INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

BEGINS IN ENGLAND

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From

Glimpses of World History

by

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

I must now tell you of some of the mechanical inventions which made such a tremendous difference in methods of production. They seem simple enough when we see them now in a mill or factory. But to think of them for the first time and to invent them was a very difficult matter.

The first of these inventions came in 1738, when a man named Kay made the flying shuttle for cloth-weaving. Before this invention the thread in the shuttle in the weaver’s hand had to be carried slowly across and through the other threads placed lengthwise, called the wrap. The flying shuttle quickened this process, and thus doubled the weaver’s output. This meant that the weaver could consume much more yarn. Spinners were hard put to it to supply this additional yarn, and they tried to find some way of increasing their output. This problem was partly solved by the invention by Hargreaves in 1764 of the spinning-jenny. Other invention by Richard Arkwright and others followed; water-power was used and latter stream-power. All these invention were first applied to the cotton industry, and the factories or cotton-mills grew up. The next industry to take to the new methods was the woolen industry.

Meanwhile, in 1765, James Watt made his steam engine. This was a great event, and the use of steam in factory production followed from it. Coal was now wanted for the new factories, and the coal industry therefore developed. The use of coal led to new methods of iron-smelting –that is, the melting of the iron ore to separate the pure metal. The iron industry there upon grew fast. New factories were built near the coal fields, as coal was cheaper there.

Thus three great industries grew up in England- textile, iron and coal – and factories sprung up in the coal areas and other suitable places. The face of England changed. Instead of the green and pleasant countryside, there grew up in many places these new factories with their long chimneys belching forth smoke and darkening the neighbourhood Tthey were not beautiful to look at, these factories surrounded by mountains of coal and heaps of refuse. Nor were the new manufacturing towns, growing around the factories, things of beauty. They were put up anyhow, the only object of the owners being to get on with the making of money. They were ugly and large and dirty, and the starving workers had to put up with these as well as with the terribly unwholesome conditions in the factories.

You may remember my telling you of the squeezing out of the small farmers by the big land owners and the growth of unemployment, resulting in riots and lawlessness in England. The new industries made matters worse to begin with. Agriculture suffered and unemployment increased. Indeed, as each new invention came it resulted in replacing manual labour by mechanical devices. This often led to workers being discharged, and caused great resentment among them. Many of them came to hate the new machines, and they event tried to break them. The machine-wreckers, these people were called.

Machine-wrecking has quite a long history in Europe, going back to the sixteenth century, when a simple machine loom was invented in Germany. In an old book written by an Italian priest in 1679 it is stated about this loom that the Town Council of Danzig “being afraid that invention might throw a large number of the workmen on the streets, had the machine destroyed, and the inventor secretly strangled or drowned”! In spite of this summary way of dealing with the inventor, this machine appeared again in the seventeenth century, and there were riots all over Europe because of it. Laws were passed in many places against its use, and it was even publicly burned in the market-place. It is possible that if this machine had come into use when it was first invented, other inventions would have followed, and the machine age would have come sooner than it did. But the mere fact that it was not used shows that conditions were not them ripe for it. When these conditions were ripe, then machinery established itself in spite of numerous riots in England. It was natural for the workers to feel resentment at the machine. Gradually they came to learn that the fault did not lie with the machine, but with the way it was used for the profit of a few persons. Let us go back, however, to the development of the machine and of factories in England.

The new factories swallowed up many of the cottage industries and the private workers. It was not possible for these home-workers to compete with the machine. So they had to give up their old crafts and trades and seek employment as wage-earners in the very factories they hated, or to join the unemployed. The collapse of the cottage industry was not sudden, but it was rapid enough. By the end of the century-that is, by about 1800-the big factories were much in evidence. About thirty years later steam railways began in England with Stephenson’s famous engine . And so the machine went on advancing all over the country and in almost all departments of industry and life.

It is interesting to note that all inventors, many of whom I have not mentioned, came from the class of manual workers. It is from this class also that many of the early industrial leaders came. But the result of their inventions and the factory system that followed was to make the gulf between the employer and the worker wider still. The worker in the factory became just a cog in a machine, helpless in the hands of vast economic forces he could not even understand, much less control. The craftsman and artisan sensed that something was wrong when they found that the new factory competing with them and making and selling articles far cheaper than they could possibly make them with their simple and primitive tools at home. For no fault of theirs they had to shut up their little shops. If they could not carry on with their own crafts, much less could they succeed with a new one. So they joined the army of the unemployed and starved.

“Hunger”, it has been said, “is the drill-sergeant of the factory owner,” and Hunger ultimately drove them to the new factories to seek employment.

The employers showed them little pity. They gave the work indeed, but at a bare pittance, for which the miserable workers had to pour out their life–blood in the factories. Women, and little children even, worked long hours in stifling, unhealthy places till many of them almost fainted and dropped down with fatigue. Men worked write down below in the coal-mines the whole day long and did not see the day light for months at a time.

But do not think that all this was just view to the cruelty of the employers. They were seldom consciously cruel; the fault lay with the system. They were out to increase their business and to conquer distant world-market from other countries, and in order to do these they were prepared to put up with anything. The building of new factories and the purchase of machinery cost a lot of money. It is only after the factory begins to produce and these goods are sold in the market that the money comes back. So, these factory-owners had to economize in order to build and, even when money came by sale of goods, they went on building more factories. They had got a lead over the other countries of the world because of their early industrialization, and they wanted to profit by their business and make more money, they crushed the poor workers whose labour produced the source of their wealth.

