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The Industrial Revolution

Recent Titles in Crossroads in World History

The Enlightenment: History, Documents, and Key Questions

William E. Burns
The Rise of Christianity: History, Documents, and Key Questions
Kevin W. Kaatz
The Rise of Fascism: History, Documents, and Key Questions
Patrick G. Zander
The Industrial
Revolution
HISTORY, DOCUMENTS,
AND KEY QUESTIONS

Jeff Horn

Crossroads in World History

Copyright © 2016 by ABC-CLIO, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Horn, Jeff (Historian)
Title: The industrial revolution : history, documents, and key questions /
Jeff Horn.
Description: Santa Barbara : ABC-CLIO, 2016. | Series: Crossroads in world
history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016020574 (print) | LCCN 2016022008 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781610698849 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781610698856 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Industrial revolution—History. | Industrialization—History. |
Social history.
Classification: LCC HD2321 .H67 2016 (print) | LCC HD2321 (ebook) |
DDC 330.9/034—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020574
ISBN: 978-1-61069-884-9
EISBN: 978-1-61069-885-6
20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available as an eBook.
ABC-CLIO
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC
ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
www.abc-clio.com
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents

Alphabetical List of Entries vii

Topical List of Entries ix
How to Use This Book xi
Prefacexiii
Timelinexvii
Historical Overview xxi

The Industrial Revolution: A to Z1

Primary Documents 115

Child on Interest, Trade, and Money: Josiah Child, Brief
Observations Concerning Trade and Interest of Money 115
The State of the Poor: Frederick Morton Eden, The State of
the Poor 117
Lowell Mill Girls: Harriet H. Robinson, “Early Factory Labor
in New England” 118
Conditions in the Mines: United Kingdom, Children’s
Employment Commission (Mines) Report 121
Defending the Factory System: Andrew Ure, The Philosophy
of Manufactures 126
Living and Working in Manchester: Friedrich Engels, The
Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 128
The Enlightenment’s Focus on Education and the Usefulness
of Knowledge: Frederick II, “Discourse on the Usefulness of the
Arts and Sciences in a State” 130
vi Contents

Resisting Mechanization: The Luddites: The Writings of

the Luddites 132
Robert Owen on Education and the Evils of Child Labor:
Robert Owen, A New View of Society 134
Adam Smith on the Division of Labor: Adam Smith, An Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations138

Key Questions 141

Question 1: Why Was England First to Industrialize? 141
Question 2: Was the Exploitation of the Working Classes
Necessary to Have an Industrial Revolution? 151
Question 3: Could an Industrial Revolution Have Taken Place
without European Colonialism and Imperialism? 162

Selected Annotated Bibliography 173

Index181
About the Author and Contributors 188
Alphabetical List of Entries

Agricultural Revolution
American System of Manufactures
Arkwright, Richard
Armory Practice
Bridgewater, Duke of
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom
Cartwright, Edmund
Chaptal, Jean-Antoine
Coal
Cockerill, William
Colonialism
Consumer Revolution
Cotton
Credit
Crystal Palace
Discipline
Division of Labor
Domestic Industry
Education
Enlightenment
Factory Acts
Factory System
Fitch, John
Hargreaves, James
“Industrious Revolution”
Interchangeable Parts
viii Alphabetical List of Entries

Iron and Steel

Jacquard, Joseph-Marie
Lancashire
Liebig, Justus von
Luddites
Mercantilism
Owen, Robert
Patent(s)
Pollution, Health, and Environment
Productivity
Railroads
Role of the State
Royal Society of Arts
Second Industrial Revolution
Slater, Samuel
Socialism
Standard of Living
Steam Engine
Tariffs and Excise Taxes
Transportation by Water
Waltham System
Watt, James
Wedgwood, Josiah
Whitney, Eli
Workforce
Topical List of Entries

KEY PEOPLE
Arkwright, Richard
Bridgewater, Duke of
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom
Cartwright, Edmund
Chaptal, Jean-Antoine
Cockerill, William
Fitch, John
Hargreaves, James
Jacquard, Joseph-Marie
Liebig, Justus von
Owen, Robert
Slater, Samuel
Watt, James
Wedgwood, Josiah
Whitney, Eli

EVENTS
Agricultural Revolution
Consumer Revolution
Crystal Palace
Enlightenment
Factory Acts
Luddites
Second Industrial Revolution
x Topical List of Entries

INSTITUTIONS
Colonialism
Credit
Mercantilism
Patent(s)
Royal Society of Arts
Tariffs and Excise Taxes
Transportation by Water
Workforce

PROCESSES
American System of Manufactures
Armory Practice
Discipline
Division of Labor
Domestic Industry
Education
Factory System
“Industrious Revolution”
Interchangeable Parts
Pollution, Health, and Environment
Productivity
Role of the State
Socialism
Standard of Living
Waltham System

RAW MATERIALS AND INVENTIONS

Coal
Cotton
Interchangeable Parts
Iron and Steel
Railroad
Steam Engine
How to Use This Book

Throughout the course of history various events have forever changed the
world. Some, like the assassination of Julius Caesar, happened centuries ago
and took place quickly. Others, such as the rise of Christianity or the Enlight-
enment, occurred over an extended period of time and reshaped worldviews.
These pivotal events, or crossroads, were departures from the established so-
cial order and pointed to new directions and opportunities. The paths leading
to these crossroads in world history were often circuitous, and the routes
branching off from them led to developments both anticipated and unex-
pected. This series helps students understand the causes and consequences of
these historical turning points.
Each book in this series explores a particular crossroad in world history.
Some of these events are from the ancient world and continue to reverberate
today through our various political, cultural, and social institutions; others
are from the modern era and have markedly changed society through their
immediacy and the force of technology. While the books help students dis-
cover what happened, they also help readers understand the causes and effects
linked to each event.
Each volume in the series begins with a timeline charting the essential ele-
ments of the event in capsule form. An overview essay comes next, providing
a narrative history of what happened. This is followed by approximately 50
alphabetically arranged reference entries on people, places, themes, move-
ments, and other topics central to an understanding of the historical cross-
road. These entries provide essential information about their topics and close
with cross-references and suggestions for further reading. A selection of 10 to
15 primary source documents follows the reference entries. Each document is
accompanied by an introductory paragraph discussing the background and
xii How to Use This Book

significance of the text. Because of their critical nature, the events covered in
these volumes have generated a wide range of opinions and arguments. A sec-
tion of original essays presents responses to key questions concerning the
events, with each essay writer offering a different perspective on a particular
topic. An annotated bibliography of print and electronic resources concludes
the volume. Users can locate specific information through an alphabetical list
of entries and a list of entries grouped in topical categories, as well as through
a detailed index.
The various elements of each book are designed to work together to pro-
mote greater understanding of a crossroad in world history. The timeline
and introductory essay overview the event, the reference entries offer easy ac-
cess to essential information about key topics, the primary source documents
give students first-hand accounts of the historical event, and the original argu-
mentative essays encourage students to consider different views related to the
events and to appreciate the complex nature of world history. Through its
combination of background material, primary source documents, and argu-
mentative essays, the series helps students gain insight into historical causa-
tion as they learn about the pivotal events that changed the course of history.
Preface

The Industrial Revolution changed the world. In economic terms, it gave rise
to the modern era. It took centuries to develop the institutional structures,
technological capacity, and global markets while accumulating enough capital
to enable industrialization to occur. Centered in Great Britain in the century
between 1750 and 1850, but with competition initially from France and
the Austrian Netherlands (later Belgium) and then the United States and the
German lands, the Industrial Revolution took advantage of European coloni-
alism in the Atlantic world and trade ties with Asia. The Industrial Revolution
also facilitated the later spurt of 19th- and 20th-century imperialism. The gap
between the industrial “haves” and “have nots” widened dramatically. Unprec-
edented growth in manufacturing output resulting from the Industrial Revo-
lution accelerated the elaboration of European global hegemony, forcing states
that hoped to compete to seek to jumpstart their own industrial revolutions.
Those that did not, or could not, found themselves relegated to providing
resources and markets for increasingly dominant industrialized or industrial-
izing powers.
This extraordinary economic transition did not come cheap. A significant
proportion of the wealth, resources, and markets that underlay the Industrial
Revolution were generated by the Atlantic slave trade and slavery. But the
emerging working classes put in tremendously long hours laboring on danger-
ous machines in terrible conditions as more productive means of manufactur-
ing goods were developed. Given this situation, it is not surprising that a huge
percentage of the laborers in the first factories were there because they had no
choice. Evidence for the declining standard of living for the first generations
of industrial workers is overwhelming and incontrovertible. The Industrial
Revolution was simply not beneficial to those who provided the raw materials
xiv Preface

or made the goods that streamed in increasing numbers from Britain’s, then
the West’s factories, mills, and workshops. Only after 1830 did improvements
in living standards trickle down to England’s workers and slowly reach the
working classes in other industrialized countries.
How did—how could—such a system emerge? Socioeconomic elites devel-
oped progressively more powerful state structures capable of enforcing their
control over recalcitrant populations that did not want to work such long
hours, in dangerous and polluted places tied to machines, especially for so
little money. With the population growing and opportunities for emigration
to the colonies as an outlet, beginning in the 17th century, the rulers of
Britain identified the interests of the state with those of entrepreneurs ever
more tightly. The British state implemented a legal framework conducive to
protecting property owners, supported financial institutions like the Bank of
England to provide cheap and plentiful credit, and fought wars both to defend
and to acquire economic assets. Acts of Parliament to aid certain industries
and particular entrepreneurs with money or monopolistic control were sup-
plemented by the deployment of troops, police spies, and the entire military
apparatus of the British state to prevent the working classes from effectively
resisting their domination with force. Despite the prevalence of the myth that
laissez-faire underlay its economic policies, government action was essential to
British leadership of the Industrial Revolution. States that sought to follow
in Britain’s footsteps had to be even more active in fostering and protecting
industrial society.
The key to the economic breakthrough known as the Industrial Revolution
was making labor more productive through investments of capital. Human
ingenuity responded to the challenge with mechanization; the replacement of
human and animal power by wind, water, and coal; building factories, canals,
steamships, and railroads; all while increasing the division of labor and man-
agement’s oversight of the production process. This was no supply-side pro-
cess; entrepreneurs and states invested their time and energy in response to
clear signs of rapidly accelerating demand for a myriad of goods. One of the
chief reasons for the success of industrialization was the seemingly unquench-
able desire of people up and down the social scale and throughout the western
world for ever more material possessions that first manifested itself in the late
17th century and shows no sign of coming to a halt.
The Industrial Revolution is studied most effectively using an inter- and
cross-disciplinary perspective. History establishes the narrative and provides
the evidence. An historical understanding, however, should be enriched by
insights from business, political science, gender studies, sociology, and espe-
cially economics. At the same time, this book seeks to correct assumptions or
misinterpretations about the Industrial Revolution that are based too much
Preface xv

on theoretical constructs rather than on the historical record. That major

thinkers on economics from Karl Marx to Paul Krugman have devoted so
much attention to the age of the Industrial Revolution reminds us that this
ground-breaking transition is not some irrelevant past event that can be easily
or safely ignored. The Industrial Revolution still has lessons for today’s poli-
cymakers, politicians, and pundits, especially those concerned with the devel-
oping world.
Following the guidelines of the series, Crossroads in World History, this
book is divided into several sections for ease of use. A timeline begins the
volume to structure and show the relationship between and among events. A
broad yet deep essay exploring the Industrial Revolution follows to provide a
narrative that introduces and contextualizes the material to come in a com-
prehensible framework. A section of encyclopedia entries examines the peo-
ple, places, events, and processes essential to understanding a transformation
as complex as the Industrial Revolution. These synthetic entries are trailed by
excerpts from primary source accounts that seek to provide a flavor of the
period and the issues that motivated the people who lived through these tur-
bulent times. Many of these accounts offer conflicting interpretations of what
was going on to allow readers to make their own decisions about which ac-
counts are more convincing. Having been introduced to the central issues
and considered what contemporaries had to say about them, a Key Questions
section examines three issues of vital import to scholars and students from
contrasting viewpoints to provide alternative interpretations to provide path-
ways to deeper reflection on the meaning and import of the Industrial Revo-
lution. An annotated bibliography guides readers to the most useful and
appropriate sources for further research along those pathways. Through these
features, this volume provides a concise and clear means of understanding
one of the most important and most enduring changes in world history.
Timeline

1624 First English patent law.

1651 England passes the first effective Navigation Act.
1670 English Corn Laws are first instituted to control the price of
grain.
1694 First central Bank is established in England.
1709 Englishman Abraham Darby uses coke instead of charcoal or
wood to smelt iron.
1712 Thomas Newcomen invents the first productive steam engine
in England.
1733 James Kay invents the flying shuttle, a simple weaving
machine, in England.
1742 Englishman Benjamin Huntsman develops crucible steel.
1754 Foundation of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts,
Manufacture and Commerce in London. Becomes the Royal
Society of Arts in 1847.
1761 The Duke of Bridgewater opens the first section of his canal
from Worsley to Manchester.
1763 Josiah Wedgwood patents creamware pottery.
1764 James Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny, which allows
one worker to manage eight spindles. Patented six years later.
1769 Richard Arkwright patents the waterframe, which hooks up
spinning machines to a waterwheel.
1769 James Watt patents his revision of the steam engine, with
a separate condenser. Extended by Parliament in 1775, the
patent lasted until 1800.
xviii Timeline

1771 Richard Arkwright’s mechanized factory at Cromford is

powered entirely by waterwheels.
1772 The Duke of Bridgewater’s canal connects Manchester and
Liverpool.
1773 Opening of the London Stock Exchange.
1774 Samuel Crompton begins work on the spinning mule, which
combines spinning and weaving into one machine.
1776 Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations.
1776 James Watt’s main patent for an improved steam engine.
1776 United States Declaration of Independence.
1779 Samuel Crompton patents the spinning mule.
1781 Watt adapts his steam engine from a reciprocal to a rotary
motion.
1783 United States becomes independent.
1783 Marquis Claude de Jouffroy builds the first steamboat on the
Saône River in France.
1784 Englishman Henry Cort develops the puddling process for
wrought iron.
1784 Frenchman Claude Berthollet develops a method for chemical
bleaching.
1785 Edmund Cartwright invents the power-loom in England,
which is patented in stages over the next three years.
1785 Henry Cort invents highly successful iron refining techniques
in England.
1785 Frenchman Honoré Blanc demonstrates fully interchangeable
gunlocks.
1786 Anglo-French Commercial Treaty lowers tariff rates dramatically.
1789 Outbreak of the French Revolution.
1790 Establishment of U.S. patent system in law.
1791 John Fitch receives both U.S. and French patents for a steamboat.
1793 American Eli Whitney develops the cotton gin.
1794 The first telegraph line is set up between Paris and Lille for
military information.
1794 Creation of the Polytechnic and the National Institute in Paris.
1798 Englishman Edward Jenner introduces vaccination against
smallpox.
1799 Englishman Charles Tennant creates bleaching powder for use
on textiles by combining chlorine with lime.
1799–1800 Combination Acts make it illegal in England for workers to
unionize in order to bargain for higher pay or better working
conditions.
Timeline xix

1799 Napoleon Bonaparte becomes the ruler of France.

1800 Englishman Richard Trevithick constructs a new model steam
engine based on higher steam pressures.
1802 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act passes in the United
Kingdom.
1803 The term socialism first appears in print, in Italian.
1804 Frenchman Joseph-Marie Jacquard patents a loom capable of
weaving complex patterns using punch cards.
1807 American Robert Fulton’s steamboat the Clermont completes a
five-day roundtrip voyage from New York City to Albany.
1809 Frenchman Nicolas Appert develops canning to preserve food.
1811 Luddites begin breaking machines; this lasts until 1817.
1812 Parliament passes law making it illegal on penalty of death to
destroy industrial machines.
1812 War of 1812 begins between the United States and the United
Kingdom. It lasts until 1815.
1813 Waltham System is inaugurated by Francis Cabot Lowell.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte is exiled for good to Saint Helena.
1815 The English Corn Laws are reformulated to provide higher
profits to landowners.
1819 Cotton Mills and Factories Act passes in the United Kingdom.
1821 First iron steamboat launches in the United Kingdom.
1822 Boston Manufacturing Company founds a mill town named
Lowell.
1823 Mechanics Institutes is founded in London and Glasgow to
provide mechanical training to artisans and the working classes.
1824 John Hancock Hall achieves gun interchangeability at the
U.S. Harpers Ferry Armory.
1825 George Stephenson develops an effective steam locomotive
from his first prototype of 1814. He is commissioned to
construct a 30-mile-long railway from Liverpool to Manchester.
1825 Richard Roberts patents the self-acting mule.
1825 Justus Liebig sets up the first research laboratory at the
University of Giessen in Hesse.
1825 Utopian socialist community is established at New Harmony,
Indiana. Robert Owen is a major influence.
1825 Erie Canal connecting Hudson River and Lake Erie is
completed.
1829–1832 Captain Swing riots rock rural England.
1830 The Liverpool and Manchester Railway is the first commercial
rail service.
xx Timeline

1832 Sadler Committee investigates child labor in factories and

issues report to Parliament.
1833 Slavery is abolished in Britain’s colonies (completed in 1838).
1833 The Factory Act regulates child labor in textile factories.
1834 Poor Law creates “poorhouses” for the destitute.
1838 The steamship S.S. Great Western designed by Isambard
Kingdom Brunel is launched.
1841 Great Western Railway linking London and Bristol is completed
by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
1842 Publication of the Children’s Employment Commission
(Mines) Report.
1842 Plug Plots led by Staffordshire miners conclude the era of
machine-breaking in Britain.
1846 End of the English Corn Laws.
1847 Ten Hours Act for women and children’s labor passes in the
United Kingdom.
1848 British government sets up the General Board of Health to
investigate sanitary conditions, setting up local boards to
ensure safe water in cities.
1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist
Manifesto.
1848 Slavery is outlawed in the French empire.
1851 The international Exhibition featuring the Crystal Palace
opens in London.
1860 Anglo-French free trade treaty is signed.
1870 Second Industrial Revolution begins.
Historical Overview

The Industrial Revolution transformed European and ultimately world soci-

ety. It gave birth to the modern economy and provided the context for equally
revolutionary political and social changes. Although the foundations began to
be laid more than a century earlier, the transition to a fundamentally new
type of industrial production emerged around 1780 in Great Britain and in
other places in northwestern Europe and then spread later to North America.
The initial stages of industrial transformation lasted until about 1850, which
marked the height of British industrial dominance. After a few generations
and based on the suffering of tens of millions of workers and slaves, the
Industrial Revolution allowed Europe and later North America to improve
the standard of living of the vast majority of the population and to develop
the power required to maintain and then increase the West’s domination
of the world economy.
T. S. Ashton provided the most widely accepted definition of this revolu-
tionary economic transformation. He identified five characteristics to differ-
entiate an industrial “revolution” from other, less significant, forms of
economic growth: increased population; the application of science to indus-
try; a more intensive and extensive use of capital; the conversion of rural to
urban communities; and the rise of new social classes. Demographic develop-
ments appear to be the essential factor, yet many historians and economists
focus on Ashton’s depiction of the development of a “wave of gadgets that
swept Britain” during the Industrial Revolution, thereby overemphasizing the
role of technological change at the expense of the role of the state and the
importance of empire. Arguments that the Industrial Revolution resulted
from an increasing supply of goods, both consumer and capital, available at
ever-cheaper prices, are insufficiently based on the historical record. Instead,
xxii Historical Overview

the new forms of production that made the Industrial Revolution must be
understood as a means of coping with growing demand. This demand
stemmed from rapid population growth and an influx of wealth siphoned off
from other parts of the world. Taken together, these two massive sources of
increased demand for various sorts of industrial products pushed innovators to
find novel ways of giving the people what they needed, wanted, and desired.
The Industrial Revolution gave rise to a new organization of society—the
emergence of new classes, urbanization, and a vastly more powerful state.
Industrialization made possible rates of economic growth that overcame de-
mographic pressures for the foreseeable future. This achievement was and is
enormously important in its own right, but the Industrial Revolution also led
eventually to dramatic and long-lasting improvements in the standard of liv-
ing that underpin the affluence of the contemporary industrialized world.
These two achievements explain why the process of industrialization in the
late 18th and 19th centuries was so “revolutionary.”
The Industrial Revolution was fostered effectively first by the British gov-
ernment and then by those states that followed in England’s wake. During the
early-modern era, official direction of the economy is generally associated
with a group of policies collectively known as mercantilism. From 1651, Brit-
ain closely oversaw trade through a series of Navigation Acts and tight control
over tariff policies to create and then maintain maritime supremacy by ena-
bling British merchants and landowners to earn large profits. The British also
gave certain mercantile associations charters to explore, colonize, and trade
with specific areas. Several companies became “states within states” ruling vast
territories and generating enormous profits for investors. These companies
tied the global economy together, expanding world trade for the benefit of
Europe. By developing institutions like the Bank of England to allow it to
borrow money at low rates, the British state obtained what proved to be a
decisive military advantage in the series of eight wars fought against France
between 1688 and 1815. The British state used its legal system and violence
to protect property and the authority of elites to encourage investment and
guarantee the domination of employers over workers. Law and order enforced
by the state were essential components of the British industrial advantage.
The government also provided monetary incentives, tax breaks, and monop-
olies to entrepreneurs. Parliament passed laws to create patents to support
invention while also investing in improvements to ships, docks, harbors, and
weapons. Without the thoroughgoing intervention of the state, Britain would
not have pioneered the Industrial Revolution.
Although the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain has been studied thor-
oughly, the partial nature of available statistics make it difficult for scholars
to agree on the pace, scope, or timing of the emergence of high levels of
Historical Overview xxiii

economic growth. The most convincing estimates of the percentages of an-

nual growth in the rate of real output from manufacturing range from 1.24 to
2.61 for the period 1760–1780, from 2.7 to 4.4 for the era 1800–1830, and
from 2.9 to 3.1 for 1830–1870. Newly industrialized sectors accounted for
nearly two-thirds of productivity growth in the British economy between
1780 and 1860. By the middle of the 19th century, Great Britain dominated
the global market for the products of “modern” industry. For a generation
during the middle of the 19th century, Britain produced two-thirds of world
output of “new technology” products. Britain furnished half the planet’s iron
and cotton textiles and mined two-thirds of its coal. Discounting for infla-
tion, Britain’s gross national product (GNP) increased fourfold between 1780
and 1850. The British share of world industrial production rose from 2 per-
cent in 1750 to 4.3 percent in 1800 to 9.5 percent in 1830 and to nearly
20 percent in 1860. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, a relatively small
island nation became the “workshop of the world,” achieving a level of global
economic dominance never seen before or since.
National and global economic statistics obscure the sectoral and regional
character of industrialization. Certain key industries like cotton textiles and
machine building grew at stunning rates thanks to technological changes that
boosted labor productivity. In the key growth sector—cotton textiles—output
increased more than fivefold while prices fell 50 percent in the generation
from 1815 to 1841. The value of British cotton textile production skyrock-
eted from £600,000 in 1770 to £48.6 million in 1851 and then to £104.9
million in 1871, of which about 60 percent was exported. This phenomenal
expansion was centered in the county of Lancashire, which produced between
55 and 70 percent of Britain’s cotton goods. Textiles contributed a whopping
46 percent of the value added by British industry both in 1770 and in 1831.
Cotton’s share grew from 2.6 percent to 22.1 percent and wool fell from
30.5 percent to 14.1 percent. The woolen textile–producing region of the
West Riding in Yorkshire and the iron foundries and machine shops of the
West Midlands, known as the “Black Country” to contemporaries because
of the heavy concentration of coal use, along with the Scottish Lowlands were
the other key districts that pioneered the British Industrial Revolution. An
extremely high percentage of Britain’s modern industries were situated in
these four regions. In 1831, Lancashire and the West Riding possessed a stun-
ning 55 percent of all manufacturing employment in the United Kingdom,
demonstrating the revolutionary character of these regions’ industrial growth.
This economic development was made possible by and took advantage of
rapid population growth. Britain grew from approximately 6.3 million peo-
ple in 1761 to 15.9 million in 1841. This expansion was most rapid from
1791 to 1831. Britain’s population growth was even more impressive because
xxiv Historical Overview

heavy emigration to the colonies and the United States as well as long years of
war punctuated this era. Declining mortality played an important role, par-
ticularly among infants and young children, but increasing fertility was a
greater factor. Rising fertility resulted from falling mean age of marriage and
the space between births, while the proportion of women who married grew
and married women became more likely to have children. These factors over-
came the harsh living and working conditions, health hazards, and poor nu-
trition that characterized the period. These factors combined with skyrocketing
urbanization to lower average life expectancy in Britain from 41.3 years in
1826 to 39.5 years in 1850. The simultaneous drop in infant and child death
rates and the absence of major wars suggests both how sharp the decline
in adult mortality was during the Industrial Revolution and the dramatic in-
creases in British fertility that surmounted it.
The British Industrial Revolution was based on a number of economic,
social, and political developments that began in the late 15th century and ac-
celerated during the 17th century. These developments provided the capital
and infrastructure that made industrialization feasible and profitable. In-
creased crop yields significant enough to be described as an “Agricultural
Revolution” complemented dramatic expansion of commercial interaction
both within Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world, especially
the Americas. Goods from Europe’s colonies in the western hemisphere were
exchanged for luxury goods from Asia and human beings from Africa who
were brought to the Americas to work as slaves in farms, mines, and homes.
It was only once the Industrial Revolution was well underway that European
manufactures could compete in many key markets around the world. The
emergence of a true world economic system in the 18th century was vital to
Europe’s ability to industrialize. New goods, new experiences, and increased
interaction with other peoples and places supported fresh ways of thinking
associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. In their
quest to understand the natural world, these movements encouraged tinker-
ing and experimentation, which sometimes led (usually indirectly) to im-
provements in production.
The critical technological developments that permitted a transformation
of the manufacturing process took place in England during the second half
of the 18th century, but were continually refined and improved on until su-
perseded after 1850. In almost every case, new machines and/or production
processes responded to specific problems that slowed down manufacturing.
In this sense, innovation was driven by economic “demand” rather than sci-
entific or technological “supply.” The decisive industry was textiles, particu-
larly cotton, which was both stronger and easier to work than wool, linen, or
silk, facilitating the switch to machine production. Cotton was also lighter,
Historical Overview xxv

washable, and could be grown in many places around the world. Therefore,
cotton textiles had an enormous potential market, greater than any other
textile.
The first “blockage” to expanding production was to manufacture enough
thread. This problem was resolved by Richard Arkwright’s water frame
(1769), James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny (1770), and Samuel Crompton’s
spinning mule (1779). Arkwright and Hargreaves applied principles devel-
oped in woolens to the new fiber, using water and hand power respectively.
Crompton’s machine combined both power sources in impressive fashion; a
spinning mule did 200–300 times the work of a spinning wheel. This mecha-
nization put pressure on weavers to make use of the increased amount of
available thread. Edmund Cartwright developed the power-loom (1785–
1788) in response. Although for several decades the power-loom did not
work any faster than a weaver, one worker could run first two, and then many
looms, increasing output exponentially. American Eli Whitney patented the
cotton gin in 1793 to get the seeds and dirt out of raw cotton. Finished yarn
could be bleached with chlorine using a process invented by French chemist
Claude-Louis Berthollet in 1784. Fifteen years later, Englishman Charles
Tennant greatly improved on Berthollet’s discovery by combining chlorine
with lime to make bleaching powder, which was easier, more effective, and
cheaper to use.
These advances permitted the British cotton industry to grow rapidly. Al-
though wool remained the largest textile sector throughout the 18th century,
the cotton industry expanded much more quickly. British cotton production
increased approximately tenfold between 1760 and 1800, and accelerated even
more rapidly in the 19th century. By 1830, cotton goods constituted half of all
British exports.
Improvements in iron production made the rapid mechanization of indus-
try feasible. The key to British predominance in iron making stemmed from
the use of coal in smelting rather than charcoal. Iron makers preferred char-
coal because, as a vegetable fuel, it did not pass on impurities to the smelted
iron. However, in 18th-century England, wood shortages made charcoal ex-
pensive, encouraging the English to use coal as a replacement fuel. A great
deal of British iron production shifted to the 13 North American colonies
where wood was plentiful. The loss of these colonies in the War of American
Independence accelerated the cost incentive to replace charcoal. Iron masters
experimented until they discovered how to apply heat indirectly using a
reverberatory furnace that kept coal from direct contact with iron. English-
man Henry Cort (1740–1800) developed this process, known as “puddling,”
in 1783–1784 and improved it in the 1790s. Rapid expansion of iron pro-
duction began in the late 1790s and skyrocketed in the first decades of the
xxvi Historical Overview

19th century as machines made from metal became ever more crucial to eco-
nomic development.
The experience of artisans and iron makers with using coal as fuel and
experimenting with machines stimulated British technological creativity. The
most important example was the steam engine. First developed in the late
17th century and improved frequently over the course of the 18th century,
the steam engine, powered by coal, put almost unlimited power at humanity’s
disposal, superseding the limitations of human or animal power. Early steam
engines were highly inefficient at turning steam pressure into motive power.
Some of Britain’s best engineers, led by James Watt (1736–1819), an instru-
ment maker from Glasgow, sought to increase its efficiency. Watt solved several
technical problems, which saved a huge amount of coal and permitted the en-
gine to be moved, making a vast array of industrial machinery possible. Watt’s
patented steam engine was essential to mechanization and the emergence of the
factory system, but it was too large and did not produce enough pressure to run
a steam-powered vehicle. Only after another Englishman, Richard Trevithick,
developed such an engine in 1800 did it become possible to build steamboats
and railroads, the era’s most vital advances in transportation.
The question of why Great Britain was able to undertake an industrial
revolution has been hotly debated since the first signs of industrialization
became visible in the late 18th century. Other countries—notably France, the
Netherlands, and what became Belgium—had many of the same social, eco-
nomic, and technological preconditions for industrialization, so what made
Britain unique? The issue remains important today because it affects national
economic policies in the nonwestern world.
Britain enjoyed a number of important advantages for industrialization.
Rapid population growth provided a surplus of workers forced to labor for
low wages while generating a burgeoning demand for manufactured goods.
In terms of natural resources, Britain had a productive agricultural sector, and
large, high-quality deposits of iron and coal. Britain had myriad rivers and
streams to power machines and to provide cheaper transportation. No place
in Britain is more than 70 miles from the sea or more than 30 miles from a
navigable waterway. The surrounding seas protected the British Isles from
invasion and the damage associated with events like the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic wars (1792–1815) that devastated the continent. Colonies and
overseas commerce furnished needed raw materials and lucrative markets.
Centuries as a leading mercantile nation had generated significant capital and
fostered institutions capable of managing the national economy, like the
Bank of England, that facilitated industrialization. However, by themselves,
these advantages do not explain the process of industrialization or how Brit-
ain was able to lead the way to a new economy.
Historical Overview xxvii

The labor force explains why Britain was able to lead an industrial revolu-
tion more effectively than any other factor. As a group, British workers were
relatively well educated and possessed many craft skills. Perhaps more impor-
tantly, British laborers were thoroughly disciplined. They adopted innova-
tions in technology and in the organization of production far more
systematically than their brethren on the other side of the Channel. The Brit-
ish also adapted to the time-clock and the demands of the machine while
their counterparts were distracted by political and military diversions during
the upheavals of the French Revolution and Napoleon. These characteristics
resulted from a combination of greater control by British elites and by height-
ened desperation on the part of laborers on the margins. The willingness of
entrepreneurs to invest in machines and the financial need of enough laborers
to accept mechanized work, which they despised, were the twin bases of Brit-
ain’s major advantage in the process of early industrialization: labor produc-
tivity. This “domestication” of labor permitted the successful implementation
of the factory system.
The term domestication has a double meaning because the rudimentary
machines found in early factories required the entire family to enter the fac-
tory together, recreating the division of labor found on many farms. In gen-
eral, fathers did the heavy manual labor, women undertook tasks requiring
greater dexterity, and children cleaned, fetched raw materials, or tended
difficult-to-reach parts of the machine. Despite the dangers to life and limb
from unsafe machinery; rickety, crowded factories; and toxic materials essen-
tial to production, children and their parents worked 12- to 17-hour days, six
days a week in order to earn a living wage. Only the continual improvement
of machines in the 19th century made it possible for the family unit to be
replaced by individuals and, later, for men to be supplanted by women or
children. The ease of finding families, and subsequently children, to perform
these onerous tasks reminds us of how difficult economic conditions were,
and why socialist doctrines highlighting the inequality of profits created by
industrialization coming at the expense of enormous human suffering by the
working classes ultimately found such a large audience.
Factories concentrated workers at one site rather than in the home
while mechanized production increased the division of labor and enforced
hierarchical management. The use of machinery imposed geographical
constraints—factories required a nearby power source, either water or coal.
Thus, industrialization was regional more than national, clustering around
rivers and coal deposits. This new form of production lowered costs, not only
permitting greater profits but also allowing prices to be reduced, bringing
manufacturing goods within the purchasing reach of more people, dramati-
cally increasing potential demand. The creation and spread of the modern
xxviii Historical Overview

factory system within the confines of the British textile industry during the
late 18th century was essential to the Industrial Revolution.
The British pioneered the factory system, and it spread most rapidly there.
As a result, manufactured goods produced in the British Isles tended to be
cheaper and in many cases better (thanks to the mechanization of many op-
erations) than the same products made in other countries. British industrial
dominance was founded on relatively inexpensive goods made with machin-
ery and a high level of division of labor by workers with unique craft skills in
economic sectors with highly elastic demand. Changes in the production
process, the development of other countries’ industrial sectors, and the evolu-
tion of consumer demand eventually sounded the death knell for Britain’s
advantages, but not until after 1870.
The Industrial Revolution: A to Z

AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION Between 1600 and 1750, an “Agri-

cultural Revolution” in Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, and parts of
northern France dramatically increased crop yields. The Agricultural Revolu-
tion was an essential precondition for the Industrial Revolution, and, before
the 19th century, this transformation affected the daily lives of more people
than industrialization.
The Agricultural Revolution employed and spread existing knowledge,
changing technique rather than applying new technology. The methods put
into practice to increase crop yields had been known for centuries, but only
came into widespread use in northwestern Europe in the 17th and 18th cen-
turies. Executed most thoroughly in the Dutch Republic and England, imple-
mentation stemmed from population pressure and the desire of elites to earn
higher profits from their landholdings.
Explicit production for the market, usually termed “commercial agricul-
ture,” replaced subsistence farming thanks to a host of factors such as irriga-
tion; greater use of draft animals; different crop rotations that included grasses
and clover to permit land to recover from growing grain that also provided
fodder to feed larger herds of animals; more thorough breeding of animals;
the systematic use of fertilizer; the enclosure of common land; the consolida-
tion of plots; and the clearing of new land. These improvements provided
incentives to consolidate holdings, creating larger farms that increased effi-
ciency, maximized the income of landowners, allowed a significant number
of people to eat better, and increased the available quantity of agricultural
commodities.
2 Agricultural Revolution

The Agricultural Revolution had remarkable economic consequences. The

production of more grain allowed urban areas to grow. Improved techniques
meant that less labor was needed for agriculture: a greater percentage of the
population could labor at other tasks such as manufacturing or mining. By
increasing yields, farmers made more money, which enabled them to pur-
chase manufactured goods, increasing demand overall and to new areas. The
production of more food let prices fall despite the increasing population. De-
clining food prices meant people could eat more. The decline in the number
of stillborn children and in infant mortality is powerful evidence of improved
nutrition. Escalating profits for landowners generated by commercial agricul-
ture could be invested in industry. In short, without the capital and other
improvements provided by the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revo-
lution would not have taken place when or where it did.
British agriculture represented an enormous and continuing comparative
advantage. At the dawn of the industrial age, the output per worker of British
agriculture was one-third greater than France’s and twice that of Russia while
Europe enjoyed double the productivity of any other part of the world. By
1851, British output per worker was twice that of any contemporary European
state. Not only did high agricultural productivity foster effective work habits
throughout the population, but it also released labor. This labor could be em-
ployed in industry, but the path does not seem to have been direct. Instead,
high wages or employment opportunities attracted rural labor to migrate
within the “internal empire” of Ireland and Scotland, to the cities, or abroad.
This migration fostered urbanization and the expansion of more sophisticated
and dense markets that steadily increased demand for industrial products.
In addition, agricultural productivity encouraged population growth, which
stimulated the development of the market for manufactured goods. Current
explanations for this agricultural productivity in Britain generally focus on the
role of the state in fostering a system of land tenure based on a distinctive and
profoundly inegalitarian system of property rights that increasingly favored
the formation of more efficient, large estates.
Most of the efficiency gains from the Agricultural Revolution were realized
by 1750. It preceded and permitted the onset of industrialization. During the
Industrial Revolution, although total output and labor productivity continued
to improve, the increments were far less than in the period from 1600 to 1750.
Despite the best efforts of agricultural reformers like English agronomist Ar-
thur Young or French author François Quesnay, after the mid-18th century,
the majority of the growth in agricultural output in areas undergoing industri-
alization stemmed from increases of the area of land under cultivation. Nor
did agriculture provide a vital market for manufactures, generate new capital,
or release labor in different fashion than before 1750. The finding that the
American System of Manufactures 3

benefits of agricultural transformation did not continue during the Industrial

Revolution is the result of recent research. The significance of these findings
stems first from the fact that it shows a continuous process of economic trans-
formation operating in northwestern Europe beginning in the 17th century,
and second refocuses attention on demand rather than supply as the primary
cause for the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. The spread of the tech-
niques associated with the Agricultural Revolution outside of western Europe
during the 19th century along with the development of new technologies that
improved agricultural productivity, combined with the enormous expansion
of farmland devoted to commercial agriculture in other parts of the world,
contributed greatly to increasing global commodity output and facilitating the
spread of industrialization beyond northwestern Europe.

See also: Standard of Living; Workforce; Document: “The State of the Poor”

Further Reading
Broadberry, Stephen, and Kevin O’Rourke, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of
Modern Europe, vol. 1, 1700–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010.
Clark, Gregory. “The Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution: Eng-
land, 1500–1912.” 2002. Available online at http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu
/faculty/gclark/papers/prod2002.pdf.
King, Steven, and Geoffrey Timmins. Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: Eng-
lish Economy and Society 1700–1850. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2001.
Overton, Mark. Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrar-
ian Economy 1500–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

AMERICAN SYSTEM OF MANUFACTURES The American System of

Manufactures refers to a method developed during the middle third of the
19th century of making metal goods through careful division of labor and
mechanization using specially designed, single-purpose machines. Often these
machines were powered by water or steam. It allowed high-quality goods to be
made in quantity and to replace more easily skilled workers with semiskilled
laborers to give management far more control over the production process.
The American System of Manufactures built on armory practice and was an
important step on the road to true mass production in the 20th century.
Only the financial support of the federal government made the American
System possible. Eli Whitney’s abortive industrial efforts attracted the govern-
ment’s interest from 1798. The arsenals at Springfield, Massachusetts, and
Harpers Ferry, Virginia, were commanded to make weapons with interchange-
able parts. Despite some success in 1826, it took until 1840 for the arsenals to
4 American System of Manufactures

make guns with reliably interchangeable parts. Nor did that interchangeabil-
ity survive a change in design. When a new weapon was introduced in 1842,
it took seven years to develop the precision machine tools to mimic the same
results. The hand-filing of parts was succeeded by the invention of machines
that automatically made identical parts to a specified pattern. Weapons with
interchangeable parts were considerably more expensive than handmade
weapons, but they were easier to repair. It was at the 1851 Crystal Palace Ex-
hibition in London that the “American System of Manufactures” received its
name from impressed observers.
Once developed, the American System was used to manufacture sewing
machines and then bicycles in addition to ever-more-lethal weapons. From
bicycles, the American System diffused to the automobile industry. The suc-
cess of this system came from the design and use of machine tools, which could
fashion exactly alike metal parts for products ranging from clocks, to cash
registers, to typewriters, to reapers, to locomotives, and finally to automobiles.
Many of these products were not internationally competitive on price or qual-
ity, but U.S. manufacturers were able to survive by selling to the vast and grow-
ing American market while high tariffs kept out foreign rivals. Only after a
long period of constant improvement did U.S. manufacturers become truly
competitive in the world market in the last decades of the 19th century. Simul-
taneous improvements in steel making along with U.S. expertise in machine
building permitted the factory assembly line to be created. The assembly line
must be seen as the culmination of a century-long process through which gen-
uine mass production emerged out of the American System of Manufactures.

