INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION• DEFINITION

– The Industrial Revolution involves a general decline of agriculture and handicrafts as the dominant sectors of a nation’s economy and their replacement by manufacturing as the dominant sector

• Manufacturing involves the introduction and implementation of three factors

– The substitution of mechanical devices for human skill– Inanimate power replaces human and/or animal

strength– Increased use of raw materials

• The combination of these three factors causes an infinite explosion in per capita production

– Increase in the amount each individual produces

HOW DOES IT CHANGE SOCIETY?

• Provokes growing demand for manufactured commodities• Provokes shift in a nation’s economy away from agriculture• Provokes rapid growth of cities

– Urbanization• Provokes rapid demographic change

– Decline in both birth and death rates• Aids in the establishment of a centralized, bureaucratic

government• Improves general standard of living but does not improve

distribution of wealth– Often causes increase in gap between rich and poor

• Causes the replacement of traditional elites by new ones– Bourgeoisie replaces nobility– Sometimes involves political upheaval

WHY ENGLAND?

• First IR took place in England between 1750 and 1815

• Why?

• It possessed the correct combination of prerequisites for industrial development– A tautological view

but it will have to do

FIRST PREREQUISITE: AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

• Agricultural Revolution provokes a sustained increase in agricultural production

• Why is it a prerequisite for an Industrial Revolution?– It provides means to feed a

growing population– It stimulates iron and steel

industries– It provides capital for industrial

investment– It provides pioneer

entrepreneurs for industrial development

ENGLAND: FIRST AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

• Noble landowners realized commercial potential of their estates and transformed them into capitalist farms– As early as 16th century– Gradual process over 300 years

• Transformation involved– New forms of crop rotation– Use of nitrogen-restoring crops and

fertilizers– New cultivation methods– New drainage and irrigation systems

• Overall result was the production of surpluses– Eliminated famine– Provided tremendous incomes for

“improving landlords”

IMPROVING LANDLORDS• Originally turned to agricultural

innovation as a means to keep up with the huge expense of maintaining a noble lifestyle– Illustrated “capitalist mentality” of

English gentry– Spent on display but also invested

some of their income back into agriculture

• In order to receive bigger profits in future

– Later would also invest in manufacturing

• Where potential return on investment was greater

SUMMARY

• The Agricultural Revolution in England not only provided a source of cheap and reliable food for a growing population; it also fomented the rise of surplus capital that could be invested in the development of industry. It also encouraged the growth of a capitalist mentality (profit and investment oriented, not obsessed with conspicuous consumption) among those engaged in this type of agriculture

ENCLOSURE MOVEMENT I

• English peasants in the way of agricultural progress– Tradition bound and hostile to

innovation– Held scattered land parcels

• Made it difficult to apply new techniques

– Opposed to free market in agricultural products

• They were therefore systematically destroyed through an institutional device known as the Enclosure Movement

ENCLOSURE MOVEMENT II

• Landlords, whose holdings were scattered and cut up by tiny peasant holdings, petitioned Parliament for authorization to consolidate his property into one solid block– By pushing peasants of their land

and settling them elsewhere• Peasants initially remained in the

countryside– Working as agricultural laborers– Supplementing income with sporadic

employment in “domestic industry”• Created second prerequisite for IR

– Large potential labor force that was used to working for wages

POPULATION GROWTH• Male peasants traditionally waited

until they inherited their father’s property before they married– Therefore married relatively late

in life• Late 20s/early 30s

• This custom, given traditional fertility habits, kept population down– Because it cut fertile marriage

years short– Traditional means of

unconscious birth control

POPULATION EXPLOSION• Enclosure movement destroyed traditional

landowning peasantry– Replaced them with landless agricultural

laborers and domestic industry workers– Inheritance of land no longer a factor in

marriage decision• Men now relied on wages, not on the

ownership of land– Rural people therefore began to marry at a

younger age• Increasing potential fertility period• Birth rate thereby increased

• Death rate dropped at the same time– Because Ag Revolution eliminated famine and

produced a healthier, longer-lived population• Increased birth rate and decreased death rate

produced population explosion

BEFORE• Earlier population explosions had

been disasters– Increases in per capita production

sparked population growth • But they were not the result of

innovations that would sustain productivity

– Production would rise, level off, and continue for as long as conditions continued

– Population would continue upward provoking a “demographic crisis”

• Population became larger than means to support it

• People died off until a balance between food and population was reestablished at a lower level

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AFTER• England’s growing population

had highest per capita income in Europe– Cheap food– Incomes did not rely on

subsistence peasant agriculture but instead on wages

– Growing population stimulated further increases in per capita production and did not overwhelm it

– Looser class structure in England facilitated greater demand for consumer staples

• Particularly cotton textiles 0

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REMEMBER THIS

• Fourth prerequisite: English population explosion actually encouraged further increases in per capita production by sparking growing demand for manufactured consumer products– Helped along by England’s overseas colonies

