-running streams. When the steam engine became efficient, it was
possible to locate factories in more convenient places.
Coal and Iron
The first users of steam engines were the
coal and iron industries. They were destined to be basic industries in the new
age of machinery. As early as 1720 many steam engines were in operation. In
coal mines they pumped out the water which usually flooded the deep shafts. In
the iron industry they pumped water to create the draft in blast furnaces.
The iron industry benefited also from other
early inventions of the 18th century. Iron was scarce and costly, and
production was falling off because England's forests could not supply enough
charcoal for smelting the ore. Ironmasters had long been experimenting with
coal as a fuel for smelting. Finally the Darby family, after three generations
of effort, succeeded with coal that had been transformed into coke. This
created a new demand for coal and laid the foundation for the British coal
industry. The next great steps were taken in the 1780s, when Henry Cort
developed the processes of puddling and rolling. Puddling produced nearly pure
malleable iron. Hand in hand with the adoption of the new inventions went the
rapid development of the factory system of manufacture.
Changing Conditions in England
The new methods increased the amount of goods
produced and decreased the cost. The worker at a machine with 100 spindles on
it could spin 100 threads of cotton more rapidly than 100 workers could on the
old spinning wheels. Southern planters in the United States were able to meet
the increased demand for raw cotton because they were using the cotton gin.
This machine could do the job of 50 men in cleaning cotton. Similar
improvements were being made in other lines of industry. British merchants no
longer found it a problem to obtain enough goods to supply their markets. On
the contrary, at times the markets were glutted with more goods than could be
sold. Then mills were closed and workers were thrown out of employment.
With English factories calling for supplies,
such as American cotton, and sending goods to all parts of the world, better
transportation was needed. The roads of England were wretchedly poor and often
impassable. Packhorses and wagons crawled along them, carrying small loads.
Such slow and inadequate transportation kept the cost of goods high. Here again
the need produced the invention. Thomas Telford and John MacAdam each developed
a method of road construction better than any that had been known since the
ancient Romans built their famous roads.
Building Canals and Railways
Many canals were dug. They connected the main
rivers and so furnished a network of waterways for transporting coal and other
heavy goods. A canalboat held much more than a wagon. It moved smoothly if
slowly over the water, with a single horse hitched to the towline. In some
places, where it was impossible to dig canals and where heavy loads of coal had
to be hauled, mine owners laid down wooden or iron rails. On these early
railroads one horse could haul as much coal as 20 horses could on ordinary
roads.
Early in the 19th century came George
Stephenson's locomotive and Robert Fulton's steamboat, an American invention.
They marked the beginning of modern transportation on land and sea. Railroads
called for the production of more goods, for they put factory-made products
within reach of many more people at prices they could afford to pay.
The Condition of Labor
As conditions in industry changed, social and
political conditions changed with them. Farm laborers and artisans flocked to
the manufacturing centers and became industrial workers. Cities grew rapidly,
and the percentage of farmers in the total population declined.
The population of England as a whole began to
increase rapidly after the middle of the 18th century. Because of progress in
medical knowledge and sanitation, fewer people died in infancy or childhood and
the average length of life increased.
Far-reaching changes were gradually brought
about in the life of the industrial workers. For one thing, machines took a
great burden of hard work from the muscles of human beings. Some of the other
changes, however, were not so welcome.
The change from domestic industry to the
factory system meant a loss of independence to the worker. The home laborer
could work whenever he pleased. Although the need for money often drove him to
toil long hours, he could vary the monotony of his task by digging or planting
his garden patch. When he became a factory employee, he not only had to work
long hours, but he had to leave his little farm. He lived near the factory,
often in a crowded slum district. He was forced to work continuously at the
pace set by the machine. The long hours and the monotonous toil were an especially
great hardship for the women and children. The vast majority of the jobs were
held by them by 1816.
The change was particularly hard on the
weavers and the other skilled workers who sank to the position of factory
workers. They had been independent masters, capitalists in a small way, and
managers of their own businesses. They had pride in their skill. When they saw
themselves being forced into factories to do other men's bidding for the same
pay as unskilled workers, it is no wonder that they rioted and broke up looms.
