CHAPTER 20

1 582 CHAPTER20 The IndustrialRevolutionand Its Impacton EuropeanSocietyLCHAPTER OUTLINE The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain The Spread of Industrialization The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution ConclusionFOCUS QUESTIONS What conditions and developments coalesced in Great Britain to bringabout the first Industrial Revolution? What were the basic features of the new industrial system created bythe Industrial Revolution? How did the Industrial Revolution spread from Great Britain to theContinent and the United States, and how did industrialization in thoseareas differ from British industrialization? What effects did the Industrial Revolution have on urban life, socialclasses, family life, and standards of living?

2 What were working conditions like in the early decades of the IndustrialRevolution, and what efforts were made to improve them?THE FRENCH REVOLUTION dramatically and quickly alteredthe political structure of France, and the Napoleonic conquestsspread many of the revolutionary principles in an equally rapid andstunning fashion to other parts of Europe. During the late eighteenthand early nineteenth centuries, another revolution an industrial one was transforming the economic and social structure of Europe, althoughin a less dramatic and rapid fashion. The period of the Industrial Revolution witnessed a quantum leapin industrial production. New sources of energy and power, especiallycoal and steam, replaced wind and water to create labor-savingmachines that dramatically decreased the use of human and animallabor and, at the same time, increased the level of productivity.

3 In turn,power machinery called for new ways of organizing human labor tomaximize the benefits and profits from the new machines; factoriesreplaced shop and home workrooms. Many early factories were dreadfulplaces with difficult working conditions. Reformers, appalled at theseconditions, were especially critical of the treatment of married Industrial Revolution and Its Impact on European Society583 One reported: We have repeatedly seen marriedfemales, in the last stage of pregnancy, slaving frommorning to night beside these never-tiring machines,and when .. they were obliged to sit down to take amoment s ease, and being seen by the manager, werefined for the offense. But there were also examples ofwell-run factories.

4 William Cobbett described one inManchester in 1830: In this room, which is lighted inthe most convenient and beautiful manner, there werefive hundred pairs of looms at work, and five hundredpersons attending those looms; and, owing to the good-ness of the masters, the whole looking healthy andwell-dressed. During the Industrial Revolution, Europe experi-enced a shift from a traditional, labor-intensive econ-omy based on farming and handicrafts to a morecapital-intensive economy based on manufacturing bymachines, specialized labor, and industrial the Industrial Revolution took decades tospread, it was truly revolutionary in the way it funda-mentally changed Europeans, their society, and theirrelationship to other peoples.

5 The development of largefactories encouraged mass movements of people fromthe countryside to urban areas where impersonal coex-istence replaced the traditional intimacy of rural levels of productivity led to a search for newsources of raw materials, new consumption patterns,and a revolution in transportation that allowed rawmaterials and finished products to be moved quicklyaround the world. The creation of a wealthy industrialmiddle class and a huge industrial working class (orproletariat) substantially transformed traditional socialrelationships. uThe Industrial Revolution inGreat Britain Although the Industrial Revolution evolved out of ante-cedents that occurred over a long period of time, histori-ans generally agree that it had its beginnings in Britainin the second half of the eighteenth century.

6 By 1850, theIndustrial Revolution had made Great Britain the wealth-iest country in the world; by that time it had also spreadto the European continent and the New World. By the endof the nineteenth century, both Germany and the UnitedStates would surpass Britain in industrial production. lOrigins A number of factors or conditions coalesced in Britain toproduce the first Industrial Revolution. One of these wasthe agricultural revolution of the eighteenth century. Thechanges in the methods of farming and stock breeding thatcharacterized this agricultural transformation led to a sig-nificant increase in food production. British agriculturecould now feed more people at lower prices with less the rest of Europe, even ordinary British familiesdid not have to use most of their income to buy food, giv-ing them the potential to purchase manufactured the same time, a rapid growth of population in the sec-ond half of the eighteenth century provided a pool of sur-plus labor for the new factories of the emerging Britishindustry.

7 Rural workers in cottage industries also provideda potential labor force for industrial enterprises. Britain had a ready supply of capital for investmentin the new industrial machines and the factories that wereneeded to house them. In addition to profits from tradeand cottage industry, Britain possessed an effective cen-tral bank and well-developed, flexible credit in Europe were people so accustomed to usingpaper instruments to facilitate capital transactions. Manyearly factory owners were merchants and entrepreneurswho had profited from eighteenth-century cottage indus-try. Of 110 cotton spinning mills in operation in the areaknown as the Midlands between 1769 and 1800, 62 wereestablished by hosiers, drapers, mercers, and othersinvolved in some fashion in the cottage textile capital alone is only part of the story.

8 Britain had a fairnumber of individuals who were interested in making prof-its if the opportunity presented itself (see the box on ). The British were a people, as one historian has said, fascinated by wealth and commerce, collectively and indi-vidually. These early industrial entrepreneurs faced con-siderable financial hazards, however. Fortunes were madequickly and lost just as quickly. The structure of early firmswas open and fluid. An individual or family proprietorshipwas the usual mode of operation, but entrepreneurs alsobrought in friends to help them. They just as easily jetti-soned them. John Marshall, who made money in flax spin-ning, threw out his partners: As they could neither ofthem be of any further use, I released them from the firmand took the whole upon myself.

9 1 Britain was richly supplied with important mineralresources, such as coal and iron ore, needed in the man-ufacturing process. Britain was also a small country, andthe relatively short distances made transportation read-ily accessible. In addition to nature s provision of abun-dant rivers, from the mid-seventeenth century onward,both private and public investment poured into the con-struction of new roads, bridges, and, beginning in the1750s and 1760s, canals. By 1780, roads, rivers, andcanals linked the major industrial centers of the North, theMidlands, London, and the Atlantic. Unlike the conti-nental countries, Britain had no internal customs barri-ers to hinder domestic trade. Britain s government also played a significant rolein the process of industrialization.

10 Parliament contributed to the favorable business climate by providing a stablegovernment and passing laws that protected private prop-erty. Moreover, Britain was remarkable for the freedom584 CHAPTER20it provided for private enterprise. It placed fewer restric-tions on private entrepreneurs than any other Europeanstate. Finally, a supply of markets gave British industrial-ists a ready outlet for their manufactured goods. Britishexports quadrupled from 1660 to 1760. In the course of itseighteenth-century wars and conquests, Great Britain haddeveloped a vast colonial empire at the expense of its lead-ing continental rivals, the Dutch Republic and also possessed a well-developed merchant marinethat was able to transport goods to any place in the crucial factor in Britain s successful industrialization was the ability to produce cheaply those articles most indemand abroad.