• Population growth, combined with rising per capita income, a fluid social structure, and increasing colonial markets, all added up to one important result:– Rising demand for cotton textile products

COTTAGE INDUSTRY• Consumer products had traditionally

been made in towns by skilled craftsmen organized into guilds– Manufacturers found this to be

expensive and restrictive• Began to bypass guilds by recruiting rural

people to do manufacturing• Rural people perfect labor force

– Recently dispossessed of their land and worked as agricultural laborers

• Seasonal work so manufacturing was ideal supplement for incomes

• Domestic system established– People worked in their homes– Merchant supplied them with raw

materials and picked up and marketed finished product

– Workers received a wage

ADVANTAGES• Merchant

– Rural workers did not require a high wage• Because they worked part-time as a

supplement to agricultural work– Did not require high fixed investment or

overhead• Only raw materials

– Little problem in cutting back workers when demand slowed down

• Workers– Received a supplement to their unreliable

agricultural income

• Wages paid to domestic workers increased the income of ordinary Englishmen and stimulated demand for consumer commodities– Also helped support growing population

DRAWBACKS I

• Merchants had to increase production to meet rising demand– But the only way to do so

was to increase the number of workers

– Impossible to increase individual productivity

• Due to habit of self-sufficiency

• Incentives did not work

DRAWBACKS II

• Traditional work routines not conductive to increased productivity– Alternate periods of intense

labor and idleness– Did not work steadily from day-

to-day nor even at a steady pace during a single day

• Part of the reason for this was that they viewed domestic industry as a part-time supplement to fill in gaps between agricultural work

DRAWBACKS III• Various other customs and traditions

interfered with the establishment of a consistent pattern of production

• Irregularity of work day and work week took place within a irregular work year– Numerous holidays and fairs– Rural people had 125-150 days off a

year

• Resistance by domestic workers to change in their work habits, routines, and their attitude towards work was a big obstacle in the way of increasing production to meet rising demand

DRAWBACKS IV

• Hand-powered tools could not keep up with rising demand

• Technological bottlenecks

– The limit placed by relatively primitive machines on production

– Bottleneck in production of thread slowed down the entire production process of cotton textiles

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION• Technological problem solved because

English merchants were already market-oriented– Were not afraid to take risks, break with

tradition, to try something new in order to meet needs of the market

• Two revolutionary inventions around 1795– James Hargreaves’ “spinning jenny”

• Hand-powered• Spun 24 spools of high quality thread

at the same time– Richard Arkwright’s “water frame”

• Powered by water wheel• Spun 300-400 spools of low quality

thread at the same time

Spinning Jenny

Water Frame

THE BIG SOLUTION

• Samuel Crompton’s “spinning mule” combined best features of earlier machines

– Spinning jenny’s ability to make high-quality thread

– Water frame’s ability to make lots of thread

– Solved technological bottleneck in spinning

MORE INNOVATION• Technological bottleneck now moved to

weavers– Hand weavers could not keep up with

amount of thread now being produced• Great for hand-weavers• But skyrocketing labor costs and

low productivity was unacceptable to merchants

• Result was Edmund Cartwright’s “power loom”– Water powered– Did work in two hours that it had

taken 25 hand weavers to do in a week

• Elimination of one bottleneck would give rise to a new one in a different area of production and, as each bottleneck was overcome, mechanization gradually took over every step of the production process in the textile industry

Power Loom

KEY TO THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

• Key to the Industrial Revolution was the destruction of traditional work habits and routines of domestic workers and the creation of industrial discipline and a modern labor force

LEVEL ONE: THE FACTORY

• Place where production in centralized under one roof– Workers and

machines concentrated in one building under the supervision of the former merchant

REASONS FOR FACTORIES• The need to locate the new, large

machines near a convenient source of power

• Early machines had to operate 16-20 hours a day to pay for themselves– Putting them in centralized

location where workers could be supervised made sure they ran all day and their investment paid off

• Factories arose in response to the need to locate workers in a centralized location where they would be supervised to make sure they worked steadily in order to insure that the owner’s investment in machinery would pay off

THE CARROT AND THE STICK• The stick

– Negative incentives• Corporal punishment• Firing or threat of being fired• Fines

• Carrot– Positive incentives

• Subcontracting– Farming out particular jobs to

groups of workers and making them responsible for completing the assigned task and giving crew leader responsibility for imposing discipline

• Creation of system of piece rates, bonuses, and monetary incentives that rewarded good work

REFORMING THE WHOLE MAN

• Necessary to change mentality of workers– Crackdown on “bad language”– Campaign against leisure on

Saturday and Sunday• Forced children to go to

Sunday school– Attacked traditional celebrations

and holidays• Movement was not undertaken for

humane motives but as way to construct new factory discipline

SUMMARY

• By 1848, England had emerged as the “workshop of the world”– Premier industrial nation– Dominated global production of

textiles, coal, iron– Monopolized world markets– Protected by huge navy, England

would remain the most powerful country in the world until the early 20th century

• And the Industrial Revolution made it all possible

Steam Engine