See also: Armory Practice; Crystal Palace; Interchangeable Parts; Iron and
Steel; Role of the State; Second Industrial Revolution; Tariffs and Excise
Taxes; Whitney, Eli

Further Reading
Hoke, Donald R. Ingenious Yankees: The Rise of the American System of Manufactures
in the Private Sector. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Hounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The
Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1984.
Mayr, Otto, and Robert C. Post, eds. Yankee Enterprise: The Rise of the American Sys-
tem of Manufactures. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 1981.
Meyer, David R. “The Roots of American Industrialization, 1790–1860.” Available
online at https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-roots-of-american-industrialization
-1790–1860/.
Smith, Merritt Roe. Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of
Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.
Arkwright, Richard 5

ARKWRIGHT, RICHARD Richard Arkwright developed the water frame

to spin thread for use in the manufacture of textiles in 1767 (patented in
1769). This machine transformed the production process and gave a major
boost to the nascent cotton textile industry. He also established the first mod-
ern factory at Cromford in Derbyshire, England, in 1771.
Arkwright (1732–1792) was a barber and wigmaker with no experience in
making textiles when he devised the water frame or throstle with the help of
a clockmaker. This relatively simple wooden machine was about 32 inches
high. A wheel was connected to four pairs of rollers that stretched the roved
cotton, which was then twisted and wound on spindles placed vertically on
the machine. The coarse yarn produced by a water frame was strong and
tightly twisted; it was suitable for hosiery and the warp for cotton goods.
Arkwright intended to use horses to power his machine, but water was swiftly
found to be far more economical and gave the device its name. The water-
frame conceived of by Arkwright differed little from several others developed
over the previous 30 years.
If the technology of Arkwright’s machine did not represent a breakthrough,
his implementation of this device was nothing short of revolutionary. At first,
Arkwright set up a horse-powered workshop in 1769 to make cotton textiles
in Nottingham not far from James Hargreaves’s mill. It was clear that this
enterprise did not have sufficient capital to set up the manufacture as effi-
ciently as possible, which led Arkwright to form an association with two rich
hosiers, Jebediah Strutt and Samuel Need, to create Cromford. When this
factory opened in 1771, it had space for a complete set of machines and was
purpose-built to be lit by candle for night work. The machines were run by
large waterwheels. By 1773, the three partners had set up a weaving workshop
to make England’s first all-cotton calicoes in imitation of goods imported
from India. Their technical and financial achievements enabled Arkwright,
Strutt, and Need to lobby the government successfully in 1774 to eliminate
the tariff on imports of raw cotton. Arkwright’s most persuasive argument was
that “The said manufacture, if not crushed by so heavy a duty, will rapidly
increase and find new and effectual employment for many thousand British
poor, and increase the revenue of the kingdom.”
Cromford became the model for many other establishments. It swiftly
grew to house several thousand spindles and 300 workers. In 1776, there were
140 Arkwright-type water-powered mills spinning cotton. By 1800, England
housed 900 cotton-spinning factories of which 300 were large mills patterned
on Arkwright’s that employed more than 50 workers apiece.
Initially, few unemployed, even unskilled, workers sought jobs at Cromford
because the rural site was picked for maximizing water power potential, not
for convenience or ease of access for the labor force. (Unskilled workers were
6 Armory Practice

preferred because they did not have to unlearn other techniques, they did not
mind the closer supervision demanded by factory labor, and they were willing
to be trained to work the machines.) Arkwright solved the labor problem by
accepting a huge number of youthful apprentices from Poor Houses all over
Britain. Apprentices who were children or teenagers lived at the mill and were
bound legally to work for Arkwright either until they were 18 or for seven
years, whichever was longer!
To address an ongoing shortage of labor, Arkwright set up several mills in
Lancashire in association with different groups of limited partners, becoming
Europe’s first cotton baron. The mills got bigger and bigger. The factory at
Chorley was the biggest in Great Britain with 500 workers. In Manchester,
Arkwright engaged 600 workers and built a multistory mill with weavers
established on the premises instead of in a separate building. In the 1780s,
Arkwright greatly upgraded earlier carding machines that combed and
straightened the raw cotton. It hardly mattered that Arkwright’s patent to this
machine was revoked in 1785. The British government ruled that he had
stolen the idea that made his fortune. Stolen or not, Arkwright’s water frame
was the foundation of the factory system inaugurated in Britain’s cotton tex-
tile industry.

ARMORY PRACTICE The term armory practice refers to manufacturing

innovations that occurred in U.S. military arsenals starting around 1800
in Springfield, Massachusetts. Overseers deliberately sought to diminish the
power of artisanal skill by substituting division of labor and mechanization.
The willingness of the U.S. government to pay a much higher price for
guns made with interchangeable parts subsidized this effort. Armory practice
was a major step in disciplining independent-minded American workers,
Armory Practice 7

especially in metalworking, to accept factory labor. The habits inculcated in

the armories spread throughout the machine shops scattered across the
Northeast.
Behind high tariff walls, the U.S. government supported industrial com-
petitiveness by paying high prices for technologically advanced goods and
supporting entrepreneurs seeking to overcome the unwillingness of many
artisan-trained workers to diminish the role of skill or submit to industrial
discipline. The United States competed most successfully in products that
required the use of machine tools. The federal government—inadvertently—
fostered American specialization in machine tools and precision production.
Around 1800, in imitation of French practice, the federal armory at Spring-
field, Massachusetts, began to break down the tasks that went into the manu-
facture of guns. This division of labor proceeded rapidly. By 1815, 36 separate
tasks had been identified and, by 1825, about a hundred. In 1855, there were
more than 400 different operations involved in making a gun with inter-
changeable parts at the Springfield armory. Production reached 20,000–
30,000 muskets annually in the 1840s, and, at the height of the U.S. Civil
War, the Springfield Armory produced a mind-boggling 276,000 muskets in
a single year. As in Europe, workers did not like to see their skills discounted
or turned into tasks that anyone could accomplish. Nor did they appreciate
the labor discipline that the managers of the armory insisted on. Worker re-
sistance was, however, successfully overcome in the 1820s and 1830s. Thanks
to the armory’s example, the factory discipline developed at such enormous
cost in Great Britain became standard operating procedure in the machine
shops of New England with relative ease despite the vastly different economic
environments.
If the division of labor was one key to armory production, mechanization
was its twin. Over the course of 35 years, mechanics adapted or invented a
large number of special-purpose machines to produce precision parts either in
wood or metal. These machines undermined the influence of skilled workers,
allowed significant labor cost savings, and permitted greater quality control.
Mechanization was facilitated by the general familiarity of Americans with
machines. Thanks to the federal government’s willingness to pay a premium
for weapons with interchangeable parts, and the introduction of inspectors to
insure that only correctly made parts were used, machine tools were continu-
ally invented, improved, and used to manufacture a wide variety of parts.
Although the weapons made at the Springfield and Harpers Ferry, Virginia,
armories were more expensive than those without interchangeable parts, the
federal government accepted the added cost. At the same time, federal super-
intendents inculcated a different attitude toward the work process, division of
labor, and mechanization that, taken together, was called “armory practice.”
8 Bridgewater, Duke of

These production methods, like the acceptance of factory discipline, spread

from the armories to other machine shops throughout the country and then
to the manufacture of other products. Armory practice was the other essential
foundation of the American system of production, but it did not lead directly
to true mass production that only became possible thanks to a new wave of
technological developments at the tail end of the 19th century.

BRIDGEWATER, DUKE OF Francis Egerton, third Duke of Bridgewa-

ter, was an Enlightened English aristocrat who sought to increase the profits
earned from the large coal deposits on his vast estates in Lancashire. Getting
the coal to market was the stumbling block. Despite the daunting technical
difficulties, Bridgewater successfully built a canal from his lands to Manches-
ter. He then developed a canal linkage between Liverpool and Manchester.
By lowering transportation costs on raw materials and finished goods, canal
builders like the Duke of Bridgewater contributed to a major British com-
petitive advantage.
As a 17-year-old, Francis Egerton (1736–1803), third Duke of Bridgewa-
ter, visited the European continent to complete his education. While on this
Grand Tour, he saw the Canal du Midi in France that linked the Atlantic and
Mediterranean Seas. Inspired by this great feat of engineering, Egerton de-
cided in 1758 to construct a seven-mile-long canal from his estate at Worsley
to the city of Manchester. The investment was potentially profitable because
of the staggering 9–10 shillings a ton cost of transporting coal to Manchester.
Transportation priced Worsley coal out of the market. After consulting two
Bridgewater, Duke of 9

noted engineers—James Gilbert, who drew up the plans, and James Brindley,
who oversaw construction—Bridgewater also decided to improve the drainage
in his mines, which would increase production. That growth in output would
be sold in Manchester via the canal he envisioned.
The technical difficulties involved were enormous. The directors of an
existing canal, the Mersey & Irwell, made them worse by obstructing the
project. A significant portion of the canal had to be constructed underground.
The canal also had to cross the Mersey & Irwell which they addressed by
building an aqueduct 38 feet above the existing canal. Needless to say, this
proposal was widely ridiculed by contemporaries. Despite the staggering cost
of about “10,000 guineas [each worth 21 shillings or 1.05 pounds] a mile,”
the section of the canal running from Worsley to Castlefield in Manchester
was completed in 1761. Canal boats drawn by horses operated until the late
19th century. Once Worsley coal began to reach Manchester by water, the
price of coal in the city fell by half.
In 1762, Egerton embarked on a major expansion of the canal to link Man-
chester and Liverpool. It took more than a decade to complete this section
because the marshy ground was hard to stabilize. Ultimately about 47 miles of
underground canal were constructed at four different levels as links between
the various segments of Egerton’s canal. Other waterways were constructed to
form a more effective and efficient transportation network throughout the
rapidly growing region. Building these additions nearly bankrupted Egerton,
but, by the end of the century, he had recouped his investment and begun to
make substantial profits. Known as the “Canal Duke,” Egerton remained an
enthusiastic supporter of canals and canal building throughout his life. His
heirs sold the canal network in the 1870s for a huge profit and the canals
remained in commercial operation until 1974.
The Duke of Bridgewater inspired two vitally important groups of people.
The duke’s determination to profit from his landholdings by selling coal
attracted the attention of nobles and other large landowners who had largely
been aloof from the industrial economy. His audacious and ultimately profit-
able canal-building schemes motivated others to seek similar opportunities by
developing improved communications. British elites modeled their actions
after successful pioneers like the Duke of Bridgewater to lead the Industrial
Revolution.

“The Bridgewater Canal: The Duke’s Cut.” Available online at http://www.canalar

chive.org.uk/stories/storycontents.php?enum=TE133.
“Bridgewater Estates Collection.” Available online at http://discovery.nationalar
chives.gov.uk/details/rd/51a53e3d-9afe-4975-a94b-653841a57e3c.
“Duke of Bridgewater’s Underground Canal at Worsley.” Available online at http://
web.archive.org/web/20060924230857/http://www.d.lane.btinternet.co.uk
/canal.html.
Malet, Hugh. Bridgewater: The Canal Duke, 1736–1803. Manchester: Hendon Press,
1977.

BRUNEL, ISAMBARD KINGDOM Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a

mid-19th-century British engineer who realized many of the potentialities of
the Industrial Revolution in transportation and infrastructure. Between 1826
and his death in 1859, Brunel built 25 railroad lines, more than 100 bridges,
several dock complexes, the first tunnel underneath a navigable river, and
the S.S. Great Britain, the first ocean-going, propeller-driven, iron steamship.
Brunel’s innovative designs laid the foundations for modern engineering
practice.
Brunel (1806–1859) was born into the engineering profession. His
French-born father Marc fled the Revolution to become the chief engineer of
New York City. After inventing a new machine to manufacture ship’s blocks,
Brunel moved to Great Britain where he became a productive inventor of
industrial machinery and an engineer charged with designing a pedestrian
tunnel under the Thames River. Marc Brunel made sure that Isambard got
the best mathematical training available, which meant going to France. When
Isambard returned in 1822, he worked for his father as resident engineer on
the Thames Tunnel.
Brunel made his name by winning a contest to design a bridge over the
Avon Gorge outside Bristol in 1831. Only two years later, he was appointed
the chief engineer of the Great Western Railway linking London and the busy
port of Bristol. He successfully convinced the directors that by using a broader
gauge track (7 feet, 0.25 inches vs. the standard 4 feet, 8.5 inches), locomotives
could almost double their speed to 60 miles per hour. After careful surveying,
construction began in 1837. The route required the construction of several
viaducts, bridges, and tunnels, including the two-mile-long Box Tunnel. Com-
pleted in 1841 at a cost of £6.5 million, double the original estimate, Brunel
shifted attention to the stations at either end. First Brunel designed and built
the Temple Meads station in Bristol and then was tasked with rebuilding Pad-
dington Station, the London terminus, in preparation for the 1851 Crystal
Palace Exhibition. Paddington Station was built by the same contractors in the
same style as the exhibition building, of wrought iron and plate glass.
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom 11

In Brunel’s all-encompassing transportation plan, the Great Western Rail-

way should and could extend across the Atlantic Ocean. Launched in 1838,
the S.S. Great Western, a wooden paddle steamer that was the longest ship
in the world, missed being the first steamship to cross the Atlantic by a
mere three hours, despite leaving four days after the ultimate winner. The
S.S. Great Western ran regularly between Bristol and New York, demonstrat-
ing the commercial viability of transatlantic steamship service. Brunel fol-
lowed up by designing and building the S.S. Great Britain, an iron steamship
driven by a six-bladed propeller. Widely considered the first modern ship, the
Great Britain first crossed from Liverpool to New York in 1845, but soon was
shifted to other routes. Its owner went bankrupt. The third ship Brunel was
commissioned to build was intended to take passengers to India and Aus-
tralia. At almost 700 feet long, the S.S. Great Eastern was the largest ship built
before the 20th century. It could carry up to 4,000 passengers in luxury and
was supposed to be able to cruise nonstop from London to Sydney and back.
Brunel resolved many of the technical problems associated with large-scale,
propeller-driven, all-metal steamships, but only at huge cost. He lived to see
the Great Eastern make its shakedown cruise in 1859, but not its first transat-
lantic voyage the following year. Like the Great Britain, the Great Eastern was
a technical success but a financial failure in large measure because his designs
and vision of transportation were too far ahead of their time.
In addition to many railroad lines, bridges and docks, both in England and
abroad in India, Australia, and Italy, Brunel is known for building a prefabri-
cated hospital of wood and canvas that could be broken down and reassembled
where it was needed, in this case near the facility in Constantinople (modern-
day Istanbul) overseen by Florence Nightingale to care for British military per-
sonnel fighting in the Crimean War. In five months, Brunel designed, built,
and shipped 18 prefabricated buildings based on the most up-to-date knowl-
edge of hygiene and sanitation, each able to handle 50 patients at a time. The
hospital complex was established at Renkioi.
Brunel brought a can-do attitude to resolving technical problems. His
amazing capacity to oversee and complete several complex projects at once
involving very different types of engineering issues both inspired and daunted.
Brunel’s career coincided with and brought to fruition many of the greatest
engineering achievements of the Industrial Revolution as Britain ploughed
some of its great wealth into the next phase of transportation and infrastruc-
ture improvements. Many of Brunel’s bridges and viaducts are still in use to-
day. He built for the long haul.

See also: Crystal Palace; Education; Iron and Steel; Railroads; Role of the
State; Transportation by Water
12 Cartwright, Edmund

Further Reading
“Brunel 200.” Available online at http://www.brunel200.com/.
“Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Design Engineer (1806–1859).” Available online at
http://design.designmuseum.org/design/isambard-kingdom-brunel.html.
Landes, David. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Devel-
opment in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1969.
MacLeod, Christine. Heroes of Invention: Technology, Liberalism and British Identity
1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Pugsley, Alfred, ed., The Works of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1980.

CARTWRIGHT, EDMUND The Reverend Edmund Cartwright was a

self-taught inventor from Nottingham, England, who was responsible for de-
veloping the power-loom (in 1785) and a wool-combing machine (in 1790)
among other patents. Although his inventions clearly responded to important
blockages in production, their implementation took decades, primarily be-
cause of determined resistance from workers and the slow improvement of
the machine’s mechanics.
Cartwright (1743–1823) was the son of well-to-do landowners and gradu-
ated from Oxford University to become a clergyman in the Church of Eng-
land. Active and well educated, Cartwright was profoundly interested in
helping the rural population he served, teaching them the newest fever rem-
edies and latest agricultural methods. Cartwright applied this same energy to
a major industrial problem when he learned about the relative oversupply of
thread as a result of Richard Arkwright’s and Samuel Crompton’s inventions.
Although he had never even seen a handloom before, Cartwright believed he
could invent a power-loom to take advantage of the growing supply of cotton
thread. With the help of a carpenter and a blacksmith, Cartwright developed
a machine that ran, though not very well or for very long. He patented this
machine in 1785 and made several major improvements over the next two
years. The power-loom worked no faster than a skilled handloom adult
weaver, but an unskilled apprentice could oversee first two and eventually far
greater numbers of power-looms.
Cartwright sought to take advantage of his invention. He set up a factory
in Doncaster, Yorkshire, with 20 looms powered first by horses and then,
after 1789, by a Watt steam engine. The factory was badly run and failed. In
partnership with Manchester manufacturer Robert Grimshaw, Cartwright
erected a large factory in 1791 that would eventually have hundreds of his
looms, but with only the first 30 in place, handloom weavers, fearing for their
Cartwright, Edmund 13

livelihoods, burned the factory to the ground in 1792. Cartwright lost his
entire investment and, because no other manufacturer thought that the re-
wards were worth the risks, was unable to find other partners. Cartwright was
forced to turn his patent over to trustees while he dealt with his debts. While
the invention languished, the number of home-based handloom weavers ex-
panded greatly from 75,000 in 1795 to 225,000 in 1811.
Cartwright did not stop inventing. He made a wool-combing machine in
1790 and took out several other patents related to textile manufacture. Diffu-
sion of the wool-combing machine was also slowed dramatically by opposi-
tion from wool-combers who recognized the threat to their high wages based
on a unique skill. Although a few entrepreneurs were able to make the invest-
ment in power-looms profitable, especially after a number of Stockport man-
ufacturers made major improvements in the device, widespread implementation
of Cartwright’s invention did not come until the mid-1820s. The wool-
combing machine came into wide usage in the same era.
By 1825, a power-loom could weave 7.5 times as much as a cottage artisan
in domestic manufacture, and a boy could supervise two looms. From 2,400
looms in 1813 and 14,150 in 1820, the number of looms expanded to
100,000 in 1833 and 250,000 by midcentury. Cartwright did not live to
see the success of his inventions; he needed a grant of £10,000 from the Par-
liament of the United Kingdom in 1809 to get rid of his last creditors from
his entrepreneurial endeavors. In 1821, he was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society. Cartwright’s inventions solved two major industrial blockages, yet
he was unable to profit from them in large measure because of the organized
opposition of workers, which highlights the gap between invention and
implementation.

CHAPTAL, JEAN-ANTOINE Jean-Antoine Chaptal was the architect of

the French path to industrial society. A noted chemist and a wildly successful
manufacturer of chemical products, Chaptal was Napoleon Bonaparte’s
most influential minister of the interior (1800–1804). It was thanks to his
leadership that the French abandoned their hope to imitate the British and
fashioned their own approach to industrial development. Continental gov-
ernments played an essential role in British industrialization because the
demands imposed by being forced to play “catch up” compelled the state to
take over many essential economic functions directly. The manner of state
direction of the manufacturing economy inaugurated by Chaptal remained
characteristic of the French industrial landscape throughout the 19th century
and beyond.
Born into a bourgeois family in Montpellier, Chaptal (1756–1832) stud-
ied medicine and chemistry in Paris. His reputation in chemistry was based
on solving practical problems. He wrote important treatises that detailed how
to improve production of wine, butter, and cheese as well as a well-regarded
chemical textbook. Ennobled in 1788, Chaptal was imprisoned during the
Reign of Terror for his political moderation. Late in 1793, he was released
and charged with overseeing the production of gunpowder, a difficult task
because of the lack of raw materials. Chaptal became professor of chemistry
at the elite Paris Polytechnic in 1798. Under Bonaparte, Chaptal was named
a councilor of state and charged with improving public education. Napoleon
soon appointed Chaptal minister of the interior in 1800, a job he kept until
1804. Upon leaving the ministry, Chaptal entered the Senate and became
Count of Chanteloup in 1808.
According to Chaptal, who built on Adam Smith’s views, the 19th-century
government’s role in managing industry had three basic components. First,
the state had to mend the damage done by the prerevolutionary administra-
tion. By depriving those involved in the production and distribution of goods
of their proper place in society, the prerevolutionary Bourbon regime had
damaged French “public spirit” and alienated potential entrepreneurs. Only
active state sponsorship of the social value of commerce and industry could
repair centuries of contempt. Second, Chaptal asserted, with regard to indus-
try, “The actions of government ought to be limited to facilitating supplies,
guaranteeing property, opening markets to manufactured goods and to leav-
ing industry to enjoy a most profound liberty. One can rely on the producer
to pay attention to all the rest.” Third, Chaptal recognized that, in reality, the
government could not be quite so “hands-off.” To ensure that all French citi-
zens could find gainful employment and to guarantee that the revolutionary
ideal of equality under the law existed in economic practice, the state must
intervene. Chaptal contrasted the French emphasis on equality with Great
Coal 15

Britain, where “private interest directs all actions.” To Chaptal, the public
good required state mediation of the myriad of private interests.
Chaptal founded, revived, or sponsored a host of institutions such as
Chambers of Commerce, Consultative Chambers of Manufacturing, Arts,
and Crafts, industrial expositions, Councils of Agriculture, Arts, and Com-
merce as well as Schools of Arts and Crafts, the Society for the Encourage-
ment of the National Industry, Museums of Arts and Crafts, and free spinning
schools for women. This list is not exclusive and demonstrates both Chaptal’s
commitment to state intervention in the economy and how wide open the
field was for institutional innovation.
Chaptal was not just a bureaucrat or a theoretical chemist. He was also an
entrepreneur. He created three large-scale chemical workshops around Paris.
On his vast estate, he became vitally concerned—both scientifically and
commercially—with improving the process of distilling sugar from grapes
and naturalizing the sugar beet and merino sheep in France. In 1819, Louis
XVIII named Chaptal a peer of the realm. That same year, Chaptal published
one of the first accounts of the nascent industrial revolution in France. For
the rest of his life, Chaptal actively promoted educational reform to improve
interaction between theoretical and applied science while employing his pre-
cepts to increase his personal fortune. Chaptal’s career shows that with the
support of the state, economic rationality and market orientation often led in
different directions on the continent than in Britain.

especially in Great Britain. With wood increasingly expensive, England began

relying heavily on coal both for domestic heating and for industrial purposes
in the 16th century. Coal played the largest part in the radical transformation
from organic (human and animal) to inorganic (water, wind, and coal) energy
that permitted large-scale industrialization. Britain’s lead in switching prima-
rily to coal was a major reason for its ability to have an industrial revolution.
Coal became vital on the British Isles because wood was a relatively scarce
resource as early as the 16th century. Britain was blessed with large supplies
of high-quality coal that also happened to be conveniently located. The three
great coal fields—in Northumberland, Lancashire, and south Wales—were
all found within a few miles of access to the sea, encouraging Britons to make
use of this precious natural resource.
Europeans had mined coal for hundreds of years, but pits were small and
not very productive: many were open cast mines (just big holes dug in the
surface). Tunneling to find richer coal seams was both difficult and danger-
ous, especially because of the threat of drowning when water flooded the
shaft. Necessity led British miners to become expert at sinking mine shafts,
extracting ore, and transporting it. More importantly, British artisans, me-
chanics, tinkerers, and scientists became accustomed to using coal as a fuel
source. Early dependence on coal gave the British essential craft knowledge,
based on trial and error, of coal’s properties and the best practices of using it.
Coal provided much more energy than wood and could be used in myriad
ways. Thanks to this experience with coal, British metallurgy and machine
building became among the best and most economical in Europe. A great
deal of process-oriented innovation resulted from the search for ways to use
coal as fuel.
Such knowledge was a major national advantage when technological
change and increasingly scarce charcoal also forced Britain’s competitors to
switch over to coal at various points in the 19th century. A lack of familiarity
with using coal as fuel made it harder to transfer British technology to other
nations, heightening the island nation’s industrial advantage. British coal pro-
duction reached 3 million tons annually in 1700, already a high level. From
there, British output skyrocketed, attaining almost 9 million tons by 1775 at
the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. By 1815, British coal production was
22 million tons, tripling to almost 67 million tons annually at the end of
the 1850s, which represented a staggering two-thirds of global output. In
the next 50 years, production tripled once more as the Industrial Revolution
expanded more broadly and the transition to inorganic sources of fuel was
completed.
Britain’s coal was mined by up to 200,000 men, women, and children.
During the age of the Industrial Revolution, coal ore was cut from rock by
Coal 17

hand with pickaxes. As the demand for coal grew and pits grew deeper, steam
engines were used to pump water out of the mines, but the tunnels that
reached the coal faces were rarely very large, forcing miners to contort them-
selves into uncomfortable positions to get at the coal. Women and girls were
usually responsible for pushing tubs of ore often weighing more than they did
to a collection point. Children as young as five were employed to get into
tight places. Flooding and fire-damp (the combustion of explosive gases in
enclosed spaces with a spark) were daily dangers as were the collapse of mine
shafts or accidents with explosives used to blast tunnels in hard rock. In the
19th century, these threats killed hundreds of British miners annually. Long
hours inhaling coal dust while getting alternately soaked with cold water or
baked by humid heat led many miners to develop respiratory and joint prob-
lems, most notably coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, also known as black lung
disease or black lung; bronchitis; and rheumatism.
The reforms that improved working conditions in factories took longer to
apply to mines. As in the case of textiles, British elites claimed that they could
not take better care of miners or improve safety without undermining profits
or losing jobs to overseas competition. These unfounded claims—as the mas-
sive increases in production during the 19th century demonstrated—were
allowed to stand unchallenged for most of the era of the Industrial Revolu-
tion. Only after the same reformers who tackled child labor in the factories led
by Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, turned
their attention to the mines did the British state take action. The publication
of the shocking Children’s Employment Commission (Mines) Report in 1842
detailing the horrible working conditions in the mines led directly to the par-
liamentary passage of a Mines and Collieries Act, which outlawed women and
children under age 10 from working underground. Because no means of en-
forcing the bill’s provisions were included, several pieces of follow-up legisla-
tion in the 1850s and 1860s were needed to keep women and children out
of the mines. In Britain, government-mandated improvements to safety and
working conditions took place only in subsequent decades, long after the end
of the first Industrial Revolution.
Outside Britain, coal also played a transformative role in industrial devel-
opment. France’s coal reserves were hard to get to and not as high quality as
Britain’s. As a result, France used coal only when necessary and focused more
on water power. This was a rational, though not quite as profitable, strategy
given that nation’s natural resource endowment. The United States’ almost
inexhaustible supplies of wood along with easy access to water power retarded
development of the coal industry until the needs of iron makers amplified
demand after 1840. In succeeding decades, the United States’ rapidly expand-
ing population required steamboats, railroads, and many other machines and
18 Coal

consumer products especially in the growing cities, which necessitated ever

more coal. Like Britain, Belgium and the German lands had also used coal for
centuries. When incorporated into Revolutionary and Napoleonic France be-
tween 1795 and 1814, these areas had boomed by supplying coal and iron to
the vast French market. After Napoleon’s second defeat in 1815, these areas,
with thoroughgoing support from their governments, began to develop coal
mining and iron making on the English model, often using British workers
and entrepreneurs to jumpstart the process. After 1830, Belgium and the
German lands also experienced rapid growth in coal output that was essential
to the onset of full-scale industrialization. The heavy hand of the state helped
coal and iron production expand rapidly enough to begin catching up to
Britain both in efficiency and, in the case of Germany, in total output. Dif-
fering factor endowments and industrial strategies affected the intertwined
roles of coal and iron in the process of industrialization, but the shift to coal
as a major source of energy in manufacturing was essential to the Industrial
Revolution, in Britain and in its closest competitors alike.
Rising demand for coal came from many sources. As the population in-
creased, so did the domestic market. The growing towns needed coal for heat-
ing and manufacture as wood was depleted nearby. More and more industries
from iron makers to brewers and bakers adopted coal as it became cheaper
and more cost effective. Around 1800, British cities began to install coal-
powered gas lamps; 52 urban areas had gaslight networks by 1823. The bur-
geoning demand for industrial machines and products made from iron also
required copious amounts of coal for smelting. Steam engines devoured coal
at a rapid pace. Once railroads began to be built after 1830, demand for coal
accelerated further. Some historians and economists believe that steam en-
gines built of iron and powered by coal were the critical combination that,
more than any other factor, created the Industrial Revolution.

See also: Factory Acts; Factory System; Iron and Steel; Pollution, Health, and
Environment; Productivity; Railroads; Role of the State; Steam Engine;
Transportation by Water; Workforce; Document: “Conditions in the Mines”;
Document: “Living and Working in Manchester”

Further Reading
Adams, Sean Patrick. “The US Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century.” Available
online at http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-us-coal-industry-in-the-nineteenth
-century/.
Burt, Roger. “The Extractive Industries.” In The Cambridge Economic History of
Modern Britain, ed. Roderick Floud and Paul Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004.
Cockerill, William 19

Landes, David. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Devel-
opment in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1969.
Testimony Gathered by Ashley’s Mines Commission. Available online at http://www
.victorianweb.org/history/ashley.html.
Wrigley, E. A. Energy and the English Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010.

COCKERILL, WILLIAM English mechanic William Cockerill emigrated

to Belgium early in the 19th century. Over the next 40 years, he and his fam-
ily established metallurgical enterprises there and in western Germany that
paired continental natural resources and markets with English technologies
and craft knowledge. The experiences of Cockerill and his firm demonstrate
the workings of personal technology transfer so common in the nations fol-
lowing in Britain’s industrial wake as well as the difficulties of entrepreneur-
ship during the early Industrial Revolution.
William Cockerill (1759–1832) emigrated from England to Verviers in
French-held Belgium in 1798 to take advantage of the opportunities afforded
by his specialized craft knowledge to set up his own firm. He swiftly built five
mechanized mills to spin wool, beginning a rapid modernization of the mori-
bund woolens industry in that region. The first firm to invest in innovation
remained the largest single producer for the rest of the 19th century. Flush
with success, Cockerill, his three sons William Jr., John, and James, along
with his son-in-law James Hodson, established a workshop in 1805 to build
machines in Liège. The demand for textile machines spawned a host of or-
ders, and the quality of Cockerill construction guaranteed sales. A supple-
mental workshop was established in Paris to supply the French market, and
Cockerill spinning machines also equipped the woolens industries of Prussia
and Saxony. In the hothouse atmosphere created by the protectionism of Na-
poleon’s Continental System, the Cockerill establishment swiftly became a
vertically integrated enterprise comprising coal and later iron mining, iron
smelting, pig-iron processing, metal fabrication, and machine building.
After 1815, the Cockerills introduced puddling and the blast-furnace to
the continent and built the first locomotives and iron steamships outside
of Britain, all with the direct financial support of King William I of the
Netherlands. In engineering and metallurgy, the Cockerill enterprises now
centered at Seraing (a mansion bought from the king for a pittance) were
among the largest and most productive in the world. At their height, the
machine-building shops alone employed 2,700 workers and helped to natu-
ralize high-pressure steam-engine construction in the region. Woolens weav-
ing was mechanized after 1814, again with machines built by the Cockerills.
20 Colonialism

John moved to Berlin where he set up a wool-spinning factory, established

a satellite machine-building shop, and bought and refurbished three other
woolens spinning mills. William Jr. remained in Berlin. James built a machine-
building workshop in Aachen. This spurt of metallurgical development
spurred complementary growth in several districts in Belgium and western
Germany as local entrepreneurs, often paired with English engineers or tech-
nicians, rushed to open coal mines, modern blast furnaces, puddling plants,
and machine shops in hopes of exploiting the same deep vein of demand
tapped by the Cockerills.
These two generations of entrepreneurs also revealed the limits of personal
involvement in managing a far-flung and diverse enterprise. The Cockerills
failed to establish a business structure capable of weathering recessions and
the waning of their initial technological advantages. By the late 1840s, the
industrial empire built by the Cockerills had largely passed into the hands of
others, demonstrating the growing importance of business organization to
long-term industrial success by a family firm.

See also: Coal; Iron and Steel; Role of the State; Transportation by Water

Further Reading
Heckscher, Eli. The Continental System: An Economic Interpretation. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1922.
Henderson, William O. The Industrial Revolution in Europe, 1815–1914. Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1968.
“Industrial History: Belgium.” Available online at http://www.erih.net/industrial
-history/belgium.html.
Teich, Mikuláš, and Roy Porter, eds. The Industrial Revolution in National Context:
Europe and the USA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

COLONIALISM European states began establishing colonies to the south

and west in the 14th century, reviving earlier patterns of territorial expansion.
From the late 15th century, the Spanish and Portuguese militarily controlled
access by water to the wealth of Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas. To
break or sidestep the putative monopoly of the Iberian powers, the Dutch,
English, and French attempted to conquer Spanish and Portuguese trading
stations, forts, and settlements and founded communities in less desirable, un-
occupied areas to create their own spheres of influence. Colonial conquest and
commercial exploitation rapidly became a free-for-all in which every power
preyed on the others as well as on native populations. The acquisition and
development of overseas territories is known as colonialism and was an essen-
tial part of a long series of wars fought by European powers across the globe.
Colonialism 21

In the 16th century, Spain and Portugal developed and maintained vast
empires. Spain dominated the coastline of the western hemisphere from Flor-
ida to the straits of Magellan with the exception of Portuguese Brazil. Portugal
set up trading stations and forts to protect the route to the East Indies. Only
in the 17th century did the Dutch wrest control of much of Portugal’s Asian
empire while also acquiring South Africa and a handful of territories in and
around the Caribbean. The French managed to establish footholds in Canada,
throughout the Caribbean, and in strategic spots in western Africa and India
while the British acquired most of the eastern half of the continent of North
America, a host of possessions in the Caribbean led by Jamaica, trading stations
on the coast of Africa, and scattered outposts on the subcontinent of India,
especially Bengal, among other territories and spheres of interest spread out
across the globe. These colonies provided markets and raw materials that gen-
erated truly enormous wealth essential to industrialization.
For Europeans, the twin poles of economic attraction were the Americas
and Asia. Although they eventually established political and economic
control of vast swaths of territory in Asia, European settlement was always
limited, especially during the age of the Industrial Revolution. European set-
tlement and political control in Africa was even more restrained. Both areas
were able to defend themselves relatively effectively, and disease constrained
the ability of Europeans to settle in many tropical areas of India and west
and central Africa. In the western hemisphere, the introduction of European
diseases like measles so drastically decimated the native population—from
about 54 million in 1492 to approximately 13.5 million in 1570, a decline of
75 percent—that Europeans were able to seize the best land and resources
much more easily and cheaply than they could anywhere else on the globe. To
take advantage of this temporary relative strength, 17th and 18th century
European colonialism focused on the western hemisphere.
Atlantic trade made outsize contributions to European profits, especially for
Great Britain and France. The average annual value of Britain’s Atlantic com-
merce (exports, re-exports, imports, and services) increased from £20,084,000
in 1651–1670 to £105,546,000 in 1781–1800 to an amazing £231,046,000 in
1848–1850. African labor, both in Africa and in the Americas, generated most
of the wealth that financed this burgeoning trade. European exports made up a
little less than 40 percent of these totals. Historian Joseph Inikori estimated that
Africans produced no less than 69 percent (in 1651–1670 and in 1848–1850)
and up to 83 percent (in 1761–1780) of the value of British Atlantic com-
merce. For Britain, whose economy made up about one-third of the Atlantic
total, the rate of increase in Atlantic trade was far superior to that for other re-
gions. Whereas total British foreign trade doubled over the course of the 18th
century, British Atlantic trade increased by a factor of 12 in that same period!
22 Colonialism

Atlantic trade was founded on the conquest and expropriation of native

supplies of precious metals. Once ready stocks of gold and silver had been
seized and sent back to Europe, Europeans began to exploit American ores
using native and then African labor. The exhaustion of most of these mines in
the 17th century set the stage for the development of plantations by a host of
European states. These plantations grew tropical and semitropical commodi-
ties such as tobacco, then sugar, cotton, chocolate, coffee, and rice. Planta-
tions furthered the development of an economy in the western hemisphere
that was focused on furnishing raw materials to Europe either for its own
consumption or to pass along to Asia. The labor demands of mining and
plantation agriculture spurred the rapid increase in the acquisition of millions
of human slaves from Africa. Thus, two trade triangles emerged. First, gold
and silver from the Americas went to Asia passing through European inter-
mediaries in exchange for “oriental” goods that were consumed in Europe.
Second, manufactured goods were sent from Europe or re-exported from Asia
to Africa where they were exchanged for human beings, who were then
brought to the Americas to mine precious metals for trade with Asia or grow
agricultural commodities for consumption in Europe. Europeans were the
chief (though not the sole) “winners” of this system and enslaved Africans
along with enslaved and/or dispossessed native Americans were the primary
“losers.”
The dramatic expansion of trade on this scale had a multitude of effects.
British manufactured products were sold in protected markets even if they
enjoyed no competitive advantage other than a legal monopoly. Commercial
expansion spurred the development and application of new technologies. The
wide range of territories that became tied into this global trading network
required different trading goods, thereby promoting commercial and indus-
trial diversification. In addition, the size of the domestic market no longer
determined the scale of potential demand, a factor that was of critical impor-
tance in newly emerging industrial sectors like cotton textiles.
Colonialism spawned huge profits that could be and were reinvested in
industry. Different forms of business practice such as joint-stock companies
and commercial institutions like stock markets had to be created to deal with
the enormous capital invested. New, exciting, and sometimes addictive prod-
ucts were now available to many more Europeans, which encouraged and, in
some cases, forced them to work harder and for longer hours to get their “fix.”
Britain’s merchant fleet grew spectacularly to deal with the expansion of
trade. From a total tonnage of 323,000 in 1700, the merchant marine reached
over a million tons in 1788. The British state also extracted tax revenues from
colonial trade that amounted to a quarter of its revenues. In short, the Com-
mercial Revolution based in the Atlantic was the means by which Britain
Colonialism 23

developed the legal, financial, and commercial institutions and expertise that
supported the Industrial Revolution.
Although Atlantic trade dwarfed commercial interaction with Asia until
the late 19th century, it was desire for “oriental” (Asian) goods—spices, espe-
cially pepper; cotton and silk textiles; tea and coffee—that encouraged the
“take off ” of European long-distance trade. European demand for these goods
was exceptionally strong, but was not matched by an equivalent Asian desire
for European products. Europeans had to pay for pepper, cottons, and silks
with hard currency—gold and silver—that they did not have, thus constrain-
ing trade. What enabled Europeans to increase their consumption of Asian
goods was the exploitation of the Americas. The specie Europeans spent in
Asia came overwhelmingly from the Americas. In the 16th century, Spain and
Portugal initiated huge transfers of bullion, first by expropriation and then
from mining, that were then succeeded by the plantation economies devel-
oped in and around the Caribbean Sea.
The exploitation of Africans, both in Africa or in the western hemisphere,
enabled Europe to industrialize. Inikori’s important findings are comple-
mented by Kenneth Pomeranz’s provocative comparison of China and
Europe. Pomeranz contends that what enabled Europe to industrialize before
China was privileged access to the resources and markets of the Americas.
Thus, colonialism centered on the western hemisphere was of world historical
significance because of its essential role in permitting the industrialization of
Europe.
More effectively than its rivals, Britain developed a colonial empire popu-
lated by Europeans centered on the Atlantic world that contributed enor-
mously to the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to the effectiveness of mercantilist
trade policies like the Acts of Trade and the Navigation Acts, Britain also
profited more thoroughly from its expanding empire than rival European
powers. An estimate of the scale of annual profit for the era leading up to the
American Declaration of Independence in 1776 was £2.64 million out of an
official total of British imports and exports from the 13 North American
colonies valued at £9.5 million (28 percent). Although significant, this trade
was dwarfed by the annual profits on the trade in human beings, which
constituted almost 40 percent of the sum total of all British commercial and
industrial investment. Colonial trade comprised 15 percent of British com-
merce in the 1698 and one-third by 1774. The protected colonial market for
staple manufactured goods like woolens and for “new” products like cottons
eased the rivalry between the two industries and facilitated a rapid and con-
tinued growth of exports. The new industrial goods went overwhelmingly
to the colonies, thereby increasing demand and permitting continuous im-
provements in economies of scale. State regulation also suppressed potential
24 Colonialism

competition from the 13 North American colonies in such key products as

woolens and iron, diverting colonial manufacture to less profitable, less es-
sential, supplemental areas. All colonial production was supposed to benefit
the home country, but, of course, it did not always work that way.
Colonialism also affected Ireland, which was treated as a colony until
1801, although conditions improved after 1779 because Britain feared that
the struggle in North America would touch off a renewed push for independ-
ence. The Irish were encouraged to raise sheep and gather raw wool, but that
wool had to be exported to England. It could not be used by Irish industry.
This measure effectively destroyed the manufacture of woolens, which had
been Ireland’s most important export. Throughout the 18th century and well
into the 19th, efforts to develop Irish industry were crushed with delibera-
tion. English goods were sold at a loss if necessary. Irish cattle, butter, and
cheese were barred from the English market, but Ireland was not permitted to
do the same to English goods. As compensation, Irish linen (whose manufac-
ture was concentrated among the Protestants of Ulster) was protected and
encouraged. It should not surprise, however, that such an unequal economic
relationship led the Irish to become expert smugglers. Through conquest and
mercantilism, the Hanoverian state created political conditions in Ireland and
the rest of the Empire that greatly favored British manufactured goods. The
scale and scope of this colonial trade was vital to Britain’s ability to inaugurate
an industrial revolution.