Problems of Capital and Labor
A person had to have a lot of capital to buy
machines and open a factory. Those who were successful made huge profits with
which to buy more machines, put up larger buildings, and purchase supplies in
greater quantities at enormous savings. Thus capital increased far more rapidly
than it ever had before. Much of it was invested in building canals, railroads,
and steamships and in developing foreign trade. The men who controlled these
enterprises formed a powerful new class in England--the industrial capitalists.
The capitalists had a struggle to obtain a
voice in the government. They needed a better system of banking, currency, and
credit. They had to find and hold markets for their products. They had many difficulties
in organizing their factories to run efficiently. They also had to make a
profit on their investments in the face of intense competition.
Laissez-faire was the rule in England. This
meant that the government had accepted the doctrine that it should keep hands
off business. Factory owners could therefore arrange working conditions in
whatever way they pleased. Grave problems arose for the workers--problems of
working hours, wages, unemployment, accidents, employment of women and
children, and housing conditions.
Children could tend most of the machines as
well as older persons could, and they could be hired for less pay. Great
numbers of them were worked form 12 to 14 hours a day under terrible
conditions. Many were apprenticed to the factory owners and housed in miserable
dormitories. Ill-fed and ill-clothed, they were sometimes driven under the lash
of the overseer. The high death rate of these child slaves eventually roused
Parliament to pass laws limiting the daily toil for apprentices.
Rise of Labor Unions
Workers sought to win improved conditions and
wages through labor unions. These unions often started as "friendly
societies" that collected dues from workers and extended aid during
illness or unemployment. Soon, however, they became organizations for winning
improvements by collective bargaining and strikes.
Industrial workers also sought to benefit
themselves by political action. They fought such legislation as the English
laws of 1799 and 1800 forbidding labor organizations. They campaigned to secure
laws which would help them. The struggle by workers to win the right to vote
and to extend their political power was one of the major factors in the spread
of democracy during the 19th century.
Revolution Spreads to the United States
Until 1815 France was busy with the
Napoleonic wars. It had little opportunity to introduce machinery. When peace
came France began to follow England. It followed slowly, however, and has never
devoted itself as exclusively to manufacturing as England has. Belgium was
ahead of France in adopting the new methods. The other European countries made
little progress until the second half of the 19th century.
The United States too was slow in adopting
machine methods of manufacture. Farming and trading were its chief interests
until the Civil War. The new nation had little capital with which to buy the
machinery and put up the buildings required. Such capital as existed was
largely invested in shipping and commerce. Labor was scarce because men
continued to push westward, clearing the forests and establishing themselves on
the land.
A start in manufacturing, however, was made
in New England in 1790 by Samuel Slater. An employee of Arkwright's spinning
mills, Slater came to the United States in 1789. He was hired by Moses Brown of
Providence, R. I., to build a mill on the Pawtucket, or Seekonk, River. English
laws forbade export of either the new machinery or plans for making it. Slater
designed the machine from memory and built a mill which started operation in
1790. When the Napoleonic wars and the War of 1812 upset commerce and made
English products difficult to obtain, more American investors began to build
factories.
Pioneer Industries and Inventions
New England soon developed an important
textile industry. It had swift streams for power and a humid climate, which
kept cotton and wool fibers in condition for spinning and weaving. In
Pennsylvania iron for machines, tools, and guns was smelted in stone furnaces.
They burned charcoal, plentiful in this forested land. Spinning machines driven
by steam were operating in New York by 1810. The first practical power loom was
installed at Waltham, Mass., by Francis Cabot Lowell in 1814. Shoemaking was
organized into a factory system of production in Massachusetts in the early
19th century. New England was the first area in the United States to
industrialize.
American inventors produced many new machines
that could be applied to industry as well as to agriculture. Oliver Evans
designed a steam engine more powerful than that of James Watt. Engineers
quickly adopted the new engine and used it to power locomotives and steamboats.
