Chapter 22 Notes Industrial Revolution – What was it?

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  In general, up to the year 1800, all work utilized hand tools for work done by humans and animals (with some help from wind and water). After approximately 1800, machines powered by energy forces such as steam, electricity, gases and the atom, and manipulated and directed by humans complete the work. This shift from hand tools to power machinery defines the Industrial Revolution.
  
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  Such a transformation, so contrary to the inherent conservatism of most people's lives, required a mobility of labor and capital, which can develop out of historical changes or generated through political decisions.
  

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  After 1688 and until 1832, England was in the hands of the great landowners in a type of "squirearchy" aligned with the great merchants.
  
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  The large landowners were interested in increasing productivity and engaged in a systemic exploration of ways to make improvements. Greater use of fertilizers, new implements, new crops like turnips, and improved crop rotation and breeding practices, all formed an agricultural revolution.
  
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  The traditional forms of farming (strips of lands worked by individual farmers and open fields and common lands all protected by customary law) were the primary impediments to rapid progress. Parliament passed hundreds of acts of "enclosure" of the commons, turning them from lands determined by traditional rights to private ownership and open to exploitation. Small farmers sold their lands to the larger landowners, creating a high concentration of land ownership in England.
  
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  Productivity of the land and of agricultural workers grew, so that food supplies and animal output increased at the same time that fewer people worked to produce them. Many people in the countryside had already become wage earners in the domestic system. They now became a mobile labor force.
  

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  During the 18th century an increase in disposable income helped to drive the first industrial revolution.
  
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  Key to change in consumption depended on expanding the various domestic markets in Europe
  
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  New methods of marketing convinced people that they needed or wanted new consumer goods.
  
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  Josiah Wedgwood, a porcelain manufacture first sold to the royal family and the aristocracy, but began to manufacture a less expensive version to attract middle-class customers who wanted to copy the aristocracy. Wedgwood opened showrooms in London, used advertising to attract customers, and expanded to the continent using bilingual catelogues
  
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  People were attracted by new styles -- be it in fashion or new inventions. If new goods could be produced markets could be found by enterprising entrepreneurs
  
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  Ever increasing consumption and production of goods of everyday life became a hallmark of modern Western society from the 18th century to our own day.
  

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  England had supremacy on the seas, a global empire with people around the globe ready to buy British goods. The demand for cotton was high but England could not compete with Asia in its production using the same methods. Capital was mobile and readily available and was sufficient to invest for the long term. The labor force was fluid as well.
  
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  The first important invention in the textile industry was Kay's fly shuttle, which meant that only one person would be necessary to weave at a loom. This increased the demand for yarn, met in the 1760s with the invention of the spinning jenny, which allowed one spindle to produce first 8 and then 16 threads. They were, at first, used in the homes of the workers.
  
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  Arkwright's water frame was a water-powered device for the production of many threads at once. He soon changed the power source to the steam engine, which meant heavier and more cumbersome equipment, located in what the English called mills (and the Americans factories). Now the workers came to the work, rather than the work coming to them as in the domestic system.
  
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  The increased production of yarn put more demands on the weavers. The power loom became common after 1800, which, in turn, increased the demand for raw cotton. Eli Whitney's cotton gin of 1793 sped up the process of cleaning the raw cotton; production rose rapidly, and the economy of the American South, then in a state of decline, saw rapid improvement. By 1820, half of British exports were cotton cloth. Cotton, as a new industry, was more easily mechanized.
  

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  The noticeable decline in British supplies of native timber sped up the work begun in the seventeenth century to harness the power of steam. Burned timber created charcoal used to smelt iron. Timber's disappearance increased the need for coal, which meant a way to pump out the water out of deeper mine shafts was required.
  
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  Around 1702, Newcomen developed the first useful steam engine, which still used a great deal of energy.
  
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  Watt significantly improved Newcomen's machine in 1763 and, by collaborating with the manufacturer, Boulton, began producing steam engines for domestic use and export in the 1780s.
  
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  In 1807 Fulton used the first steam engine on the Hudson River near New York.
  
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  In the 1820s, the steam engine began to be used as locomotives, first in the mines; the first successful steam locomotive in both speed and safety was Stephenson's Rocket used in 1829 on a newly built Manchester-Liverpool railroad.
  
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  By the 1840s, the great era of railroad construction had begun.
  

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  Population rose dramatically, tripling in Great Britain from 1750 to 1850.
  
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  Most of the population growth was in the Midlands, not in the south near London.
  