CONSUMER REVOLUTION The Consumer Revolution describes a

demand-driven desire for a vast array of new, innovative, or previously scarce
goods that drove the Atlantic economy in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Centered in northwestern Europe, especially in England, the Netherlands,
and northern France, but also encompassing 13 of Britain’s North American
colonies, the Consumer Revolution was noted by contemporaries in the early
18th century and picked up steam across the decades as it spread to new areas
and further down on the socioeconomic scale. Seemingly insatiable demand
for luxury goods (many coming from Asia), colonial commodities, and novel-
ties propelled the vast expansion of world and especially Atlantic and intra-
European trade that marked this critical era.
In light of powerful domestic and European demand for Asian, especially
Chinese and Indian, luxury goods and that they had little other than specie to
offer in return, Europeans became even more dependent on the exploitation
of their colonies and trade links in the Atlantic world to provide the goods
and precious metals necessary to facilitate trade with Asia. On the broad,
straining backs of slaves and the slave trade, the Atlantic world furnished ag-
ricultural commodities, markets, and profits that supported the Consumer
Revolution and facilitated the emergence of a true global economy.
The British proved to be masters at taking advances in science and tech-
nology to develop innovative products to capture new markets and satisfy
consumer demand. Product creativity by British entrepreneurs was essential
to supplying the consumer demand unleashed by economic growth. In a host
of industries from pottery to metalwork, to textiles, to glass, manufacturers
embraced innovations in quality, product variety, and price as means of at-
tracting the consumer. Taste and aesthetics were explored and cultivated
through creative uses of publicity. Imitations of foreign (especially Asian and
French) luxury goods were developed using British technological expertise.
Improvements to the supply of products for sale in European markets as
well as import substitution responded to ongoing and increasing consumer
demand.
Although the passion for fashionable goods and products was most easily
observed among elites and the growing middle classes, swelling consumer
demand also extended to the laboring classes, especially in larger cities like
London, Paris, and Amsterdam. Successful workers, artisans, shopkeepers,
or farmers sought to emulate their economic betters; they too wanted to be
“fashionable” and “in style.” One of the most changeable of consumer goods
is clothing, where fashionable shifts in texture, pattern, color, and stitching
were eagerly bought, particularly as prices fell thanks to innovation. By the
18th century, even the laboring classes could afford stylish cloaks and shirts
and began to wear muffs, nightclothes, and underwear, often modeled on or
26 Consumer Revolution

in the style of luxury goods imported from France, India, or China. A major
aim of 18th-century technological innovators and merchants was to render
goods that had been luxuries into products that could be marketed to much
wider audiences. This shift toward a wider market even within the luxury
trade was a key link in the chain connecting demand and supply, but it de-
serves reiteration that most members of the popular classes, even in the rich-
est countries and regions, could not afford such goods: their purchasing
power focused on subsistence. For some people outside the elite, the desire to
emulate, to consume was so great that they were willing to work longer hours
or to send their wives or children to work for wages in what has been termed
the “Industrious Revolution.”
To encourage these trends and to allow people to distinguish or differenti-
ate themselves from others through their taste or style, entrepreneurs engaged
in constant product innovation to attract the wandering eyes of fickle con-
sumers. The ability to implement these innovations marked a major diver-
gence from the market environment of earlier eras where reliably made
versions of standardized products, either by region or by a known manufac-
turer, were sold all over the globe. Speedier and more reliable modes of trans-
portation, the reduction of transfer costs, and improved credit facilities
enabled the spread of “fashionable” goods. So too did innovative means of
reaching the public. From traveling salesmen to showrooms in the capitals to
printed catalogues and advertising in the growing number of “fashion” maga-
zines that appeared in the 1770s throughout western Europe, merchants and
manufacturers attempted to influence public taste. Entrepreneurs also devel-
oped goods like medallions and plates that combined fashion (although not
always good taste!) with trendiness. A growing vogue for shopping developed:
to be seen looking at what was for sale was part of the experience. The role of
women in the desire for distinction and in the rise of shopping as a social
activity has been hotly debated. Women certainly were thoroughly engaged
in the process of social differentiation, but men were also deeply involved in
shopping. Women were a fundamental part of the development of taste, fash-
ion, style, and luxury, but both genders were responsible for the emergence of
consumer capitalism.
An important division emerged between the upper and middle classes
whose interest in the new, the fashionable, and in taste extended to all catego-
ries of available goods, and the lower classes who focused more (though far
from exclusively) on commodities they could consume. These goods included
tea, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, and sugar, but beer and spirits also were con-
sumed in increasing quantities. The addictive properties of these commodities
made many laboring families willing to work longer and harder to get their
cup of tea, chocolate fix, or tobacco product of choice. As Scottish economist
Cotton 27

James Steuart put it in 1767, “Men are forced to labour now because they are
slaves to their own wants.” Thus, as with the Agricultural Revolution, both
the “Industrious Revolution” and the Consumer Revolution predated the on-
set of revolutionary industrial transformation. The similarity of these precon-
ditions once again demonstrates the central importance of demand in calling
forth innovative organizational and technological means of meeting potent
consumer demand.

domestic-made goods by banning the import of cotton goods from India,

Persia, and China. In Great Britain, an initial ban passed in 1700 was ex-
tended and made more wide-ranging in 1719 thanks to pressure from woolens
manufacturers who feared both the competition from and the ever-growing
demand for cotton textiles.
Cotton played such an important role because of its unique qualities.
Thread spun from cotton is both stronger and easier to manipulate than wool,
linen, or silk. These properties make it suitable for machine-based produc-
tion. Bleaching or dyeing both last longer and are more effective on cotton
than on other natural fibers. Cotton fabric is also lighter and more washable
than these other mainstay textile fabrics. The potential market for cotton, in
Europe and overseas, was therefore greater than for any other textile.
To produce a bolt of cotton fabric, the raw cotton had to be combed to
remove seeds, dirt, and other impurities. Then the raw cotton had to be spun
into thread on a spinning wheel, twisted into yarn, and woven into cloth on
a loom. To this basic process, other steps could be added to improve the qual-
ity or attractiveness of the cloth. Roving twisted the threads to increase their
strength. Cloth could be cleaned and the weave shrunken and thickened by
dunking it in a mix of hot water and fuller’s earth (or some other cleanser)
and then beating it with wooden mallets in a process called fulling. Dyeing or
bleaching could help sell the cloth by making it more fashionable or attrac-
tive. Treating the fabric in other ways softened it. The process could be sped
up by inventing new machines to save labor or by adding an additional source
of power to run more than one machine at a time.
At the dawn of the industrial age, weaving was more technologically ad-
vanced than the other parts of the production process. In 1733, John Kay
invented the flying shuttle, which eliminated the limitation of an “arm’s
length” to the width of a cloth. The loom’s shuttle was fitted with small wheels
set in a wooden groove to allow it to move without interfering with the alter-
nating rise and fall of the warp. This simple device both removed a limiting
factor and sped up weaving considerably.
As a domestic industry in cotton goods emerged in Lancashire, entrepre-
neurs and workers identified a series of mechanical bottlenecks as they tried
to help spinning catch up to weaving. To find a workable solution, they tink-
ered with various machines. Over the course of decades, practical men found
practical solutions to bottlenecks that held back production. These solutions
transformed the industry and began the Industrial Revolution. The same pro-
cess was going on in several regions of Europe, but the English developed
more efficient solutions than their competitors.
The key steps toward mechanizing the manufacture of textiles were taken
in the late 1760s. In 1764, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny,
Cotton 29

and in 1767, Richard Arkwright developed the water frame. Both began to be
used in 1768. Arkwright’s patent dates from the following year, Hargreaves’s
from the year after. Hargreaves’s invention saved considerable labor, but
did not fundamentally alter the production process. Arkwright’s machine
did. With his spinning or jenny-mule (1779), Samuel Crompton, also from
Lancashire, vastly increased the utility of both Arkwright’s and Hargreaves’s
machines. As the name suggests, this is a hybrid machine that was soon able
to do 200–300 times the work of a spinning wheel.
Crompton’s jenny-mule permitted an enormous increase in the quality
and quantity of cotton goods produced. For the first time, a European pro-
ducer could match the quality and undercut the cost of Indian cotton textiles.
A measure of how efficient a labor-saving device the jenny-mule was can be
seen in a comparison of the hours needed to process 100 pounds of cotton.
At the end of the 18th century, it took Indian hand spinners more than
50,000 hours, but with Crompton’s machine, it took only 2,000 hours. Me-
chanics, tinkerers, and workers who actually used the machines continuously
made further small refinements that, taken together, rapidly improved the
initial machines dramatically, thereby increasing their productivity.
Additional breakthrough machines followed, including the power-loom
developed by Reverend Edmund Cartwright in 1786. Although a power-loom
was no faster than a hand-weaver for several decades, a single worker could
run first two and then several looms, which sped up production considerably.
Frenchman Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a draw loom capable of imprint-
ing designs and figures on the fabric through the use of punch cards. Devel-
oped for use with silk in 1801, the Jacquard loom was applied to all fabrics in
the second quarter of the 19th century. Richard Roberts applied power to re-
versing and turning the spindles at varying speeds to create a mule that did not
have to be “run” by a human being. He patented the “self-acting” mule in
1825 and improved it greatly five years later. Thanks to these innovative ma-
chines, what had taken 2,000 hours in the late 18th century dwindled to only
135 hours in 1825. This first major bottleneck to expanding production—
spinning—was swept aside. These machines saved such prodigious quantities
of labor that prices could fall, profits could rise, and demand could be satisfied
simultaneously.
Other technological developments that eliminated bottlenecks facilitated
the skyrocketing growth of the cotton industry. American mechanic Eli Whit-
ney developed the cotton gin in 1793 to remove the seeds and dirt from raw
cotton. In the 1780s, Arkwright greatly upgraded earlier carding machines
that combed and straightened the raw cotton. Finished yarn could be bleached
a brilliant white with chlorine using a process developed by French chemist
Claude Berthollet in 1784. However, in what would become a frequent
30 Credit

occurrence, in 1799, British chemist Charles Tennant made this continental

European’s discovery more practical and profitable by creating bleaching pow-
der. These advances permitted the cotton industry to grow rapidly. Although
wool remained the largest European textile industry throughout the 18th cen-
tury, the cotton industry expanded much more quickly. British cotton produc-
tion increased approximately tenfold between 1760 and 1800 before spurting
in the 19th century. By 1830, textiles made of cotton constituted half of all
British exports, which fueled the Industrial Revolution.

CREDIT Industrialization cost money. Even wealthy entrepreneurs rarely

chose to finance their businesses with cash: instead they borrowed money to
establish or expand their workshops, mills, and factories. Industrialists needed
more than long-term credit; they also needed substantial working capital to
pay laborers and purchase raw materials while waiting for customers to buy
their goods. Building transportation networks also required vast sums beyond
what an individual or even a small group of investors could provide. Some-
times this capital was supplied or guaranteed by the state, especially on the
continent, in the colonies, or in North America. The state itself also required
enormous amounts of money to wage war and also to develop the military,
judicial, and other institutions vital to industrialization. The availability of
credit at low rates of interest determined whether certain places would indus-
trialize ahead of their competitors. Britain’s development of reliable credit
institutions was an important factor in its leadership of the first Industrial
Revolution.
Credit 31

During the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, a typical firm had
less than one-quarter of its assets in fixed goods like buildings, machines, and
tools. About 20 percent was in raw materials and stock while the remaining
capital—the bulk of the company’s assets—was in trade debt: goods that had
been shipped, but not yet paid for. These percentages take on even greater
weight when the sums involved are considered. Jedediah Strutt established a
cotton-spinning factory at Belper in 1793: it cost £5,000 to erect the build-
ing, another £5,000 for various machines (including but not restricted to
Arkwright water frames), and another £5,000 for stocks of raw materials. In
total, Strutt needed about £60,000 in working capital to get his business off
the ground, demonstrating the high financial barrier to industrial entrepre-
neurship. As machines got bigger and more expensive, the start-up costs and
capital requirements increased proportionately.
Credit was available from a variety of sources. Once established, many
firms made use of bills of exchange from other businesses, which specified
that a certain sum would be paid at a later date, often two or three months in
the future. The same mechanism was also utilized to allow storekeepers to
stock a manufacturer’s goods. A select few entrepreneurs, often inventors or
those seeking to achieve import substitution, received funding or loans di-
rectly from the state. Banks, however, were the most common source of credit
for industry, especially in Great Britain. They provided capital in exchange
for mortgages on buildings and machinery. It deserves emphasis that banks
and capital markets were regulated (more or less successfully) by the state,
usually to ensure its own access to credit.
Banks run by individuals or families and usually licensed by the govern-
ment had provided credit to industrial enterprises for centuries. In the 17th
century, as the financial center of Europe shifted from Amsterdam to Lon-
don, English banks benefited from the emergence of a sophisticated mortgage
market for land that contributed to the availability of capital for productive
purposes. The stability of the mercantilist English government, the profits of
the empire, and the continuing growth of trade combined with institutional
development of the nascent banking system to lower interest rates dramati-
cally. In 1700, annual interest rates were about 6 percent, but this already low
figure fell to 3.5 percent a year around midcentury. Between 1714 and 1832,
the English government prohibited commercial interest rates above 5 percent
a year. In France, Britain’s chief industrial competitor, interest rates never
dipped below 5 percent and even relatively safe investments in certain regions
were required to pay a great deal more than that. Thus, Britons enjoyed the
cheapest and most plentiful credit in the world.
The chief means by which Britain became the financial capital of Europe
was the Bank of England. Founded in 1694 to assist the government to
32 Credit

manage and consolidate its debt while lowering the rate of interest, the Bank
was focused on commerce and state finance. The emergence of private or
country banks in the early 18th century filled some of the void. These banks
were founded by those who were involved in a variety of endeavors (gold-
smiths, merchants, manufacturers) and provided much-needed credit due to
investments from those wishing to take advantage of the booming industrial
economy. When the Bank of England intermittently tightened credit because
of government demands between 1772 and 1825, many of these banks failed.
Thus, even in the country with the lowest borrowing rates and greatest avail-
ability of credit, industry was squeezed for capital and could not expand as
fast as it might have. Only after 1825 was the British and then the European
banking system organized more effectively, first by the Bank of England and
then by other state-run banks, to distribute capital to areas where it was
needed and drawing it from areas with a surplus.
The emergence of a more coherent, government-supervised banking sys-
tem after 1825 helped protect the British industrial achievement while gener-
ating profits that would sustain the island economy long after its manufacturers
were no longer as competitive. At the same time, government-sponsored banks
played major roles in helping continental nations catch up to the British. In
France, Belgium, and the German lands, banks furnished credit for strategic
purposes to build up the industrial economy rather than strictly from a short-
term profit and loss cost accounting. Credit was the grease that made the
Industrial Revolution run.

CRYSTAL PALACE “The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all

Nations” or “The Great Exhibition” was organized by the Society of Arts and
held in a purpose-built structure usually referred to as the Crystal Palace
erected in Hyde Park, London, between May 1 and October 11, 1851. The
Crystal Palace displayed the United Kingdom’s technological prowess and
taste for innovation at the height of its economic power. At the same time, the
exhibits demonstrated that other countries were beginning to catch up to the
first industrial nation.
The Crystal Palace was designed and built by Sir Joseph Paxton (he was
knighted for successfully erecting his design on time). It was constructed spe-
cifically for the event from cast iron and 900 tons of a newly developed form
of plate glass that let in natural light, hence the reference to crystal. The
building was more than one-third of a mile in length and, at 128 feet high,
tall enough to cover the park’s majestic trees. Over 14,000 exhibits were on
display in the Palace’s nearly 1 million square feet of interior space. The Crys-
tal Palace was also the first British building to have public toilets. It would
have been impossible to build the structure a mere 20 years before, highlight-
ing the rapid progress of technological capabilities to be able to manufacture
building materials of greater strength. A wide-ranging and enormous assort-
ment of goods from all over the world lured more than 6 million British
people to visit the Crystal Palace (usually by train), equivalent to nearly
30 percent of the population. Initially, admittance cost £3 for men and £2 for
women for a season pass or £1 for a single visit, but the price was soon low-
ered to a shilling for everyone. The event’s substantial profits were used to
found London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, and the
National History Museum. The innovative building was moved in 1852 to
Sydenham Hill outside London with parts incorporated into a new, larger
building that housed exhibits and displays of all types until it burned down
in 1936.
The Crystal Palace marked the height of Britain’s scientific, technological,
and economic domination. Britain dominated the age of the Industrial Revo-
lution as no other relatively small country ever had before. By 1841, nearly
50 percent of the British population worked in industry and by 1860, these
workers produced an astonishing 20 percent of the world’s industrial goods,
up from 2 percent in 1750. This small island nation furnished half the plan-
et’s iron and cotton textiles and mined two-thirds of its coal. Discounting for
inflation, Britain’s gross national product increased fourfold between 1780
and 1850. Great Britain emerged as the “workshop of the world.” As meas-
ured by consumption, the standard of living increased about 75 percent in
the same period, which seems paltry, until British population growth is taken
into account. Despite heavy emigration and natural disasters like the Irish
34 Crystal Palace

Potato Famine of the 1840s, the population of the British Isles grew from
9 million in 1780 to 21 million in 1851. The Crystal Palace was the symbol
of that extraordinary growth in national and individual wealth.
Yet, by 1851, change was already in the air. Many British visitors at the
Crystal Palace were startled by the high quality and reasonable prices of man-
ufactured goods and luxury items from the continent and even from the
United States. Other countries began to industrialize, some on the British
model, but all recognized the importance of advanced scientific knowledge
and technological ability to economic development.
The United States’ industrial “coming of age” took place at the Crystal
Palace Exhibition. Although the American exhibit was quite small, the qual-
ity was impressive. Cyrus Hall McCormick’s mechanical reaper, Charles
Goodyear’s India rubber life-raft, and Samuel Colt’s six-shot pistol all won
prestigious medals, and Europeans publicly took notice of American technol-
ogy and metal-working skills. Success in the world of sport even played a role
in winning favorable publicity: the yacht America defeated the pride of Great
Britain, the S.S. Titania, in a race that has been perpetuated as the America’s
Cup. The Liverpool Times fretted, “The Yankees are no longer to be ridiculed,
much less despised. The new world is bursting into greatness—walking past
the old world, as the Americans did to the yachts . . . America, in her own
phrase, is ‘going ahead’ and will assuredly pass us unless we accelerate our
speed.” From humble beginnings, it was clear that by 1850 the Industrial
Revolution in North America had reached a point that some U.S. manufac-
tured goods could compete on the world market. The Crystal Palace marked
both the zenith of British industrial might and possibilities of new industrial
rivalries on the horizon.

Picard, Liza. “The Great Exhibition.” Available online at http://www.bl.uk/victorian

-britain/articles/the-great-exhibition.

DISCIPLINE Labor discipline made extraordinary contributions to man-

ufacturing’s profitability. Getting workers to perform the tasks that their mas-
ters, managers, and foremen wanted them to do, when and how they wanted
them done, was the chief managerial accomplishment of the Industrial Revo-
lution. The efforts of British entrepreneurs were powerfully supported by the
state, which ensured that their persons and property were safe from all
threats—domestic or foreign—while providing legal tools and economic in-
struments capable of subordinating the working classes to industrial disci-
pline. Workers often accepted this discipline, usually because they had no
other choice, but many did not. Laboring men and women recognized their
oppression, which goaded them to push for reform. When changes came too
slowly or too timidly for their liking, laborers sought more radical solutions.
Deeply entrenched labor discipline slowed the pace of worker demands for
their rights, but could not stop it. Emigration was often the last resort of
mistreated or impotent workers.
The British labor force played a key role in industrialization. As a group,
they were relatively well educated and possessed many useful craft skills. Yet,
just as or even more importantly, British laborers were more thoroughly dis-
ciplined than their continental counterparts. They accepted innovations in
technology and in the organization of production far more systematically
than their brethren on the other side of the Channel. The British also adapted
to the time-clock and to the demands of the machine while their counterparts
were distracted by political and military diversions that surfaced during the
era of the French Revolution and Napoleon (1789–1815). This situation can
be understood both as greater control by British elites and as heightened des-
peration on the part of the laborers. Elite willingness to invest in machines
and the financial need of enough laborers to undertake mechanized work was
the basis for Britain’s major advantage in the process of early industrialization:
labor productivity. This “domestication” of labor underlay the successful im-
plementation of the factory system.
Management sought to increase the productivity of labor in pursuit
of profits. Improved discipline was essential to boosting labor productivity.
Although oversight in a factory was not as thorough as in a small workshop,
an important duty of full-time overseers and managers was to ensure that
laborers did not simply punch the clock, but worked as hard as they could
throughout their shift. This was a frustrating task. As a whole, entrepreneurs
were dissatisfied with their employees’ work habits because, as a wool clothier
in England’s West Country put it, workers “will never work any more time in
36 Discipline

general than is necessary just to live and support their weekly debauches.” To
the greatest degree possible, managers wanted laborers to match the regularity
and stamina of the machines they tended. Managers resorted to a variety of
disciplinary measures that ranged from docking the pay of workers who did
not give their best effort to heavy doses of corporal punishment, applied
mostly to women and children.
British owners, managers, and foremen attempted to train children to act
the way they wanted. Their methods were not gentle. In a study of 609 exam-
ples of enforcing discipline or modifying the behavior of factory children
undertaken in 1833, nearly 95 percent of all the tactics used were negative,
with dismissal being the norm (58 percent), and fines (17 percent), corporal
punishment (9 percent), and threats (8 percent) also being common. A re-
ward was given only 23 times (4 percent), a promotion or raise 9 times
(1 percent), and kindness twice. Corporal punishment was considered neces-
sary to make “lazy” children work a 12- or 14-hour day, six days a week. In
1832, a slave owner testified before the House of Commons: “I have always
thought myself disgraced by being the owner of slaves, but we never in the
West Indies thought it possible for any human being to be so cruel as to re-
quire a child of nine years to work twelve and a half hours a day, and that, you
acknowledge, is your regular practice.”
Another aspect of the mounting effort to discipline the workforce focused
on getting workers to show up on time, every day, and to remain at their sta-
tions the entire day. This was not as easy as it sounded as customary practice
ran contrary. Another problem was that when workers labored six days a
week, their day of “rest”—Sunday—was often punctuated by blowing off a
little steam, often by drinking to excess. “Saint Monday” was the term used
when workers failed to come to work after a binge. Even Tuesday was a slow
day for those recovering from a particularly intense drunk. Managers also
wanted to cut down drastically on the number of holidays, religious or other-
wise, both paid and unpaid, to keep the machines humming. When the non-
factory workday usually ran from dawn to dusk and clocks and watches were
not yet common possessions, it was difficult to ensure punctuality, especially
for early morning shifts.
From the perspective of a manager or entrepreneur, discipline also implied
an individual relationship between master and man. In other words, manag-
ers did not want any kind of union, coalition, or association to unite workers
to contest or resist their demands. As individuals, unskilled workers had little
bargaining power; their strength rested solely in numbers. So managers at-
tacked workers’ organizations, breaking them whenever and however possi-
ble. They also took aim at customary work practices that, to their way of
thinking, prevented innovation and reduced efficiency. Managers resented
Discipline 37

attempts by groups of workers to influence hiring and firing practices or

work-floor rules and regulations that limited their control in any way. During
the Industrial Revolution, managers insisted that their workers function as a
blank slate upon which they could impose their own standards, practices, and
expectations.
Industrial pioneers like Richard Arkwright found the task of “training
human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work and identify them-
selves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton” a difficult
proposition at best. When workers complained, the burgeoning population
meant that unskilled laborers could be replaced with impunity. When and
where that proved to be difficult, laborers were imported from poorer areas
such as Ireland or the Highlands of Scotland to fill jobs no local person
would take. During the first two or three generations trained to the factory,
the new industrial discipline was imposed, in many cases, on workers who
were not free to dispose of their own labor; modern notions of discipline
were not accepted passively. The frequent resort to violence—judicial and
military—on the part of the state to enforce industrial discipline or to pro-
tect innovating entrepreneurs demonstrates how deeply changes in custom-
ary work practice were resented by laborers whose defiance threatened the
entire social order.
The British state enabled entrepreneurs to discipline their workers. By
providing a high degree of protection from both domestic and foreign chal-
lenges while guaranteeing stability and order, the state contributed mightily
to instituting labor discipline. Britain borrowed and spent vast sums to fight
its wars, acquire colonies, and control its people. Despite its belligerency and
far-flung imperial commitments, more than half of British military expendi-
ture was dedicated to preserving internal order. Scots, Irish, workers, farm
laborers, religious dissenters, political reformers, and the poor were all sub-
ject to thoroughgoing military rule whose oppressiveness increased over time
to eliminate the unruliness of “an ungovernable people.” The government
made heavy-handed use of spies and informers, and, in the early 19th cen-
tury, 155 military barracks were constructed in industrial districts to oversee
the laboring classes.
The British state enforced discipline through a variety of means. During
the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon, the average British person
lost many of their customary rights and protections while new repressive laws
were enacted to restrict individual liberties and prevent any sort of collective
activity by laborers. The transmutation of machine-breaking into a felony
carrying the death penalty in 1812 during the Luddite movement (1811–
1817) demonstrates the impunity with which British elites utilized the legal
system to protect their economic interests by disciplining the working classes.
38 Division of Labor

Extensive legal, military, and political oppression had dramatic economic

consequences. Given how dangerous and tightly disciplined the early factories
were, entrepreneurs during the first few decades of the Industrial Revolution
relied on apprentices, indentures, Irish, Scots, women, and children for a sig-
nificant proportion of their labor force. It was not simply a matter of econ-
omy; it was also an expression of the domination of these groups by the elite.
What requires emphasis is that those who went into the factory generally did
so out of desperation or hunger. Higher wages were usually insufficient to
convince these people to submit to factory life. Thanks to state repression and
a lack of other options, this domination of the working classes was widely
accepted. The toleration by the working classes of a level of repression that
would have sparked a revolution on the continent was the cornerstone of
British labor discipline.

DIVISION OF LABOR The division of labor refers to breaking down

the process of manufacturing into as many simple, easily repeated separate
tasks as possible. Each step would be performed by a different person who
would become faster and more reliable through repetition. Division of labor
facilitated mechanization and expedited the establishment of the factory sys-
tem. This approach was fundamentally different than artisanal production
in which one person made something from start to finish. Division of labor
was an important means of increasing the productivity of labor, but it also
Division of Labor 39

undermined workers’ independence of thought and action, as both Adam

Smith and Karl Marx emphasized. Substituting unskilled for skilled labor
lowered the costs of production. Increasing the division of labor was a vital
component of the economic transformation that supported the Industrial
Revolution.
Smith coined the phrase and articulated the benefits and drawbacks of the
division of labor in The Wealth of Nations published in 1776. His famous
example was pin making, which could be broken down into 18 different op-
erations allowing workers to become increasingly efficient at their limited
assignments. Labor was also saved because workers did not have to switch
tools or move when they shifted from task to task. Division of labor allowed
and allows growing economic interdependence as larger populations spread
over wider geographic areas could and can contribute to the manufacture of
complex goods. It also facilitated and facilitates specialization in the widest
possible sense of the term. At the same time, Smith noted that while increas-
ing the division of labor is more efficient, it is also more stultifying. As a
worker’s “whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations . . . [h]e
naturally loses, therefore becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a
human creature to become.” Instead of being valued for their knowledge and
skill, workers were expected to perform like machines and steadily lost the
opportunity to take advantage of their understanding of the production pro-
cess to become entrepreneurs themselves.
Marx focused on the fact that the division of labor alienated workers from
the product of their labor by removing the role of skill and making workers
responsible for only one discrete part of manufacturing a product. Since the
laboring classes’ value to society was defined in terms of what they produced
and how they produced it, this alienation diminished their worth and ena-
bled the value of what they produced to be appropriated from them. Thus,
for Marx, the division of labor was the starting point for class conflict as well
as the basis of the system of capitalism.
More generally, division of labor can and has taken place between genders
and nations and among ages and regions. As Smith and Marx made clear,
there are significant consequences, both positive and negative, to increasing
the division of labor. U.S. “armory practice” relied on increasing the division
of labor as did the American system of production and the birth of true mass
production with the assembly line during the Second Industrial Revolution.

DOMESTIC INDUSTRY “Domestic industry” refers to the manufacture

of goods—most often textiles—in the home, usually but not always in rural
areas. “Cottage industry” made use of local materials such as wool or linen to
produce cloth for household consumption as well as for the market. This type
of labor was generally either seasonal or part-time and complemented agricul-
tural work. From the late medieval era, domestic industry was commonplace
in northwestern Europe with its concentrated network of markets, dense
population, and long winters. In the late 17th century, and lasting well into
the 20th century, domestic industry expanded to include what became known
as the “putting out” system by which entrepreneurs sold raw materials to a
family that then resold the finished products either to the original merchant
or on the market. Reliance on domestic industry to survive was a sign of the
financial pressures on the agricultural population in this era and demon-
strated that industrial output could be expanded greatly without resorting to
implementing a factory system.
Many rural families engaged in domestic industry because the effects of
population growth outstripped the gains of the Agricultural Revolution, at
least in the short term. Put another way, there were too many people trying
to earn a living by working too little land. Rural overpopulation forced farm-
ing families to do additional labor to survive if they wanted to remain on the
land. For many families, domestic industry filled the slack winter months
when there were relatively few agricultural tasks to perform. It was a supple-
ment rather than a replacement for full-time agricultural work.
In families more closely tied to the emerging market economy and with-
out other options, women and children devoted their efforts to industry
while males worked either on their own farm or for others. Only in a few
places was domestic industry a full-time, year-round occupation. Some liked
the ability to work on their own schedule, enjoying a few days off for a festi-
val following the completion of an order. In general, spinning was women’s
work and weaving was a male pursuit; children helped out wherever they
were needed.
Domestic Industry 41

The putting out system had tremendous productive potential and played
a major role in accelerating the interaction of the rural populace with local,
national, and international markets. A prosperous shopkeeper or affluent
farmer required only a limited amount of capital to begin finding client fami-
lies. The profitability of the system was based on the low wages given to rural
workers, who accepted a pittance because they needed only to augment their
agricultural income. Rural wages were at least 20 percent and up to 50 per-
cent lower than their urban equivalents. Yet careful and thrifty workers could
and did better themselves. Especially on the continent, domestic industry al-
lowed significant numbers of poor or marginal agricultural laborers or small-
holders to remain on the land far longer than would otherwise have been
possible.
Eventually, putting out came to dominate whole regions of Europe and
contributed substantially to total industrial output. From Ireland to Prussia,
dense networks of rural outworkers numbering in the hundreds of thousands
and stretching up to 80 kilometers in a given direction surrounded many
large mercantile cities that shipped goods abroad. This phenomenon has
sometimes been termed “proto-industrialization.” In the Austrian Nether-
lands (modern-day Belgium), a quarter of the working population toiled in
domestic industry in the middle of the 18th century. In addition to textiles,
goods that were put out included gloves, lace, ribbons, stockings, hats, boots,
shoes, pins, nails, and cutlery, as well as other hardware. At the end of the
18th century, the putting out system accounted for 43 percent of all manu-
factured goods in the German-speaking lands. By increasing textile produc-
tion, spreading spinning and weaving skills to the rural population and
introducing a market mentality into the day-to-day lives of many Europeans,
the putting out system paved the way for industrialization based on the fac-
tory system. As a form of production, rural industry lasted alongside newer
means of production until the 1930s.
Domestic industry and especially the putting out system also responded to
the limitations and lack of flexibility inherent in the output of urban guilds
with monopolies on the manufacture and often sale of certain types of goods.
With demand outstripping supply, mercantilist governments dedicated to
self-sufficiency and import substitution wanted to provide work and domi-
nate the domestic market. Because communities of guilds were unwilling or
unable to produce the kinds, qualities, and quantities of goods demanded by
other continents as well as by the burgeoning European population, different
methods of satisfying these markets had to be developed. To sidestep guild
restrictions on urban production, entrepreneurs, including merchants, no-
bles, and even state officials either funded or allowed the massive expansion of
domestic industry into northwestern Europe’s large-scale putting out system.
42 Education

Domestic industry and the putting out system responded to growing con-
sumer demand and the restrictions of the existing productive environment.
Rural labor engaged in this poorly paid work in order to remain on the land
or, far more rarely, to afford to buy luxuries like coffee, chocolate, or even
a fashionable shirt. Although production could be increased relatively easily
through this system and the low wages paid to laborers made this approach
competitive in some ways, machine-based production was of finer quality
and could take advantage of greater economies of scale. Domestic industry
lasted into the 20th century in several regions, but its heyday was 1680–1830.
It enabled and led to industrialization.

EDUCATION Education played an indirect role in supporting the initial

phases of the Industrial Revolution. That role centered on empowering curi-
osity, encouraging tinkering, and diffusing existing knowledge. Scientific and
technological education enjoyed a greater function in supporting the “catch
up” efforts of the second wave of industrializing nations on the continent. A
major element of the Enlightenment’s agenda was education. Over the course
of the 18th century, literacy jumped dramatically. In the Protestant areas of
Europe, the trend was most marked, but even in Catholic France, nearly half
the male population and over a quarter of the females were literate by the end
of the century. In eastern Europe, literacy rates increased, although not as
impressively as in western Europe. Scientific or technological training, how-
ever, was quite limited in both availability and quality. Universities in Protes-
tant countries did teach mathematics and advance medical knowledge, but
the power of organized religion limited both what could be taught and access
to higher education. In most of western Europe, the best training in scientific
matters came from private institutions like the Dissenting Academies in Eng-
Education 43

land, which provided a practical education in modern languages and mathe-

matics to non-Anglican Protestants, not the classical curriculum still
in vogue at the universities. In Great Britain, the creation of new state and
private institutions expedited the exchange of scientific information. State-
sponsored academies and informal private salons successfully spread knowl-
edge of the techniques of scientific agriculture and broadened interest in
scientific and technological developments. In addition, the English developed
institutions focused on the application of science to manufacturing.
The Royal Society of Arts established in London in 1754 had a decidedly
practical orientation. Similar institutions were created throughout the coun-
try, with the Lunar Society in Birmingham being the most important. Such
learned societies were composed not only of important scientists like Joseph
Priestley, but also counted inventors like James Watt, who dramatically im-
proved the steam engine, and industrial entrepreneurs including Matthew
Boulton, who manufactured and marketed Watt’s steam engine among its
members. A close interaction between laboratory and workshop was common
among the “Lunatics” and differentiated the practice of science in Great Brit-
ain from the continent. The spread of the scientific knowledge by itinerant
lecturers and the high level of literacy in Great Britain meant that by the late
18th century, an understanding of some basic scientific principles, most no-
tably mechanics, was more widely disseminated among the British popula-
tion than anywhere else in Europe.
It was in scientific method that 18th-century education broke most deci-
sively with the past. During the age of Enlightenment, rather than accept the
teachings of organized religion and deduce information from known princi-
ples, many Europeans and their colonists preferred to investigate nature and
natural phenomena. They used rigorous observational and experimental ap-
proaches to explain what happened even if they did not yet understand why
something occurred. As a result of this interest, a startlingly large number of
individual Europeans of all social classes observed the heavens, experimented
with machines, and classified plant and animal species. This willingness to
investigate, this ability to apply the scientific method, and an emphasis on
“what” rather than “why” were all attitudes that expedited the technological
breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution. Although the educational devel-
opments of the 17th and 18th centuries encouraged and permitted tinkerers
to function, there was no direct link between the scientific advances associ-
ated with the Scientific Revolution and the technology that made the Indus-
trial Revolution.
To catch up with Great Britain and to develop or protect productive special-
ties of their own, the French and later other countries needed to acquire and
spread various kinds of specialized craft, scientific, and technological knowledge.
44 Education

Although financial incentives for innovation and the enticement of skilled work-
ers from abroad played important roles in this process, education was at the
heart of the long-term French approach to becoming competitive.
Educational institutions were to facilitate the application of French pre-
dominance in basic science, especially in chemistry, mathematics, and medi-
cine to the problems of production. French education also aimed to spread
mechanical knowledge more widely and deeply among the laboring classes.
These educational efforts began during the Revolution with the creation of
the National Institute and the Polytechnic in 1794, which were staffed by
some of the best scientific minds alive. These elite institutions were supposed
to provide expert training and to reorient theoretically minded French elites
toward practical problems of industry and engineering. It was hoped that
their effects would trickle down the French educational system. Thanks to
Jean-Antoine Chaptal, students at specialized training schools for mining and
civil engineers also began to spend part of each year in the field learning about
the practical problems they would someday face. The thorough reform of the
university system undertaken by Emperor Napoleon I in 1808 supported
these goals. To bridge the gap between the elite and the rest of the population,
the French opened two Schools of Arts and Crafts (1803, 1811) where skilled
workers, foremen, engineers, and scientists melded scientific theory and
hands-on practice with machines. According to their founding statutes, these
schools were to “train petty officers for industry.”
Chaptal and his collaborators also sought to institutionalize the type of
interaction of scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and bureaucrats that took
place in the London Society of Arts and the Lunar Society of Birmingham.
These educational efforts helped France develop expertise in areas where they
could compete successfully with the British, strongly supporting French in-
dustrialization throughout the 19th century.

