Industrial Revolution

A Punch cartoon of 1844 entitled Capital and Labour contrasts the luxurious life of a mineowner with the harsh working conditions in the pits. Although the Industrial Revolution brought Britain as a whole greater material prosperity, it also caused massive social upheavals.

English inventor Thomas Newcomen built the first successful steam engine in 1712. It was used to pump water out of mines.

English inventor James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in about 1764. It proved to be one of the key inventions in the textile industry at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The ‘water frame’ for spinning cotton, designed by British inventor Richard Arkwright in 1768. Although so-called because it was water-powered, it was originally driven by mule. From 1790 onwards it was powered by steam engine. Its increased efficiency allowed Arkwright's factories to successfully compete with Indian calico manufacturers.

A cotton mill, c.1850. Cotton was spun and woven into cloth by hand in England until textile machinery, developed in the late 1700s, revolutionized its manufacture and provided an impetus for the Industrial Revolution. By the mid-19th century, cotton manufacture was an entirely factory-based operation, notably in the Lancashire towns of Manchester and Oldham.

A young girl working in a brickyard in Victorian England, 1871. Factory owners exploited children, sometimes just five or six years of age, to work long, hard hours in poor conditions. In 1878 the first significant legislation against child labour banned the employment of children under 10 years of age and restricted the hours of those aged between 10 and 14.

Acceleration of technical and economic development that took place in Britain in the second half of the 18th century. The traditional agricultural economy was replaced by one dominated by machinery and manufacturing, made possible through technical advances such as the steam engine. This transferred the balance of political power from the landowner to the industrial capitalist (for example, a factory owner) and created an urban working class. As the first country to have an industrial revolution, Britain for a while was the ‘workshop of the world’. The Industrial Revolution, therefore, became the basis of 19th-century British world power and the British Empire. From 1830 to the early 20th century, the Industrial Revolution spread throughout Europe and the USA, and to Japan and the various colonial empires.

The term ‘Industrial Revolution’ has been criticized on the grounds that it implies a sudden and dramatic change, whereas the process of industrialization was long-drawn-out, erratic, and varied from industry to industry and from region to region.

Causes Historians still debate whether the Industrial Revolution was ‘revolution or evolution’ - whether industrialization was a radical change, or an inevitable development in the context of the continuing social and political changes, agricultural innovations, accumulation of capital, and expansion of trade which had taken place in the 17th century and earlier.

In 1960 the economic historian W W Rostow hypothesized a model of the ‘stages of economic growth’. Starting from a ‘traditional’ agricultural society, Rostow suggested a long period in which the ‘preconditions for take-off’ were created - notably the creation of an agricultural surplus which could finance industrial development, and the development of suitable trading and governmental institutions. By the 18th century Britain exhibited a combination of favourable circumstances for change: growing agricultural production; extensive trade; a growing population creating a larger workforce; natural resources, especially a plentiful and accessible supply of coal; raw materials from its colonies; expanding markets in its growing population and its colonies; a strong middle class and comparatively stable political system; and a sound monetary system and cheap capital as a result of low interest rates, essential for the high levels of investment required in the new technology. This allowed what Rostow called the ‘take-off’ in about 1780 (though historians disagree about dates). Initial growth was based on certain staple industries - particularly textiles, coal, and iron. Once take-off had begun, growth in one industry provoked growth in others by way of a complex set of ‘linkages’ (interdependences) and ‘externalities’ (side-effects), and led to associated developments in organization, power, and engineering. Rostow postulated that the economy reached ‘maturity’, or self-sustaining growth, by the Great Exhibition of 1851, and went on to the modern world of ‘high mass consumption’ in the 20th century.

Industry in 1700 Britain had an embryonic industrial base in 1700, including woollen textiles (East Anglia, the West Country, and the West Riding of Yorkshire), iron (Sussex and the Forest of Dean), the leather trades, silk (Derby), linen (Scotland), hosiery (Nottingham and Leicester), lead, brewing, shipbuilding, and many other trades. Most industry was located in the south and east of the country, and was small-scale and low-technology. Industrial organization was based around the domestic system, where merchant-clothiers ‘put out’ work to artisans (outworkers) in their own homes. The domestic system had social advantages - workers could work at their own pace, and devote more time to farming when trade was slack. However, it was economically inefficient, and made it difficult for employers to ensure quantity or quality of production.

Textile industry The textile industry saw most of the early benefits of the technological innovations. The flying shuttle was invented by John Kay in 1733; the shuttle was put on wheels and the invention enabled the weaver to double output. This in turn led spinners to seek mechanical aids to meet the increased demand for yarn. These innovations were swiftly followed by others, notably James Hargreaves's ‘spinning jenny’ in about 1764, Richard Arkwright's ‘water-frame’ (a cotton spinning roller) in 1768, and Samuel Crompton's ‘spinning mule’, a combination of Hargreaves's jenny and Arkwright's water-frame, in 1779. Edmund Cartwright's power loom was not perfected for another 25 years, but by that time his Doncaster factory was equipped with a steam engine, and a year or two later hundreds of his looms were selling to Manchester firms. Mechanization was associated with the development of the factory system, and strict discipline of the workers.