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  Urban population grew substantially, with many new large cities created. Most prominent among them was Manchester, originally a large market town and until 1845 still organized as a manor, not legally a city. Not having legal status as a city made dealing with the problems of rapid industrialization, such as water and safety. harder.
  
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  The new cities were drab and dirty, with cheap tenement housing and black soot everywhere.
  
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  Family life suffered as whole families lived in single rooms; neglected children lived on the street. Wages were too low to allow a man to support his family, so women and children worked, often preferred to the men because they could be paid less. Work was long (14-hour days were typical), tedious, oppressively regimented, and erratic with frequent periods of unemployment.
  
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  By the 1820's the second generation of machines allowed the majority of the work in textile factories to be done by women, mostly single women, as less skill was needed.
  
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  Most women continued to work on the land or as domestic servants.
  
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  Others worked in domestic cottage industries where they were earned low wages.
  
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  To supplement their income, many women became prostitutes to supplement their wages. Male bosses often exploited vulnerable young women
  
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  Skilled artisans lost income and status.
  
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  Workers were not unionized and negotiated individually with factory owners.
  
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  The first industrial capitalists, the factory owners, were typically self-made men who worked hard and lived in comfort. They saw both the workers and the aristocrats as lazy idlers, and they resisted regulation of their businesses.
  
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  To regulate the employment of pauper children Parliament enacted the first Factory Act in 1802. Britain had no trained government bureaucracy, so there were no inspections to enforce the law.
  
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  Workers' work conditions were not necessarily worse in factories than they had been in the domestic system. Urbanization meant a higher concentration of the visible poor and allowed for the development of class solidarity.
  

In 1833, the Parliament abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. This represented a victory for the abolitionists led by William Wilberforce (1759-1833).

A Factory Act adopted in 1833 placed restrictions on child labor in the textile industry. Children under the age of nine could not be employed in textile mills, while those between the ages of nine and thirteen could not work for more than nine hours a day. Work by children between the ages of thirteen and eighteen was limited to twelve hours a day. The Factory Act provided for a system of inspectors to make certain that the law was being observed. Two hours of school was also required for children between 9 -13. Later legislation placed further restrictions on work by women and children.

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  Mines Act of 1842 – prohibited women and children from working in mines
  
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  Ten Hours Act of 1847 – women and children under the age of 18 could not work more than 10 hours a day
  

The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 established a system of elected councils to govern most cities and towns.

Crime appears to have increased throughout the first sixty years of the 19th century. Reasons for the rise are still being debated -- perhaps it can be attributed to a combination of events -- the revolutions of the late 18th century and the early 19th century and the processes of industrialization and urbanization certainly could have played a role. Crime statistics during this period are not very reliable as countries did not use the same methods to track crime and criminal codes and systems of judicial administration varied widely across the continent.

Robert Peel (I 788-1850), who served as home secretary from 1822 to 1827, won parliamentary approval for a reform of the criminal codes, substantially reducing the number of capital crimes. Peel also reorganized the London police, who came to be known as bobbies in his honor.

First appeared in 1828; they were viewed as a parental police charged with keeping safety and order by day and night

Police were deployed after the Revolutions of 1848.

Political Trends

The campaign for the repeal of the Corn Laws provided powerful evidence of the increased political power of the British middle class.

During the winter of 1845-1846, a severe famine struck Ireland following a failure of the potato crop. Starvation and diseases such as typhus and cholera took the lives of some 700,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of survivors emigrated, with many finding new homes in the United States.

The Irish famine demonstrated the need for lower food prices and in 1846 Parliament voted to repeal the Corn Laws. Repeal was a victory for Britain's urban dwellers, which for the first time comprised a majority of the population. In the following years, the British eliminated the remaining tariffs, establishing a free trade policy.

The Chartist Movement

demands:

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   Universal manhood suffrage.
   
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   The secret ballot in place of voting in public meetings.
   
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   The abolition of property requirements for members of the House of Commons.
   
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   The payment of salaries to members of the House of Commons.
   
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   The creation of equal electoral districts. (Members of the House of Commons should represent approximately the same number of people.)
   
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   Annual elections for the House of Commons.
   

The Chartists won support among many intellectual reformers, as well as from urban workers. In 1839, the Chartists presented to Parliament a petition setting forth their demands. However, the British middle classes were not yet prepared to share political power with the masses, and Parliament ignored the petition. Although Parliament also ignored Chartist petitions presented in 1842 and 1848, all the demands of the Chartists were ultimately enacted, except for annual elections for the House of Commons.