ENLIGHTENMENT The Enlightenment, a fundamentally new way of

thinking, made the Industrial Revolution possible. To undermine the claims
to exclusive and universal knowledge by the Roman Catholic Church and the
absolutist French monarchy under Louis XIV (1638–1715), the most power-
ful institutions of late 17th and early 18th century Europe, Europeans (most
notably in France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands) inaugurated an ever-
more-comprehensive investigation of nature and the natural world using new
methodologies based on the achievements of the Scientific Revolution. The
Enlightenment spawned not only a different conception of the universe, but
also shifted perceptions of what humans could accomplish.
In the 18th century, the ideal of comprehending nature that impelled the
Scientific Revolution expanded into new areas as the consequences and rami-
fications of the discoveries of the Scientific Revolution were explored and
demonstrated conclusively. During the Enlightenment, the goal of searching
out new knowledge was wedded firmly to a generalized ambition to spread
existing knowledge as widely as possible. The ultimate goal of those men and
women generally referred to as philosophes (lovers of knowledge or wisdom)
who contributed to the project of Enlightenment was to improve the human
condition by elevating their ability to understand and control the natural
environment. This combination of objectives not only helped to make the
Enlightenment an important period in western intellectual development, but
also lay the foundations for greater interaction between science and technol-
ogy that later became an important element of the Industrial Revolution.
The Enlightenment drew crucial support for its attack on exclusive claims
to knowledge from the breakthroughs of Englishman Isaac Newton (1643–
1727). Newton and German Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) earned the dis-
dain of generations of students by simultaneously developing calculus, a
branch of mathematics that was an essential tool to explaining the physics of
the universe. In his major work, published in 1687, Newton reconfigured
European understandings of celestial mechanics (the movement of heavenly
bodies) and explained his three laws of motion. For those with the mathemat-
ical skills to decipher the formulas—not to mention the ungrammatical Latin
Newton wrote in—this work definitively obliterated the dominant religious
and scientific conceptions of the universe almost uniformly based on Aristo-
tle. Newton’s explanation of the universe was convincing to the scientific
community until the breakthroughs of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisen-
berg in the first half of the 20th century. These stunning achievements were
not enough for Newton, who also made important discoveries in optics that
46 Enlightenment

led to new theories concerning the properties of light and colors, which cul-
minated in the invention of the reflecting telescope. Despite the efforts of
gifted writers such as John Locke and Voltaire, who published popular and
popularized explanations of Newton’s ideas in 1704 and 1733 respectively, it
took decades for Newton’s ideas to percolate through the educated strata of
western society. Such fundamental conceptual reordering of people’s under-
standing of the universe demonstrated the possibilities of human endeavor
and took the prestige of English science and technology to new heights, jus-
tifying the broad and deep transformation envisioned by the philosophes.
The Enlightenment emphasized the diffusion of ideas. Frenchmen Denis
Diderot (1713–1784) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783) led a great
collaborative enterprise to rationalize and categorize existing knowledge.
They published a 24-volume compendium of existing knowledge, the Ency-
clopédie, between 1751 and 1772. Diderot and d’Alembert had to overcome
the opposition of powerful individuals in the Church hierarchy and state
administration. Other 18th-century projects of diffusion and rationalization
included the creation of the periodic table of elements and Swede Carl von
Linné’s (or Linnaeus, 1707–1778) development of a means of classifying
plants and animals into categories. The organization and publication of cur-
rent scientific knowledge set the stage for later accomplishments.
Although science made few direct contributions to manufacturing tech-
nology during the first few decades of the Industrial Revolution, it did
accomplish something vital. The Scientific Revolution bequeathed a new in-
ductive method of testing ideas that focused on experimentation. The wave
of scientific discoveries, clever experiments, and geographical explorations
that followed helped to convince the average person that an improvement of
the human condition was not only possible but underway. As a result of the
Enlightenment, the prospect of “progress,” both in understanding and mate-
rially, gradually overcame the pessimistic views of people like Thomas Malthus
that had dominated European society for a millennium. In the 19th century,
this faith in progress became firmly entrenched as technological change and
industrialization first transformed the day-to-day life of western Europeans,
and ultimately, much of the world.
The Enlightenment also shaped agricultural improvement. Arthur Young
(1741–1820), a leading English agricultural writer, emphasized the impor-
tance of education, the development of new knowledge, and the utility of help-
ing agricultural entrepreneurs to escape the binding restrictions of customary
practice through innovation, all hallmarks of the Enlightenment. Young’s fer-
vor for agricultural improvement was shared by an impressive number of other
people in Great Britain and throughout western Europe, bringing the benefits
of the new ways of thinking to ever wider audiences.
Factory Acts 47

FACTORY ACTS From 1802, the British Parliament passed a series of

“factory acts” to regulate the industrial employment of child labor. These
legislative acts attempted to mitigate the very worst excesses of child exploi-
tation, though with minimal success until improved mechanisms for en-
forcement began to be developed in the 1830s and 1840s. Although the
effect of children’s labor on morals was the initial motivation of the factory
acts, their scope expanded to cover female labor and the length of the work
day. The factory acts were paralleled by legislation in other countries, but
Britain’s efforts went the furthest and the fastest in curbing the abuse of
factory labor for later generations of workers that endured the Industrial
Revolution. The factory acts gave birth to modern industrial regulation of
the labor force.
The 1802 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act was introduced by rich
mill owner Sir Robert Peel. It applied only to those young people (under 18)
sent to work in textile mills by their parish in exchange for financial or mate-
rial support for their impoverished families. Widely used as cheap labor and
with no recourse because they could not leave and had no protectors, these
apprentices were exploited horribly. This act limited the work day to 12 hours,
six days a week, and outlawed night work. Employers were required to pro-
vide a place to sleep, decent clothing, and some sort of education. In textile
factories with more than 20 employees, ventilation was mandated and the
mill had to be whitewashed at least twice a year. The act was to be enforced by
local magistrates known as justices of the peace who were supposed to appoint
visitors to investigate whether the requirements of the law were met. Because
many justices of the peace were more closely allied to the mill owners and
because taking care of apprentices cost money that had to be raised by local
48 Factory Acts

taxes, which the justices usually wanted to keep as low as possible, the law was
generally ignored. Mill owners increasingly turned to unregulated “free” labor
instead of relying on parish apprentices.
In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the British Parliament again
took up factory regulation on the instigation of Robert Owen. Peel agreed to
sponsor the project, but it took three years of parliamentary investigations
and numerous concessions that gutted the bill before the passage of the Cot-
ton Mills and Factories Act in 1819. This measure forbade the employment
of children under the age of 9 and restricted children aged 9–16 to 12 hours’
work per day between the hours of 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. (six days a week), but
only in cotton factories. Again, justices of the peace were supposed to enforce
the act, but no funds for inspection were allocated, rendering this bill, like its
predecessor, almost completely without practical effect.
The tide of reform that followed widespread popular unrest in 1830–1831
included important limitations on child factory labor. A narrow Labour in
Cotton Mills Act passed in 1831 excluded night work for anyone under the
age of 21 working in a factory, but was clearly understood as a stopgap meas-
ure. The creation of a parliamentary commission spearheaded by Anthony
Ashley-Cooper, later Earl of Shaftesbury, and Michael Sadler led to a scathing
report that prompted the establishment of more extensive restrictions on
child labor and created more effective means of enforcement, though large
loopholes continued to exist.
The Factory Act of 1833 forbade children under the age of nine from
working in textiles (except silk mills). Children between 9 and 13 could not
work more than eight hours without getting an hour-long lunch break. They
were also to receive two hours of education per day (in addition to going
to work) and could be employed no more than 48 hours a week. For children
aged 14 to 18, the length of the day’s labor that required a formal meal break
was 12 hours. Nobody under 18 years old could work between 8:30 p.m. and
5:30 a.m. Factories were to be regularly inspected and a dedicated professional
corps of inspectors was established that was independent of local authorities
and did not require ministerial authorization to act.
The humanitarian impulses that led to the enfranchisement of Catholics
in 1831, the parliamentary Reform Act of 1832, and the abolition of slavery
in the United Kingdom and its colonies in 1833 did not stop mill owners
from objecting strenuously to the passage of the Factory Act. They com-
plained to the House of Commons that such limitations were “prejudicial to
the Cotton Trade” and “impracticable” because “Free labourers cannot be
obtained to perform the night work, but upon very disadvantageous terms to
the manufacturers.” The continued success of Britain’s textile industry em-
powered the next generation of reformers to push for new restrictions on the
Factory Acts 49

work day in all factories without exception and to apply the same constraints
established in 1833 to young people and to women.
An 1844 Factory Act affected all textile mills (except lace and silk) and
banned women and youths between 13 and 17 from working more than
12 hours a day. Children under the age of 13 could work no more than
6.5 hours a day and children under the age of 8 could not be employed. Three
years later, a Ten Hour Act was applied to women and youths with total hours
reduced to 63 and then 58 hours by May 1848. In 1850, the workday was set
to either 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. or 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and women and youths could
work a maximum of 10.5 hours a day (with 1.5 hours of breaks). Six more
Factory Acts were passed between 1853 and 1878 that extended the rules on
children, youths, and females established for textiles to all other factories.
The factory acts were a series of small steps in the direction of reform. It
took more than 30 years to pass effective limitations on child labor in the
cotton industry and another 45 years for those restrictions to be applied to all
factory work. There was widespread pressure to improve the conditions of
labor from elites, the middle classes, and workers themselves. The continued
vigor of British industry and the tremendous wealth gained from the Indus-
trial Revolution allowed these halting reforms from above to be implemented
before the eruption of major violence. The factory acts showed that an indus-
trial economy can allow the working classes to gain a share of the benefits
without destroying profitability. This model was widely copied and even sur-
passed by Britain’s industrial rivals in the second half of the 19th century.

FACTORY SYSTEM The seemingly inexhaustible demand for cotton tex-

tiles led entrepreneurs to develop the factory system as a more efficient way of
organizing manufacturing to maximize production. The essential characteris-
tics of the factory were the concentration of workers at one site rather than in
the home, and the mechanization of production with concurrent increased
division of labor and hierarchical management. The use of machinery im-
posed geographical constraints—mechanization required a nearby power
source, either water or coal. Thus, industrialization was regional more than
national, clustering around rivers and coal deposits. This new sort of produc-
tion lowered costs, permitting greater profit while allowing prices to be re-
duced, bringing goods within the purchasing reach of more people, increasing
potential demand. The creation and spread of the modern factory system
within the confines of the British textile industry during the late 18th century
was the most tangible sign of the coming transformation of western civiliza-
tion: the Industrial Revolution.
The first modern factory was a cotton mill at Cromford in Derbyshire,
England, established by the inventor Richard Arkwright. When it opened in
1771, it had space for a complete set of machines and was purpose-built to be
lit by candle for night work. The machines were run by large waterwheels. In
1769, Arkwright had founded a horse-powered workshop not far from James
Hargreaves’s jenny-mill in Nottingham to utilize his inventions in partner-
ship with a bar-owner and a banker, but the partners simply did not have
enough capital to outfit the manufactory the way he wanted. So, he formed
an association with two rich hosiers: Jedediah Strutt and Samuel Need who
funded Cromford. At first, Strutt and Need purchased the mill’s entire output
for their stocking knitting businesses, but, in 1773, the three partners estab-
lished a weaving workshop to make England’s first all-cotton calicoes in imi-
tation of goods imported from India.
Cromford became the model for a huge number of other establishments.
It swiftly grew to house several thousand spindles and 300 workers. Only
15 years later, there were 140 Arkwright-type water-powered mills spinning
cotton. By 1800, England was home to 900 cotton-spinning factories of
which 300 were large mills (with more than 50 workers) patterned on Ark-
wright’s. Almost all of these establishments utilized water power. Initially, few,
even unskilled workers sought employment at Cromford because the rural
site was picked for maximizing water power capacity, not for convenience or
ease of access. (Unskilled workers were preferred because they did not have to
unlearn other techniques, they did not mind the closer supervision demanded
Factory System 51

by factory labor, and they were willing to be trained to work the machines.)
In the short run, Arkwright solved the labor problem by accepting a huge
number of youthful apprentices from poor houses all over Britain. The child
and teenage apprentices lived at the mill and were bound (i.e., they could not
leave) to work for Arkwright either until they reached the age of 18 or for
seven years, whichever was longer!
Arkwright’s long-term answer to his labor problem was to return to the
region of his birth. He set up his factories in the relatively poor region of
Lancashire where domestic industry was well established. Lancashire also had
a large number of small streams and shallow rivers that were perfect for turn-
ing waterwheels. The region enjoyed excellent access to the sea through the
port of Liverpool. Other entrepreneurs followed him both in moving to the
province to benefit from the same cost advantages and by taking thorough
going advantage of child, female, convict, and apprentice labor.
The British pioneered the factory system, and it spread most rapidly there.
As a result, the manufactured goods produced in the British Isles tended to be
cheaper and in many cases better (thanks to the mechanization of many op-
erations) than those made in other countries, allowing ever-increasing econo-
mies of scale. British industrial dominance in the first half of the 19th century
was founded on relatively inexpensive goods made with machinery and a high
level of division of labor by workers with unique craft skills in economic sec-
tors with highly elastic demand. Yet these advantages did not survive changes
in the production process, the development of other countries’ industrial sec-
tors, and in consumer demand that ultimately sounded the death knell for
British dominance, but not until after 1870.
Factories pre-dated the Industrial Revolution in the sense that large build-
ings that housed many workers collaborating in the manufacture of some
product had existed for centuries. Silks, tapestries, porcelain, weapons, and
some ships were made at sites that qualified as factories. But in the 18th cen-
tury, in order to satisfy the burgeoning market for cotton textiles, a hierarchi-
cal management emerged that was interested in implementing mechanization,
substituting water or coal for human energy, and instituting a greater division
of labor. Such means of maximizing production necessitated a much more
thorough control over labor and the work process. These characteristics were
the difference between a factory derived from the term “manufacture” and a
factory system. This shift, along with reliance on water and coal power, trans-
formed the means of production by lowering costs. Because of competition
both from India and from other European countries, such saving went into
reducing prices to increase demand rather than increasing profits. Lower
profit per unit was acceptable when volume was skyrocketing. The creation
and spread of the modern factory system within the confines of the British
52 Fitch, John

textile sector during the late 18th century represented the true beginnings of
the Industrial Revolution.

FITCH, JOHN After a successful trial of his steamboat on the Delaware

River in 1787 in front of delegates from the Constitutional Convention,
American John Fitch received the first patents for this new form of transpor-
tation, in the United States and in France, both in 1791. Fitch also ran the
first commercial steamboat service across the Delaware River between Phila-
delphia and Burlington, New Jersey, though it ran only for a single summer
before it failed due to lack of customers. Despite his patents, Fitch could not
find backers, in part because those patents only provided limited protection.
Although a good designer and builder, he was a poor entrepreneur. His con-
tributions have generally been overlooked in favor of Robert Fulton’s.
Fitch was born in 1743 in the British colony of Connecticut and died in
1798 in Bardstown, Kentucky, by his own hand. A jack of all trades, Fitch
worked on farms, as a silver- and gunsmith, as a surveyor and would-be land
speculator, and as a clockmaker. During the Revolutionary War, he fought for
the Continental Army. He then traveled west to survey and lay claim to new
Fitch, John 53

territories in the Ohio River valley, where he was captured by Native Ameri-
cans. He survived captivity and settled north of Philadelphia where he began
to experiment with steamboats in 1785 at the same time as several competi-
tors, most notably engineer James Rumsey.
Racing to stay ahead of his rivals and to find financial sponsors, Fitch
staged a spectacle in front of delegates to the Constitutional Convention in
August 1787. This steamboat featured two horizontal racks of oars on either
side of the vessel rather than a paddle wheel. It ran successfully in the Dela-
ware and Schuylkill Rivers. Several delegates even took a ride on the new
invention. Fitch’s hopes for federal financial support were disappointed, but
he took on Henry Voigt as a partner and built an improved 60-foot steamboat
with stern-mounted oars. In the summer of 1790, this steamboat, able to
carry up to 30 passengers, made many round-trips between Philadelphia and
Burlington. The business failed: customers were few and far between.
Despite the bankruptcy of his business, Fitch received the first U.S. patent
for steamboats in August 1791; his French patent was awarded later the same
year. However, the newly established Patent Commission only awarded Fitch
a monopoly on his most recent design rather than the monopoly on steam-
boats that he sought. Other inventors received related patents on the same
day, which undermined Fitch’s efforts to find financial supporters or partners.
Fitch went to France hoping to capitalize on his French patent, but failed to
find backers amid the turmoil of the French Revolution.
Fitch returned to the United States in 1793 and attempted to claim land
around Bardstown, Kentucky, that he had surveyed in the 1780s, but squat-
ters had already taken up residence. A lengthy court battle followed—as he
continued to experiment with steam engines—during which Fitch despaired
and committed suicide in 1798. Fitch’s career shows how difficult it was for
inventors, even those with patent protection, to profit from their inventions
without powerful patrons or partners. His experiences also show that inven-
tors can take various routes to solving the same technical difficulties and dem-
onstrates that the design that becomes popular is not always selected due to
superior technology.

HARGREAVES, JAMES Englishman James Hargreaves developed the

spinning jenny in 1764 and patented it in 1770. A spinning jenny could do
the work of numerous spinners and make higher quality, more even, and finer
thread. This pioneering invention contributed greatly to resolving a technical
bottleneck in cotton textile production, enabling a spectacular increase in
output that drove the Industrial Revolution.
Hargreaves (1720–1778) was born in Lancashire and spent his first
20 years working as a carpenter and a weaver near Blackburn. As a result, he
had both mechanical skills and an intimate knowledge of the process of weav-
ing, though little formal education. He was asked by a neighbor, a calico
printer named Robert Peel who founded a manufacturing dynasty, to build a
carding machine. Not long afterward, legend has it, he saw an overturned
spinning wheel that continued to revolve: this image supposedly gave him the
idea for his jenny. His relatively simple machine consisted of a rectangular
frame mounted on four legs with a row of vertical spindles at one end. Two
parallel wooden rails were mounted on a carriage that slid back and forth.
Cotton that had been carded and roved could then be passed between the two
rails and wound on the spindles. A spinner could move the carriage with one
hand and turn the handle for the spindles with the other, thereby drawing the
thread and simultaneously twisting it. Hargreaves’s first model had eight spin-
dles, but this number was rapidly increased. A decade later, a spinning jenny
could accommodate up to 80 spindles.
Although he successfully solved a vexing technical problem, Hargreaves
suffered numerous setbacks while trying to profit from his invention. These
difficulties were typical of those faced by innovators in this era. Hargreaves
began to construct machines for sale in 1767, but he did not seek a patent for
three more years, a decision that had major financial consequences. Once it
became clear that the spinning jenny saved considerable labor, local cotton
spinners who feared for their jobs during a sharp economic downturn broke
down his door and smashed his machines. Two years later, the same thing
happened again. Hargreaves did not seem to fear further violence from rebel-
lious workers despite moving out of the frying pan and into the fire. He relo-
cated to Nottingham, a major locus of machine-breaking throughout the
18th and 19th centuries. Instead, Hargreaves experienced far greater difficul-
ties with unscrupulous entrepreneurs and unsympathetic judges. With a part-
ner, he set up a spinning mill that ran successfully, but his hope to become
“Industrious Revolution” 55

wealthy was based on selling his machines. They were cheap to make; they
required only a skilled craftsman to make precision parts that moved seam-
lessly. His problem was that other manufacturers copied his design with ease
and then refused to pay the patent fees. He sued, but the court found that
since his machines had been used before he patented them, his patent was
meaningless. Hargreaves did not die penniless, as another legend has it; he left
an estate worth £4,000, but this was a pittance compared to the economic
value of his invention. A decade after his death, at least 20,000 spinning jen-
nies were at work in Great Britain with thousands more to be found on the
continent. The device was also swiftly adapted to wool and later linen and
silk. Each machine did the work of at least eight people. The spinning jenny
completely altered the production of cotton textiles and played a major role
in sparking the Industrial Revolution.

“INDUSTRIOUS REVOLUTION” The “Industrious Revolution” refers to

an explanation of the origins of the Industrial Revolution. The term is closely
linked to the notion of a Consumer Revolution and was developed by Akira
Hayami, a Japanese demographer, but in the historical literature on the Indus-
trial Revolution, the idea is associated with Jan de Vries, a Dutch-born, U.S.-
trained historian of Europe, especially the Dutch Republic. Over the course of
the era between 1600 and 1800, increased demand for various consumer goods
led households to decide that consumption of these products were worth pro-
viding more labor, especially the labor of women and children, to be able to earn
enough money to afford them. This “Industrious Revolution” explains how
the working classes participated in the Consumer Revolution—experienced
mostly by the middle-classes—and why some people worked longer hours to
56 “Industrious Revolution”

counterweigh the generally falling wages of the period up to 1830. The term is
currently at the center of a major academic debate on the Industrial Revolution:
accepting the idea has important implications for explanations of economic
behavior.
According to its proponents, the “Industrious Revolution” responded to
both demand- and supply-side factors and places the Industrial Revolution in
a broader context. By getting families to decide to work longer hours, “indus-
triousness” increased production by expanding the supply of labor. At the same
time, the elasticity of household labor supply meant that demand for con-
sumer goods could be satisfied, thereby allowing demand to grow even more
rapidly. Such a conception of the origins of the British Industrial Revolution
understands this transformation as essentially a supply-side phenomenon.
Households became more industrious in two main ways. First, labor was
reallocated through the reduction of leisure time. Men, women, and children
performed not just more labor, but, more importantly, worked increasingly
for wages. Instead of making what the household needed, families that worked
for wages progressively purchased not only what they needed, but what they
wanted. This shift in the nature of production and consumption permitted
greater specialization and helped to increase the productivity of labor. This
process preceded and was independent of the organizational and technologi-
cal developments associated with the first Industrial Revolution.
The “Industrious Revolution” is a complex notion that may explain certain
aspects of popular behavior in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it is less clear
whether this concept explains the onset of modern economic growth through
industrial transformation, as its adherents claim. Was demand for consumer
goods the cause or the effect of the pressure of declining wages on the family
economy? Within those increasingly industrious families, was the “Industrious
Revolution” a means by which male heads of household appropriated the ben-
efits of the wage labor of women and children? Was there a compelling linkage
between industriousness and industrial transformation? The answers to these
questions and others like them are hotly debated. Beyond the simple yet im-
portant fact that in the 17th and 18th centuries consumption of consumer
goods increased and went further down the social scale than ever before, pro-
ponents of the idea have struggled to marshal convincing evidence to tie it
to broader economic trends and transformations. In its contemporary usage,
focus on the “Industrious Revolution” privileges a supply-side explanation of
the origins of the Industrial Revolution by ignoring or at least undervaluing
issues of class, the standard of living, and changes in the nature of production.
The existence and role of an “Industrious Revolution” and its relationship to
the Consumer Revolution will continue to motivate research into the origins
of the Industrial Revolution for the foreseeable future.
Interchangeable Parts 57

INTERCHANGEABLE PARTS Interchangeable parts are practically

identical. Pieces are made to similar enough specifications that they can be
taken from one model of a machine and put into another. Developed in
France for military purposes during the 18th century, interchangeable parts
required substantial state investment to overcome the resistance of workers
and pay the higher prices that such flexibility cost. Although skilled metal-
workers could produce interchangeable parts for many devices, the invention
or adaptation of a variety of machine tools allowed greater precision. In the
19th century, interchangeable parts began to be developed in many industri-
alizing economies, but this approach became particularly important in North
America where it was incorporated into both armory practice and the Ameri-
can System of Manufactures.
The practice of interchangeable parts had been developed by the state-run
Arsenal of Venice in the early-modern era. In shipbuilding, certain wooden
parts were cut to rigorous specifications to allow quick and easy assembly,
but this applied to only a few parts that could be readily standardized. French
artillery officers of the 18th century were the chief proponents of the idea
of interchangeable parts in machines with metal components. Inspector
general of artillery Jean-Baptiste Gribeauval, ordered the standardization
of components in large artillery pieces in the 1750s, which was applied
experimentally to muskets in the late 1770s. Although the trials were
58 Interchangeable Parts

promising, the opposition of skilled gunsmiths who did not want to be told
how to do their jobs was considered too implacable to ramp up to full-scale
production.
Honoré Blanc (1736–1801), an experienced mechanic and gunsmith, re-
vived the idea. He set up a workshop to make gunlocks, the critical piece. In
1785, Blanc staged a public experiment in which he had another gunsmith
assemble a gunlock, choosing randomly from a bin with the parts to make
50 muskets. The demonstration succeeded brilliantly, but workers’ opposition
again postponed setting up production. When France went to war in 1792,
however, Blanc broke down the process of manufacturing muskets into as
many simple tasks as possible with the goal of using this division of labor to
undermine opposition to interchangeable parts. The government supported
Blanc’s efforts, but artisanal resistance slowed down the process. Production
at Blanc’s workshop at Roanne using a number of purpose-built gauges, tools,
and machines began in 1797. After his death, this enterprise produced
about 10,000 fully interchangeable gunlocks annually in the first years of the
19th century, constituting about 5 percent of the needs of Napoleonic France
at a price 20 percent higher than those made using traditional methods. But
when state subsidies ended, so did production.
American mechanic Eli Whitney attempted to replicate Blanc’s process. He
won a contract with the U.S. War Department to make 10,000 muskets by
September 1800. Whitney built or invented a set of purpose-built machines
capable of manufacturing many of the key parts with precision. It took Whit-
ney until January 1809 to fulfill his contract; he used the goal of interchange-
able parts as an excuse to justify the delays. Although Whitney never developed
a set of machines capable of manufacturing interchangeable parts, he did
propagate the idea, setting the stage for John Hancock Hall (1781–1841) to
achieve interchangeability in 1824 at the Harpers Ferry armory. Based on that
tardy beginning, the manufacturing techniques spread to other armories and
workshops and from there to other industries. After 1850, interchangeable
parts became an integral part of U.S. manufacturing.

Meyer, David R. “The Roots of American Industrialization, 1790–1860.” Available

online at https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-roots-of-american-industrialization
-1790–1860/.
Roser, Christoph. “230 Years of Interchangeable Parts—A Brief History.” Available
online at http://www.allaboutlean.com/230-years-interchangeability/.
Smith, Merritt Roe. Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of
Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

IRON AND STEEL Iron was essential to building the machines and infra-
structure that made the Industrial Revolution. Although steel, an alloy of iron
and carbon, had been made beginning many centuries before the Common
Era, it was not cost effective for widespread employment except for certain
specialized uses such as swords. Experimentation across the 18th century im-
proved iron production, which facilitated mechanization in a wide variety of
industries, making an industrial revolution possible.
Across the early modern era, the British iron industry was the largest, most
innovative and internationally competitive in the world. Britain had large de-
posits of iron ore, but when greater strength or higher quality was needed,
it imported ore from countries on the Baltic Sea, particularly Sweden and
Russia. Wrought (malleable) iron was generally smelted by combining pig
iron (crude cast into ingots known as “pigs”) with charcoal, a vegetable fuel
that did not transmit impurities to the finished product. In 18th-century Eng-
land, however, charcoal was in short supply because of a general shortage of
wood, which led Abraham Darby to experiment with coke beginning in 1709.
As a result of ongoing scarcity, roughly one-third of British iron production
relocated to the 13 North American colonies, especially to Pennsylvania,
where wood was plentiful as well as easy and cheap to move on the many rivers
of the region. The definitive loss of these colonies in 1783 provided a signifi-
cant cost incentive to the British to further their use of coal as a replacement
fuel. Thus, the development of the iron and coal industries was inextricably
linked in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As in textiles, experimentation by those Britons directly involved in the
production process was the key to improving technique. Iron-masters discov-
ered how to apply heat indirectly. A reverberatory furnace stirred molten pig
over a bed of coal until it became wrought iron, preventing direct contact
between the coal and the iron. This process, known as “puddling,” was devel-
oped by Englishman Henry Cort (1740–1800) in 1783–1784 and perfected
in the 1790s. Further improvements made iron produced with coal as fuel of
equal or higher quality to traditional production using charcoal while main-
taining puddling’s huge cost advantage. Cort’s methods also permitted 15 tons
of iron to be processed in 12 hours. A forge-hammer could usually but not
60 Iron and Steel

always produce a single ton in the same time. These innovations enabled a
rapid expansion of iron production in the late 1790s, and even faster growth
in the first decades of the 19th century as machines made from metal became
ever-more crucial to economic development. From 23,000 tons produced an-
nually around 1720, Britain’s annual output attained 3.5 million tons by the
end of the 1850s.
Although iron was the indispensable component of machines and infra-
structure in the age of the Industrial Revolution, steel too played a role. Steel
is an iron alloy that contains 1–2 percent carbon: it is stronger than low-
carbon (less than 1 percent) wrought iron, and more malleable than high-
carbon (cast or) pig iron. The major improvement that took place during the
18th century was the development of the technique to make crucible or cast
steel by English instrument maker Benjamin Huntsman around 1742. His
breakthrough was to mix bars of steel with an alkali in a clay crucible and
then heat them with coke. Cast steel had many uses, but it was still quite
expensive and rather brittle. Only precision instruments, certain tools like
files, and some bladed weapons were worth the expense. Although most
of the machines that “made” the Industrial Revolution would have benefitted
from higher-quality steel construction, iron or even wooden construction
was much more economical and easier to make. Many 18th- and early 19th-
century manufacturing processes were not optimal, but they worked well
enough to begin a revolutionary transformation. Improved iron production
made the Industrial Revolution while the emergence of economical means of
producing steel in the 1860s was the basis of the Second Industrial Revolu-
tion and the eventual eclipse of Britain in metalworking.

JACQUARD, JOSEPH-MARIE Joseph-Marie Charles, whose family

nickname was “Jacquard,” developed an attachment for the programmable
loom that made the machine practical, transforming the textile industry.
Jacquard’s attachment could be fixed on many different types of looms and
enabled automatic weaving of intricate patterns by raising or lowering the
threads. This machine helped France compete with Britain in many high-
value categories of textiles and facilitated the emergence of the factory system
on the continent of Europe. The basic principles remain in operation today
and Jacquard’s approach to programming his loom, through punched paste-
board cards joined together on a continuous chain in which each card corre-
sponded to a row of the design, formed the basis for other programmable
machines, including the earliest computers.
Jacquard was born in 1752 in Lyon, France, where his father was a master
silk weaver. (He died outside the same city in 1834.) Self-educated, Jacquard
squandered his inheritance along with his wife’s dowry, which forced him to
earn a living as a manual laborer. He fought in France’s armies during the
Revolution. After discharge, Jacquard returned to Lyon, where he sought to
automate silk weaving to eliminate a major bottleneck in production. In
1800, he patented an improved draw loom that received a bronze medal at the
1801 Paris industrial exposition, then developed a loom to weave fishing nets
two years later before making his major breakthrough in 1804. What inspired
Jacquard’s attachment was looking at earlier inventors’ failed approaches to
automating looms on display in a Paris museum. Jacquard’s invention was a
significant improvement on and combination of these earlier models that had
never been used profitably in full-scale production.
Jacquard’s first loom excited the fears of Lyon’s large population of weavers
who were afraid that his invention would eliminate their jobs. They attacked
Jacquard and destroyed his loom. The weavers’ opposition made entrepre-
neurs afraid to try the Jacquard loom. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, how-
ever, was so impressed by the possibilities of the new loom that he purchased
the patent and gave it the city of Lyon, thereby granting them a monopoly. In
exchange, Jacquard received an annual pension of 3,000 francs and a royalty
of 50 francs for each loom he made that went into operation over the next six
years. By the end of that period, there were 11,000 Jacquard looms in opera-
tion in France with further improvements coming in 1815 that increased the
speed and reliability of Jacquard’s attachment.
In addition to transforming the manufacture of high-end textiles and help-
ing France to compete with its cross-channel rival in some product categories,
Jacquard’s invention was adapted to other uses. During the 1820s and 1830s,
Englishman Charles Babbage modified the punched-card system to run his
calculators and other programmable machines. Most historians of science
62 Lancashire

and technology believe that Babbage’s devices were the forerunner of contem-
porary methods of computer programming. Today, Jacquard-style weaving is
still widespread, but now a computer scans the design and operates the loom.

LANCASHIRE The county of Lancashire, located in northwestern Eng-

land, was the hub of the British Industrial Revolution. Starting as a relatively
poor area, industrialization made Lancashire into one of the richest areas in
Europe. The county’s rapid transformation stemmed from a combination of
natural resources, geographical advantages, and entrepreneurial action that,
taken together, turned Lancashire into the laboratory of industrial change.
Lancashire’s experience reminds us that the first Industrial Revolution did not
occur on a national scale, but rather must be understood regionally or even
locally.
Bounded by Wales to the southwest, Yorkshire’s West Riding to the east,
Cheshire to the south, Westmoreland and Cumberland to the north, Lanca-
shire had certain geographic advantages. Liverpool, Britain’s chief western
port for the Atlantic trade, provided access to raw materials and markets.
Myriad fast-running streams were potential power sources for factories and
mills. Large deposits of coal and iron allowed the development of ancillary
industries. As population growth and the creation of large farms put pressure
on penniless small farmers and agricultural laborers, they increasingly turned
to domestic industry to supplement their incomes. A large, impoverished yet
skilled labor force trained in the manufacture of woolens helped draw entre-
preneurs to set up shop in Lancashire.
With cotton imported through Liverpool, entrepreneurs established
water-powered spinning mills beginning in the 1760s. Technical bottlenecks
encouraged innovators like James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright to
Lancashire 63

tinker with new machines and ways of organizing production. The combina-
tion of factors that led to rapid industrial growth attracted more entrepre-
neurs to a 30-mile-wide circle around Manchester. New-built canals like the
Duke of Bridgewater’s delivered coal, and foundries provided the iron used to
make machines and factories and later steam engines and railroad tracks.
Seemingly infinite demand for cotton textiles and the county’s growing abil-
ity to supply good-quality textiles at rock bottom prices drove the British
Industrial Revolution and carried the rest of Lancashire and indeed all of
England along with it.
The county’s population doubled to more than 700,000 between 1761
and 1801, making it the fastest growing area in England during an era of
rapid overall population growth. By the latter date, nearly a quarter million
men, women, and children labored in Lancashire’s cotton industry. In 1851,
the county’s population surpassed 2 million with nearly 375,000 people
working in the cotton trades. At its height around 1861, almost 450,000 men
and women made cotton goods in Lancashire. During the Industrial Revolu-
tion, Lancashire produced between 55 percent and 70 percent of Britain’s
total output of cottons, which grew to become the largest industry in the
country. In 1831, the two counties of Lancashire and its neighbor, the West
Riding, housed approximately 55 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the
entire United Kingdom. The radical transformation of economy and society
associated with the first Industrial Revolution occurred first and most thor-
oughly in Lancashire. For most of the period, industrialization was a regional,
not a national, phenomenon: it was centered on the county of Lancashire.

Trueman, C. N. “Lancashire and the Industrial Revolution.” Available online at

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/britain-1700-to-1900/industrial-revolu
tion/lancashire-and-the-industrial-revolution/.
Walton, John K. “Factory Work in Victorian Lancashire.” Available online at http://
www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/work/england/lancashire/article_1.shtml.

LIEBIG, JUSTUS VON Justus von Liebig inaugurated modern labora-

tory-based scientific teaching at the University of Giessen (which has since
been renamed after him) around 1825. He made major contributions to ag-
ricultural and biological chemistry and is usually considered the founder of
organic chemistry. Liebig was also an entrepreneur who believed that science
should have practical application. He created a company that trademarked
the Oxo brand beef bouillon cube that is still sold today. Through his teach-
ing methods, Liebig revolutionized the interaction of science, industry, and
the state while demonstrating the profound productive impact of research-
oriented universities.
Justus Liebig (1803–1873) was from Darmstadt, the capital of Hesse in
what became western Germany. His family ran an apothecary and made art
supplies, where he learned the basics of laboratory work. After university,
he moved to Paris in 1822 to work with Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, perhaps
the foremost chemist of the era. Only 18 months later, he was named a
professor at Giessen at the tender age of 21. In 1825, Liebig set up a labora-
tory focused on teaching graduate students and founded what became the
premier academic journal in the fields of chemistry and pharmacology to
disseminate the findings of his team’s experiments. The steady stream of sci-
entific advances and profitable applications coming out of Liebig’s program
at Giessen attracted the best students from around the world and inspired
other universities to imitate his teaching methods. In 1852, seven years after
being named a baron and gaining the right to add the “von” to his name,
Liebig moved to the University of Munich in Bavaria where he spent the rest
of his career.
Liebig’s own contributions to science included developing devices to per-
form organic analysis and demonstrating certain principles of chemical struc-
ture that gave rise to modern biochemistry. Outside the classroom, Liebig’s
most important breakthroughs came in the application of science to agricul-
ture. He identified what nutrients plants needed to grow fastest and invented
the first nitrogen-based fertilizer. In addition, he formulated the Law of the
Minimum, which describes the effect of specific nutrients on plants. These
findings laid the foundations of modern industrial-style agriculture. He dis-
seminated them in his textbook Organic Chemistry and Its Application to Agri-
culture and Physiology published in 1840.
Luddites 65

With breakthroughs coming so rapidly, Liebig and his students made it

impossible to ignore the potential economic benefits of state support for uni-
versity-based research and scientific and technical education more generally.
Through scientific advances, states could develop innovative ways to compete
with more established industrial powers or to develop totally new industries
that expanded the scope of industrialization. Following up on Liebig’s suc-
cesses, many German universities emerged as effective centers of scientific
and technological research, tackling industrial problems with academic disci-
pline. They also provided a strong grounding in scientific and technological
issues to nearly all university students. With this knowledge, German offi-
cials, professionals, and entrepreneurs adapted to changing technologies and
were more likely to take advantage of opportunities stemming from scientific
advances. With his unmatched achievements and deep coterie of students,
Justus von Liebig became perhaps the key figure in fostering the emphasis on
scientific and technical education in German-speaking Europe.

LUDDITES The Luddites were English workers who unsuccessfully re-

sisted mechanization in 1811–1817. Named after a supposed Leicester stock-
ing maker’s apprentice named Ned Ludham who in 1779 responded to his
master’s reprimand by taking a hammer to a stocking frame, the followers of
“Ned Ludd,” “Captain Ludd,” or sometimes “General Ludd” targeted this
machine for destruction during a deep economic downturn. Centered in the
Midlands, before moving to Yorkshire and Lancashire, the Luddites destroyed
only those machines that directly threatened their jobs. Although the Lud-
dites are remembered as opposing all technology and standing in the way
of “progress,” in fact, the Luddites’ use of violence and hostility to techno-
logical change were limited to those machines that directly jeopardized their
66 Luddites

livelihood. Government repression of worker resistance greatly exceeded the

original acts of violence. The failure of the Luddites and their demonization
in popular culture demonstrates the domination of British elites and the rela-
tive weakness of worker resistance to industrialization in England.
Early in February 1811, the Luddites began operation in the Midlands
triangle formed by Nottingham, Leicester, and Derby in the lace and hosiery
trades. Over the next year, Luddite bands conducted at least 100 separate at-
tacks that destroyed about 1,000 frames (out of England’s total of 25,000)
valued at £6,000–10,000. These Luddites did not attack all machines or act
indiscriminately; they only attacked special frames making cheap knockoffs
that undermined the jobs of skilled workers. The woolens workers of York-
shire imitated their compatriots beginning in January 1812, but these Lud-
dites were more generally opposed to mechanization. The cotton weavers of
Lancashire rose up in April as armed crowds attacked large factories. Thou-
sands participated in these activities, including many whose employment was
not threatened. Taken together, these initial episodes of Luddism caused per-
haps £100,000 of damage. Further waves of machine-breaking in the Mid-
lands where a few hundred additional stocking frames were destroyed took
place in the winter of 1812–1813, in the summer and fall of 1814, and in the
summer and fall of 1816 that sputtered into early 1817. Other than hurting
some employers, the Luddites only managed to slow down mechanization in
the woolens, lace, and hosiery trades. They had slight impact on the vital cot-
ton industry. In short, the Luddites had little impact on the course of British
industrialization.
The government’s response was disproportionate, even excessive. To begin
the conflict against Napoleon in Spain in 1808, the British sent less than
10,000 troops, but the British state deployed 12,000 troops against the Lud-
dites in 1812. Parliament made frame-breaking a capital crime (carrying the
death penalty) that same year. Leading up to the Luddite movement, Parlia-
ment passed the Two Acts restricting individual liberties in 1795, suspended
the writ of habeas corpus that forced the government to charge those in de-
tention with specific crimes, outlawed any and all worker associations in
1799–1800, and eliminated the ability of magistrates to set minimum wages
in 1809 for woolens and minimum wages more generally in 1814. Thou-
sands of spies were engaged and sent to identify the Luddites, especially the
leaders. The army was not only sent in to stop the Luddites, it was perma-
nently redeployed as 155 military barracks were built in industrial districts to
ensure that property owners and magistrates had easy access to overwhelming
force when challenged by militant workers. There were only two fatal victims
of Luddite violence against property, though there were dozens of casualties
during the attacks themselves. For instance, in repulsing the Luddite attack
Luddites 67

on Daniel Burton’s factory at Middleton in Lancashire on April 18, 1812, five

were killed and 18 wounded. With frame-breaking a crime, British courts
hanged more than 30 Luddites in 1812–1813, dozens were transported to
Australia, and hundreds more were imprisoned, some for long stretches.
Clearly, the state supported the mill owners by discouraging working-class
militancy with every weapon at its disposal.
The Luddites built on a long tradition of working-class violence against
innovative machines or industrial techniques that threatened employment. In
a wide variety of industries, 18th-century British workers turned to machine-
breaking when more peaceful protests had no effect. James Hargreaves’s first
spinning jenny was dismantled and burned in 1767, Richard Arkwright’s cot-
ton mill at Chorley was destroyed in 1776, and the first factory containing
Edmund Cartwright’s power-looms was burned in 1792. Major waves of vio-
lence against machines took place in 1776–1780, 1785, 1792, 1799–1802,
and 1810–1813. Nor did machine-breaking disappear with the followers of
Ned Ludd. Machine-breaking accompanied extensive rural rioting in East
Anglia in 1816 and again in 1822. In 1826, Lancashire endured a wave of
machine-breaking more extensive than in 1811–1812: 21 factories were as-
saulted and 1,000 looms valued at £30,000 smashed. Three years later, power-
looms were targeted by Manchester’s working classes. During the Captain
Swing riots, which ran from 1829 to 1832 with a high point in late August
1830, agricultural laborers relied on arson, but machine-breaking was an
important means of expressing popular anger. As a result of more than 1,500
separate incidents, an impressive proportion of England’s threshers were de-
stroyed along with quite a bit of industrial machinery. The Plug Plots led by
Staffordshire miners in 1842 concluded the era of machine-breaking in
Britain.
The Luddites failed to stop or even slow down mechanization for more a
few months. In the aftermath of their attack on machines, the British state
took even more overt action to control the working classes on behalf of in-
novating entrepreneurs. The domination of the labor force developed by Brit-
ish industrialists and enforced by the government was essential to the
emergence of industrial society. The lingering memory of Luddite opposition
to their own technological obsolescence and the weakness of their response
demonstrated concretely the nature of power relations between the workers
and elites during the first Industrial Revolution.