‘Whoever says Industrial Revolution says cotton,’ observed the historian E J Hobsbawm. The cotton industry of South Lancashire benefited primarily from these technological developments - Lancashire had coal, soft water, good ports, and a growing population. Later there was growth also in the woollen industry, particularly in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The woollen industry in East Anglia and the West Country largely died out, and there was economic dislocation, particularly among hand-loom weavers, and this provoked sporadic outbreaks of opposition, such as that by the Luddites.

Steam power The first factories used water power, which limited the location of industry to hill areas besides fast-running streams. James Watt's steam engine of 1769, and particularly its adaptation to produce rotary motion (sun-and-planet gear, 1781) allowed the rapid and wholesale use of steam power in industry. Steam power changed the location of industry. Mills and factories were set up near the coalfields, where fuel was cheaper.

Coal In 1700 most coal was mined by hand from horizontal adit mines or the bell pits. The 18th century saw growing demand from the steam engines of industry, and from the domestic fires of the growing population. The coal industry responded by producing more coal. The main coalfields were the South Wales, Staffordshire, Yorkshire-Nottinghamshire, Northumberland-Durham, and Central Scotland coalfields.

Deeper pits could be dug because the invention of the steam engine allowed them to be drained - Thomas Newcomen's steam engine was first developed to drain the mines in about 1712. A simple system of ventilation was also created by digging a second, ‘upcast’ shaft and placing a fire at the bottom of it, so that the hot updraft of the fire pulled fresh air down the ‘downcast’ shaft and through the mine. To ventilate every part of the mine required a complicated system of ‘stoppings’ and ‘trapdoors’, and failures of ventilation led to many fatal explosions. Humphrey Davy invented a safety lamp in 1815, which allowed miners to light the workings with less danger of igniting explosive methane gas (called ‘firedamp’ by the miners). The first railways were developed by mine engineers such as George Stephenson to transport coal from the mines to the docks.

However, although there were technological advances in mining methods, there was no similar advance in methods of extraction, and the 225 million tons of coal produced by British mines in 1900 were hewed by hand, in dangerous and harsh conditions.

Iron and steel By 1720 the English iron industry was in trouble, owing to lack of wood to make charcoal; half the country's iron at this time was imported. However, in 1709 Abraham Darby (I) pioneered the use of coke in smelting ore, and in 1784 Henry Cort's puddling process allowed ironmasters to produce wrought iron from pig iron using coal. Iron became a key element in industrialization. John ‘Iron Mad’ Wilkinson advocated using iron for everything, from barges to chapels. He improved casting and engineering methods, and also developed a large-scale ironworks. Further developments were enabled by James Watt's steam engine, which was used to create blast; by the inventions of James Neilson, who invented the hot blast in 1828; and by James Nasmyth, who developed a steam hammer to work wrought iron and steel in 1839. The iron industry grew rapidly in the 18th century. Iron was used to make machinery and buildings for the textiles industry, and allowed the development of accurate machines and steam engines. Without it the Industrial Revolution could not have happened. The Darby family ironworks at Coalbrookdale continued to develop, and Abraham Darby III built the first iron bridge at Ironbridge in 1779. John Roebuck opened the Carron ironworks in Scotland, and Richard Crawshay built up the huge Cyfarthfa ironworks in South Wales.

In about 1740 Benjamin Huntsman developed the crucible process of making small amounts of cast steel, using coke. In 1856, however, Henry Bessemer invented the Bessemer process, and in 1861 William Siemens invented the open-hearth process. These new methods allowed the production of large amounts of mild steel from nonphosphoric ores, and in 1879 Sidney Gilchrist-Thomas learned how to use phosphoric ores by lining the converter with dolomite limestone. Steel was stronger and more malleable than cast iron, and rapidly replaced it as the main metal of the Industrial Revolution, used for machinery, buildings, ships, and weapons. Cheap steel allowed, in particular, the construction of the railways.

Technological, political, and social change The Industrial Revolution brought many changes. New materials, basically iron and steel, were used as well as new energy sources, such as coal and the steam engine, and most obviously new machinery, particularly in the textile industry. Transport systems were revolutionized by steam trains, canals, and better roads. As domestic industry was replaced by the factory system, new methods of labour organization were employed, bringing specialization, the division of labour, and new relationships between employer and employee.

The new working conditions led to political changes as wealth moved away from the land and towards the new manufacturing classes, and there were massive social changes brought about by internal migration, a rising population, and the growth of urban areas.

Political reform These changes highlighted how unrepresentative Parliament was. Growing industrial centres such as Birmingham and Manchester had no representation while a sparsely populated rural county like Cornwall had 44 members. The Industrial Revolution, therefore, led to political reform, notably the Parliamentary Reform Acts. As the influence of the business interest within Parliament grew, laissez faire attitudes increasingly dominated government policy, particularly free trade; the industrialists argued that protectionism caused other countries to close their economies to British goods.