14. The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution: An Overview

The Industrial Revolution that would change the world forever began with an "agricultural revolution" in England in the 1600s. Changes in attitudes towards property saw the commonly-farmed open fields and pastures of the feudal manorial system being enclosed as plots of "private" property. With large fields being cut into private holdings came the need for new developments in agricultural technology. The results were new farming methods (crop rotation) and machines (e.g., the horse-drawn seed drill, cultivator) that led to significant increases in agricultural production. Consequently, more food could be produced by less people, freeing people from dependence on the land for their livelihood. Many former farmers, unable to compete with their richer neighbors, mortgaged and often forfeit their lands to pay their debts. Without their own lands, they either became tenant farmers on larger estates or migrated into towns and cities. There they became part of a growing labor force for a growing business, the textile industry.

In the early 1700s the British textile industry began to expand in response to increased demand for finished cloth both from home and abroad. The domestic "cottage industry," wherein raw cotton was processed by hand into cloth in private homes, was unable to meet the demand. Inventive entrepreneurs, seeking greater efficiency, devised mechanical means of increasing productivity. By the mid-1700s inventions such as the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, and water frame loom marked the modest beginnings of British industrialization.

British economic expansion was enhanced by the right combination of what economists call the factors of production: land (the availability of natural resources); labor (availability of manpower); capital (surplus wealth that could be invested in business expansion); management (Britain had a commercial middle class with both capital and business expertise); and government (meaning a government willing and able to encourage and support industrial development). By 1800 the British economy, driven by water-powered textile mills had become the world's first industrial economy. Industrial expansion was accelerated by the application of steam power to factory production. Britain had vast resources of iron and coal, the essential raw materials for industrial development. With the availability of steam power, mills no longer had to be located along river fall lines. Small villages began to grow into factory towns. Towns rapidly expanded into major cities. The overall wealth of the nation increased beyond comprehension. The commercial middle class, as the owners of the new industries, rose to increased economic and social importance. A new working class of urban industrial laborers came into existence. These were the people who worked the factories, mines, and mills.

The Industrial Revolution that began in British textile mills in the mid-18th century and gradually spread to other parts of Europe brought unparalleled changes in overall economic, social, and political conditions. As nations industrialized, factory production began to replace agriculture as the basis of social wealth. The old traditions of hand labor and individual craftsmanship were replaced by machines tended by unskilled factory laborers. In the first industrialized nations (Britain, France, the United States, Prussia, and the northern German states), the middle class became the new captains of industry, owning and managing industrial production. The industrialization of agriculture produced huge food surpluses, leading to rapid population growth. Once-small villages and mill towns mushroomed into huge overcrowded cities as displaced farmer laborers sought the easy wealth of factory work. The philosophical basis of the new industrial economies was that of capitalist free enterprise in which the "laws" of supply and demand and of unregulated competition became the foundations of the emerging industrial economy. With industry providing the basis for their new and vast wealth, the European middle classes pressured traditional monarchist governments for constitutional changes, giving them the vote and a more significant voice in the legislative process. The epoch of revolutionary unrest that began in France in 1789 and lasted until 1848 was initiated by middle class resentment of the traditional monopoly of power and privilege held by the crown, nobility, and church. By 1832 the middle class in Britain had achieved the political ascendancy that would enable it to shape the laws, institutions, and values of industrial society. Industrialization not only made the middle class a powerful socio-economic force in Europe, it also created another new class with its own set of identifying characteristics - the industrial working class.

The new working class consisted largely of the laborers who worked in the factories, mills, mines, and built the railroads. As wages were based on what employers chose to pay their employees, workers lived in poverty in the crowded and unsanitary slums of the new industrial cities. Because factory labor did not require learning special skills, it was possible for children of both sexes to do industrial work. Needing the money their children could earn as laborers, working class parents saw value in large families and sent their children to the mills and mines as early as five or six years old. Initially, unrestricted free enterprise was the guiding principle regulating industry. The average work day was 14 to 16 hours, for children as well as adults. The work week was six days. Factory conditions were usually unsanitary and dangerous. For a person who began work in the mills as a child of six, his or her productive life would be over by the age of twenty. For such children there was no possibility of any formal education. Often young workers were crippled, deafened, or deformed by their years in the mills. Unlike today, there were no laws regulating the maximum length of work days, minimum age for workers, or the safety of working or living conditions. Because the middle classes controlled the parliaments that made the laws, workers were forbidden to form unions or strike for higher wages or improved working conditions. Under unrestricted free enterprise, the middle class seemed destined to profit from new and ever expanding riches while the working class seemed doomed to poverty, illiteracy, and deprivation.

Could capitalist free enterprise ever be made to benefit the workers who made its success possible? Eighteenth and 19th century economic philosophers were mixed in their response. The Scottish economist Adam Smith maintained that all economic activity was based on the universal natural laws of supply and demand and of competition. If governments abandoned their mercantilist policies and took a complete laissez-faire (hands off) approach to the economy, the result would be unlimited production of the best quality goods at the best price by the most efficient means. All of humanity would benefit. Yet, one group of economic philosophers – those called the "dismal scientists," such as Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo – reasoned that the unimpeded operation of the natural laws of economics meant that the working class would continue to grow in size and become increasingly poorer. In contrast, later liberal philosophers, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, argued that all, both middle class and workers, could benefit from reforms that ensured the "greatest good for the greatest number." Capitalism could be reformed and still remain based on free enterprise. Such reforms should include the representation of all classes in the political process brought about by extending all the right to vote to all without wealth or property qualifications. Good government and laws beneficial to the interests of all classes would be dependent upon mandatory and universal public education. The middle class, they maintained, had the both power and responsibility to reform and regulate capitalism for the benefit of all. In addition to this philosophical response to industrialization, writers and social critics such as Britain's Charles Dickens called public attention to the abuses of the capitalist system by describing the horrors of poverty and hopelessness of life in the slums of the great industrial cities.[1]

Gradually and hesitantly, governments in Western Europe began to respond by passing laws expanding the right to vote and regulating economic activity. Such legislation included the regulation of working hours for women and children but not much more. While encouraging, 19th century efforts at economic reform remained modest at best and largely unfulfilled. To many, something seemed terribly wrong. Capitalism's promise of profit and wealth caused middle class governments to resist significant efforts to regulate free enterprise. The rich seemed to be getting richer. The poor seemed to be getting poorer.

Sources for the Industrial Revolution

Brinton, Crane et al. A History of Civilization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960.

Johnson, Paul. The Birth of the Modern. New York: Harper-Collins, 1991.

Knapton, Ernest and Thomas Derry. Europe 1815 – 1914. New York: Scribners, 1965.

Langer, Walter et al. Western Civilization. New York : Harper and Row, 1968.

Mazour, Anatole and John Peoples. A World History: People and Nations. Austin: Harcourt, 1993.

Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.

Palmer, Robert R. et al A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.

Map source: Cole, Joshua and Carol Symes. Western Civilizations. New York: Norton, 2008.

[1] Smith, Mathus, Ricardo, Bentham, and Mill are considered in a later reading, “The Philosophical Response to Industrialization.”