MERCANTILISM All early-modern governments attempted to improve

the economy of the territory under their control. This goal has been associ-
ated with the state policy of mercantilism, which attempted, in part, to in-
crease exports in order to create a favorable balance of trade while maximizing
the supply of precious metals. This approach conflated stocks of hard money
in hand and the total amount of national wealth. European mercantilist
policies focused on managing foreign trade, but also supported a variety
of institutions such as the guilds. This approach to economic development
favored both low cost and luxury producers who could capture and keep
markets abroad. States sought to garner exclusive trading privileges through
treaties and all colonies were exploited to benefit the mother country. Con-
sumers thus suffered in favor of producers. Mercantilism was practiced by
all early-modern European states to a greater or lesser degree, but nowhere
was mercantilism more intertwined with political culture than in Great
Britain.
Conserving domestic markets and resources motivated the promulgation
of a series of English Navigation Acts beginning in 1651. Intended to protect
the domestic merchant marine from Dutch competition, these acts mandated
that goods from Asia, Africa, and the Americas could only be imported into
Britain or its colonies in British ships. Goods from Europe either had to be
carried by British ships or by ships of the origin of the goods in question.
Certain colonial commodities like sugar, tea, and tobacco were required to be
shipped directly to a British port even if their ultimate destination was some-
where else (this was why the proportion of re-exports of colonial goods was
so high.) Although the British were, by far, the most successful at enforcing
their Navigation Acts because of their growing naval supremacy, nearly all
European nations had similar legislation on the books in the 17th and 18th
centuries.
Mercantilism led all European states to license associations of investors
to explore, colonize, and trade with certain areas. These associations were
Mercantilism 69

chartered by the state, which provided some support but usually left the vast
majority of the activities of these associations unregulated. Chartered compa-
nies could institute laws, fight wars, make treaties (subject to state approval),
and enjoyed a monopoly of trade and/or colonization in their area of opera-
tion. The English established chartered companies to trade with Muscovy
(1555), the Levant (1581), East Indies (1600), and Hudson’s Bay (1670).
Other charters entrusted colonization to the Virginia Company (1606) and
the Massachusetts Bay Company (1629). The Netherlands established East
India (1602) and West India (1621) companies, while the French established
a number of such companies to trade with the Caribbean, West Africa, the
Levant, and the Indian Ocean. Many other states including Denmark, Swe-
den, Austria, and several German lands also created chartered companies.
Several of these companies, most notably the Dutch East India, the English
East India, and Hudson’s Bay became virtual states within states ruling vast
territories with minimal government supervision (or expense!), earning enor-
mous profits for investors. These state-sponsored companies extended the
European presence to new areas, tied the global economy together, and vastly
expanded world trade.
The British state also regulated the import and export of food. From 1689
to 1846, the notorious English Corn Laws forbade the export of grain unless
prices were extremely cheap, thanks to a bumper crop. The intent was to en-
courage domestic grain production by guaranteeing that a relative scarcity
would keep prices high. Until 1772, additional legislation mandated state
oversight of internal trade in grain, meal, flour, bread, and meat. Although
the government sometimes enforced lower prices in times of dearth, in gen-
eral, these regulations kept food prices above the norm for northwestern
Europe and limited food consumption for the average Briton. Mercantilism,
especially in Britain, benefited economic and political elites at the expense of
the standard of living of the vast majority of the population.
The fundamental dependence of 18th-century economic growth on mer-
cantilism by the European powers especially Great Britain in the 17th and
18th centuries has been obscured by the gigantic shadow cast by the im-
mensely influential work of Adam Smith. For far too many economists, eco-
nomic historians, and politicians, Smith’s well-known attack on mercantilism
and state action more generally in favor of a more individualistic focus on
industry and free trade has assumed the status of dogma. That Smith was
criticizing rather than describing contemporary practice appears to have been
either forgotten or deliberately overlooked. No matter how Smith has been
read by his successors, it must not be forgotten that the economic precondi-
tions for industrialization were fostered in a thoroughly exploitative, mercan-
tilist economic system.
70 Owen, Robert

OWEN, ROBERT Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a Welsh factory man-

ager who demonstrated that overweening exploitation of the working classes
was not required to earn huge profits. He pushed for reform of the factory
system in the name of the negative effects of industrialization on the British
national character. In later life, Owen’s critique of industrial society led him
to embrace socialism as a means of preserving the egalitarian and communal
lifestyles of the rural population.
Owen worked as a draper in London and Manchester, and after 1792
managed a mill in the latter city. He became a member of Manchester’s Liter-
ary and Philosophical Society where he was profoundly influenced by the
Enlightenment. Owen also worked for the city’s Board of Health where
he saw the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the first generations of
workers. He married Caroline Dale, the daughter of the co-owner of a water-
powered cotton mill (with Richard Arkwright) located in New Lanark, Scot-
land, and took over its management in 1800. Owen got a stake in the
enterprise, which expanded to encompass four large mills. Based on his expe-
riences in Manchester, Owen was dissatisfied with the condition of the work-
ers. He put his ideas on social reform into action by founding schools for
children employed in his mills and by reducing the length of the workday
from 13–14 hours to 10.5 and then, in 1810 to 10 hours. His goal was an
eight-hour day. He also instituted infant childcare at the mills, a first in the
United Kingdom, and eliminated the exploitative practice of paying workers
Owen, Robert 71

in a type of token that could only be redeemed at a “trunk” store controlled

by the mill owner that generally sold low-quality goods at exceptionally high
prices. The workers rewarded Owen’s dedication to their welfare with far
greater effort. Their productivity made New Lanark highly profitable. During
the 29 years he directed the mills, he more than doubled the capital of the
investors, but his expensive measures led him to bring in new partners in
1813 (including Jeremy Bentham) who were willing to let him try out his
social experiments.
The success of New Lanark underpinned Owen’s efforts to improve the
welfare of workers. He published an essay entitled “Observations on the
Effect of the Manufacturing System” in 1815 that was intended to persuade
Parliament to limit the exploitation of child labor in British factories: some
of his reform proposals were enacted in the Factory Act of 1819. Owen pub-
licly embraced socialism in 1817 while commenting on the English Poor
Law, and increasingly saw a rural lifestyle as preferable to any other. Building
on the model of a new kind of community being formed nearby in Orbiston,
Scotland, in 1825, Owen invested the bulk of his money in a utopian com-
munity established at New Harmony, Indiana. This social experiment failed
after less than two years. Owen moved to London and increasingly focused
on lobbying for labor reform and spreading socialist propaganda. His long
career provided a concrete reminder of both the potential and the drawbacks
of Enlightened responses to industrialization as well as proof positive that
profits and the well-being of the workers were not mutually exclusive.

PATENT(S) Patents protect intellectual property. Based on an English

law dating from 1624 and amended many times since, Britain and all other
states grant patents or a monopoly of use for a specified amount of time to
individuals or groups of individuals and then restrict the ability of others to
make use of an idea without the consent of the patent holder. Governments
can only assure patent rights within their own borders though they often
make arrangements with other states to respect each other’s patents. Patents
improved production by making it easier for the developer to benefit eco-
nomically from new machines or technical advances. During the Industrial
Revolution, patents nurtured innovation, especially though not exclusively in
Great Britain.
During the industrial age, patents involved three fundamental interests
that were often in conflict. Governments wanted to preserve their national
advantages in machinery, worker expertise, or scientific knowledge. Individu-
als or groups who developed new techniques or more efficient machines
sought to maintain their exclusivity, while also capitalizing on their discover-
ies. Lastly, because the scientific community was international in scope, the
steady advance of scientific knowledge meant that researchers sometimes
reached similar conclusions almost simultaneously. These disparate interests,
combined with inherent advantages and disadvantages of national scientific
cultures, and differences in resources and infrastructures, meant that some
scientific advances or technological innovations spread immediately, while
others stagnated for decades. States tried to hold onto their advantages by
extending the life of certain patents while systematically allowing the imita-
tion of other patents. The leads and lags associated with the spread of techno-
logical and scientific developments increasingly concerned governments, as
the protection or acquisition of such knowledge impacted not only the econ-
omy, but also a state’s military preparedness.
Throughout the industrialized world, patents for inventors were instituted
to encourage technological innovation. The number of patents issued grew
steadily during the 18th and accelerated in the early 19th century. Other
countries established similar laws in the same period. Britain legally prohibited
the export of many important machines until 1843, but this ban only slowed
the flow of workers, machines, and ideas across national borders. Technology
transfer was often personal, arriving in the form of an individual or small
group bearing the scientific knowledge necessary to make or operate a certain
machine or the craft skills needed to construct the machinery. During the In-
dustrial Revolution, patents shaped the flow of technology transfer.

Jacquard, Joseph-Marie; Role of the State; Second Industrial Revolution;

Steam Engine; Watt, James; Whitney, Eli

Further Reading
Griffin, Emma. A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution. Houndsmills, UK:
Palgrave, 2010.
Henderson, David R. “Patents.” Available online at http://www.econlib.org/library
/Enc1/Patents.html.
Khan, B. Zorina. “An Economic History of Patent Institutions.” Available online at
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/an-economic-history-of-patent-institutions/.
MacLeod, Christine. Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System,
1660–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Pursell, Carroll W., ed. Technology in America: A History of Individuals and Ideas, 2nd
ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.

POLLUTION, HEALTH, AND ENVIRONMENT Population growth,

urbanization, and industrialization vastly increased the health problems of
Europe during the age of the Industrial Revolution and beyond. Rapid popu-
lation growth especially in overcrowded cities with insufficient sanitation
facilities compounded the threat of disease in general while harsh working
conditions in factories and mines amplified the incidence of diseases like coal
workers’ pneumoconiosis and tuberculosis. Only after 1850 did the state and
the scientific/medical community take effective action to improve the health
of the working classes and of urban areas more broadly, with most of the
benefits coming near the end of the 19th century. Limiting pollution and the
degradation of the environment stemming from industrialization only be-
came important considerations in the 20th century.
During the Industrial Revolution, dirt from coal smoke darkened the
buildings and the landscape, already splattered by mud in the unpaved streets.
Breath came short amid the coal fumes, but other smells often masked it
because of crowding in cities and industrial districts. Garbage and human
waste littered the streets, particularly in poorer areas. Supplemented by animal
wastes, such refuse got into the drinking water, already in short supply in most
cities, causing disease. Disease preyed on malnourished and overworked urban
populations throughout the period, leading to spectacular declines in life ex-
pectancy with peaks during catastrophic natural disasters like the cholera epi-
demic of 1831 or the Europe-wide potato blight of the late 1840s. Children
and pregnant women suffered disproportionately. In 1840, workers in Man-
chester, England, could anticipate an average life-span of only 17 years because
of very high rates of infant mortality, whereas the average for all of England
was a still horrific 40 years. Nor was Manchester unique. Dr. G. Calvert
74 Pollution, Health, and Environment

Holland oversaw a demographic investigation of the city of Leeds in 1842.

The average age of death for the gentry, manufacturers, and their families was
44. For shopkeepers, it was 27, and for laborers, it was a terrifying 19! The
aggregate average was 21, which demonstrated the preponderance of laborers
in the population. Dr. Holland reported, “We have no hesitation in asserting,
that the sufferings of the working classes, and consequently the rate of mortal-
ity are greater now than in former times. Indeed, in most manufacturing dis-
tricts the rate of mortality in these classes is appalling to contemplate. . . .”
At the same time that industrial wages were being reduced to—or even
below—the poverty line, workers were angry that because of neglect the work
environment was increasingly unhealthy. The effects of water-logged mine
shafts, closed rooms full of wool particles, breathing coal dust, performing
difficult repetitive motions, badly constructed machines, dangerous raw mate-
rials (toxic materials like mercury, lead, arsenic, and chlorine were commonly
used in many industries), and extremes of heat and cold were all magnified by
exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and poor diet. These environmental conditions
led directly to pneumonia, arthritis, rheumatism, bursitis, carpal tunnel syn-
drome, eye strain, and tuberculosis. Machines sheared off fingers and explo-
sions led to the loss of legs. Mine collapses and falls left battered and broken
bodies behind them. Chemical poisoning rendered people paranoid and pal-
sied. Clearly, workers’ health was not a priority for either entrepreneurs or the
state during the first several generations of industrialization.
The scientific community in partnership with governments and some
entrepreneurs did make some advances in public health such as vaccination.
Many natural substances effective against disease had been known for centu-
ries or millennia; the practice of inoculation, the injection of a disease to
prevent a more drastic appearance, had been practiced since the Renaissance.
In 1798, the English physician Edward Jenner (1749–1823) took the first
step in controlling smallpox by injecting a milder form of the disease into a
healthy individual as a means of building up resistance to it, and preventing
the illness from reappearing in a more virulent form. Hotly debated by con-
temporaries because nearly all believed that people contract disease when they
breathe odors of decay or putrefying excrement (the miasmatic theory of
disease), vaccination slowly became standard practice throughout western
Europe. In Britain, Parliament signaled its acceptance of its efficacy with the
Vaccination Act of 1853. Smallpox vaccination was the culmination of centu-
ries of trial and error, rather than scientific understanding of why this method
worked. Only in the later 19th century did directed scientific inquiry reveal
the causes and vectors of disease: what mattered was that it seemed to work.
Pushed by outbreaks of cholera in 1831–1832 and 1848–1849, along with
the omnipresence of many other diseases in urban industrial Europe, states
Productivity 75

and concerned individuals devoted increased attention to problems of public

health. Poor Law Commissioner Edwin Chadwick took the lead in publiciz-
ing urban decay and its attendant health risks. In response, Britain began to
clean up its cities by passing the first public health law in 1848, which set up
a national health board with broad authority to create more modern sanitary
systems. Chadwick and others interested in public health emphasized the
need for clean drinking water. In the 1840s and 1850s, close observation by
public health officials, many of them doctors, revealed the limitations of the
miasmatic theory of disease. They suggested that the vector of contagion for
a disease was passed through excrement or decaying matter rather than by
miasmas. This observation set the stage for the bacterial revolution, which,
after 1870, transformed the health of Europe and ultimately the world. The
lack of interest by elites and governments in stopping pollution, improving
health, and protecting the environment until the twilight of the Industrial
Revolution is closely intertwined with the late onset of benefits to the work-
ing classes’ standard of living.

See also: Coal; Factory Acts; Factory System; Iron and Steel; Lancashire;
Owen, Robert; Productivity; Railroads; Role of the State; Second Industrial
Revolution; Socialism; Standard of Living; Document: “The State of the
Poor”; Document: “Conditions in the Mines”; Document: “Living and Work-
ing in Manchester”

Further Reading
“Effects of the Industrial Revolution.” Available online at http://webs.bcp.org/sites
/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevolution/IREffects
.html#publichealth.
“The Environmental Impact of the Industrial Revolution.” Available online at
https://taapworld.wikispaces.com/The+Environmental+Impact+of+the+Indust
rial+Revolution.
Mathias, Peter. The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–
1914, 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2001.
McLamb, Eric. “The Ecological Impact of the Industrial Revolution.” Available
online at http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/18/ecological-impact-industrial
-revolution/.
Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from
Antiquity to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

PRODUCTIVITY Productivity was a vital component of the broadly

based changes that transformed first British and then western society as a
whole during the Industrial Revolution. In economics, the term refers to the
effectiveness of effort and is measured by the rate of output per unit of input.
76 Productivity

Almost any factor involved in manufacturing, especially capital, land, trans-

portation, energy, and labor, can become more or less productive based on the
quality of inputs. These broad measures can be broken down by economic
sector, industry, or to account for specific features like technological change.
Economists often focus on “Total Factor Productivity,” which is defined as
that portion of output not explained by the amount of inputs. In other words,
Total Factor Productivity measures how efficiently and intensely inputs are
used. In one form or another, the issue of productivity has been at the heart
of investigations of the processes of change during the British Industrial Rev-
olution. The reason for this emphasis is that it has been demonstrated that
improvements in labor productivity and the increase in manufacturing out-
put were far slower and came far later than would seem to make sense given
the overall rate of industrial growth. Investigations of productivity have
driven discussion of the standard of living, the role of the state, the “Industri-
ous Revolution,” and many other dynamic questions relating to the Indus-
trial Revolution.
Current scholarly estimates of the rates of productivity growth in various
industries and sectors suggest that technology contributed much less than
had been thought to industrial transformation before 1800. For the period as
a whole, newly industrialized sectors accounted for nearly two-thirds of pro-
ductivity growth in the British economy between 1780 and 1860. While
cotton textiles and machine building enjoyed high productivity growth rates,
almost all other industries grew slowly if at all. Even in these exemplary in-
dustries, productivity growth did not greatly exceed what had been achieved
in preceding decades. During the key “take-off ” period of 1770 to 1800,
Total Factor Productivity was stagnant. By some accounts, greater supplies of
increasingly efficient energy contributed more than 90 percent to productiv-
ity growth between 1800 and 1850.
Generally speaking, even in the first half of the 19th century, productivity
growth stemmed from improvements in transportation and massive increases
in the quantity and efficiency of energy use as coal and water replaced human
and animal power. The effects of technologies linked to the steam engine on
productivity were gradual and less important than had been assumed. These
findings suggest that the Industrial Revolution was the result less of increases
in the productivity of labor based on technological change than of an en-
hanced transportation system and enlarged supplies of capital and energy.
Such an understanding of the process of industrialization suggests that far
greater attention must be paid to coal, water power, and transportation in
explaining Britain’s advantages.
Technological change linked to the productivity of labor has been at the
heart of most explanations of the British Industrial Revolution. This focus
Productivity 77

has crowded out other factors in understanding shifts in labor productivity.

The heights of English inventive creativity were also the years that the state
removed traditional protections of worker rights in order to enforce the labor
discipline sought by entrepreneurs, with force if necessary. With food prices
kept artificially high by the mercantilist Corn Laws, wages stagnant or in
decline, and the looming example of popular insurrection on the other flank
of the Channel, British workers only entered factories and mills because they
had little other choice. Aversion for labor discipline helps to explain why par-
ish apprentices, immigrants, women, and children played such dispropor-
tionate roles in early industrialization. It seems quite possible that whatever
improvements came from technological change were cancelled out by these
factors, in which case technological change assumes a much more ambivalent
position in understandings of the role of productivity in the Industrial
Revolution.
Scholarly research has also found that labor productivity had been steadily
improving since the 16th century. In fact, the growth rates, especially in agri-
culture but also in industry, were higher before 1750 than during the Industrial
Revolution. That this growth stalled in the second half of the 18th century
deserves greater attention, as does agriculture’s continuing to outperform in-
dustry in labor productivity. These considerations point toward a longer term
framework for understanding why an industrial revolution took place at all,
much less in Britain during this era.

RAILROADS Railroads were tangible signs of the Industrial Revolution.

The first commercial railroad ran between Liverpool and Manchester, Eng-
land, and began operation in 1830. Steam-powered locomotives dramatically
lowered land transport costs for goods and passengers opening up vast swaths
of the globe to development, bringing western economic needs and priorities
to areas that previously had been protected by their remote location. The
railroad also had major economic and social effects that marked the last gen-
eration of the first Industrial Revolution and paved the way for the second
wave of industrial transformation after 1870.
Based on Richard Trevithick’s high-pressure steam engine, and constantly
improved by talented British engineers, the railroad emerged as a viable tech-
nology in 1814. Initially steam trains ran back and forth to the pit-heads of
coal and iron mines, and then in 1830 the Rocket, a locomotive built and
developed by George Stephenson, first traveled from Liverpool to Manches-
ter at the impressive speed of 16 miles per hour. In its first year, the line car-
ried more than 400,000 passengers, making transporting humans more
profitable than carrying freight, a situation that continued until the 1850s.
The financial success of this line, in the heart of the rapidly industrializing
region of Lancashire, spurred many imitators.
Within 20 years, a web of railroad tracks traversed the British Isles; other
networks spread rapidly across western Europe and North America. By 1870,
extensive railroad systems crisscrossed most of the European continent. In ad-
dition, the United States and the British colonies of Canada, Australia, and
especially India boasted their own vast railroad systems. On the eve of the First
World War, railroads covered the continents of Asia, North America, and
Africa and tied the disparate parts of the world together as never before. Along
with the steamboat and the telegraph, the railroad accelerated the speed of life
and the speed of change just as the maximum speed of the railroad increased
from 16 mph in 1830, to 50 mph in 1850, to nearly 100 mph by 1914.
Railroads had powerful economic and social effects. They lowered the cost
of transporting heavy goods, allowing more remote areas to become part of
the global economy. Manufactured goods and raw materials now flowed across
the planet much more easily and, most importantly, much more cheaply than
ever before. With markets widening and costs falling, larger and larger facto-
ries could be built, allowing greater and greater potential profits. The ease and
relative affordability of transportation meant that industrial production now
could occur far from sources of raw materials. As a result, cities boomed and
the urban working classes replaced farmers as the largest single occupational
group in most industrialized societies.
In the United States and other “second wave” industrial nations, railroads
as well as the other internal improvements had particularly powerful economic
Role of The State 79

and social effects. By lowering the cost of transporting heavy goods, railroads
provided remote areas with cheap access to distant markets. Before the rail-
road, the paper industry of western Massachusetts paid 8–24 cents per ton-
mile to get their goods to market. By 1865, their freight charges had dropped
to 4.5 cents per ton-mile.
Railroads also required strong government support. Completed in 1833,
the Camden and Amboy railroad linked New York and Philadelphia to be-
come the first working line in North America. Given a monopoly by the state
of New Jersey, this railroad company became one of the largest corporations
in the United States. The cost of building the United States’ lines was signifi-
cantly cheaper than in England or in Europe. By 1865, thanks to the support
of various states and the federal government as well as the initiative of private
citizens, the United States had 35,000 miles of railroad track, 3.5 times that
of the United Kingdom. Yet the 10,000 miles of British track constituted a
dense web; this was not the case in the United States. For Americans, because
of the regional concentration of industry and the reliance on water power, the
railroad was often the first tangible sign of the Industrial Revolution. Rail-
roads, together with steamboats, perpetuated the factory system and brought
the necessities of industrialization to new areas, thereby playing a major role
in creating a truly global economy.

ROLE OF THE STATE State action was essential to industrialization in

Great Britain and to those nations that began the process two to three genera-
tions later, including France, Belgium, Prussia, and the United States. Gov-
ernment action took a number of forms, both indirect and direct, that can
80 Role of The State

appear insignificant to modern eyes but were necessary to industrialization.

To consider the Industrial Revolution without recognizing that state action
made it possible is to misrepresent the process of economic development in
the 18th and 19th centuries.
In early modern Europe, state intervention in the economy is generally
known as mercantilism. Mercantilism involved control of trade and shipping.
The Navigation Acts as established in 1651 required goods imported from
Africa, the Americas, and Asia into Britain or its colonies to arrive in British
hulls while European cargoes had to be brought either by ships from Britain
or from the country of origin. Almost all European nations enacted similar
laws. Chartered companies were also established by European governments to
explore, colonize, and trade with certain areas. Governments left these com-
panies largely unregulated. The most powerful ones became virtual states
within a state ruling huge territories and generating enormous profits that
helped pay for industrialization. The British state also controlled the price of
grain through the Corn Laws in force between 1689 and 1846 while other
laws regulated internal trade in grain, meal, flour, bread, and meat until 1772.
These elements of mercantilism were essential elements of the early modern
state’s approach to economic oversight. Mercantilism helped to create the
wealth and economic conditions needed to industrialize while protecting the
power of elites from successful challenge until the eve of the Second Indus-
trial Revolution.
War was the crucible of government intervention in the economy. Great
Britain and France fought eight wars between 1688 and 1815 occupying
65 of the intervening 127 years. Britain spent an enormous proportion of
its military budget on its navy. The navy defended the island nation from
invasion and protected British trade and the empire while menacing enemy
coastlines and colonies. England’s small regular army was backed up by local
militia. The militia were of limited value in repelling an invasion, but had
significant capability to repress domestic threats by workers or rebellion in
Scotland and Ireland.
The sheer number and scope of these wars forced the British state to tax
and spend on a scale beyond that of any contemporary government. In the
17th century, the British state collected 2–4 percent of national income and
6 percent in wartime. For the era 1689–1815, that figure jumped to 12 per-
cent. Between 1670 and 1815, total revenue from taxes increased by a factor
of 17 while national income tripled. Great Britain was the most highly taxed
society of the time, but other competing states like France, Spain, Prussia,
and the Dutch Republic took many steps down this same path.
Despite this huge increase in tax revenue, the English state could only af-
ford to fight this series of increasingly expensive, world-spanning conflicts by
Role of The State 81

borrowing huge sums through the London capital market. The Bank of Eng-
land was created in 1694 to help the government manage and consolidate its
debt and to lower the rate of interest paid by the state. After the defeat of
Napoleon, interest payments on government debt amounted to 56 percent
of the state’s income. A further 31 percent was spent on defense. There can
be no doubt that, like its chief European competitors, Great Britain was a
military regime. The state’s development of efficient and effective means of
borrowing money and limiting interest charges helped Britain win wars, slow
the economic gains of its rivals, gain colonies, and allow investments in in-
dustrialization and transportation to be made.
The British state was also increasingly willing to deploy first law and then
force to support the interests of entrepreneurs. Local justices of the peace
controlled wages and prices: they generally rejected salary demands not linked
to rising prices. The enclosure of fields was mandated by Act of Parliament,
and resistance to the division of common land was overcome by force. The
same process accompanied the creation of the turnpike trusts when they in-
fringed on or replaced local interests. Labor was also controlled more thor-
oughly than in the past. The system of lengthy apprenticeships was maintained
and strengthened and the traditional rights of skilled workers to resist the
demands of their employers were steadily eroded until they were finally elimi-
nated in 1809–1814. Combinations of workers were outlawed while combi-
nations of entrepreneurs were encouraged. Strikes by miners and industrial
workers were broken up by force whenever property was threatened. The
English legal system also enforced social control in dealing with vagrancy and
unemployment. Since many jobs were seasonal, a very high proportion of
workers were unemployed at some point in an annual cycle. Those who did
not have a current means of support could be sent back to the parish of their
birth where they were put into a workhouse, imprisoned in a house of correc-
tion, or even transported to Georgia or later Australia. This Poor Law, like
most of the actions of the British state in the 18th century, maintained or
even increased the servility and dependence of the lower socioeconomic ranks
of English society. This dependence probably made labor more productive,
thereby contributing to economic growth, but it did little to achieve social
peace.
Government resources were also used to improve transportation. Britain
invested directly to develop ships, docks, harbors, and weapons. Turnpikes and
canals were created or upgraded thanks to government-granted monopolies.
The state also spent heavily to attract skilled workers and inventors from abroad
with monetary incentives and tax breaks. For technologies or craft practices
that could not be so acquired, the state resorted to commissioning and/or
rewarding industrial spies. From the 17th century, a patent law protected the
82 Role of The State

inventions or improvements of innovators. In imitation of continental acade-

mies, King Charles II supported the establishment of the Royal Society to ex-
plore the world of science in 1660. Although much of this sort of activity was
“behind the scenes,” the mercantilist British state was an effective supporter of
economic development throughout the period.
The fundamental dependence of 18th-century economic growth on state
action has been obscured by the gigantic shadow cast by the immensely influ-
ential work of Adam Smith. For far too many economists, economic histori-
ans, and politicians, Smith’s well-known attack on mercantilism and state
involvement in the economy in favor of a more individualistic focus on indus-
try and free trade has assumed the status of dogma. That Smith was criticizing
rather than describing contemporary practice appears to have been either for-
gotten or deliberately overlooked. No matter how Smith has been read by his
successors, it must not be forgotten that the British state fostered the eco-
nomic preconditions for industrialization in a thoroughly exploitative, mer-
cantilist economic system that it dominated.

ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS The Society for the Encouragement of

Arts, Manufacture, and Commerce was founded in 1754 by William Shipley.
The society first met at Rawthmell’s Coffee House, Covent Garden, London.
The group was based on Irish and French models of organizations devoted to
philosophical exploration, the arts, and the development and spread of
knowledge regarding useful machines and agricultural techniques. Among its
11 founding members were two high-ranking nobles, Lord Romney and Vis-
count Folkestone; two medical doctors; three gentlemen deeply interested in
science; and a watchmaker, with Shipley who earned his living as a dancing
master. The organization ran on dues collected from the members and stayed
largely independent of the government until the society was granted a royal
charter in 1847 and received the right to use the term “royal” in 1908. Today
is it known as the Royal Society of Arts or RSA and has over 27,000 members
in the English-speaking world and in Belgium.
Dedicated to the fulfillment of Enlightenment ideals of social justice
through practical innovation, the society brought together scientists, tinker-
ers, industrialists, government officials, and other like-minded people from a
broad spectrum of social groups. The society also awarded a variety of prizes,
which allowed the group to encourage certain types of invention while recog-
nizing excellence. During the age of the Industrial Revolution, prizes were
offered in six categories: Agriculture; Manufacture; Chemistry; Mechanics;
Polite Arts; and Colonies and Trade. From 1783, the group also published a
newsletter Transactions, which disseminated its goals and accomplishments
widely. The society took the lead in many projects for the greater good of
commerce, industry, and the populace as a whole such as organizing the Crys-
tal Palace Exhibition of 1851.
This group was only the most well-known and influential of such learned
groups, which included the Royal Society that focused on science, and a host
of provincial groups. Taken together, learned societies encouraged the inter-
action of those interested in science, technology, and their applications with
government officials while spreading both theoretical and practical knowl-
edge. This interaction played a hotly debated role in boosting British techno-
logical creativity and in British industrial leadership. The issues in dispute
concern whether Britain enjoyed unique institutions that encouraged the
communication and collaboration between those interested in the practical
application of science and those devoted to the development of knowledge
for its own sake.

SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION The Second Industrial Revo-

lution began around 1850 and continued until the outbreak of World War I
in 1914. In a major shift from the first Industrial Revolution, “pure” science
played a major role in developing new industries—in large part because of
growing interaction among scientists, entrepreneurs, and state officials. Steel,
chemicals, and electricity were the characteristic industries of the Second
Industrial Revolution as textiles, iron, and coal had been for the first indus-
trial transformation. The Second Industrial Revolution was spearheaded by
Germans and Americans, taking over leadership from the British and French.
If the original Industrial Revolution inaugurated modern economic life, the
second placed western industrial society at the apex of a globe-spanning eco-
nomic system.
The Second Industrial Revolution built on the foundations of the first.
States and universities sponsored institutions to systematize scientific knowl-
edge, particularly in electricity and chemistry. These institutions focused on
the practical application of science to industry. As technical education spread
widely and deeply, manufacturing was transformed as the production process
was broken down through the division of labor and machines were developed
to replace or improve on human labor as in the American System of Produc-
tion. The Second Industrial Revolution substituted capital for labor as hu-
man physical skills were replaced by improvements in management and
design. This trend culminated in the emergence of the factory assembly line
early in the 20th century.
The Second Industrial Revolution capitalized on the improvements in
transportation made by railroads, steamships, canals, and turnpikes. The world
shrank as the telegraph and telephone permitted communication across vast
distances, even across the oceans. During the period between 1870 and 1914,
raw materials from the hinterlands of the European and North American
continents became readily available while western political power—in large
measure based on burgeoning military might generated by industrialization—
stretched across Africa and much of Asia, bringing new areas into the global
economy. People moved within and between countries as never before. A
Second Industrial Revolution 85

world-spanning division of labor subordinated the economies of colonies and

western dependencies to the industrial centers of Europe, North America, and
later Japan.
Population growth, urbanization, and migration fueled demand as con-
sumerism spread throughout global society. Manufacturing techniques im-
proved sufficiently to put many goods within financial reach of huge segments
of the population. Britain and to a lesser degree France provided the capital
for industrialization in most of the follower nations as governments sought to
contain the worst excesses of domestic exploitation through legislation to
avoid political unrest that might threaten the control of elites. States also in-
vested heavily in economic development, both directly by funding railroads
and indirectly by supporting technical education. Producers formed cartels to
guarantee profits and maintain market share while minimizing the risks of the
trade cycle.
The Second Industrial Revolution emerged during an era of increasingly
free trade. In the aftermath of the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty in 1860,
international commercial barriers fell drastically or disappeared. However,
following the onset of a global depression in 1873 based on the overproduc-
tion of many commodities resulting in deflation, tariffs began to reappear
toward the end of the decade. Only after the return of economic good times
near the end of the century did trade barriers again begin to fall. Control over
resources and access to markets were thus important issues in most countries
and were used to justify the nearly complete control over other parts of the
planet exercised by western and westernized economies.
Because industrialization came relatively late to the United States, many
Americans confuse the results of the Second Industrial Revolution with those
of the first. It is important, however, to recognize that these are distinct phe-
nomena based on very different factors. Just as Britain had its era of industrial
glory based on unique, unrepeatable circumstances, so too did the United
States. The transition to a Second Industrial Revolution demonstrates the
evolution of the global economy and the dangers of assuming that industrial
predominance will last.

SLATER, SAMUEL Samuel Slater was an English emigrant who became

known as the “father of the American Industrial Revolution.” Slater was a
self-nominated industrial spy who took advantage of the rewards offered by
various U.S. states to provide the latest model cotton textile machines from
England. Between 1790 and 1835, Slater and his partners set up mills that
were the first of their kind in North America, though they had existed for
generations in Europe. They could not compete internationally; they sur-
vived only because of a high degree of government financial support and tariff
protection. Slater and his partners also benefited greatly from the conflict
between the United States and the United Kingdom that ultimately led to
war in 1812–1815.
Born in England to a wealthy family, Samuel Slater (1768–1835) was
apprenticed to Jedediah Strutt, one of Richard Arkwright’s first and most
important partners. From Strutt, one of the largest textile manufacturers in
Britain, Slater learned both management and the technical side of manufac-
turing. In 1789, he finished his apprenticeship, which included a stint as a
mill supervisor, and decided to emigrate to the United States. He was drawn
by the hefty bounties offered by several American states to anyone who could
bring or build the latest model cotton textile machines. Slater arrived in New
York, but he was disgusted by the machines and organization of the group
that offered the bounty. Instead, he moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to
work with Quaker merchant Moses Brown who had employed a number of
skilled workmen and constructed several prototype machines.
Slater rejected Brown’s existing designs. Instead, from memory, he drew up
plans for the Arkwright carding machine and spinning frame and then had
the craftsmen assembled by Brown build the machines. The mill began op-
eration in 1790 with workers walking on treadmills to power the machines;
the following year, this plant became the first U.S. factory to produce cotton
yarn with water-powered machinery. It operated on the British pattern:
12 hours a day, 6 days a week with a heavy complement of child laborers aged
7 to 12 who worked for very low wages. Slater became a partner, but soon
Slater, Samuel 87

formed another firm that built a separate mill in Pawtucket. Both mills made
yarn that was sold to independent weavers. These enterprises were kept going
by the embargo on British goods imposed in 1807. The ban enabled Ameri-
cans to replace temporarily the British in many domestic markets. Later,
Slater founded a number of other mills for both cotton and wool scattered
around New England, including one at the modestly named Slatersville (now
part of North Smithfield), Rhode Island. These water-powered mills con-
tained both spinning and weaving operations within the same factory build-
ing and became quite widespread after 1815.
Slater elaborated a deeply paternalistic approach to finding and disciplin-
ing labor. He recruited young, unmarried women and recent immigrants. At
Slatersville, families lived and worked in the community surrounding the
mill. Tenement houses, a store, and even a Sunday school (the first one in a
factory in the United States) were provided for the workforce by the com-
pany. In the aftermath of the 1829 downturn, however, Slater lost control
of several of his mills. To restore his business prospects, Slater increasingly
focused on finding (often short-term) competitive advantages and then maxi-
mizing profit before moving on. To achieve greater efficiency on the model of
Robert Owen, Slater and his sons loosened their paternalist control over the
labor force.
Slater took advantage of government incentives and tariff protection, the
financial resources of Quaker merchants, and the machine-making skills of
Yankee artisans along with the strong work habits of their laborers to become
one of the most successful men in New England. When the business environ-
ment became rockier, his managerial practice evolved to become more effi-
cient. Slater, like his models Arkwright and Strutt, was not a technical
innovator; rather, he was an economic opportunist whose most important
expertise was in management where he became the prototype for a new, more
capitalistic businessman.

“Samuel Slater: Father of the American Industrial Revolution.” Available online at

http://www.woonsocket.org/slaterhist.htm.
Tucker, Barbara M. Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry,
1790–1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984.

SOCIALISM Socialism emerged in the first half of the 19th century as a

response to the inequalities inherent in the political system that facilitated the
Industrial Revolution. Early socialists were usually intellectuals rather than
workers; they sought a restructuring of society to replace the competition
integral to individualism and exploitation with egalitarianism and coopera-
tion. As socialists developed their ideas, the common element was a social and
economic system distinguished by social or collective ownership—often
through the medium of control of the state—of the means of production
along with cooperative management of the economy. Socialism also refers to
the political theories and movements that sought to establish such a system.
During the age of the Industrial Revolution, the many varieties of socialism
were marginal movements with little impact and few followers, but these
groups became a far greater threat to the status quo after 1850.
The term “socialism” first appeared in print in 1803 in Italian: it only
entered public discussion in the 1820s and 1830s. The first generation of
socialist thinkers included Englishman Robert Owen (1771–1858) and two
Frenchmen: Charles Fourier (1772–1837) and Claude-Henri de Rouvray,
count of Saint-Simon (1760–1825), among a host of others concerned with
the socioeconomic transformation then well underway. Although a large
number of “socialist” groups emerged, the most influential adopted and
adapted the ideas of Owen, Fourier, and Saint-Simon. These thinkers and
their followers were frustrated by the growing inequality of the industrial
system in which factory owners grew rich while working-class families had to
deploy the labor of women and children to complement the wages of the
“breadwinner” not just to keep body and soul together, but to afford a few of
the goods associated with the Consumer Revolution. In good Enlightenment
fashion, the early socialists hoped to convince economic elites to forego vol-
untarily maximizing their profits in order to allow workers to lead better lives.
Such optimism about human nature proved to be one of the major limiting
factors in the early socialist movement, leading German socialist theorist Karl
Marx (1818–1883) to dismiss these dedicated reformers and their followers
as ineffectual “utopians” with no grasp on reality whose ideas had no practical
application.
Saint-Simon, an aristocrat who renounced his title to support the French
Revolution, advocated public control of the means of production in order
to minimize inequality. Marx built on Saint-Simon’s ideas that the form of
Socialism 89

economic relations differentiated the various forms of societies and that history
demonstrated an enduring cyclical pattern of construction and deconstruc-
tion. Fourier was born into the French middle class: he rejected industrializa-
tion as harmful both to individuals and to communities. He preferred
agricultural societies in which most goods were made in the home for domestic
use because they were more likely to enable humans to master their passions
and attain what he referred to as a natural state of harmony. Owen had several
advantages over his French colleagues. He was a self-made man who amassed a
considerable fortune as a textile entrepreneur, most notably at New Lanark,
Scotland, where he treated workers with respect. Owen put a number of his
ideas into practice before nearly driving himself into bankruptcy with the es-
tablishment of what was intended to be a self-sustaining, cooperative commu-
nity at New Harmony, Indiana. In the aftermath of this community’s failure in
1827, Owen devoted the rest of his life to spreading socialist ideas and lobby-
ing for government-sponsored reforms on behalf of the working classes.
Few factory workers endorsed the ideas of these early socialists. Artisans
whose livelihoods were under assault by mechanization were, by far, the most
likely supporters of socialist ideas until the 1870s. Perhaps factory workers
found the ideas too optimistic, too abstract, expressed in ways that their lim-
ited educations made difficult to grasp, or the plans were too far removed
from their own realities, but for whatever reason(s), early socialism attracted
few workers. This remained the case even after Marx and his collaborator,
Prussian-born English industrialist Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) introduced
an explicitly political element into the movement with The Communist Mani-
festo (1848), calling for an immediate social revolution that would turn soci-
ety upside down. Despite this clarion call, throughout the 19th century, many
and probably most socialists limited themselves to advocating for industrial
reform to curb the excesses of the capitalist system. Only after European gov-
ernments inaugurated their own reforms at the height of British dominance,
limited as they were, did significant numbers of factory workers espouse
socialism.
Socialism emerged as a bogeyman for elites and the middle classes who
sought ways to prevent calls for change in defense of the status quo. Although
Owen and Fourier explicitly disavowed political action on behalf of their
ideas, and the Saint-Simonians did not go beyond lobbying, the fundamental
challenge of socialism—its focus on equality, collective ownership, and
cooperation—threatened the position of economic elites dependent on the
exploitation of workers and their inherited positions in society that provided
them ownership of the means of production. By thoroughly scapegoating
socialist ideas and practices, elites and their agents sought to avoid change
and protect their positions. In the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848,
90 Standard of Living

workers increasingly recognized that the middle classes would not act consist-
ently in their interest, which eventually led many to adopt more radical, even
revolutionary, means of achieving change. However, the adoption of Marxist
ideas on the need for a revolution to remake society belongs to the era of the
Second Industrial Revolution, not the first. The emergence of socialism in the
early 19th century was a harbinger that the working classes would not accept
the growing inequality of industrial society forever.