Thus the new system of industry was particularly adapted to the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Right through history we have seen the powerful exploiting the weak. The factory system made this easier. In law there was no slavery, but in fact the starving worker, the wage-slave of the factory, was little better than the old slave. The law was all in favour of the employer. Even the religion favoured him and told the poor to put up with their miserable lot here in this world and expect a heavenly compensation in the next. Indeed, the governing classes develop quite a convenient philosophy that the poor were necessary for society, and that therefore it was quite was virtuous to pay low wages. If higher wages were paid the poor would try to have a good time, and not work hard enough. It was a comforting and useful way of thinking, because it just fitted in which the material interests of the factory-owners and the other rich people.

It is very interesting and instructive to read about these times. One learns so much. We can see what tremendous effect the mechanical processes of production have on economics and society. The whole social fabric is upset, new classes come to the front and gain power, the artisan class becomes the wage-earning class in the factory. In addition to these the new economics moulds people’s ideas even in religion and morals. The conviction of the mass of mankind run hand in hand with their interests or class-feelings, and they take good care, when they have the power to do so , to make laws to protect their own interests. Of course all this is done with every appearance of virtue .

Our zamindars tell us how they love their tenants but they do not scruple to squeeze and rack-rent them till they have nothing left but their starved bodies.

Our capitalists and big factory-owners also assure us of their good-will for their workers, but the good-will does not translate itself into better wages or better conditions for the workers. All the profits go to make new palaces, not to improve the mud hut of the worker.

It is amazing how people deceive themselves and others when it is to their interest to do so. So we find the English employers of the eighteenth century and after resisting all attempts to better the lot of their workers. They objected to factory legislation and housing reform, and refused to admit that society had any obligation to remove the cause of distress. They comforted themselves with the thought that it was the idle only who suffered, and in any event they hardly looked upon the workers as human beings like themselves. They developed a new philosophy which is called laissez-faire-that is, they wanted to do just what they liked in their business without any interference from government. By having had got a lead, and all they wanted was a free field to make money. Laissez-faire became almost a semi-divine theory which was supposed to give an opportunity to everybody if he could but take advantage of it. Each man and woman to fight the rest of the world to go ahead, and if many fell in the struggle, what did it matter?

In the course of these letters I have told you of the progress of co-operation between man and man, which had been the basis of civilization. But laissez-faire and the new capitalism brought the law of the jungle.

“Pig philosophy”, Carlyle called it.

Who laid down this new of life and business? Not the workers. The poor fellows had little to say in the matter. It was the successful manufacturers at the top who wanted no interference with their success in the name of foolish sentiment. So in the name of liberty and the rights of property they objected even to the compulsory sanitation of private houses and interference with the adulteration of goods.

I have just used the word capitalism. Capitalism of a kind had existed in all countries for a long time-that is to say industry was carried on with accumulated money. But with the coming of the big machine and industrialism far larger sums of money were required for a factory production. “Industrial capital” this was called, and the word capitalism is now used to refer to the economic system which grew up after the Industrial Revolution. Under this system capitalists –that is, owners of capital-controlled the factories and took the profits. With industrialization capitalism spread all over the world, except now in the Soviet Union and perhaps one or two other places. From its earliest days capitalism emphasized the difference between the rich and the poor. The mechanization of industry resulted in much greater production, and therefore it produced greater wealth. But this new wealth went to a small group only-the owners of the new industries. The workers remained poor. Very slowly the workers’ standards improved in England, largely because of the exploitation of India and other places. But the workers’ share in the profits of industry was very small.

The Industrial Revolution and capitalism solved the problem of production. They did not solve the problem of the distribution of the new wealth created. So the old tussle between haves and the have-nots not only remained, but it became acuter.

The Industrial Revolution took place in the second half of the eighteenth century. This was the very period when the British were fighting in India and Canada. It was then that the seven years’ War took place. These events acted and reacted on each other greatly. The enormous sums of money that the East India company and its servants (you will remember Clive) extorted out of India, after the Battle of Plassey and later, were of great help in starting the new industries. I have told you earlier in this letter that industrialization is an expensive job to begin with. It swallows up money any return for some time. Unless plenty of money is available, either by loan or otherwise, it results in poverty and distress till such time as the industry begins to work and make money. England was extraordinarily fortunate in getting these vast sums of money from India just when she wanted them most for her developing industries and factories.

Having built up these factories, new wants arose. The factories wanted raw material to convert it into manufactured articles. Thus cotton was required to make cloth. Even more necessary were new markets where the new goods produced by the factories could be sold. England had got a tremendous lead over other countries by starting factories first. But in spite of this lead she would have had difficulties in find easy markets. Again India came, very unwillingly, to the rescue. The English in India adopted all manner of devices to ruin Indian industries and force English cloth on India. I shall say more of this later. Meanwhile it is important to note how the Industrial Revolution in England was helped by the British holding India and forcing it to fit in with their schemes.

Industrialism spread to all parts of the world during the nineteenth century, and capitalist industry developed elsewhere on the general lines laid down in England. Capitalism led inevitably two a new imperialism, for everywhere there was a demand for raw materials for manufacture and markets to sell the manufactured goods. The easiest way to have the markets and the raw materials was to take possession of the country. So there was wild scramble among the more powerful countries for the new territories. England, again, with possession of India and her sea power, had a great advantage. But of imperialism and its fruits I shall have to say something later.

With the coming of the Industrial Revolution the English world was more and more dominated by the great cloth manufacturers of Lancashire, and the iron-masters and the mine-owners. (September27, 1932)