Farvour / 2009

The Industrial Revolution

The transition from a world of artisan manufacture to a factory system, and all its attendant benefits with which we are familiar, is known as the Industrial Revolution. It began in Britain in the early years of the 18th century. In a little over a century, Britain went from a largely rural, agrarian population to a country of industrialized towns, factories, mines and workshops. Britain was, in fact, already beginning to develop a manufacturing industry during the early years of the early 18th century, but it was from the 1730's that its growth accelerated. As well as a revolution in industry, this period saw many changes and improvements in agricultural practice. So much so, that it can be said that there was a parallel Agricultural Revolution.

Four Crop Rotation: Between the 15th and 18th centuries there was a gradual increase in the amount of land being enclosed. Enclosed literally meant that a field was surrounded by a fence or a hedge. It also meant that the enclosed field was worked as a complete unit and no longer divided into strips. The reasons for the increase in land enclosure were varied. During the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547), monastery land was taken by the king and sold. Traditionally, wool products had always been England's major export to Europe. As the profit made from the wool trade increased in the 15th century, more land was enclosed to graze sheep. In the 17th century, it was partly new farming techniques which forced land enclosure.

Charles Townshend. Townshend was an able politician, reaching the position of Secretary of State in the reign of George I. He retired from politics in 1730 and turned his attention to his estate in Norfolk. Townshend introduced a new type of crop rotation which was already practiced in Holland. It rotated crops on a four year basis and used turnips and clover as two of the crops in the rotation, innovations in this four year system. Turnips were not a new crop to English farming because they had been grown for use as cattle feed, fodder for livestock, during the winter months, since the 1660's. However, this was the first time they had been used in crop rotation. Charles Townshend was later to be known as "Turnip" Townshend because of his use of this crop in the four year rotation system.

The gradual enclosure of land, together with the four year rotation system, had two major effects on agriculture. The first was that the harvest increased in yield. In 1705, England exported 11,5 million quarters of wheat. By 1765, wheat export had risen to 95 million quarters. The second effect was that livestock, which no longer needed to be slaughtered before the winter months, increased in both quantity and quality.

The Importance of the Agricultural Revolution to the Industrial Revolution

(1) Crop yields increased:

  • Enough food was available for people in the cities
  • Falling food prices meant more money to spend on consumer goods
  • Healthier population which meant decline in death rate, especially in infants
  • In the 18th century, the population doubled from 5 million to 10 million

(2) Wool yield increased due to better care of animals and selective breeding:

  • More wool was available for the textile industry and at less cost

(3) Ready workforce becomes available:

  • Peasants were turned off their land by enclosures
  • Families moved into the cities
  • There was much unemployment and many people were looking for work
  • Labour was cheap

Brief History of the Cotton Industry

During the second half of the 17th century, cotton goods were imported from India. Because of the competition with the wool and the linen industries, in 1700, the government placed a ban on imported cotton goods. Cotton had become popular, however, and a home-based cotton industry sprung up using the raw material imported from the colonies. Since much of the imported cotton came from New England, ports on the west coast of Britain, such as Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow, became important in determining the sites of the cotton industry. Of course, the wool and linen manufacturers made sure that many restrictions were imposed on the import of cotton, but, as cotton had become fashionable, there was little they could do to stop the trend.

Two processes are necessary in the production of cotton goods from the raw material - spinning and weaving. At first, these were very much home-based, "cottage" industries. The spinning process, using the spinning wheel, was slow and the weavers were often held up by the lack of thread. In the 1760's, James Hargreaves improved thread production when he invented the Spinning Jenny. By the end of the decade, Richard Arkwright had developed the Water Frame. This invention had two important consequences. Firstly, it improved the quality of the thread, which meant that the cotton industry was no longer dependent on wool or linen to make the warp. Secondly, it took spinning away from the home-bases to specific areas where fast-flowing streams could provide water power for the larger machines. Not long after the invention of the Water Frame, Samuel Crompton combined the principals of the Spinning Jenny and the Water Frame to produce his Spinning Mule. This provided even tougher and finer cotton thread.