STANDARD OF LIVING The standard of living refers to the bulk of the

population’s well-being. In the context of the 18th and 19th centuries, the
term is contentious because a significant proportion of commentators both
then and now assert that the British working classes’ standard of living im-
proved dramatically because of the Industrial Revolution. Recent research has
corrected this view by demonstrating that almost all the gains in workers’
standard of living came after 1830, more than 50 years after the onset of
industrialization.
Britain’s output grew impressively during this era, partly in response to a
burgeoning population. Because few industries grew as fast as cotton textiles,
metallurgy, or even woolens, Britain as a whole actually experienced relatively
slow growth, punctuated by periodic crises during the critical era from 1780
to 1850. As a result, average living standards rose gradually and tentatively in
the heyday of industrialization. For the entire period, the standard of living
Standard of Living 91

increased, at most, by 30 percent. Since this improvement followed a period

of falling wages in the first decades of industrialization (1760–1780), indus-
trialization did not improve British living standards—especially for the bur-
geoning working classes—as much or as rapidly as many would like to believe.
The Industrial Revolution imposed harsh sacrifices on the typical household
economy.
Real wages increased about 16 percent from 1760 to 1820, an increase that
is distorted by the decline of average real family incomes by approximately
14 percent from 1791–1795 to 1816–1820. From that point, real wages im-
proved a dramatic 41 percent from 1820 to 1850. These improved real wages
were partially the result of a vastly extended work week. Without formal vaca-
tions, in 1760, an average employed British adult labored nearly 50 hours a
week. By 1850, when nearly half of British workers labored in mines, mills,
workshops, and factories, that figure had climbed to more than 61 hours a
week. Women and children had to work outside the home to survive because
an adult male often did not earn enough to support a family. Pushed by
declining hourly wages and increasing hours of labor for men, perhaps
two-thirds of married women earned wages or had an occupation in the late
18th century. In 1851, census data indicates that 36 percent of children aged
10–14 worked for wages after half a century of legislative efforts to curb that
practice.
The fall in real wages was masked by the increased labor of the entire fam-
ily. This intensification of labor was also sufficient to support a large increase
in consumption of about 75 percent in 1750–1850. Workers’ growing par-
ticipation in the Consumer Revolution gave the impression of an improving
standard of living. This was the “Industrious Revolution” in operation.
Other measures tell a more ambivalent story. The height of British army
recruits—a unique source that provides insight into nutrition and health
conditions—declined by 1.3 percent. In 1850, the average British male was
probably shorter than he had been a century before. Continental Europe did
not experience a similar drop. Such data might be explained in part by greatly
increased consumption of sugar, tobacco, and alcohol. British life expectancy
at birth had stood at 42.7 years in 1581, but fell rapidly until it reached a
mere 25.3 years in 1726. By 1826, it was back to 41.3 years before declining
to 39.5 years in 1850. Of course, some groups enjoyed consistently longer
lives, but as a whole, mid-Victorian British life expectancy was less than it had
been under Queen Elizabeth. This data suggests that there were serious short-
comings to the British standard of living during the Industrial Revolution.
The standard of living must also take into account the speedy expansion of
the British population from approximately 6.3 million in 1761 to 14.9 mil-
lion in 1841. This expansion was most rapid from 1791 to 1831. Such growth
92 Standard of Living

was particularly impressive given the heavy emigration from Britain to the
colonies and to the United States as well as the long years of war that punctu-
ated this era. Declining mortality played an important role, especially for
infants and young children, but increasing fertility was a greater factor in the
impressive increase in British population. People had more children for
several reasons. The mean age of marriage fell from 28 for males and 26 for
females in the decade 1680–1689 to 25 for men and 23 for women in 1830–
1837. Women increasingly expected to marry. Married women were also
slightly more likely to have children and to minimize the spacing between
births. These shifts in nuptiality were an essential component of the increased
fertility of the period. Greater willingness to have children and the likelihood
of those children surviving are a vital measure of the positive evolution of the
standard of living during the age of the Industrial Revolution.
Not only was the population growing, but people also moved to urban
areas. The proportion of urban dwellers more than doubled from 21 percent
in 1750 to 45 percent a century later. Cities offered jobs, access to educa-
tional opportunities, and entertainment among many other familiar benefits,
but at the same time they were centers of disease, lawlessness, and poverty
where life expectancy was quite low and falling during most of the first Indus-
trial Revolution. Only after 1850 did governments begin to deal with these
difficult problems with manifest advantages for the standard of living of the
British people.
In short, the British Industrial Revolution relied on exploiting the working
classes, lowering real wages, forcing men to work far longer hours, and requir-
ing women and children to work outside the home to support the family.
Although fertility improved, child mortality declined, and consumption in-
creased, the falling height of army recruits and sinking overall mortality sug-
gests that the effects of industrialization had a generally negative effect on the
British people’s, much less the working classes’, standard of living. Only once
Britain had enjoyed at least two generations as the “workshop of the world”
and defeated rival France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars did the
benefits of the Industrial Revolution “trickle down” to the population at large.
It is the period after the first Industrial Revolution when most of the gains in
the standard of living stemming from the Industrial Revolution were enjoyed,
by the great-grandchildren (or even great-great grandchildren) of those work-
ers who toiled in the first factories that touched off this revolutionary
transformation.

Pollution, Health, and Environment; Role of the State; Second Industrial

Revolution; Socialism; Workforce; Document: “Living and Working in Man-
chester”; Document: “Conditions in the Mines”; Document: “Adam Smith on
the Division of Labor”; Document: “The State of the Poor”

Further Reading
Daunton, Martin J. Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain
1700–1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Griffin, Emma. A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution. Houndsmills, UK:
Palgrave, 2010.
King, Steven, and Geoffrey Timmins. Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: Eng-
lish Economy and Society, 1700–1850. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2001.
Nye, John V. C. “Standards of Living and Modern Economic Growth.” Available
online at http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/StandardsofLivingandModern
EconomicGrowth.html.
Steckel, Richard H. “A History of the Standard of Living in the United States.” Avail-
able online at https://eh.net/encyclopedia/a-history-of-the-standard-of-living-in
-the-united-states/.

STEAM ENGINE This external combustion machine uses heat in the

form of expanding or rapidly condensing steam to generate mechanical work.
Although the potential of boiling water to produce power had been known
since the first century CE, only in the 17th century were practical, though
highly inefficient, means invented to put this knowledge into practice. James
Watt’s various improvements turned a machine used primarily as a pump to
remove water from mines into the workhorse of the Industrial Revolution.
Steam engines were the critical invention in creating the factory system and
enabling the development of steam-driven transportation that characterized
the 19th century.
In 1606, a Spanish inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont invented
a rudimentary steam engine to pump water. Thomas Savery patented a
pump with hand-operated valves that sucked water from mines using con-
densed steam to create a vacuum in 1698. Thomas Newcomen added a pis-
ton that separated condensing steam from the water in 1712. It was used in
a coal mine, where fuel was essentially free. A few other such “atmospheric
engines” were built where similar conditions applied, but it was clear that
major improvements were necessary for steam engines to become widely
used.
Some of Britain’s best engineers worked to improve the steam engine.
The most successful ones had experience designing and building precision
94 Steam Engine

tools. In the 1760s, John Smeaton (1724–1792), an instrument maker from

Leeds, upgraded existing designs, doubling their efficiency. James Watt
(1736–1819), an instrument maker from Glasgow, spent two decades tinker-
ing with the engine, solving several technical problems. His improvements
saved a huge amount of coal and permitted the machine to be moved, which
made the steamboat and the railroad possible. British entrepreneurs and
craftsmen rapidly applied an upgraded engine he built in 1778 to run all sorts
of industrial machines. Constantly improved, the steam engine was essential
to successful mechanization and to the emergence of the factory system.
However, Watt’s engines were too large and did not produce enough pressure
to run a steam-powered vehicle. Only after another Englishman, Richard Tre-
vithick, developed such an engine in 1800 did it become possible to build
steamboats and railroads, the era’s most vital advances in transportation.
The development of the modern factory is often linked to the steam en-
gine. This is not accurate as many early factories instead relied on water
power. It was not until 1783 that steam power was first used in a factory,
albeit indirectly. Richard Arkwright’s Manchester mill used a Newcomen en-
gine to pump water to drive the machines in the dry season when the water
pressure was insufficient to turn the waterwheel. The first fully steam-driven
factory was at Papplewick, Nottinghamshire, which began operation in 1785.
Watt wrote to his partner, Matthew Boulton, “If you come home by way of
Manchester, please do not seek orders for cotton-mill engines, because I hear
that there are so many mills erecting on powerful streams in the North of
England, that the trade must soon be overdone, and consequently our labour
may be lost.” Other sources of power did not disappear or even fade away
even after the efficiency of steam engines improved.
For decades, steam did not represent a huge improvement over other
sources of power. All but a few of the 496 Boulton and Watt steam engines
sold by that firm produced only 15–16 horsepower per hour. They were lim-
ited by the current state of metalwork, which could not fabricate parts capable
of withstanding greater steam pressure. Thus, for more than 30 years, a steam
engine did not provide appreciably more power than wind or water could
generate. Until the dawn of the 19th century, the steam engine’s great advan-
tage was its mobility and its independence of the weather. However, the enor-
mous investment in steam engines and the mechanization it permitted did
encourage a round-the-clock use of machinery. Constant employment of ex-
pensive machines by two shifts of workers had dramatic effects on total out-
put and heightened the need to discipline the labor force to get them to accept
permanent night work. The true age of steam in manufacturing did not begin
until after 1800 when Watt’s patent expired. By 1835, three-quarters of the
machines in the cotton industry were run by steam.
Tariffs and Excise Taxes 95

In addition to its traditional spheres of agriculture and mining and its vital
places in textile mills and iron foundries, steam power was applied to run a
host of other machines. Matthew Boulton set up six presses to make coins for
Britain’s Mint. Brewers and canal masters used steam engines primarily as
pumps. Others were interested in transportation. William Murdock, a Boul-
ton and Watt employee, devised a steam-driven wheeled carriage. In 1801,
Henry Bell began to experiment with a steamboat [based on successful French
experiments undertaken in 1783], and a decade later, he established steamer
service on Scotland’s Clyde River. Steamships required ever-improving pres-
sure to supply the motive power. These lessons were applied later to the steam
locomotive, which was the key to building a network of railroads and com-
menced a revolution in land transport.
The constant improvement to the steam engine that took place in the 18th
and 19th centuries relied on the experience of artisans and iron makers with
using coal as fuel and their willingness to experiment with new machines.
The result of this technological creativity was the coal-driven steam engine,
which ultimately placed almost unlimited and reliable power at humanity’s
disposal, replacing the dependence on human or animal power. The steam
engine was the characteristic machine of the Industrial Revolution.

TARIFFS AND EXCISE TAXES Tariffs are taxes—either set at a general

rate or on specific goods—on imports and exports that are generally collected
at the border. An excise tax applies to particular commodities or products
96 Tariffs and Excise Taxes

made and sold within a country’s borders. They are usually assessed either at
the point of production or at the point of sale. Taken together, tariffs and
excise taxes were major sources of revenue for all European states. As part of
the approach to economic policymaking usually referred to as mercantilism,
governments used these fiscal instruments to favor some industries and pro-
tect certain producers. The prevalence of these levies demonstrates the limita-
tions in practice of the economic principles articulated by Adam Smith that
free trade accelerated industrial growth and economic realities. Tax policy was
one of the most important ways that the state influenced economy and soci-
ety during the age of the Industrial Revolution.
In the 17th century, high tariffs encouraged European states to develop
their colonial empires and trading relations outside Europe to guarantee ac-
cess to raw materials, luxury goods, and markets. Tariffs also enabled manu-
facturers to make goods to substitute for imports like Indian calico cotton
cloth. European equivalents did not have to be internationally competitive;
they just had to be able to compete behind the government’s tariff walls. In
some places like Great Britain, imported grain was also highly taxed to pro-
tect the incomes of landowners who benefited from higher food prices. These
Corn Laws were first instituted in 1670 and amended frequently in the 18th
century, then reinstated fully in 1815, and remained in force until 1846. At
the same time, mercantilist governments realized that excise taxes stifled ini-
tiative and encouraged smuggling. They therefore moved to reduce or elimi-
nate these duties whenever possible. During the 18th century, state officials
lowered both tariff and excise rates to encourage trade and industry. The chief
exception was Britain where the excise emerged as the government’s chief
means of paying off its enormous wartime debts.
The ebb and flow of customs and excise rates can best be explained through
the lens of political economy. Governments maintained, increased, or re-
duced rates for fundamentally political reasons rather than strictly economic
motives. For most of the 18th century, the British excise on goods like beer,
malt, hops, soap, salt, candles, and leather brought in at least 40 percent of
the state’s total revenue and, in some years, as much as 55 percent. Although
tariff rates were generally on the wane, improved collection and the broadly
based expansion of trade volumes meant that receipts doubled over the course
of the century to about one-third of revenue. British tariff rates on most
goods were exceptionally low before the series of wars with France forced the
government to raise vast sums to support its military adventures. In 1689,
tariff rates were 5 percent on most goods, rising to 15 percent in 1704 and
25 percent in 1759. Further increases stalled in 1786–1792 before continu-
ing their ascent. By 1820, tariff rates reached 60 percent before falling gradu-
ally to about 20 percent in 1850. Given the dependence of the British
Tariffs and Excise Taxes 97

manufacturing economy on imported raw materials and the island nation’s

reliance on exports, elevated customs rates—much higher than Britain’s clos-
est economic rivals such as France and the Netherlands—during the era of
industrial take-off suggests that Britain might have grown faster and with far
less hardship for the laboring classes if it had practiced what Adam Smith
preached. The loss of 13 North American colonies largely due to trade policy
is also surely relevant. Lobbying and the operation of patronage networks
played dominant roles in determining the specifics of trade policy throughout
the era. Free trade was a goal (for some) but certainly never a reality during
the first Industrial Revolution.
European states and the United States all relied on the tariff and the excise
for the bulk of government revenue. In the 1780s, as industrialization got
under way, tariff rates continued to drop, most concretely with the Anglo-
French Commercial Treaty of 1786 that lowered taxes on many items, in
large measure because many governments led by France saw closer trade ties
as a way of avoiding the animosities that led so frequently to war. On the
continent, excise levies also fell, especially in the 1790s as France eliminated
guilds and economic privileges that fragmented the national market. The suc-
cess of French arms led to the eradication of those same institutions through-
out western and central Europe. Despite their reputation as free-traders,
Britain went in a different, more regressive direction, distorting the market by
heightening excise rates on certain goods and maintaining high tariff walls to
protect infant industries and elite incomes.
British reliance on regressive taxation while their competitors were remov-
ing barriers to competition challenges many assumptions about the process of
industrialization. This situation also flies in the face of what most economists
consider best practice. British political economy provides the best explana-
tion for why it bucked the trend and why their strategy worked. The ability
of British elites—seconded by the state—to dominate their workers helps to
explain why food prices could remain so high without causing riots and rebel-
lions. The tremendous benefits of Britain’s colonial empire and global com-
mercial ties, along with the negative effects of Revolutionary politics and
military defeat that stifled continental industrialization for at least a genera-
tion, also played major roles in this situation. Achieving the highest possible
rates of economic growth was never the goal of British political economy
during the Industrial Revolution. Preserving the power of entrenched elites
and special interests was, as the role of tariffs and excise taxes demonstrates
concretely.
In the second wave of industrializing nations like the United States and the
German lands, excise taxes declined rapidly as both sources of revenue and as
tools of state economic policy. Tariffs, however, remained high especially in
98 Transportation by Water

the United States to shelter infant industries and encourage import substitu-
tion. After 1815, the German lands of Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and
Hesse-Darmstadt suffered from the breakup of the French low-tax trading
zone developed by Emperor Napoleon I. They recognized that lowered barri-
ers could encourage commerce and industry. From a hesitant beginning
in 1818, Prussia sponsored a customs union, the Zollverein, that by 1834
encompassed German-speaking Europe (other than Austria). The Zollverein’s
moderate tariff rates, about half of the United Kingdom’s, recognized that
retaliation for high rates was a major threat for economies dependent on both
exports and imports that were not in the dominant financial and military
position enjoyed by the British in the first half of the 19th century.
It is highly significant that concrete movement toward genuine free trade
on the part of the first industrial nation occurred only at the very end of the
era. The abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 and a general lowering of tariff
rates led eventually to a free trade treaty between the United Kingdom and
France in 1860, which encouraged the elimination of trade barriers around
the world. The effects of free trade on industrialization, however, are part of
the story of the Second Industrial Revolution, not the first, which was strongly
affected by the persistence of excise taxes and high tariffs resulting from the
political economy of the various states undergoing industrialization.

TRANSPORTATION BY WATER Until the development of railroad net-

works after 1850, water transport was significantly cheaper than moving either
goods or people by land. Although states poured resources into improving
Transportation by Water 99

roads, building turnpikes and bridges, as well as other means of speeding and
easing transport by land, water transportation remained far easier and less ex-
pensive. Thus, access to navigable rivers or the seacoast was a major geographi-
cal advantage to trade and industry. The development of steamboats as well as
a network of canals along with improvements to ports and docks lowered costs
further and gave new areas access to the global economy. Improved water
transport enabled and supported the Industrial Revolution.
At the dawn of the 18th century, British road transport costs averaged
about 1 shilling per ton-mile, while shipping via inland waterways cost about
2.5 pence per ton-mile and coastal shipping even less. This difference of at
least 480 percent in shipping costs demonstrates the extreme expense of
transporting heavy or bulky goods by land and the benefits of extending and
improving transportation by water.
The island nature of the British state was a tremendous material resource.
It was also a key to building an effective transportation network. Even with-
out man-made improvements, nowhere in Britain is more than 70 miles from
the sea, and very few places are more than 30 miles from navigable water. The
Severn and the Trent river systems provide water carriage to the industrial
Midlands, and the Thames and the Wash Rivers allow easy transport to major
agricultural regions. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, the British state
seconded by numerous entrepreneurs expended considerable capital on im-
proving waterways, building canals, and ensuring access to the rivers and
streams as sources of industrial power. These efforts were not unique; in fact,
Britain was following in the wake of various continental countries in water
transport. But because of the compactness of the island, the reach of the navi-
gable rivers, and the plentiful ports, the improvements made to the British
water system were more effective in creating a national transportation net-
work and thus a national market than was possible on continental Europe.
The differential in shipping costs encouraged greater investment and
innovation in canal building. Cheap coal was so critical to the British econ-
omy that canals were constructed solely to transport it to market. Beginning
around 1750, canals were constructed along the Severn, Trent, and Mersey
Rivers and their tributaries. Later canals linked the river systems or facilitated
access to inland areas like southern Wales that had vital resources but no
outlet to the sea. With a few notable exceptions like the canal constructed
by the Duke of Bridgewater to link his estates to Manchester and Liverpool,
the construction of most canals was financed through joint-stock companies
to mobilize the enormous sums needed. By 1830, England and Wales
had 3,876 miles of inland canals, up from 1,399 in 1760. From 1780 to
1830, Britain’s canals contributed a 0.8 percent annual increase in transport
productivity.
100 Transportation by Water

In the United States, canals tied the interior of the continent to the Atlan-
tic Ocean and thus to the global economy. The most notable of the large
number of canals built during this era was the Erie Canal financed by the
state of New York. Stretching 363 miles, the canal was completed in 1825. By
joining the Hudson River and Lake Erie, the so-called Eighth Wonder of the
World crossed the Appalachian Mountains to link the port of New York with
markets hundreds of miles in the interior and vice versa. Because of the ex-
pense of building and maintaining canals, the vast distances to be traversed,
the limited tax revenues of local and state governments in the United States,
and the emergence of the railroad as a transportation rival, less than 3,400
miles of canals were built during the Industrial Revolution. Canals linked
several key hubs like the Great Lakes and the river systems of the Midwest,
but the exorbitant cost of building—an average of $37,580 per mile—
ensured the dominance of the railroad after 1830.
Harbors and rivers were dredged and deepened to permit additional or
further access. Even before the use of steam revolutionized ocean transport,
sailing ships were modified through different rigging and hull design to in-
crease carrying capacity while lessening the number of men needed to sail
the vessel. On ships entering London from Spain and Portugal, the tonnage
grew rapidly: the number of tons per man swelled from 7.9 in 1686 to 9.1 in
1726 and 12.6 in 1766. Shipping contributed a 1.4 percent annual increase
in transport productivity between 1780 and 1860. Gradual improvements
took England’s transportation network to a level beyond their European com-
petitors and set the stage for further advances once steam power was added to
the mix.
Steamboats were a major innovation in water transportation because they
could travel more easily upstream on rivers and were not dependent on the
weather or the tide. The possibility of using a steam engine to turn a wheel
outfitted with paddles to propel a boat or ship was tried in a number of places
in the 1780s concurrent with James Watt’s improvements to the machine.
Marquis Claude de Jouffroy first achieved the feat in 1783 on the Saône River
in France, building on an abortive attempt in 1776 by his mentor. Four years
later, American John Fitch made a more successful trial in the Delaware River
in a small boat using a rack of oars instead of a paddle wheel. In 1790, Fitch
and a partner Henry Voigt began service across the Delaware in an improved
craft. Although the business soon failed, Fitch got both U.S. and French pat-
ents for steamboats in 1791.
Robert Fulton is often credited with developing the steamboat, which is
clearly incorrect. Rather Fulton’s accomplishment was to make the steamboat
a commercial success. He received a monopoly from the state of New
York thanks to the support of powerful investor, banker, and diplomat Robert
Transportation by Water 101

Livingston (Fulton married Livingston’s niece.) His paddle-wheeled steam-

boat the Clermont’s five-day roundtrip voyage from New York City to Albany
in 1807, traveling five knots against the current, was a sensation. In conjunc-
tion with the Erie Canal, the steamboat made access to the American interior
significantly faster and cheaper. The first steamboat reached New Orleans by
way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in 1811. Soon steamboats traveled
regular routes on the Hudson, Delaware, James, Susquehanna, Ohio, Mis-
souri, and Mississippi Rivers (among many others) as well as their tributaries
and the Great Lakes. Thirteen years after Fulton’s feat, the number of steam-
boats plying the Ohio and Mississippi river systems reached 69; it rose to 187
in 1830 and 536 in 1850. Not only could steamboats go upriver far more
easily, but by the mid-1820s, they could also travel up to 100 miles a day,
whereas other boats could achieve 20 miles only under good conditions. The
emergence of steamboats also helped to spread knowledge of engines and
precision metallurgy, especially along the Ohio River and its tributaries. In
Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Cincinnati, and Louisville, industrial development
followed in the wake of this knowledge.
In Britain, the first commercial steamboat began operation in 1812, and
the continent followed soon afterward. Steamboats took over much of the
ferrying business across the Irish Sea and the Channel and along the coasts.
The first iron steamboat was launched in Britain in 1821, setting the stage for
greater military use of the steamboat. Beginning with Isambard Kingdom
Brunel’s Great Western, which steamed between Bristol and New York from
1838, steamships began to take over transoceanic routes. This evolution was
speeded greatly by the replacement of paddles with far more efficient screw
propellers in the 1840s. Between 1840 and 1860 the number of British steam-
ships increased fivefold and represented almost 10 percent of the nation’s total
shipping tonnage.
Improvements in water transportation had myriad effects. Important tech-
nical innovations were developed in shipbuilding, hull design, dredging and
river management, and the building of locks and sluices, among other things.
Engineers of all types and the construction industries in general benefitted
directly from the development of the transportation net. British financial
practice evolved to raise the sums needed to improve waterways, ports, and
shipping. Various organizations within British society learned to work to-
gether to link up the disparate parts of the network. Developing the technical
expertise of Britain’s human capital, mobilizing finance capital and evolving
forms of organization promoted the emergence of industrial society in the
late 18th century.
The economic implications of the improvements in British transportation
were dramatic. Despite the piecemeal character of canal building, with no
102 Waltham System

national planning either attempted or implemented, an island-spanning net-

work was created, linking the major urban centers together and reaching out
into most rural areas. Food prices fell, not by reducing the incomes of those
who worked the land, but by lowering market prices by reducing transport
costs. Most commodity prices also dropped, especially that of coal. The eco-
nomic benefits of an improved transportation network were so clear that entre-
preneurs relocated production to take advantage of natural resources, especially
if coal was available nearby. All in all, roads, canals, and shipping permitted
first the development and then the integration of British markets by substan-
tially lowering transaction costs. Polities with larger landmasses like France, the
United States, and Russia also benefited from enhanced water transport, but
their economic spurts came later, with the railroad. The establishment of a
cheap and reliable system of transportation by water was among the major
contributors to the emergence of an industrial revolution in Britain.

See also: Bridgewater, Duke of; Brunel, Isambard Kingdom; Coal; Credit;
Fitch, John; Iron and Steel; Mercantilism; Productivity; Railroads; Role of
the State; Steam Engine; Document: “The State of the Poor”

Further Reading
Daunton, Martin J. Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain
1700–1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Rodrigue, Jean-Paul. “The Industrial Revolution and Transportation (1800–1870).”
Available online at https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch2en/conc2en
/ch2c1en.html.
Szostak, Rick. The Role of Transportation in the Industrial Revolution: A Comparison of
England and France. Montreal: McGill University Press, 1991.
Ville, Simon. “Transport.” In The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain,
vol. 1, 1700–1860, ed. Roderick Floud and Paul Johnson. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2004.
“Waterways of England and Wales: Their History in Maps.” Available online at
http://www.canalmuseum.org.uk/history/maps.htm.

WALTHAM SYSTEM The Waltham system was created beginning in 1813

by the Boston Manufacturing Company in a purpose-built water-powered
cotton textile factory along the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts. It
was the brainchild of Boston merchant Francis Cabot Lowell (1775–1817).
The “system” was based on the use of a workforce that consisted overwhelm-
ingly of girls and young women who lived in company-owned boardinghouses
in exchange for dramatically lower wages. The Waltham factory’s financial
success inspired many imitators and led the company to create its very own
mill town in 1822: they named it Lowell. The Waltham system as expressed in
Waltham System 103

Lowell was productive until the Civil War and beyond. It set the stage for
what became known as the American System of Manufactures at the dawn of
the Second Industrial Revolution.
Lowell began the process of creating the Waltham system with a bit of
industrial espionage. During a two-year trip to England, he, like Samuel
Slater before him, attempted to memorize the design of an important textile
machine in the factories he visited, in this case, the power-loom. When he
returned to the United States, he and mechanic Paul Moody reconstructed
the machines, adapting them to the materials available. With a new textile
machine ready to put to use, Lowell and a group of partners founded the
Boston Manufacturing Company in 1813 to supply the demand that had
accumulated because of the British blockade during the War of 1812. As with
many European enterprises, they raised capital by selling shares mostly to
their friends, relations, and business acquaintances; the firm was ultimately
capitalized at an impressive $600,000. The model of a joint-stock or share-
holder corporation rapidly became widespread in American business.
Along the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts, Lowell constructed a
brand-new brick building. Water power was used to mechanize the conver-
sion of raw cotton into cloth. Although frequently given credit in the United
States for being the first to integrate the entire production process in a single
structure, the British, French, Belgians, and Prussians had established such
mills a generation before. As an integrated factory, Waltham was significant,
however, because it abandoned New England’s long-standing reliance on do-
mestic manufacture. Its corporate structure and management practices be-
came the model for other American factories, especially when the coarse
cotton cloth it produced sold well.
Nearly the mill’s entire labor force of 300 was composed of girls fresh from
the farm. The girls, some as young as 15, received much lower wages than
men, but they could live in company boardinghouses that were clean and
respectable—they even had official chaperones. For these girls, the factory
was an escape from the farm and a means of engaging in religious and educa-
tional activities, all while earning cash wages. The boardinghouses enabled
these girls to abandon part-time agricultural work: they were now industrial
workers. Enough Waltham-type mills were constructed that finding sufficient
girls to staff the factories became difficult. The original Waltham mill, how-
ever, had no problem attracting and keeping a loyal workforce.
Although Lowell himself died young, the system he created yielded ex-
tremely high profits. When the Boston Manufacturing Company expanded
and created its own mill town in 1822 along the Merrimack River, the direc-
tors named it after him. The company chose a site with a 30-foot waterfall
that could accommodate the largest waterwheels in North America; they were
104 Watt, James

capable of running in any season and in any weather. Ultimately, the indus-
trial city of Lowell housed 20 mills and 6,000 workers (5,100 of whom were
women aged 15–29). By the end of the 1820s, 10 of the largest corporations
in the United States made use of the hydraulic system established in Lowell.
In 1850, Lowell produced 20 percent of all U.S.-made cotton cloth.
When not at work (13 hours a day), the young women of Lowell, like their
Waltham progenitors, lived in dormitories, separated from their families,
where they were subject to disciplinary “moral instruction,” including the
requirement to “attend public worship . . . and to conform strictly to the rules
of the Sabbath.” They were also to keep clean, while avoiding both “ardent
spirits” and “frivolous and useless conversation.” This heavy-handed manage-
rial paternalism was a way of combating social opposition to women working
outside the home and of attracting laborers, but the positive aspects and rela-
tively high pay lasted only as long as the good times. When a sharp downturn
hit in the mid-1830s, Lowell’s vaunted mills also experienced labor problems
when management tried to cut wages by a quarter. Despite the ambivalent
elements of managerial practice of Lowell and the mills in Lowell, the
Waltham system’s innovations in management and factory organization be-
came the seed of what became known as the American system of production
and the foundation of U.S. industrial competiveness.

WATT, JAMES Scots-born James Watt was an instrument maker at the

University of Glasgow who dramatically improved the efficiency of the New-
comen steam engine, making it far more versatile, which permitted its appli-
cation to a wide variety of industrial uses. His 1769 patent was extended in
Watt, James 105

1775 by Act of Parliament to run until 1800. In partnership with Matthew

Boulton, Watt began manufacturing steam engines at the former’s Soho
Engineering Works located in Birmingham, England. Their well-built and
well-maintained, relatively reliable engines helped to build support for the
new machine and contributed greatly to Britain’s industrial prowess in the
initial phases of the Industrial Revolution.
James Watt was born in Greenlock, Scotland, in 1736. Largely self-
educated, he went to London to learn the trade of mathematical instrument
maker in 1755. Two years later he returned home to become instrument
maker for the University of Glasgow. Watt was called upon to repair the uni-
versity’s model of a Newcomen engine. During the 1760s, with the financial
support of English inventor John Roebuck, Watt experimented with improv-
ing the efficiency of the Newcomen engine, particularly the relationship of
the density of steam to factors such as temperature and pressure. With his first
patent issued in 1769, Watt overcame the wasteful use of steam by designing
a separate condensing chamber that both improved steam pressure on the
piston and removed the need to cool the cylinder, thereby preventing heat
loss and maximizing fuel use.
In 1775, Matthew Boulton (1728–1809) purchased Roebuck’s interest in
Watt’s engine and began to manufacture engines at the Soho Engineering
Works in Birmingham. Over the next several years, Watt developed other
innovations that he also patented. These included introducing pistons that
moved up and down (a reciprocal motion), which could drive machines such
as the power-loom through the addition of a rod and crank, which turned in
a circle (rotary motion). In addition, Watt implemented a double-acting sys-
tem in which steam was admitted alternately to both ends of the cylinder.
Finally, Watt developed a “steam governor” that automatically regulated the
speed of an engine by linking output to input, a concept fundamental to
automation.
Boulton and Watt’s first engine, installed in 1776, pumped water from a
coal mine. Engine manufacture made use of the Soho Works’ highly trained
metal craftsmen to fabricate the necessary precision parts. Thus, it took a
combination of sufficient capital, trained workers, many different types of
complex machines, and more than one inventive genius to dramatically im-
prove the steam engine.
Boulton and Watt benefitted from powerful state protection through the
patent system that gave them a monopoly, which they guarded fiercely. Both
Boulton and Watt also conceived of themselves as scientists, joining and par-
ticipating faithfully in several different learned societies such as the Society
of Arts and indulging their interest in many different subjects. This activity
enhanced their national and international reputations and assisted in the sale
106 Wedgwood, Josiah

of their engines both at home and abroad, while also ensuring their value to
the state that enforced their patent rights.
In 1800, Boulton and Watt’s patent rights expired and Watt retired from
business, ostensibly to devote himself solely to science. At this point, Britain
had more than 500 operational Boulton and Watt engines. Several dozen
more had been sold on the continent and a significant number of copies of
their design had been made in places where English patent rights could not
be enforced. As a sign of his importance to the study of efficiency and power,
an electrical unit of measurement, the watt, was named after him, which also
recognized that it had been Watt who coined the term “horsepower” to de-
scribe the energy output of an engine.
Watt’s designs and willingness to oversee the quality of the machines he
and Boulton built made his reputation as a scientist and inventor, which
helped him become known to subsequent generations as the inventor of the
steam engine, even though such engines had been in existence for generations
before Watt took out his first patent. Watt did, however, vastly increase the
efficiency of the steam engine, paving the way for further improvements and
facilitating the mechanization so fundamental to the Industrial Revolution.

See also: Coal; Credit; Division of Labor; Iron and Steel; Patent(s); Produc-
tivity; Role of the State; Royal Society of Arts; Transportation by Water;
Workforce

Further Reading
“James Watt.” Available online at http://www.famousscientists.org/james-watt/.
Lira, Cara. “Biography of James Watt.” Available online at http://www.egr.msu.edu
/~lira/supp/steam/wattbio.html.
Musson, A. E., and Eric Robinson. Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969.
Tann, Jennifer, ed. The Selected Papers of Boulton and Watt. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1981.
Tann, Jennifer, and M. J. Breckin. “The International Diffusion of the Watt Engine,
1775–1825.” Economic History Review 31 (1978): 541–64.

WEDGWOOD, JOSIAH English industrialist Josiah Wedgwood pio-

neered techniques in making pottery, in marketing his wares, and in using his
political connections to gain state support for his enterprise and for his indus-
try. Wedgwood was a new model entrepreneur who combined technological
expertise, managerial proficiency, and political acumen. During the Industrial
Revolution, successful entrepreneurship, especially in fields just starting to
undergo transformation, required this kind of varied skill set.
Wedgwood, Josiah 107

Wedgwood (1730–1795) was from a family of potters in Staffordshire. At

the age of nine, he went to work for his brother in the family business and
later served as his apprentice. When his brother refused to make him a part-
ner, Wedgwood left to work for others. By 1759, he opened his own pottery
works where he not only made the models and prepared the clay mixes but
also ran the business. Wedgwood opened a new factory named Etruria in
1769 near Stoke-on-Trent with partner Thomas Bentley.
At first, Wedgwood specialized in simple, durable, everyday earthenware.
His hearty cream-colored line was dubbed Queen’s ware after Queen Char-
lotte, who named him “Queen’s potter.” Wedgwood searched constantly for
product innovation to combat competition from the quality porcelain of Asia
and the royal Sèvres works in France. Declining sales of creamware led him to
experiment with barium sulphate from which he produced distinctive green
jasperware in 1773. This porcelain featured separately molded reliefs, usually
in white. The use of other color schemes like black on red to imitate Greek
vases required numerous trials and reliable kilns. As part of the experiments,
Wedgwood invented a pyrometer to correctly measure kiln temperature.
These experiments helped bring Wedgwood’s scientific accomplishments to
others: he joined several scientific groups including the Society of Arts to
publicize his work. Other decorative themes taken from ancient Roman and
Egyptian art made Wedgwood’s goods into pieces of art: his pottery went far
beyond being just useful objects. But he also produced table china with what-
ever fad of the day seemed likely to sell.
Wedgwood was also an innovator in factory organization, marketing, and
politics. He built a village for his workforce to live in. The village provided
decent housing, but ownership of their housing gave Wedgwood enormous
control over his workers’ lives and those of their families. Machines were in-
troduced to replace the potter’s wheel, but it was by increasing the division of
labor and in imposing a thoroughgoing industrial discipline that Wedgwood
developed cost and quality advantages. In exchange for relatively high wages,
he sought to “make such machines of the Men as cannot err,” a strategy that
helped to transform Staffordshire from a poor region of artisanal enterprises
into a rich manufacturing district.
To gain prestige and win customers, Wedgwood wooed royalty all over
Europe. He sent expensive masterpieces both to them and to British ambas-
sadors in their capitals, all prominently featuring his trademark. Beyond his
hopes for patronage, he figured that elites set the fashion for luxury goods and
influenced taste. Then he sold imitations to the masses in Europe and North
America at double the prices charged by his competitors. Another means
of catching the public’s eye was by establishing a luxurious showroom first
in London, then in other cities where the wealthy congregated. Traveling
108 Whitney, Eli

salesmen, another innovation for a manufacturer of luxury goods, blanketed

England, the Continent, the British Empire, and the United States. His
motto was “Fashion is infinitely superior to merit.”
Finally, Wedgwood gathered together like-minded manufacturers to lobby
the government for effective protection from foreign competition. A General
Chamber of Manufacturers (1785–1787), of which Wedgwood was the most
influential member, shaped a trade agreement in 1785 that subordinated Irish
industry to England’s and then successfully pressured the government to reopen
negotiations for even more favorable terms for British manufactures in a com-
mercial treaty signed with France the following year. At his death, Wedgwood
left a prodigious fortune of £500,000. His sons and nephew took over the busi-
ness, and Wedgwood products are still sold all over the globe. Wedgwood was
one of the first industrial pioneers to create an enduring brand through relent-
less control over labor, constant innovation, and persistent political influence.

WHITNEY, ELI Eli Whitney was an American inventor and manufacturer

whose contributions transformed the U.S. economy, both in the short and
the long run. Whitney invented the cotton gin, which enabled short-staple,
green-seed cotton produced with slave labor to spread throughout the South-
ern states. In the United States, he is usually given credit (incorrectly) for
elaborating how mass production of metal goods could be based on inter-
changeable parts. Whitney’s long career also demonstrated the vital role of the
state in entrepreneurial success or failure.
Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts, in 1765 and died
in 1825. His father was a well-to-do farmer who did not support his son’s
Whitney, Eli 109

decision to go to Yale College to become a teacher. After graduation in 1792,

he went to Georgia where he recognized the need for a machine to get rid of
seeds and clean dirt from raw green-seed cotton. His simple machine or “gin”
invented in 1793 yielded cotton ready to start the manufacturing process.
Whitney patented his machine the following year and went into business
with another Yale graduate named Phineas Miller to make his gins.
The new partnership was frustrated because Southern planters preferred to
pirate the machine rather than pay the fees owed to Whitney and Miller. The
partners brought numerous lawsuits (always in Southern states) against plant-
ers for patent infringement, always unsuccessfully. The business went bankrupt
in 1797 and might have deterred Whitney from further entrepreneurship.
The decision of several states, led by South Carolina in 1801 but including
North Carolina and Tennessee, to pay Whitney something for his invention,
saved him. The partners were paid considerable sums, almost all of which
went to settle their legal expenses and debts. Only two years later, the states
repudiated their arrangements and sued for the recovery of their money.
Whitney had to apply—successfully—to Congress for protection in 1804.
A major reason for congressional support is that Whitney had moved
on to a new project. In 1798, he contracted with the War Department to
manufacture 10,000 muskets at $13.40 each for the U.S. Army to be deliv-
ered by September 1800. The War Department needed Whitney because the
two national armories could not furnish the military’s needs in timely fash-
ion. Whitney was no better: it took him until January 1809 to fulfill his
contract.
The means by which Whitney undertook to manufacture the weapons
proved to be critical. This choice enabled him to keep his government con-
tracts and patronage. Instead of having a skilled worker make and assemble
each part or each weapon, Whitney strove to manufacture a set of uniform or
interchangeable parts that would fit any musket. Based on French examples,
Whitney invented a series of purpose-built machines, most notably a milling
machine that enabled unskilled laborers to make many key parts with a high
level of precision by following a template. In combination with armory prac-
tice, Whitney’s approach marked the beginning of what came to be known as
the American System of Production. Although Whitney’s muskets cost far
more than the weapons made by the national armories and he never achieved
complete interchangeability, he received a second order for 15,000 muskets
in 1811 and fulfilled the contract in two years.
Whitney’s career demonstrates that the federal government was unable to
fulfill its legal obligations to patent holders, but was willing to invest in tech-
nological advances. His experience also highlights the vital role of defense
spending in supporting key infant industries. In the first few decades of the
110 Workforce

19th century, other gunsmiths achieved Whitney’s goal and the principle of
uniformity with interchangeability as a target was implemented in the manu-
facture of clocks, locks, furniture, and hardware. This advance helped to
transform the economy of the Northeast as much as the cotton gin changed
the South.

CHILD ON INTEREST, TRADE, AND MONEY

Josiah Child (1630–1699) was an English merchant, economic writer, and gov-
ernment official whose ideas, particularly those in Brief Observations Concern-
ing Trade and Interest of Money (1668) powerfully influenced British
mercantilism, monetary policy, and colonial policy. After making a fortune as a
military supplier, Child became involved in the East India Company, becoming
its elected governor. He received a baronetcy for his efforts.