Cyrus McCormick invented several machines
used to mechanize farming. His mechanical reaper, patented in 1834,
revolutionized harvesting, making it quicker and easier. Elias Howe's sewing
machine eased the life of the housewife and made the manufacture of clothing
less expensive.
Techniques of factory production were refined
in American workshops. Eli Whitney led the movement to standardize parts used
in manufacture. They became interchangeable, enabling unskilled workers to
assemble products from boxes of parts quickly. American factories used machine
tools to make parts. These machines were arranged in lines for more efficient
production. This was called the "American system of manufacturing,"
and it was admired by all other industrial nations. It was first applied to the
manufacture of firearms and later spread to other industries like clock and
lock making.
Second Industrial Revolution
The machines of the Industrial Revolution in
the 18th and early 19th centuries were simple, mechanical devices compared with
the industrial technology that followed. Many new products were devised, and
important advances were made in the system of mass production. Changes in
industry were so great that the period after 1860 has been called the Second
Industrial Revolution. New scientific knowledge was applied to industry as
scientists and engineers unlocked the secrets of physics and chemistry. Great
new industries were founded on this scientific advance: steel, chemicals, and
petroleum benefited from new understandings of chemistry; breakthroughs in the
study of electricity and magnetism provided the basis for a large electrical
industry. These new industries were larger and more productive than any
industries existing before. Germany and the United States became the leaders,
and by the end of the 19th century they were challenging Great Britain in the
world market for industrial goods.
The age of electricity began in 1882 when
Thomas A. Edison introduced a system of electric lighting in New York City.
Electricity was later applied to driving all kinds of machinery as well as
powering locomotives and streetcars. Electric lighting quickly spread across
the United States and was soon adopted in Europe. The electrical industry was
dominated by large companies that developed new products and then manufactured
and marketed them. These companies were based in Germany and the United States
but sold their goods all over the world. They were the first multinational
companies. Companies like Westinghouse and General Electric helped to electrify
cities in Europe, Africa, and South America.
The steel and chemical industries used new
technology that greatly increased production. The size of factories increased
rapidly, employing more workers and using more machinery. These industries
integrated all stages of production under a single corporate structure. They
bought out competitors and acquired sources of raw materials and retail
outlets. Corporations such as U.S. Steel and Standard Oil controlled all stages
of manufacturing the product, from mining and drilling to delivering it to the
customer. This gave them great economic power, and the United States government
took measures to limit their monopolies in steel and petroleum.
The larger size of business presented great
challenges to managers who administered enormous organizations with many
branches and subsidiaries. Advances in communications and transportation helped
decision makers to maintain control. The electric telegraph was invented by
Samuel Morse in 1844 and was used to relay commercial information about prices
and markets. It was used in the stock exchanges and on the railway systems.
Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone in 1876, and networks of telephone
lines were built quickly across the United States.
The telephone became a useful tool for
managers to keep in contact with the widely dispersed parts of their
businesses. New methods of management were devised that stressed central control,
planning, and efficient production methods. One of the leading advocates of
"scientific management" was Frederick Winslow Taylor.
The Second Industrial Revolution marked great
progress in the methods of mass production. More and more industries used interchangeable
parts and machine tools. Electric power replaced steam power in factories; it
was cheaper, faster, and more flexible. It allowed machine tools to be arranged
more efficiently. Human power was replaced by machine power. In 1913 Henry Ford
introduced the assembly line in the manufacture of his Model T Ford. Parts were
assembled on a moving conveyor belt, and the Model T took shape as it moved
from one work station to the next. The assembly line greatly increased the
speed of manufacture and soon was used in many industries.
By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, only
a small number of industries in the most industrialized nations of the world
had adopted advanced production methods and organization. Much of the world had
not yet begun a first industrial revolution. Russia, Canada, Italy, and Japan
were just beginning to industrialize.
Only Great Britain, the
United States, Germany, France, and some parts of the Scandinavian countries
had successfully completed an industrial revolution. Most of the world's
population still worked in primitive agricultural economies. China, India, and
Spain did not begin to industrialize until well into the 20th century.