These inventions turned the tables, and it was the weavers who found it hard to keep up with the supply of thread. In 1770, John Kay's Flying Shuttle loom, which had been invented in 1733 and doubled a weaver's productivity and was widely in use.

The textile industry was also to benefit from other developments of the period. As early as 1691, Thomas Savery had made a vacuum steam engine. His design, which was unsafe, was improved by Thomas Newcomen in 1698. In 1765, James Watt further modified Newcomen's engine to design an external condenser steam engine. Watt continued to make improvements on his design, producing a separate condenser engine in 1774 and a rotating separate condensing engine in 1781. Watt formed a partnership with a businessman called Matthew Boulton, and together they manufactured steam engines which could be used by industry.

In 1785, the Reverend Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom. His invention was perfected over a ten year period by William Horrocks. Henry Cort replaced the early wooden machines with new machines made of iron. These new iron machines needed coal, rather than charcoal, to produce the steam to drive them.

By 1800, cotton mills were constructed using the latest technology. The Spinning Mules provided the fine, but strong thread which was used by the weavers on their power looms. These looms were operated by steam engines. The steam had been produced using coal as the fuel. In less than one hundred years, the cotton industry had developed from a home-based, cottage industry to a factory based industry housed in cotton mills.

The spinners and weavers no longer worked for themselves. The equipment and the raw materials needed in the industry were far too expensive. The spinners and weavers were now the workers, or employees, of the person who owned the factory and who could pay for the raw materials. Instead of working for themselves, at home and at their own pace, the workers were now paid a wage to carry out a job of in a cotton mill for a specific period of time each day. This also meant that, in order to find work, many people needed to move into the areas where the cotton mills had been built.

With the technological advances in both spinning and weaving, it might be supposed that the supply of raw materials could have been a limiting factor to production. Even in this area, however, technology had lent a hand. A machine called a Cotton Gin, invented by an American, Eli Whitney, made extracting the cotton from the plant much easier. The cotton growers were able to keep up with the demand for raw materials from across the Atlantic.

Working Conditions

By the early part of the 18th century much of the easily mined surface coal had been extracted. Increasingly coal had to brought up from deep mines beneath the earth. As the coal industry expanded, more and more miners went underground to extract coal and often worked very long hours in hazardous conditions.

In early mines coal was brought up the surface in very primitive ways. Whole families worked at the mines. The father and the boys hewed the coal (cutting the coal from seams with a pick). The mother and girls ‘hurried’ (carried) the coal to the surface by climbing a spiral staircase with a basket, filled with coal, on their backs. It was held in place by a strap around the front of their heads. This often made their hair at the front wear away, creating a bald spot.

In some mines, both the coal and the miners were brought to the surface in wooden buckets which were pulled up the shaft. Sometimes the miners just had a rope to hold on to. Rope breaks and mistakes with a windlass often led to miners plunging to their deaths. As these awful accidents became known, there were calls to find out just how bad conditions were in the mines. A commission was set up to investigate the working conditions in the mines.

In 1842 a Parliamentary Committee which reported on the mines found that many workers were working in the most appalling conditions. Not only did they work very long hours, but they were also hired at very young ages. Children as young as five were used as ‘trappers’ to open and close underground doors in the mine to let the ‘hurriers’, who pulled the loaded wagons, get through. These children worked in the dark because their families were often too poor to be able to afford candles. They were in the dark for up to twelve hours each day and often had rats scurrying all over them. If they fell asleep they were beaten by the miners.

The commission also found that children were employed as coal ‘hurriers’, pulling carts or sledges filled with coal over long distances and through very small tunnels. Girls as young as thirteen were often used fir this work. The chain around their waist caused damage to their pelvic bones, distorting them and making them smaller. This often proved fatal in later life when many of them died in childbirth.

The commission discovered that men, women, boys and girls were working together in the most frightening circumstances. Strangely enough, it was the fact that girls were mixed with ‘near naked’ men which caused the most upset, and not the long hours or the harsh and brutal conditions.