. . . The Profit That People [the Dutch] have received, and any other may
receive, by reducing the Interest of Money to a very Low Rate.
This in my poor opinion, is the CAUSA CAUSANS of all the other causes
of the Riches of that people; and that if Interest of Money were with us re-
duced to the same rate it is with them, it would in a short time render us as
Rich and Considerable in Trade as they are now, and consequently be of
greater dammage to them, and advantage to us, then can happen by the Issue
of this present War, though the success of it should be as good as we can wish,
except it end in their Total Ruine and Extripation.
To illustrate this, let us impartially search our Books, and enquire what the
State and condition of this Kingdom was, as to Trade and Riches, before any
Law concerning Interest of Money was made. The first whereof that I can
find, was Ann 1545, and we shall be Informed that the Trade of England then
was Inconsiderable, and the Merchants very mean and few: And that after-
wards, viz, Anno. 1635 with ten Years after Interest was brought down to
eight per cent there was more Merchants to be found upon the Exchange
116 The Industrial Revolution

worth each One thousand Pounds and upwards, then were in the former
dayes, viz. before the year 1600 to be found worth One hundred Pounds each.
And since Interest hath been for about twenty Years at six per cent not-
withstanding our long civil Wars, and the great complaints of the deadness of
Trade, there are more men to be found upon the Exchange now worth Ten
thousand pounds Estates, then were then of One thousand pounds. . . .
If we look into the Countrey, we shall find Lands as much Improved since
the abatement of Interest, as Trade, etc. in Cities; that now yeelding twenty
Years purchase, which then would not have sold for above eight or ten at
most. . . .
More might be said, but the Premises being considered, I judge will suffi-
ciently demonstrate how greatly this Kingdom of England hath been advanc’t
in all respects for these last fifty years: And that the abatement of Interest hath
been the cause thereof, to me seems most probable; because as it appears it
hath been in England, so I find it is at this day in all Europe, and other parts
of the World: Insomuch that to know whether any Country be rich or poor,
or in what proportion it is so, no other question needs to be resolved, but this,
viz. What Interest do they pay for Money? Neer home we see it evidently, in
Scotland and Ireland, where ten and twelve per cent is paid for Interest, the
people are poor and despicable, their Persons ill cloathed, their Houses worse
provided, and Money intollerably scarce, notwithstanding they have great
plenty of all provisions, nor will their Land yield above eight or ten years
purchase at most.
In France where Money is at seven per cent, their Lands will yield about
eighteen years purchase; and the Gentry who may possess Lands, live in good
condition, though the Peazants are little better then Slaves, because they can
possess nothing but at the will of others.
In Italy Money will not yield above three per cent to be let out upon real
security; there the people are rich, full of Trade, well attired, and their Lands
will sell at thirty five to fourty years purchase, and that it is so, or better, with
them in Holland, is too manifest. . . .
Now if upon what hath been said, it be granted that de facto, this King-
dom be richer at least four-fold (I might say eight fold) then it was before any
Law for Interest was made, and that all Countries are at this day richer or
poorer in an exact proportion to what they pay, and have usually paid for the
Interest of Money; it remains that we enquire carefully, whither the abate-
ment of Interest be in truth the Cause of the Riches of any Country, or only
the Concomitant or Effect of the Riches of a Country; in which seems to lie
the Intricacy of this Question.
To satisfie myself wherein, I have taken all opportunities to discourse this
point, with the most Ingenious men I had the Honour to be known to, and
Primary Documents 117

have search’t for, and read all the Books that I could ever hear were printed
against the Abatement of Interest, and seriously considered all the Arguments
and Objections used by them against it: All which offer to the consideration
of wiser Heads, viz. THAT THE ABATEMENT OF INTEREST IS THE
CAUSE OF THE PROSPERITY AND RICHES OF ANY NATION, and
that the bringing down of Interest in this Kingdome, from six to four, or
three per cent will necessarily, in less than twenty Years time, double the Capi-
tal Stock of the Nation. . . .
Source: Josiah Child, Brief Observations Concerning Trade and Interest of Money. London: Eliza-
beth Calvert, 1668. Modeled on http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/trade.asp.

THE STATE OF THE POOR

Frederick Morton Eden (1766–1809) was a British nobleman who became an
important figure in the insurance industry. However, his chief claim to fame was
a compilation of information about the life of the poor during the Age of Revolu-
tion. He did some fieldwork, but he obtained most of the data from correspondence
with clergymen and by sending out investigators with specially designed question-
naires. The results demonstrate some of the realities of the working-class experience
and some of the fallacies of elite perceptions concerning the lives of laborers.

I most sincerely agree with those who regret that the labourer does not get
more for his shilling than is usually the case; the misfortune, however, does
not arise from (what is so often most unjustly reprobated) his being obliged
to purchase the few articles he has occasion for, from petty retail shops, but
because either through ignorance, custom or prejudice, he adheres to ancient
improvident systems in dress, diet, and in other branches of private expendi-
ture. . . . Instead of the ill-grounded complaints, which have so often been
reiterated by writers on the Poor, that the wages of industry are in general too
inadequate to provide the labourers with those comforts and conveniences
which are befitting his station in the community, they would better serve the
cause of the industrious peasant and manufacturer by pointing out the best
means of reducing their expenses, without diminishing their comforts.
There seems to be just reason to conclude that the miseries of the labour-
ing Poor arose, less from the scantiness of their income (however much the
philanthropist might wish it to be increased) than from their own improvi-
dence and unthriftiness; since it is the fact, and I trust will be demonstrated
in a subsequent part of this work, that in many parts of the kingdom, where
the earnings of industry are moderate, the condition of the labourers is more
comfortable than in other districts where wages are exorbitant. . . .
118 The Industrial Revolution

It must be confessed that the difficulty of introducing any species of food

which requires much culinary preparation into the South of England arises in
a great measure from the scarcity and high price of fuel. It is owing to this
cause that even the labourer’s dinner, of hot meat on a Sunday, is generally
dressed at the baker’s, and that his meals during the rest of the week consist
almost wholly of bread purchased from the same quarter.
In the Midland and Southern counties, the labourer in general purchases a
very considerable portion, if not the whole of his clothes from the shop-
keeper. In the vicinity of the metropolis, working people seldom buy new
clothes; they content themselves with a cast-off coat, which may be usually
purchased for about 5s., and second-hand waistcoats and breeches. Their
wives seldom make up any article of dress, except making and mending
clothes for the children. In the North, on the contrary, almost every article of
dress worn by farmers, mechanics and labourers, is manufactured at home,
shoes and hats excepted—that is, the linen thread is spun from the lint, and
the yarn from the wool, and sent to the weavers and dyers, so that almost
every family has its web of linen cloth annually, and often of woolens also,
which is either dyed for coats or made into flannel etc. Sometimes black and
white wool are mixed, and the cloth which is made from them receives no
dye; it is provincially called kelt. There are, however, many labourers so poor
that they cannot even afford to purchase the raw material necessary to spin
thread or yarn at home, as it is some time before a home manufacture can be
rendered fit for use. It is generally acknowledged that articles of clothing can
be purchased in the shops at a much lower price than those who made them
at home can afford to sell them for, but that in the wearing those manufac-
tured by private families are very superior both in warmth and durability.
Source: Frederick Morton Eden, The State of the Poor: or A History of the Labouring Classes in
England, from the Conquest to the Present Period, 3 vols. London: J. Davis, 1797, II: 491–92,
495, 547, 554–55.

LOWELL MILL GIRLS

Harriet J. Hanson Robinson (1825–1911) worked in the textile mills of Lowell,
Massachusetts, for 14 years from the age of 10. In her autobiography, Loom and
Spindle (1898), she described her life and involvement in the strike of 1836.
Robinson became deeply involved in the women’s suffrage movement and later
emerged as an important writer.

In what follows, I shall confine myself to a description of factory life in Low-

ell, Massachusetts, from 1832 to 1848, since, with that phase of Early Factory
Labor in New England, I am the most familiar—because I was a part of it.
Primary Documents 119

In 1832, Lowell was little more than a factory village. Five “corporations”
were started, and the cotton mills belonging to them were building. Help was
in great demand and stories were told all over the country of the new factory
place, and the high wages that were offered to all classes of workpeople; sto-
ries that reached the ears of mechanics’ and farmers’ sons and gave new life to
lonely and dependent women in distant towns and farmhouses. . . . Troops of
young girls came from different parts of New England, and from Canada,
and men were employed to collect them at so much a head, and deliver them
at the factories. . . .
At the time the Lowell cotton mills were started the caste of the factory girl
was the lowest among the employments of women. In England and in France,
particularly, great injustice had been done to her real character. She was rep-
resented as subjected to influences that must destroy her purity and self-
respect. In the eyes of her overseer she was but a brute, a slave, to be beaten,
pinched and pushed about. It was to overcome this prejudice that such
high wages had been offered to women that they might be induced to become
mill-girls, in spite of the opprobrium that still clung to this degrading
occupation. . . .
The early mill-girls were of different ages. Some were not over ten years
old; a few were in middle life, but the majority were between the ages of
sixteen and twenty-five. The very young girls were called “doffers.” They
“doffed,” or took off, the full bobbins from the spinning frames, and replaced
them with empty ones. These mites worked about fifteen minutes every hour
and the rest of the time was their own. When the overseer was kind they were
allowed to read, knit, or go outside the mill-yard to play. They were paid two
dollars a week. The working hours of all the girls extended from five o’clock
in the morning until seven in the evening, with one half-hour each, for break-
fast and dinner. Even the doffers were forced to be on duty nearly fourteen
hours a day. This was the greatest hardship in the lives of these children. Sev-
eral years later a ten-hour law was passed, but not until long after some of
these little doffers were old enough to appear before the legislative committee
on the subject, and plead, by their presence, for a reduction of the hours
of labor.
Those of the mill-girls who had homes generally worked from eight to ten
months in the year; the rest of the time was spent with parents or friends. A
few taught school during the summer months. Their life in the factory was
made pleasant to them. In those days there was no need of advocating the
doctrine of the proper relation between employer and employed. Help was too
valuable to be ill-treated. . . .
The most prevailing incentive to labor was to secure the means of educa-
tion for some male member of the family. To make a gentleman of a brother
120 The Industrial Revolution

or a son, to give him a college education, was the dominant thought in the
minds of a great many of the better class of mill-girls. I have known more
than one to give every cent of her wages, month after month, to her brother,
that he might get the education necessary to enter some profession. I have
known a mother to work years in this way for her boy. I have known women
to educate young men by their earnings, who were not sons or relatives. There
are many men now living who were helped to an education by the wages of
the early mill-girls.
It is well to digress here a little, and speak of the influence the possession
of money had on the characters of some of these women. We can hardly real-
ize what a change the cotton factory made in the status of the working
women. Hitherto a woman had always been a money saving rather than a
money earning, member of the community. Her labor could command but
small return. If she worked out as servant, or “help,” her wages were from
50 cents to $1 .00 a week; or, if she went from house to house by the day to
spin and weave, or do tailoress work, she could get but 75 cents a week and
her meals. As teacher, her services were not in demand, and the arts, the pro-
fessions, and even the trades and industries, were nearly all closed to her.
As late as 1840 there were only seven vocations outside the home into
which the women of New England had entered. At this time woman had no
property rights. A widow could be left without her share of her husband’s (or
the family) property, an “ incumbrance” to his estate. A father could make his
will without reference to his daughter’s share of the inheritance. He usually
left her a home on the farm as long as she remained single. A woman was not
supposed to be capable of spending her own, or of using other people’s money.
In Massachusetts, before 1840, a woman could not, legally, be treasurer of her
own sewing society, unless some man were responsible for her. The law took
no cognizance of woman as a money-spender. She was a ward, an appendage,
a relict. Thus it happened that if a woman did not choose to marry, or, when
left a widow, to remarry, she had no choice but to enter one of the few em-
ployments open to her, or to become a burden on the charity of some
relative. . . .
One of the first strikes that ever took place in this country was in Lowell
in 1836. When it was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great
indignation was felt, and it was decided to strike or “turn out” en masse. This
was done. The mills were shut down, and the girls went from their several
corporations in procession to the grove on Chapel Hill, and listened to incen-
diary speeches from some early labor reformers.
One of the girls stood on a pump and gave vent to the feelings of her com-
panions in a neat speech, declaring that it was their duty to resist all attempts
at cutting down the wages. This was the first time a woman had spoken in
Primary Documents 121

public in Lowell, and the event caused surprise and consternation among her
audience.
It is hardly necessary to say that, so far as practical results are concerned,
this strike did no good. The corporation would not come to terms. The girls
were soon tired of holding out, and they went back to their work at the re-
duced rate of wages. The ill-success of this early attempt at resistance on the
part of the wage element seems to have made a precedent for the issue of
many succeeding strikes.
Source: Harriet H. Robinson, “Early Factory Labor in New England.” In Massachusetts
Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Fourteenth Annual Report. Boston: Wright & Potter, 1883,
380–82, 387–88, 391–92.

CONDITIONS IN THE MINES

Improved conditions in Britain’s mines came, in large measure, through the efforts
of the Children’s Employment Commission (Mines) Report released in 1842 and
published in the parliamentary record the following year. Undertaken by a royal
commission of inquiry headed by Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper, seventh Earl of
Shaftesbury, the report followed up on earlier efforts at factory reform and led di-
rectly to the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842 that placed serious and enforceable
limits on the employment of women and children in the mines of the United
Kingdom.

From the whole of the evidence which has been collected under the present
Commission . . . relative to the EMPLOYMENT and the PHYSICAL CON-
DITION of the Children and Young Persons . . . who are engaged in Trade
and Manufactures, we find:
1. That instances occur in which children begin to work as early as three
and four years of age; not infrequently at five, and between five and six; while,
in general, regular employment commences between seven and eight; the
great majority of the children having begun to work before they are nine years
old . . .
2. That in all cases the persons that employ mere Infants and the very
youngest children are the parents themselves, who put their children to work
at some processes of manufacture under their own eye, in their own houses;
but children begin to work together in numbers, in larger or smaller manu-
factories, at all ages, from five years old and upwards . . .
4. That in a very large proportion of these Trades and Manufactures female
children are employed equally with boys, and at the same tender ages: in some
indeed the number of girls exceeds that of boys. . . .
122 The Industrial Revolution

6. That in the great majority of the Trades and Manufactures the youngest
children as well as the young persons are hired and paid by the workmen, and
are entirely under their control; the employers exercising no sort of superin-
tendence over them, and apparently knowing nothing whatever about them. . . .
9. That in some Trades, those especially requiring skilled workmen, . . .
apprentices are bound by legal indentures, usually at the age of fourteen, and
for a term of seven years, the age being rarely younger . . . but by far the
greater number are bound without any prescribed legal forms, and in almost
all these cases they are required to serve their masters, at whatever age they
may commence their apprenticeship, until they attain the age of twenty-one,
in some instances in employment in which there is nothing deserving the
name of skill to be acquired, and in other instances in employment in which
they are taught to make only one particular part of the article manufactured;
so that at the end of their servitude they are altogether unable to make any
one article of their trade in a complete state.
10. That a large proportion of these apprentices consist of orphans, or are
the children of widows, or belong to the very poorest families, and frequently
are apprenticed by boards of guardians [i.e., officials regulating poor relief ].
11. That the term of servitude of these apprentices may, and sometimes
does commence as early as seven years of age, and is often passed under cir-
cumstances of great hardship and ill-usage, and under the condition that,
during the greater part, if not the whole, of their term, they receive nothing
for their labor beyond food and clothing. . . .
17. That in all the districts the privies are very commonly in a disgusting
state of filth, and in great numbers of instances there is no separate accom-
modation for the males and females; but in almost all the buildings recently
constructed a greater attention has been paid to the health and the decent
comfort of the workpeople than in those of older date. . . .
19. That in some few instances the regular hours of work do not exceed
ten, exclusive of the time allowed for meals; sometimes they are eleven, but
more commonly twelve; and in great numbers of instances the employment
is continued for fifteen, sixteen, and even eighteen hours consecutively.
20. That in almost every instance the children work as long as the adults;
being sometimes kept at work sixteen, and even eighteen hours without any
intermission.
21. That in the case of young women employed in the millinery and dress
making business in the metropolis, and in some of the large provincial cities,
even in what are considered the best regulated establishments, during the
busy season, occupying in London about four months in the year, the regular
hours of work are fifteen; but on emergencies, which frequently recur, these
hours are extended to eighteen; and in many establishments the hours of
Primary Documents 123

work during the season are unlimited, the young women never getting more
than six, often not more than four, sometimes only three, and occasionally
not, more than two hours for rest and sleep out of the twenty-four, and very
frequently they work all night; there being in fact no other limit to the dura-
tion of their labor than their physical inability to work longer. . . .
23. That in some processes of Manufacture, as in winding for lace ma-
chines, the children have no regular and certain time whatever for sleep or
recreation, being liable to be called upon at any period during sixteen, twenty,
or twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four, while they have frequently to go
from one place of work to another, often at considerable distances, at all
hours of the night, and in all seasons. . . .
27. That in the cases in which the children are the servants of the work-
men, and under their sole control, the master apparently knowing nothing
about their treatment, and certainly taking no charge of it, they are almost
always roughly, very often harshly, and sometimes cruelly used; . . . the treat-
ment of them is oppressive and brutal to the last degree. . . .
29. . . . that accidents—such as hands contused, fingers cut off, jammed
between wheel- cogs, or drawn in between rollers, and arms caught in straps—
are, however, in some establishments, by no means uncommon; that some-
times the straps, wheels, etc., are so crowded and exposed that the utmost care
is required on the part of the workpeople to escape injury; and that, in by far
the greater number of instances, accidents might be prevented, if proper at-
tention were paid to the disposition and fencing of the machinery. . . .
31. . . . that, from the early ages at which the great majority [of children]
commence work, from their long hours of work, and from the insufficiency
of their food and clothing, their “bodily health “ is seriously and generally
injured; they are for the most part stunted in growth, their aspect being pale,
delicate, and sickly, and they present altogether the appearance of a race
which has suffered general physical deterioration.
32. That the diseases which are most prevalent amongst them, and to
which they are more subject than children of their age and station unem-
ployed in labor, are disordered states of the nutritive organs, curvature and
distortion of the spine, deformity of the limbs, and diseases of the lungs, end-
ing in atrophy and consumption. . . .
From the whole of the evidence collected under the present Commission
relative to the MORAL CONDITION of the Children and Young Persons
included within its terms, whether employed In COLLIERIES and Mines or
in TRADES and MANUFACTURES, we find:
1. That there are few classes of these children and young persons “working
together in numbers,” of whom a large portion are not in a lamentably low
moral condition.
124 The Industrial Revolution

2. That this low moral condition is evinced by a general ignorance of moral

duties and sanctions, and by an absence of moral and religious restraint, shown
among some classes chiefly by coarseness of manners, and the use of profane
and indecent language; but in other classes by the practice of gross immorality,
which is prevalent to a great extent, in both sexes, at very early ages.
3. . . . their low moral condition . . . often having its very origin in the
degradation of the parents, who, themselves brought up without virtuous
habit, can set no good example to their children, nor have any beneficial con-
trol over their conduct.
4. That the parents, urged by poverty or improvidence, generally seek em-
ployment for the children as soon as they can earn the lowest amount of
wages; paying but little regard to the probable injury of their children’s health
by early labor, and still less regard to the certain injury of their minds by early
removal from school . . .
5. That the girls are prevented, by their early removal from home and from
the day-schools, to be employed in labor, from learning needlework, and
from acquiring those habits of cleanliness, neatness, and order, without which
they cannot, when they grow up to womanhood, and have the charge of fami-
lies of their own, economize their husbands’ earnings, or give to their homes
any degree of comfort; and this general want of the qualifications of a house-
wife in the women of this class is stated by clergymen, teachers, medical men,
employers, and other witnesses, to be one great and universally-prevailing
cause of distress and crime among the working classes. . . .
7. . . .the children and young persons generally, of both sexes, not only
work together in the same room, but being often in closer proximity to each
other than they are in the factories of cotton, wool, silk, and flax; and all
classes of witnesses concur in attributing to this circumstance a highly demor-
alizing influence. . . .
12. That the means of secular and religious instruction, on the efficiency
of which depends the counteraction of all these evil tendencies, are so griev-
ously defective, that, in all the districts, great numbers of children and young
persons are growing up without any religious, moral, or intellectual training;
nothing being done to form them to habits of order, sobriety, honesty, and
forethought, or even to restrain them from vice and crime.
13. That neither in the new Colliery and Mining towns which have sud-
denly collected together large bodies of the people in new localities, nor in the
towns which have suddenly sprung up under the successful pursuit of some
new branch of Trade and Manufacture, is any provision made for Education
by the establishment of Schools with properly qualified teachers . . . ; nor in
general is there any provision whatever for the extension of educational and
religious institutions corresponding with the extension of the population.
Primary Documents 125

14. That there is not a single district in which the means of instruction are
adequate to the wants of the people, while in some districts the deficiency is
so great that clergymen, and other witnesses, state that the schools actually in
existence are insufficient for the education of one- third of the population.
15. That, were schools ever so abundant and excellent, they would be
wholly beyond the reach of a large portion of the children employed in labor,
on account of the early ages at which they are put to work.
16. That great numbers of children and young persons attend no day-
school before they commence work; that even those who do go for a brief
period to a day-school are very commonly removed to be put to labor at five,
six, seven, and eight years old; and that the instances are extremely rare
in which they attend an evening-school after regular employment has once
begun. . . .
18. That, in all the districts, many children and young persons, whether
employed in the mines of coal and iron, or in trades and manufactures, never
go to any school, and some never have been at any school. . . .
23. That in all the districts, great numbers of those children who, had been
in regular attendance in Sunday-schools for a period of from five to nine
years, were found, on examination, to be incapable of reading an easy book,
or of spelling the commonest word; and they were not only altogether igno-
rant of Christian principles, doctrines, and precepts, but they knew nothing
whatever of any of the events of Scripture history, nor anything even of the
names most commonly occurring in the Scriptures. . . .
32. That there are parents who not only anxiously endeavor to afford their
children, even at the expense of some personal sacrifice and self-denial, good
and sufficient food and clothing, but also the best education within their
reach, and who themselves superintend, as well as they are able, their chil-
dren’s education and conduct; but this attention to their moral condition is
rare. . . .
35. That from the whole body of evidence it appears, however, that there
are at present in existence no means adequate to effect any material and gen-
eral improvement in the Physical and Moral Condition of the Children and
Young Persons employed in labor.
. . . It was no part of the duty prescribed to us by the terms of Your Maj-
esty’s Commission to suggest remedies for any grievances or evils which we
might find to exist, because it was deemed necessary to obtain the fullest in-
formation as to the real condition of the persons included in the inquiry, be-
fore the consideration of remedies could be entertained with any prospect of
advantage. This information we have now collected; and the picture which,
in the faithful performance of this duty, we have been obliged to present of
the physical and moral condition of a large portion of the working classes
126 The Industrial Revolution

appears to us to require the serious consideration of Your Majesty’s Govern-

ment and of the Legislature.

. . . Westminster, January 30th, 1843.

Source: British Parliamentary Papers, 1843, vol. 13, #430. Children’s Employment Commis-
sion, 195–220.

DEFENDING THE FACTORY SYSTEM

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) publicly advocated maintaining the existing factory
system in opposition to any attempt to improve conditions through legislation.
Born in Scotland, Ure became a medical doctor and chemist. His standing as a
professor and public intellectual of international renown (he was also a Fellow of
the Royal Society) made him effective in opposing reform. On behalf of industrial
interests, he visited several model English textile mills in 1834. His conclusion
that reformers exaggerated the mistreatment of workers was published in The
Philosophy of Manufactures the following year.

When the wandering savage becomes a citizen, he renounces many of his

dangerous pleasures in return for tranquility and protection. He can no longer
gratify at his will a revengeful spirit upon his foes, nor seize with violence a
neighbour’s possessions. In like manner, when the handicraftsman exchanges
hard work with fluctuating employment and pay, for continuous labour of a
lighter kind with steady wages, he must necessarily renounce his old preroga-
tive of stopping when he pleases, because he would thereby throw the whole
establishment into disorder. Of the amount of the injury resulting from the
violation of tile rules of automatic labour he can hardly ever be a proper
judge; just as mankind at large can never fully estimate the evils consequent
upon an infraction of God’s moral law. Yet the factory operative, little versant
in the great operations of political economy, currency, and trade, and actu-
ated too often by an invidious feeling towards the capitalist who animates his
otherwise torpid talents, is easily persuaded by artful demagogues, that his
sacrifice of time and skill is beyond the portion of his recompense, or that
fewer hours of industry would be an ample equivalent for his wages. This no-
tion seems to have taken an early and inveterate hold of the factory mind, and
to have been riveted from time to time by the leaders of those secret combina-
tions, so readily formed among a peculiar class of men, concentrated in masses
within a narrow range of country.
Instead of repining as they have done at the prosperity of their employers,
and concerting odious measures to blast it, they should, on every principle of
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gratitude and self-interest, have rejoiced at the success resulting from their
labours, and by regularity and skill have recommended themselves to monied
men desirous of engaging in a profitable concern, and of procuring qualified
hands to conduct it. Thus good workmen would have advanced their condi-
tion to that of overlookers, managers, and partners in new mills, and have
increased at the same time the demand for their companions’ labour in the
market. It is only by an undisturbed progression of this kind that the rate of
wages can be permanently raised or upheld. Had it not been for the violent
collisions and interruptions resulting from erroneous views among the
operatives, the factory system would have been developed still more rapidly
and beneficially for all concerned than it has been, and would have exhibited
still more frequently gratifying examples of skillful workmen becoming
opulent proprietors. Every misunderstanding either repels capital altogether,
or diverts it from flowing, for a time, in the channels of a trade liable to
strikes. . . .
No master would wish to have any wayward children to work within the
walls of his factory, who do not mind their business without beating, and he
therefore usually fines or turns away any spinners who are known to maltreat
their assistants. Hence, ill usage of any kind is a very rare occurrence. I have
visited many factories, both in Manchester and in the surrounding districts,
during a period of several months, entering the spinning rooms, unexpect-
edly, and often alone, at different times of the day, and I never saw a single
instance of corporal chastisement inflicted on a child, nor indeed did I ever
see children in ill-humour. They seemed to be always cheerful and alert, tak-
ing pleasure in the light play of their muscles,—enjoying the mobility natural
to their age. The scene of industry, so far from exciting sad emotions in my
mind, was always exhilarating. It was delightful to observe the nimbleness
with which they pieced the broken ends, as the mule carriage began to recede
from the fixed roller-beam, and to see them at leisure, after a few seconds’
exercise of their tiny fingers, to amuse themselves in any attitude they chose,
till the stretch and winding-on were once more completed. The work of these
lively elves seemed to resemble a sport, in which habit gave them a pleasing
dexterity. Conscious of their skill, they were delighted to show it off to any
stranger. As to exhaustion by the day’s work, they evinced no trace of it on
emerging from the mill in the evening; for they immediately began to skip
about any neighbouring play-ground, and to commence their little amuse-
ments with the same alacrity as boys issuing from a school. It is moreover my
firm conviction, that if children are not ill-used by bad parents or guardians,
but receive in food and raiment the full benefit of what they earn, they would
thrive better when employed in our modern factories, than if left at home in
apartments too often ill-aired, damp, and cold.
128 The Industrial Revolution

Source: Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures or an Exposition of the Scientific, Moral,
and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain. London: Charles Knight, 1835,
278–80, 300–301.

LIVING AND WORKING IN MANCHESTER

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) was a Prussian-born manufacturer, journalist,
political philosopher, and activist who spent much of his life in England. He pub-
lished The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1845 based on first-
hand observation of the lives of laborers in the slums of British cities. Already
acquainted with Karl Marx, together they wrote The Communist Manifesto in
1848 to rally the working classes to the cause of revolution, which the conditions
outlined in this excerpt seem to justify.

In Lancashire, and especially in Manchester, English manufacture finds at

once its starting-point and its centre. The Manchester Exchange is the ther-
mometer for all the fluctuations of trade. The modern art of manufacture has
reached its perfection in Manchester. In the cotton industry of South Lanca-
shire, the application of the forces of Nature, the superseding of hand-labour
by machinery (especially by the power-loom and the self-acting mule) and
the division of labour, are seen at the highest point. . . . The degradation to
which the application of steam-power, machinery and the division of labour
reduce the working-man, and the attempts of the proletariat to rise above this
abasement, must likewise be carried to the highest point and with the fullest
consciousness. . . .
The whole assemblage of buildings commonly called Manchester, and
contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more than less.
The town itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in it for years, and
go in and out daily without coming into contact with a working-person’s
quarter or even with workers, that is, so long as he confines himself to his
business or to pleasure walks. This arises chiefly from the fact, that by uncon-
scious tacit agreement, as well as with outspoken conscious determination,
the working-people’s quarters are sharply separated from the sections of the
city reserved for the middle class. . . . With the exception of this commercial
district, all Manchester proper, all Salford and Hulme, a greater part of Pend-
leton and Chorlton, two-thirds of Ardwick, and single stretches of Cheetham
Hill and Broughton are all unmixed working-people’s quarters, stretching like
a girdle, averaging a mile and a half in breadth, around the commercial dis-
trict. Outside, beyond this girdle, lives the upper and middle bourgeoisie, the
middle bourgeoisie in regularly laid out streets in the vicinity of the working
quarters . . .; the upper bourgeoisie in remoter villas with gardens . . . in free
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wholesome country air, in fine, comfortable homes, passed once every half or
quarter hour by omnibuses going into the city. . . .
Going from the Old Church to Long Millgate . . . are remnants of the old
pre-manufacturing Manchester, whose former inhabitants have removed with
their descendants into better-built districts, and have left the houses, which
were not good enough for them, to a working-class population strongly mixed
with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised working-men’s quar-
ter, for even the shops and beerhouses hardly take the trouble to exhibit a
trifling degree of cleanliness. . . .
Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from the main street
into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and dis-
gusting grime, the equal of which is not to be found—especially in the courts
which lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most hor-
rible dwellings which I have yet beheld. In one of these courts where stands
directly at the entrance, at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a
door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only be
passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first
court on the Irk above Ducie Bridge—in case anyone should care to look into
it. Below it on the river there are several tanneries which fill the whole neigh-
borhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge the
only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs and
over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as
Allen’s Court, was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary
police ordered it evacuated, swept, and disinfected with chloride of lime. . . .
At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-
smelling stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower
right bank. In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-
green, slime pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which
bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable
even on the bridge forty of fifty feet above the surface of the stream. But be-
sides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind
which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge
are tanneries, bonemills, and gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find
their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the neigh-
bouring sewers and privies. It may be easily imagined, therefore, what sort of
residue the steam deposits. Below the bridge you look upon the piles of debris,
the refuse, filth, and offal from the courts on the steep left bank; here each
house is packed close behind its neighbor and a piece of each is visible, all
black, smoky, crumbling, ancient, with broken panes and window-frames.
Source: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. London:
Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892 [1845], 42, 45–46, 48–50.
130 The Industrial Revolution

THE ENLIGHTENMENT’S FOCUS ON EDUCATION

AND THE USEFULNESS OF KNOWLEDGE
Frederick II (1712–1786), King of Prussia, came to the throne at 28. He was a
brilliant military leader, significantly expanding Prussian territory and influence
while nationalizing and improving the effectiveness of the Prussian state (and the
army that it supported). Powerfully influenced by the Enlightenment, Frederick II
founded and supported learned societies like the Berlin Academy to spread both
practical and philosophical ideas. His address to that body delivered in 1772
demonstrates that even a so-called absolute monarchy felt it necessary to instruct
the population in the need for education and the importance of the useful knowl-
edge spread by the Enlightenment.

Some unenlightened or hypocritical persons [ed.: Jean-Jacques Rousseau] have

ventured to profess their hostility to the arts and sciences. If they have been
allowed to slander that which does most honor to humanity, we must be all
the more entitled to defend it, for that is the duty of all who love society and
who are grateful for what they owe to literature. Unfortunately, paradox often
makes a greater impression on the public than truth; it is then that we must
disabuse the public and refute the authors of such nonsense, not with insults
but with sound reason. I am ashamed to state in this Academy that people
have had the effrontery to ask whether the sciences are useful or harmful to
society, a subject on which no one should entertain the slightest doubt. If we
have any superiority over animals, it is certainly not in our bodily faculties, but
in the greater understanding which nature has given us; and what distinguishes
one man from another is genius and learning. Where lies the infinite differ-
ence between a civilized people and barbarians if not in the fact that the for-
mer are enlightened, while the others vegetate in brutish ignorance? . . .
Man in himself is little enough; he is born with faculties more or less ripe
for development. But they require cultivation; his knowledge must increase
if his ideas are to broaden. . . . The greatest mind, without knowledge, is
only a rough diamond that will acquire value only after it has been cut by the
hands of a skilled jeweler. What minds have been thus lost to society, what
great men of every kind stifled in the bud, whether through ignorance, or
through the abject state in which they found themselves placed!
The true benefit of the State, its advantage and glory demand therefore
that the people in it should be as well educated and enlightened as possible,
in order to furnish it, in every field, with a number of trained subjects capable
of acquitting themselves expertly in the different tasks entrusted to them. . . .
Although it is unnecessary to demonstrate to this illustrious audience and
in this Academy that the arts and sciences bring both utility and fame to the
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peoples who possess them, it will perhaps not be without use to convince
some less enlightened persons of the same thing, to arm them against the
effects which some vile sophists might have on their minds. Let them com-
pare a Canadian savage with any citizen of a civilized country of Europe, and
all the advantage will be with the latter. How can one prefer crude nature
to nature perfected, lack of means of subsistence to a life of ease, rudeness to
politeness, the security of politeness enjoyed under the protection of the laws
to the law of the jungle and to anarchy, which destroys the fortunes and con-
ditions of families?
Society, a community of men, could not do without either the arts of the
sciences. Thanks to surveying and hydraulics, riparian regions are protected
from flooding; without these arts, fertile lands would become unhealthy
marshes, and would deprive numerous families of their livelihood. The higher
land could do without surveyors to measure out and divide the fields. The
physical sciences, firmly established by experiment, help to perfect agriculture
and, in particular, horticulture. Botany, applied to the study of medicinal
herbs, and chemistry, which can extract their essences, serve at least to fortify
our hope during our illnesses, even if their property cannot cure us. Anatomy
guides and directs the surgeon’s hand in those painful but necessary opera-
tions that save our life at the expense of an amputated limb.
The mechanical sciences are useful in every field: if a load is to be raised or
transported, they will move it. If we are to dig into the bowels of the earth to
extract metals, the science of mechanics, with ingenious machines, pumps
out the quarries and frees the miner from the super-abundance of water
which would cost him his life or his work. If we need mills to grind the most
familiar and most basic form of food, the science of mechanics perfects them.
It is the science of mechanics that helps craftsmen by improving the various
types of craft at which they work. Every kind of machine lies within its prov-
ince. And how many machines are needed in all the various fields! The craft
of shipbuilding constitutes perhaps one of the greatest efforts of imagination;
but how much knowledge the pilot must possess to steer his ship and brave
wind and wave! He needs to have studied astronomy, to have good charts, an
exact knowledge of geography and arithmetical skill, in order to ascertain the
distance he has travelled and the point at which he is, and in this respect he
will be helped in future by the chronometers which have just been perfected
in England. The arts and sciences go hand in hand: we owe them everything,
they are the benefactors of mankind.

Source: Frederick II, “Discourse on the Usefulness of the Arts and Sciences in a State” (1772).
In S. Eliot and K. Whitlock, eds., The Enlightenment, Texts I. Milton Keynes: Open University
Press, 1992, 66–67. © The Open University; used by permission.
132 The Industrial Revolution

RESISTING MECHANIZATION: THE LUDDITES

The Luddite movement began in 1811 in the heavily industrialized English Mid-
lands. Workers whose livelihoods were threatened by mechanization and whose
standard of living was already under assault from wartime inflation attempted
to convince their employers to raise their wages and to stop using new machines.
The first document attempted to lay out the workers’ grievances in the hope that
employers would act to help them. The second document, a Declaration ostensibly
from the Framework Knitters gathered at Ned Ludd’s office in the Sherwood For-
est and dated January 1, 1812, claimed that discussion was no longer enough:
government legal repression was itself illegal because the manufacturers had misled
Parliament. The Declaration also proclaimed that machines that contravened the
customs of the knitting trade would be destroyed. In the Midlands, the Luddite
movement destroyed 1,000 frames (4 percent of England’s total) valued at
£6,000–10,000. Heavy-handed government repression ensured that workers
could protest their displacement by the machine only with the greatest difficulty.

The Labourer is worthy of his Hire

At a General Meeting of Plain Silk Framework-knitters, held at the Fox and
Owl Inn, December 9th, 1811, to take into consideration the increasing Griev-
ances under which they labour, it was unanimously Resolved, that every means
in their power should be employed to stop the progress of future Impositions
upon their Manufacture, and that a Statement of their Case be once more
submitted to their Employers, with an application for immediate Redress.
Gentlemen Hosiers,
GALLED by the pressure of unprecedented times, we cannot any longer
remain indifferent to our common interest as men. As a body of ingenious
artizans, employed on materials of great value; pent up in a close shop four-
teen or sixteen hours a day; (A confinement prejudicial to many constitu-
tions), having under our constant care machine confessedly difficult, from
the construction of its principles, to preserve in good condition, and allowed
to be one of the first productions of British genius; devoting our time and
abilities alone, to adorn the rich and great, we conceive ourselves entitled to a
higher station in society; and . . . considering our manufacture is consumed
alone by the opulent, it ought to produce a competence adequate to the just
wants of our families.
About thirty years ago, a Silk Stocking-maker obtained a decent subsist-
ence; but since that time we have had to contend with two great drawbacks
upon our necessary comforts, the one is imposition upon our manufacture,
the other a tripled augmentation in the price of nearly every article we
Primary Documents 133

consume. . . . The average earnings of plain silk hands are indeed too well
known to you, to be a very small pittance for the maintenance of a wife and
two or three children; they do not exceed 10s. 6d. per week: if some average
13s. per week, this will do very little for a family. Three shillings at least must
go for house-rent and taxes—one shilling for coal—one shilling and sixpence
for soap and candles, for himself and family; and if he has a wife and three
children he must have one stone and a half of flour, which is at least six shil-
lings more; here we see the poor fellow has left three shillings and sixpence to
provide all other necessaries of life.
. . . The imperious dictates of human nature impel us to raise up a manly
voice in our own behalf: governed by every principle of right towards you,
acknowledging that due deference to your superior station, yet loudly calling
your attention to our present case. . . . Hedged in by a combination act, we
cannot say to you as a public body, that we demand an advance of wages, but
we can say that JUSTICE DEMANDS that we should receive remuneration
for extra labour: this is all we want. . . .
Gentlemen, there is every reason in the world to prove that a remuneration
ought and must take place. Several Hosiers in this town have openly avowed
its necessity. The high price of provision is on our side, reason, honer, moral-
ity, philanthropy, necessity, justice, your own interest, as being accountable to
the Almighty, the practicality of the case, the combination act, and the gen-
eral sufferage of mankind; all declare that we ought to be remunerated for
extra labour.
Gentlemen, being invited by some of you to state our grievances, we have
used great plainness on the subject; well knowing that this will prvail, when
acts of violence would render us detestable to mankind. . . .
Source: Kevin Binfield, ed., Writings of the Luddites. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2004, 80–84.

By the Framework Knitters.

A Declaration.
Whereas by the charter granted by our late Sovereign Lord Charles the Sec-
ond by the Grace of God [King] of Great Britain France and Ireland, the
Framework knitters are empowered to break and destroy all Frames and En-
gines that fabricate Articles in a fraudulent and deceitful manner and to de-
stroy all Framework knitters Goods whatsoever that are so made And Whereas
a number of deceitful unprincipled and intriguing persons did attain an Act
to be passed in the Twenty Eighth Year of our present Sovereign Lord George
the Third whereby it was enacted that persons entering by force into any
134 The Industrial Revolution

House Shop or Place to break or destroy Frames should be adjudged guilty of

Felony And as we are fully convinced that such Act was obtained in the most
fraudulent interested and Electioneering manner And that the Honorable the
Parliament of Great Britain was deceived the motives and intentions of the
persons was obtained such Act We therefore the Framework knitters do hereby
declare the aforesaid Act to be Null and Void to all intents and purposes what-
soever As by the passing of this Act villainous and imposing persons are ena-
bled to made fraudulent and deceitful manufactures to the discredit and utter
ruin of our Trade. And Whereas we declare that the aforementioned charter is
as much in force as through no such Act had been passed. And We do hereby
declare to all Hosiers Lace Manufacturers and proprietors of Frames that We
will break and destroy all manner of Frames whatsoever that make the follow-
ing spurious Articles and Frames whatsoever that do not pay the regular prices
heretofore agreed to the Masters and Workmen—All point Net Frames mak-
ing single press, and Frames not working by the rack and rent and not paying
the price regulated in 1810—Warp Frames working single Yarn or two course
hole—not working by the rack, not paying the rent and prices regulated in
1809. Whereas all plain Silk Frames not Work according to the Gage—Frames
not marking the Work according to quality Whereas all Frames of whatsoever
description the Workmen of whom are not paid in the Corrent Coin of the
Realm will invariably be destroyed. Whereas it hath been represented to
the Framework knitters that Gangs of banditti have infested various parts of
the Country under the pretence of being employed in breaking of Frames and
hath committed divers Robberies upon our Friends and Neighbours I do
hereby offer a reward of one thousand pounds to any person that will give any
Information at my Office. I have Gave two thousand Pounds as secret money
any person that will give any Information of those villainous and false ru-
mours of the Frame Breakers (anyone that will come forward may depend
upon the greatest Secresy and the same reward.
Given under my hand this 1st day of January 1812.

God protect the Trade. Ned Lud’s Office

Sherwood Forest.
Source: Kevin Binfield, ed., Writings of the Luddites. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2004, 90–91.

ROBERT OWEN ON EDUCATION AND THE EVILS

OF CHILD LABOR
Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a Welshman whose experience managing cotton
mills in Lancashire led him to implement a very different approach to managing
Primary Documents 135

labor when he was put in charge of his father-in-law’s mill at New Lanark, Scot-
land. The large profits earned under his management helped demonstrate that the
thoroughgoing exploitation of workers, especially of children, was not necessary to
the success of the factory system. At the same time, Owen’s concern with education
and the welfare of society in general were important counterpoints to greedy, abu-
sive mill owners. This passage is from A New View of Society, or Essays on the
Principle of the Formation of Human Character and the Application of the
Principle to Practice written in 1813.