Other commissions, such as the Factories Inquiry Commission of 1833, gathered evidence and reported that the situation in factories was just as awful. The factory inspectors found that children worked twelve hour days, generally with only a one hour break. If the factory or mill was busy, they might work up to eighteen hours a day. The conditions were every bit as bad as in the mines, and some reports told of children spending their entire working lives doubled up under machinery in cotton mills. They were often permanently disabled as a result.

The combination of public outrage, political pressure and changes in the law eventually led to better and safer working conditions.

By the end of the 19th century, conditions had greatly improved. However, this was not achieved without pressure from the workers themselves, who increasingly gathered to protest about their conditions of work. These gatherings eventually led to organized self-help groups which later became known as Trade Unions.

Urban Conditions

As the new towns and cities rapidly developed during the Industrial Revolution the need for cheap housing, near the factories, increased. Whilst there were some men, such as Robert Owen, who were willing to create good housing for their workers, many employers were not. These employers ruthlessly exploited their workers by erecting poor, and often unsanitary, shoddily built houses. Workers often paid high rents for, at best, sub-standard housing.

In the rush to build houses, many were constructed too quickly in terraced rows. Some of these houses had just a small yard at the rear where an outside toilet was placed. Others were ‘back to back’ with communal toilets. Almost as soon as they were occupied, many of these houses became slums. Most of the poorest people lived in overcrowded and inadequate housing, and some of these people lived in cellars. It has been recorded that, in one instance, 17 people from different families lived in an area of 5 metres by 4 metres.

Sanitary arrangements were often non-existent, and many toilets were of the ‘earth closet’ variety. These were found outside the houses, as far away as possible because of the smell. Usually they were emptied by the ‘soil men’ at night. These men took the solid human waste away. However, in poorer districts, the solid waste was just heaped in a large pile close to the houses. The liquid from the toilets and the waste heaps seeped down into the earth and contaminated the water supplies. These liquids carried disease-causing germs into the water. The most frightening disease of all was cholera. The disease was greatly feared by everyone because it spread very quickly and was not confined to any one social class. It could strike anyone, from the poorest to the wealthiest and the noble.

In an attempt to contain the disease, Health Boards were set up to establish better standards of sanitation. Local government officials were told to clean up the towns and cities. They were instructed to provide for the removal of solid waste heaps and other household wastes, to clean the streets (particularly of the large amounts of horse manure) and to whitewash houses wherever possible. Despite these measures the epidemic continued to spread. Finally the connection between cholera and polluted water was accepted. As a result improved sanitation and the provision of clean drinking water became an even greater priority. This, together with gradual improvements in housing, enabled cholera, along with other diseases associated with poor living conditions, to be eradicated.

Industrialization in Europe

In comparison to Britain, industrialization in other regions of Europe took very much longer to get started. In fact, with the exception of Belgium which began to industrialize in 1806, industrialization on the British model only started after 1830. It needed the combination of a number of factors for the Industrial Revolution in Britain to take place at all. The special factors which encouraged industrialization in Britain, almost a century before the rest of Europe are detailed below.

A Work Force - There would be little point in investing enormous sums of money in machines and factories if, at the end, production was not possible because not enough people could be persuaded to work in them. In Britain there was no such problem because of the hundreds of thousands of peasants who had been forced off the land (with dramatic consequences for them) and were desperate for any kind of work. In continental Europe the peasants were not only still on the land, they were determined to stay there.

Money - It is not only necessary to have people with money. They must also be prepared to risk losing that money in order to make a profit (the risk would have to be small, of course) by investing it in new commercial enterprises. In Britain this "middle class risk mentality" existed; in the rest of Europe it did not. This was because the British middle class not only had money, they also had political power (which made them unique in Europe). This meant that they had the power to abolish the old laws which, up to then, had discouraged trade, commerce and profit, and introduce new laws which were more to their advantage. Another vital point was that Britain was the only country in Europe to have a national bank, the Bank of England, and a national Stock Exchange, or bourse, which encouraged people to invest money in companies in order to earn a profit.