According to the last returns under the Population Act, the poor and working
classes of Great Britain and Ireland have been found to exceed twelve millions
of persons, or nearly three-fourths of the population of the British Islands.
The characters of these persons are now permitted to be very generally
formed without proper guidance or direction, and, in many cases, under cir-
cumstances which must train them to the extreme of vice and misery; and of
course render them the worst and most dangerous subjects in the empire;
while the far greater part of the remainder of the community are educated
upon the most mistaken principles of human nature, such, indeed, as cannot
fail to produce a general conduct throughout society, totally unworthy of the
character of rational beings. . . .
In the year 1784, the late Mr. Dale of Glasgow [Owen’s father-in-law]
founded a spinning and weaving manufactory near the falls of the Clyde, in
the county of Lanark in Scotland; and about that period cotton mills were
first introduced into the northern part of the kingdom.
It was the power which could be obtained from the falls of water which
induced Mr. Dale to erect his mills in this situation, for in other respects it
was not well chosen: the country around was uncultivated; the inhabitants
were poor, and few in number; and the roads in the neighborhood were
so bad that the falls of Clyde now so celebrated were then unknown to
strangers.
It was therefore necessary to collect a new population to supply the infant
establishment with laborers. This however was no light task; for all the regu-
larly trained Scotch peasantry disdained the idea of working from early till
late, day after day, within cotton mills. Two modes only to obtain these labor-
ers occurred: the one, to procure children from the various public charities in
the country; and the other to induce families to settle around the works.
To accommodate the first, a large house was erected, which ultimately
contained about five hundred children, who were procured chiefly from
workhouses and charities in Edinburgh.
These children were to be fed, clothed, and educated; and these duties
Mr. Dale performed with the benevolence which he was known to possess.
136 The Industrial Revolution

To obtain the second, a village was built, and the houses were let at a low
rent to such families as could be induced to accept employment in the mills:
but such was the general dislike to that to that occupation at the time, that,
with a few exceptions, the persons must destitute of friends, employment,
and character, were alone found willing to try the experiment; and of these a
sufficient number to supply a constant increase of the manufactory could not
be obtained. . . .
The benevolent proprietor spared no expense which could give comfort to
the poor children which it contained. The rooms provided for them were spa-
cious, always clean, and well ventilated; the food was of the best quality, and
most abundant; the clothes were neat and useful; a surgeon was kept in con-
stant pay to direct how to prevent as well as cure disease; and the best instruc-
tors which the country afforded were appointed to teach such branches of
education as were deemed likely to be useful to children in their situation;
and kind, well disposed persons were appointed to superintend all the pro-
ceedings. Nothing, in short, at first sight seemed wanting to render it a most
complete charity.
But to defray the expense of these well devised arrangements, and support
the establishment generally, it was absolutely necessary that the children
should be employed within the mills from six o’clock in the morning to
seven in the evening summer and winter; and after these hours their educa-
tion commenced. The directors of the public charities from mistaken
economy, would not consent to send the children under their care to the
cotton mills, unless the children were received by the proprietors at the
ages of six, seven, and eight. And Mr. Dale was under the necessity of
accepting them at those ages, or stopping the manufactory which he had
commenced.
It is not to be supposed that children so young could remain, with the in-
terval of meals only, from six in the morning until seven in the evening, in
constant employment on their feet within cotton mills, and afterwards ac-
quire much proficiency in education. And so it proved; for the greater part of
them became dwarfs in body and mind, and many of them deformed. Their
labor through the day, and their education at night, became so irksome, that
numbers of them continually ran away, and almost all looked forward with
impatience and anxiety to the expiration of their apprenticeship of seven,
eight, and nine years, which generally expired when they were from thirteen
to fifteen years old. At this period of life, unaccustomed to provide for them-
selves, and unacquainted with the world, they usually went to Edinburgh or
Glasgow, where boys and girls were soon assailed by the innumerable tempta-
tions which all large towns present; and many of them fell sacrifices to those
temptations.
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Thus were Mr. Dale’s arrangements and kind solicitude for the comfort
and happiness of these children rendered in their ultimate effect almost nuga-
tory. They were sent to be employed, and without their labor he could not
support them; but, while under his care, he did all that any individual cir-
cumstanced as he was could do for his fellow-creatures.
The error proceeded from the children being sent from the workhouses at
an age far too young for employment; they ought to have been detained four
years longer, and education; and then all the evils which followed would have
been prevented. . . .
[After Owen took over] the system of receiving apprentices from public
charities was abolished; permanent settlers with large families were encour-
aged, and comfortable houses were built for their accommodation.
The practice of employing children in the mills, of six, seven, and eight
years of age, was discontinued, and their parents advised to allow them to
acquire health and education until they were ten years old. (It may be re-
marked, that even this age is too early to keep them at constant employment
in manufactories, from six in the morning to seven in the evening. Far better
would it be for the children, their parents, and for society, that the first should
not commence employment until they attain the age of twelve, when their
education might be finished, and their bodies would be more competent to
undergo the fatigue and exertions required of them. When parents can be
trained to afford this additional time to their children without inconvenience,
they will, of course adopt the practice now recommended.)
The children were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, during five
years, that is, from five to ten, in the village school, without expense to their
parents; and all the modern improvements in education have been adopted,
or are in process of adoption: some facilities in teaching arithmetic have been
also introduced, which were peculiar to this school, and found very advanta-
geous. They may therefore be taught and well trained before they engage in
any regular employment. Another important consideration is, that all their
instruction is rendered a pleasure and delight to them; they are much more
anxious for the hour of school time to arrive, than end: they therefore make a
rapid progress; and it may be safely asserted, that if they shall not be trained
for form such characters as may be the most wished and desired, not one
particle of the fault will proceed from the children; but the cause will rest in
the want of a true knowledge of human nature, in those who have the man-
agement of them and their parents.

Source: Robert Owen, A New View of Society: or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of Hu-
man Character and the Application of the Principle to Practice. London: Richard Taylor and Co.,
1813, 5, 35–36, 38–40, 49–51.
138 The Industrial Revolution

ADAM SMITH ON THE DIVISION OF LABOR

Adam Smith (1723–1790) was a Scotsman who became a professor at Glasgow
University. He traveled widely before becoming a customs official. His Theory of
Moral Sentiments (1759) was influential in moral philosophy and in the emer-
gence of the field of political economy, but his major work was undoubtedly An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations published in
1776. Smith articulated enormously important ideas about the complementary
role of the market and the state in the economy. These two excerpts demonstrate
that the division of labor had both positive and negative attributes.

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater
part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed,
or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.
The effects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will
be more easily understood, by considering in what manner it operates in some
particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in
some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them
than in others of more importance: but in those trifling manufactures which
are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the
whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed
in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same
workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those great
manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants
of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so
great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the
same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed
in one single branch. Though in such manufactures, therefore, the work may
really be divided into a much greater number of parts, than in those of a more
trifling nature, the division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been
much less observed.
To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in
which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of
the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division
of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the
machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of
labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost
industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in
the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is
a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the
greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another
Primary Documents 139

straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for
receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations;
to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a
trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of mak-
ing a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations,
which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in
others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have
seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed,
and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct
operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently
accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted
themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There
are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten
persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand
pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thou-
sand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins
in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and with-
out any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly
could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day;
that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four
thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of per-
forming, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their differ-
ent operations.
In every other art and manufacture, the effects of the division of labour are
similar to what they are in this very trifling one; though, in many of them, the
labour can neither be so much subdivided, nor reduced to so great a simplicity
of operation. The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced,
occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of
labour. The separation of different trades and employments from one another,
seems to have taken place, in consequence of this advantage. This separation
too is generally carried furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest
degree of industry and improvement; what is the work of one man in a rude
state of society, being generally that of several in an improved one. In every
improved society, the farmer is generally nothing but a farmer; the manufac-
turer, nothing but a manufacturer. The labour too which is necessary to pro-
duce any one complete manufacture, is almost always divided among a great
number of hands. . . .
This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the
division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is
owing to three different circumstances; first to the increase of dexterity in every
particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly
140 The Industrial Revolution

lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention
of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable
one man to do the work of many. . . . (Book I, Chapter 1).
In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater
part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people,
comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or
two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed
by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in per-
forming a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the
same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or
to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties
which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion,
and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human
creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable
of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving
any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any
just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of
the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of
judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him oth-
erwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniform-
ity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes
him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of
a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable
of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employ-
ment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular
trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual,
social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this
is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the peo-
ple, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.
(Book V, Chapter 1).
Source: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin
Canaan, 5th ed. London: Meuthen, 1904 [1776].
Key Questions

Question 1: Why Was England First to

Industrialize?
The depth of the link between England as starting point of modern indus-
trialization and the idea of an industrial revolution has been hotly debated
since the dawn of the 19th century. As David Landes noted, the term “indus-
trial revolution” was first used in 1799 when a French envoy to Berlin observed
that his nation had begun such a transformation. Clarifying the connection
between place and process is essential to understanding the Industrial Revolu-
tion both as an historical phenomenon and its lessons for contemporary eco-
nomic development.
This frequently asked question also reminds readers that although England
was the first country to industrialize, other nations were not far behind. To
acknowledge the nature and causes of the wide gap that emerged between
Britain and its closest competitors in the first half of the 19th century is one
of the vital issues in understanding what was “revolutionary” about the Brit-
ish Industrial Revolution. The question of “Why was England first?” illumi-
nates not only the internal foundations of England’s Industrial Revolution,
but the competitive context of this groundbreaking event.
Since the aftermath of World War II, the question of why England was the
first country to experience an industrial revolution has been intimately linked
to the history of technology. In 1948, T. S. Ashton explained the Industrial
Revolution as when a “wave of gadgets swept over England” beginning around
1760. A generation later, David Landes fleshed out this interpretation based on
the superiority of British technology in The Unbound Prometheus: Technological
142 The Industrial Revolution

Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present
(1969). Landes’s account has dominated understandings of this question ever
since.
A great deal of attention has been focused on how those gadgets were in-
vented and made. Studies of innovators and manufacturing pioneers have
been complemented by examination of the role of workers and the working
classes in facilitating or inhibiting industrialization. At the same time, schol-
ars have explored the impact of key institutions like the framework of prop-
erty rights, the tax system, and the financial system capped by the Bank of
England. Taken together, these studies pointed to the unique features of Brit-
ish industrialization.
Although Landes’s work compared England to the rest of western Europe,
his focus was clearly on the role of technology in the three key industries of
textiles, coal, and iron. Thanks to a flood of studies exploring developments
in Britain, it became only natural for other scholars to explore the compara-
tive dimensions. Contemporary industrial developments in France, Belgium,
the German lands, and the United States received concerted attention as did
parts of Europe and other areas of the world that only industrialized later.
These studies contextualized British industrialization by highlighting what
was truly unique and what was European or even western about the Industrial
Revolution. These studies found that it was less British scientific prowess than
skill at implementing innovations that marked English technological advance
as different from the continent.
The logical next step for testing arguments about the key factors in the
British Industrial Revolution was to determine their impact. Changes in Eng-
land’s Gross National Product (GNP) had been measured and linked to the
chief industrial districts with changes over time noted in minute detail, but
most assertions about the standard of living for diverse groups or for the
country as a whole were not based on adequate data. C. Knick Harley and
Nicholas Crafts, among a host of others, spent a decade examining the avail-
able quantitative evidence to delineate the effect of transformative industrial
growth on the standard of living in general and of diverse groups. The data
suggested that the British standard of living did not improve during the first
half-century of the Industrial Revolution. What they found ignited a major
controversy. Their findings were challenged and their numbers checked and
rechecked. Problems with the statistics were explored and their limitations
exposed and factored into the analysis. When all was said and done, it was
clear that the British standard of living did not start to improve until the
1820s at the earliest with the 1830s as more likely. For more than two full
generations, the working classes, and even the British people as a whole, did
not benefit from the Industrial Revolution. Who did profit and how that
Key Questions 143

balance of power could be maintained are deeply uncomfortable questions

for proponents of the British model of industrialization. The conclusion
about the standard of living is one of the most important yet unresolved is-
sues with regard to the question of why England was first. The consequences
of being first on the long-delayed improvements in the standard of living is
another vital subject that has not been fully dealt with by either historians or
economists.
The issue of why England was first to industrialize is also closely tied to
current interest in the contributions of colonialism and especially slavery to
the Industrial Revolution. This subject will be considered in detail in Ques-
tion 3, but it is also relevant to this issue. If Britain’s empire, based on slavery
and the slave trade, furnished the profits and resources that drove industriali-
zation, then the issue of exploitation, not just of the working classes but
throughout the Atlantic world must take center stage in answers to the ques-
tion of why England was first.
England’s uniqueness is unquestioned. This island nation not only man-
aged to turn its economic advantages into an industrial revolution, it man-
aged to do it first and to maintain that position for more than a century. That
feat was based on technological advances, but other factors such as geography,
institutions, the role of the state, entrepreneurialism, and colonialism also
contributed in significant—and hotly debated—ways. The distinguishing
features of its society and scientific culture enabled England to lead the world
in developing a manufacturing economy. Identifying which factors and fea-
tures were critical and differentiated England from its competitors goes a long
way to understanding how an industrial revolution could occur. The answer
to why England was first remains relevant to contemporary policy studies
focused on economic development.
Why was England first to industrialize? Many factors went into English
leadership of the Industrial Revolution: it cannot be narrowed down to a
single issue. Technology? Scientific culture? Resource endowments, especially
iron and coal? Geography? Colonialism and slavery? State policies? Entrepre-
neurship? Labor discipline? Supply of capital? This question seeks to help
readers understand which aspects of England’s economy and society were es-
sential to its competitive advantage, so while the question is fundamentally
about England, it is also profoundly comparative. At the same time, although
these essays are historical in nature, they also provide insight into present-day
questions of economic development. The answers to this question are not
framed as the only reasons for English leadership, but rather as the most im-
portant explanatory factor or factors.
Étienne Stockland’s analysis of the question is an updated version of the
dominant interpretation, namely, that it was technology above all that enabled
144 The Industrial Revolution

England to become the first industrial nation. Stockland wrote this essay while
conducting research for his doctoral dissertation on the environmental and
economic history of livestock. He focuses on the south of France and on the
18th century. Stockland is an advanced graduate student in the History De-
partment at Columbia University.
The second essay is written by Jeff Horn who is Professor of History at
Manhattan College. He too is a historian of France and the author of five
previous books on the French and Industrial Revolutions that explore tech-
nology, trade, colonialism, politics, and the role of the state. He takes a more
explicitly comparative approach to the question by considering what impeded
Britain’s competitors while emphasizing the role of contingency in England’s
ability to touch off and maintain the Industrial Revolution.

Answer: Étienne Stockland, Britain

Industrialized First Because of Technology
Technological innovation was why Britain was the first country to expe-
rience an industrial revolution. Between c. 1750 and 1850, a host of me-
chanical inventions were developed that had a revolutionary impact on the
production of manufactured goods, especially textiles and metals. Remark-
able upsurges in productivity and drastic reductions in the amount of labor
needed to produce yarn and iron among many other things followed from
the mechanization of industry. These mechanical innovations first found
widespread industrial applications in Great Britain. Why did other eco-
nomically developed countries in the 18th and early 19th centuries like
France, the Netherlands, China, or India lag behind Britain in this process
of technological change? The question has been hotly debated since the end
of the 18th century, when the industrial basis of the British economy took
shape. A variety of economic, social, and geographical factors sustained
British technological prowess to permit that state to commence an indus-
trial revolution.

High Wages
British wages in the 18th century were exceptionally high by comparison
with other countries in Europe and Asia. Foreign travelers marveled at the
high living standards of British laborers, who were better nourished and
clothed than their counterparts on the European continent. For British entre-
preneurs, however, the high cost of labor was an impediment that increased
prices and made their goods less competitive in domestic and international
markets. The high costs of labor in Britain acted as a powerful incentive to
Key Questions 145

develop machines that could reduce the amount of labor-time required

for each output unit. As Adam Smith (1723–1790) wrote in The Wealth of
Nations (1776), the purpose of industrial machinery was to “increase the pro-
ductive power of labor, or to enable the same number of laborers to perform
a much greater quantity of work.” The textile industry was the first to reap
the benefits of mechanization. By mechanizing hand techniques for carding
and spinning cotton, machines like James Hargreaves’s (1720–1778) spin-
ning jenny, Richard Arkwright’s (1732–1792) water frame, and Samuel
Crompton’s (1753–1827) spinning mule significantly reduced the amount of
time and labor required to produce yarn. This labor savings based on techno-
logical advance gave British textiles an unrivaled competitive advantage on
the global market. Mechanical innovations were later introduced into other,
less glamorous, industries like printing, pin making, food processing, glass
manufacturing, and metalworking. To avoid high wages, technological ad-
vances enabled productivity growth in a broad range of economic sectors
thanks to the steady mechanization of tasks previously performed by manual
labor.
Cheap Energy
What made these mechanical innovations even more productive was that
they were increasingly powered by inorganic sources of energy. The steam
engines developed by Thomas Newcomen (1664–1729) and James Watt
(1736–1819) converted heat released by burning coal into energy that could
be harnessed for mechanical work. The first steam-powered factories were
established in the late 1770s. Technical improvements to the steam engine in
the first half of the 19th century expanded the industrial application of steam
rather rapidly in many sectors. These inventions allowed Britain to make the
first transition to what economic historian Edward Anthony Wrigley has
called a “mineral-based energy economy.” By the beginning of the 19th cen-
tury, British industry consumed five times as much coal as the entire Euro-
pean continent. Tremendous productive gains in manufacturing followed
from the substitution of fossil fuels for less efficient and more costly organic
sources of energy such as wood, human, or animal power. Political economist
Andrew Ure (1778–1857) remarked in his Philosophy of Manufactures (1835)
that if horses had not been supplanted by steam engines in powering mecha-
nized cotton mills, “at the present day, they would devour all the profits of the
manufacturer.”
Why was Britain the first country to make such extensive use of mineral
energy for industrial purposes, when other countries such as France, the
Netherlands, and China either possessed or had access to significant coal re-
serves? Geography played a key role. The major deposits of high-quality coal
146 The Industrial Revolution

in Britain—in Lancashire, Wales, and Northumberland—were conveniently

located near waterways or the sea that allowed for easy transportation inland,
to coastal cities, or abroad. The construction of a dense network of canals
beginning in the 18th century further reduced the costs of transporting
coal to diverse sites of industrial production. Britain’s natural endowments
and geography, combined with an increasingly efficient transportation infra-
structure, provided manufacturers with ready access to cheap coal that
incentivized a technologically driven transition to steam-powered factory
production.
Scientific Culture
If Britain’s high-wage, cheap energy economy provided powerful incentives
for the development of fossil fuel–powered, labor-saving technology, its
unique intellectual and social environment provided a favorable context for
such innovations. A distinctive scientific culture characterized by frequent
exchanges among natural philosophers, entrepreneurs, and artisans acted as
a breeding ground for technical innovation. The proliferation of vectors of
intellectual interaction between these groups lay behind what historian Joel
Mokyr called the “Industrial Enlightenment.” Somewhat informal societies
like the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society or the more organized
Lunar Society of Birmingham and what became known as the Royal Society
of Arts in London provided a meeting ground for scientists, entrepreneurs,
and artisans. These gatherings acted as a bridge between laboratory and
workshop. Public scientific lectures like the Mechanics Institutes, eagerly
attended by men of commercial and artisanal backgrounds, demonstrated
how the laws of physics could be usefully applied to industry. Numerous pe-
riodicals, books, and pamphlets disseminated a wide variety of useful scien-
tific and technological knowledge to diverse audiences. Through these various
channels, British laborers and entrepreneurs acquired a high degree of techno-
logical literacy and a growing appetite for mechanical innovations. The asso-
ciations between mechanically minded scientists and technologically savvy
artisans and entrepreneurs were the foundation of a knowledge economy out
of which the technological marvels of the British Industrial Revolution
emerged.
Conclusion
Britain was the first country to industrialize because of its success in devel-
oping and perfecting technology that greatly enhanced productive capacity in
a range of economic sectors. High wages and cheap coal provided incentives
for this type of technological innovation. Yet a favorable intellectual and so-
cial environment for the production, dissemination, and implementation
Key Questions 147

of useful knowledge was necessary for these incentives to be translated into

concrete material gains. Unique economic, geographical, and social factors
lay behind the rapid spate of technological innovations developed between
c. 1750 and 1850 that allowed Britain to achieve a relatively short-lived posi-
tion of global dominance by the mid-19th century.

Answer: Jeff Horn, Britain Became the First

Industrial Nation Because of Geography
and Luck
Great Britain emerged as the first industrial nation in the second half of
the 18th century. British leadership took advantage of impressive technologi-
cal creativity, increasingly heavy-handed control of the working classes, major
financial resources and stability, and phenomenal contributions from coloni-
alism. That leadership was hardly uncontested and many of these factors had
more to do with Britain’s ability to sustain industrialization rather than to get
it started in the first place. Across the channel, France was not only a com-
mercial and military rival, but also a major industrial contender. Based on its
own competitive advantages, France might have been able to overtake or
overshadow Britain in the initial stages of industrialization if it had not been
for the support provided by geography and luck.
English-language commentators frequently forget the fact that France was
the largest industrial producer in the world during the 18th century (though
not per capita). In terms of basic science and in certain areas of industrial
technology, France and other areas on the continent were the unquestioned
front-runners. Many commentators also overlook a number of important
trends, namely, that French foreign trade surpassed Britain’s over the course
of the 18th century and was increasing at a faster rate. With guilds, tolls, and
other economic impediments under assault from Enlightened government
officials and a vast internal market three times the size of Britain’s, France
might have usurped Britain’s industrial leadership had just a few events turned
out differently. Contingency cannot be left out of explanations of why Britain
was the first industrial nation.
Geography comprised a major set of pieces of the puzzle. Geography pro-
vided a number of enormous advantages to Britain that were essential to that
island nation’s ability to commence an industrial revolution. Resources com-
prised a significant part of the British competitive edge. England had plenty
of highly fertile farmland to support a large and growing population of people
who did not work the land and allow them to eat as well or better than their
rivals on the continent. Large stocks of animals provided food and fertilizer,
148 The Industrial Revolution

but also leather and wool. In addition, Britain possessed high-quality supplies
of coal and iron so essential to early industrialization as well as lead, tin, kao-
lin, and other clays. These resources constituted a near optimal basis for an
industrial revolution based on textiles, iron, and coal.
Britain’s low mountains, numerous fast-running streams, pattern of rivers,
jagged coastline, superb harbors, and separation from the continent also pro-
vided unrivaled geographic advantages. England is compact and relatively eas-
ily traversed, encouraging the construction of turnpikes and canals. Streams
provided numerous potential sources of water power and the interlocking
river systems of the Thames, Trent, Severn, and Wash covered most of the
country. In combination with the craggy shoreline, this meant that nowhere
in England is more than 70 miles from the Atlantic or 30 miles from a
navigable river with access to the sea. Abundant harbors and estuaries scat-
tered around the country provided safe havens where ships were protected
from the tempestuous Atlantic as well as jumping off points for sea-borne
commerce.
The ease and extent of transportation by water was perhaps the greatest
geographical advantage enjoyed by Britain. Rivers and canals enabled goods
to be exchanged quickly and relatively cheaply across the length and breadth
of the country. Widespread access to the sea provided an even more inexpen-
sive means of transporting goods. No other nation with the resources to com-
mence industrialization possessed this massive cost advantage to engage in
long-distance trade. Before the onset of industrialization, British road trans-
port costs were about 1 shilling per ton-mile. On inland waterways, transport
cost a little more than 20 percent of that figure with coastal shipping averag-
ing significantly less than that. Transporting goods by land was far slower and
more expensive than by water. A very high percentage of Britain’s cost advan-
tage in long-distance trade stemmed from transportation. Another substan-
tial wedge resulted from superior access to energy sources such as coal whose
rock bottom price derived from low transport costs. Geography was essential
to British industrial leadership.
The English Channel also formed a moat that protected the Hanoverian
state from the vicissitudes of continental warfare. Without this defensive bar-
rier, it is hard to imagine how England could have avoided invasion and de-
feat in 1688, 1715, 1745, 1755–1761, 1778–1781, 1793–1794, 1797–1798,
and 1800–1812. To take one example, even if England could have stopped a
Napoleonic invasion in 1805, the loss of life and property would likely have
been enormous and the war effort and/or recovery would have diverted pre-
cious resources from productive use. Conquest might also have shifted state
policy away from supporting industrialization. Britain used continental wars
and France’s distraction to conquer new territories in India and to acquire
Key Questions 149

much of France’s empire in the western hemisphere. These acquisitions were

essential, even necessary contributors to British industrialization. Had France
not been distracted by the Revolution and its attempt to dominate Europe
under Napoleon, that nation might well have matched or even surpassed
Britain’s industrial achievements.
Britain’s powerful defensive position also allowed the Hanoverian state to
concentrate its military efforts abroad and on the navy. Britain did not have
to tie up resources in an expensive standing army capable of contending with
the European great powers. What money was spent on land forces could be
used to keep control of the Scots and Irish and dominate the working classes,
aiding entrepreneurs and providing monopoly control over markets and re-
sources. Lower overall military expenditures and diminished threat levels en-
couraged and enabled British political stability, an essential factor in Great
Britain’s ability to industrialize first.
Geography enabled England to develop a true national market more than
150 years before the continental countries. These industrial followers had to
use dense webs of railroads to imitate the economic opportunities that geog-
raphy gave to Britain. A national market depressed market prices for food and
other commodities, permitting greater consumption and lower transaction
costs. As a competitive advantage, geography was hard to match, much less
beat.
Yet luck cannot be discounted in understanding why Great Britain was
able to take advantage of its opportunities and commence an industrial revo-
lution. It is always a chancy thing to play “What if?” but sometimes a coun-
terfactual scenario can illuminate complex processes or situations. England
and France fought a series of eight wars between 1688 and 1815 for the mas-
tery of Europe. The turning point was the Seven Years War (1756–1763) in
which England acquired a dominant position in India and the Americas.
Defeat left France bankrupt, impoverished, and bereft of the political and
economic position that might have enabled it to challenge Britain as it com-
menced industrialization. Why did France lose? Czar Peter III’s accession to
the throne of Russia in 1762 saved Prussia from defeat and Hanover from
conquest, and prevented French continental hegemony. Had Empress Eliza-
beth lived another six months or Peter III been unwilling to give up Russian
conquests in order to win favor with Prussia, France’s overseas losses might
have been balanced by European gains. The playing field could have been far
more even, allowing France’s great resources, wealth, and population to per-
mit it to challenge Britain for the industrial mastery of Europe. Other possi-
bilities could be created, but the point is that British industrialization was
conditional (not accidental), rather than determined as the literature so often
seems to suggest.
150 The Industrial Revolution

This essay seeks to highlight the profound significance of geography and

contingency in British industrial leadership. Technological innovation, politi-
cal stability, colonialism, control of the working classes, along with several
other factors cannot and should not be discounted in trying to understand
why and how Britain was able to industrialize. But the question being ex-
plored here is slightly different, namely, why was Britain first? To answer that
question, it is necessary to go beyond standard accounts to consider the geo-
graphical basis of the economy and the factors that restrained Britain’s com-
petitors. Geography was the single greatest factor in allowing Britain to be
first, but luck also played a significant role.

Closing
Why was England first? Technology certainly played an important role.
Étienne Stockland makes a convincing case for technology’s significance,
though he also pays close attention to the prior existence of a high-wage econ-
omy and to England’s tremendous endowment of cheap energy resources. For
Stockland, these two factors facilitated the productivity of England’s scientific
culture. Horn also emphasizes England’s wealth of coal and sites appropriate
for waterwheels, but he puts it in more general terms under the heading
of “geography.” He focuses greater attention on how geography protected
the island nation from invasion and allowed it to concentrate on economic
development in ways that its continental competitors could not. As an island,
England could also focus on acquiring and profiting from its empire in ways
that France and other European states could only dream of.
English economic leadership also depended on contingency. Many ac-
counts of the English industrial revolution suggest that with its resource and
capital endowments, institutions, leadership, profitable empire, and techno-
logical creativity, the Hanoverian state was destined to be the first industrial
nation. Such quasi-deterministic interpretations are rejected implicitly by
Stockland and explicitly by Horn, in part because they are historians of politi-
cal economy and write primarily about France, England’s chief political,
military, economic, and technological competitor. It is essential to recall the
multiple pathways and accidents of history that enabled some individuals,
groups, societies, and states to take advantage of their economic opportuni-
ties while preventing others from doing the same. There is a difference be-
tween being able to commence an industrial revolution and being the first to
do so. The gap that developed in the 19th century between England and its
competitors stemmed, in large measure, from the Hanoverian state’s position
as industrial pioneer. That is one of the most important reasons why it mat-
ters why England was the first.
Key Questions 151

Doing More
Online
“The Industrial Revolution Begins in England (1760–1850).” Available online at
http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/Industrial
Revolution/IRbegins.html.
Temin, Peter. “Two Views of the British Industrial Revolution.” 1995. Available on-
line at https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/64205/twoviewsofbritis
00temi.pdf?sequence=1.
Voigtländer, Nico, and Hans-Joachim Voth. “Why England? Demographic Factors,
Structural Change and Physical Capital Accumulation during the Industrial
Revolution.” Journal of Economic Growth. 2006. DOI 10.1007/s10887–006–
9007–6. Available online at http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/nico.v/Research
/WhyEngland_JEG.pdf.

Print
Ashton, Thomas S. The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830. London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1948.
Broadberry, Stephen, and Kevin H. O’Rourke, eds. The Cambridge Economic History
of Modern Europe, vol. 1, 1700–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010.
Crafts, N. F. R. British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1985.
Crafts, N. F. R., and C. Knick Harley. “Output Growth and the British Industrial
Revolution: A Restatement of the Crafts-Harley View.” Economic History Review
45 (1992): 703–30.
Horn, Jeff, Leonard N. Rosenband, and Merritt Roe Smith, eds. Reconceptualizing
the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
Landes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial De-
velopment in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969.
Landes, David S. “The Fable of the Dead Horse; or, The Industrial Revolution
Revisited.” In The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective, 2nd ed.,
edited by Joel Mokyr. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.

Question 2: Was the Exploitation of the

Working Classes Necessary to Have an
Industrial Revolution?
Men, women, and children made the goods that generated an Industrial
Revolution. Did they do so willingly or did they have to be forced to do so?
And if they had to be forced, was it done in a manner that can be described
152 The Industrial Revolution

as exploitation? How did entrepreneurs and managers get their workforce to

do dangerous, unpleasant tasks for up to 14 hours a day, six days a week? If
exploitation was necessary to the Industrial Revolution in England, was it
required everywhere or just there? These secondary questions provide nuance
and depth to understanding the importance of the original dilemma.
A very significant proportion of the laborers who spun the thread, put
warp to weft, forged the iron, and mined the coal that made the English
Industrial Revolution had no choice in the matter. Parish apprentices, other
children either sent by or working with their parents, and women were either
unpaid or received only a pitiful fraction of the already low compensation
of an adult male. Immigrants from Scotland and Ireland also worked for
rock-bottom wages. The dangers of a deep pit or experimental or poorly
made machines; the environmental threats of laboring in enclosed spaces
full of the dust and chaff of wool, cotton, and linen fibers; along with the
loss of leisure, education, and health resulting from workdays that stretched
from before dawn to after dusk even in summer, six days a week, were the
lot of many, probably most, of the first generations of factory workers. This
question examines whether such conditions were deliberate, necessary, and
exploitative.
This question is and has always been controversial. Even at the dawn
of industrialization, workers did not simply or easily accept the working con-
ditions. They banded together into coalitions, destroyed machines, and
sought to exert control over their work environment in numerous ways. Such
behavior explains why entrepreneurs relied so heavily on workers who were
not there by choice. Workers also “voted with their feet”: they sought alterna-
tive employment, migrated within the British Isles, or emigrated elsewhere.
For them, the issue was clearly one of exploitation and what they could do
about it.
Entrepreneurs and managers, of course, viewed the matter quite differently.
They claimed that they could not increase wages, lower hours, or improve
conditions if they wished to stay in business, much less make a profit. Labor-
ers, entrepreneurs asserted, still had too much control over the workplace and
did not produce as much as they should. Their emphasis was, unquestionably,
the necessity of squeezing as much profit as possible from the labor force to
maximize their investments, to encourage the development of industrial soci-
ety that might lead to a “revolution.”
In hopes of fostering an industrial revolution and avoiding a political revo-
lution, state decision makers in England generally sided with entrepreneurs
in any conflict between management and labor. The Hanoverian state
eliminated the right of workers to organize or engage in collective bargaining
and refused to limit hours or mandate minimum standards for health or
Key Questions 153

safety until England had become the “workshop of the world” and the un-
questioned industrial powerhouse. When workers attempted to use their
superior numbers to get more money, better conditions, or fewer hours,
the state made sure that their efforts were stillborn, intervening with force
when necessary. Only after 1830 and then in a limited way did the state
intervene to stop the worst of what the working classes experienced as exploi-
tation. In the 20th century, the degree of state intervention on behalf of
either workers or entrepreneurs depended mostly on the politics of the party
in power.
The debate about the necessity of poor working conditions and paying
the lowest possible wages to those who labored in the factories and mines of
the Industrial Revolution raged across the 19th and into the 20th century.
This was no simple scholarly debate; rather, the answer to this question has
tremendous political and policy implications not only for industrialized
countries but also for the developing world. What constitutes exploitation
and how it was or can be established and maintained remains a fundamen-
tally political question.
Historians and economists have approached the issue of exploitation of the
working classes and its necessity to rapid industrialization in a variety of—
often highly politicized—ways. In approaches to the Industrial Revolution,
E. P. Thompson and an outstanding cohort of other labor historians like Eric
Hobsbawm who were influenced greatly by Marxism delineated the condi-
tions that workers endured and demonstrated that the working classes had
not simply accepted their treatment. Following in these footsteps but also
taking advantage of developments in the interlinked but separate histories of
women and of children, the position of these groups has received a great deal
of recent attention that demonstrates how bad their working conditions and
pay scales were. The downward revisions to understandings of the standard of
living for the working classes during the first two generations of industrializa-
tion have also bolstered the case that the working classes were exploited dur-
ing the Industrial Revolution.
Others scholars have argued—more or less explicitly—that if workers did
not emigrate and if they were able to purchase increasing amounts of con-
sumer goods, then they could not really have been exploited. Jan de Vries’s
evocation of an “Industrious Revolution” in which the laboring classes worked
harder (and longer) in order to be able to purchase manufactured trinkets or
foodstuffs like coffee, chocolate, sugar, and tea can be understood as rejecting
the notion of working-class experience as inherently exploitative. Compari-
son of the standard of living of workers to those in England’s closest competi-
tors shows that wages were often higher and consumption beyond the barest
necessities greater there than elsewhere.
154 The Industrial Revolution

Historians of business and management have reconstructed the accounting

for certain firms and sectors providing insight into the degree of profit that
could and sometimes did accrue to the owners of successful enterprises. How
profits were achieved and the contributions made by skimping on mainte-
nance, safety, and wages while extending the work day and expectations of
output must be understood in order to evaluate the “necessity” of the treatment
of the working classes during the first 50 years of the Industrial Revolution.
In addition to greater attention to the histories of women and children in
the Industrial Revolution, the issue of exploitation has been widened by
greater attention to the empire and the profits amassed from colonies depend-
ent on slavery. Although most scholars consider this a separate issue from the
necessity of working-class exploitation, attention to the global dimensions of
the economic developments that gave rise to the English Industrial Revolu-
tion provides new insight into the nature of industrialization in the 18th and
19th centuries.
Was the Industrial Revolution fundamentally exploitative of the English
working classes? Did it have to be? Although contemporary documentary evi-
dence of poor working conditions and extremely long hours for relatively low
pay is overwhelming, these difficult circumstances do not automatically or
inescapably imply the existence of exploitation. The necessity of these cir-
cumstances to an industrial revolution is a more hotly debated question.
Could adequate profits have been earned if the laboring classes worked shorter
hours, in a better work environment, for more money? Would those more
modest profits have provided sufficient capital and the incentive to entrepre-
neurs to have touched off and sustained an industrial revolution? These ques-
tions suggest that the issue of whether the exploitation of the working classes
was necessary to the Industrial Revolution requires clear definition of terms
and judgment of the sources.
Sergio Castellanos-Gamboa takes a more quantitative approach that owes
much to economics to conclude that things got better for the workers begin-
ning around 1815 and quickening a generation later, but that the answer is
harder to determine for earlier periods because of inadequacies of the data.
He is in his third year in the PhD program of the Business School at Bangor
University in the United Kingdom. Castellanos-Gamboa is working on the
post-1945 evolution of consumer credit in Britain.
Jeff Horn emphasizes exactly that earlier period because it was then that
the Industrial Revolution was most desperate for workers and profits. He also
stresses the lived experience of the workers when examining the issue of ex-
ploitation. Horn is professor of history at Manhattan College and has written
or edited five previous books that focus heavily on labor relations to under-
stand the unique elements of European industrialization.
Key Questions 155

ANSWER: Sergio Castellanos-Gamboa, The

Exploitation of the Working Classes Was Not
Necessary to an Industrial Revolution
To address this issue, the definition of labor exploitation is the appropriate
starting point. Social scientists usually seek to understand and explain the
world as objectively as possible. Defining terms helps to understand the na-
ture of the argument and any conclusions drawn. Labor exploitation has
been understood primarily through the lens of either socialism or neoclassi-
cal economics. Karl Marx analyzed the relationship between labor and capi-
tal. He argued that labor exploitation happens when workers cannot better
their lives over the long term: they earn only enough to subsist so they can
keep working. For most neoclassical economists, labor exploitation occurs
only when wages are less than the marginal productivity of labor. That means
that workers should be paid an amount equivalent to their contribution to
overall production, which would generally occur in perfect, competitive la-
bor markets.
Both definitions, nonetheless, include two important components. The
first one, the value of labor, is not easy to measure. The final price of a good
contains information about the whole production process, in which the
added value of labor is an important part. The second element, the issue of
fairness, is even more challenging. What is workers’ fair share of the value
of production? To judge whether labor exploitation occurred, this essay will
explore the evolution of wages for the working classes along with working
conditions and the standard of living both before and during the Industrial
Revolution.
Although there were significant increases in wages during the Industrial
Revolution compared to preindustrial times, other factors have to be taken
into account when analyzing labor exploitation. First of all, real wages do not
seem to have increased before the onset of the Napoleonic wars at the very
end of the 18th century. Second, some evidence suggests that living standards
at best stagnated during the first decades of industrialization, while evidence
about an increase in working hours is mixed. Nor is there sufficient evidence
that workers had to develop new work habits or become subject to a new time
discipline.

abor Productivity, Wages, Living Standards,

L
and Working Conditions
Economic historian Gregory Clark argues that a more efficient and there-
fore a more productive economy was the main reason for the huge economic
growth touched off by the Industrial Revolution. A notable increase in labor
156 The Industrial Revolution

productivity during this period was the main driver of this growth. Therefore,
if neoclassical economics is correct, we should expect wages to increase in a
similar fashion. In particular, we would expect real wages to increase, showing
an improvement in the working classes’ purchasing power. Moreover, empiri-
cal evidence should exist that living standards were better for the new work-
ing classes than before the Industrial Revolution, justifying an increase in the
hours worked.
Recent estimations of the evolution of wages for artisans and laborers
in the building trades in England show an increase in real wages of about
60 percent between 1760 and 1860, with most of the increase happening
after 1820. Other estimates put the increase at around 30 percent in the same
period. These lower estimates mean that wages increased less than the im-
provement in output per worker, which demonstrates that some of the profits
derived from that increase in labor productivity did not go to the workers.
Proponents of an “Industrious Revolution” find that real wages for England
and other countries show little evidence of an increase in purchasing power
for workers’ wages, and note that there was actually some deterioration before
1820. They focus, however, on evidence of growing consumer demand for a
broader range of products among the working classes.
Marx’s collaborator Friedrich Engels argued in 1844 that preindustrial
workers were far better off than their successors who toiled in the factories
because they achieved better living standards with fewer hours worked. Clark
recognizes that during its first decades, the Industrial Revolution was not ac-
companied by a noticeable improvement of living conditions for the working
classes, but emphasizes that this trend changed around the same time that real
wages increased, i.e., after 1820 at the earliest and more likely around 1850.
From that date to the beginning of the 20th century, conditions for workers
improved and they started to earn salaries well above the subsistence level,
opening the path for the emergence of a new middle class.
There seems to be mixed evidence of the evolution of the number of hours
worked. In Birmingham and the Black Country, there is no evidence of a
drastic change in the hours worked or the working conditions during the first
half of the 19th century. However, more generally, there appears to have been
a significant increase in the hours worked. This situation suggests a number
of possibilities as to why workers might increase their supply of labor. For
example, was there an “Industrious Revolution” that led them to exchange
leisure for labor in order to earn the money to purchase a broader range of
new consumer products? To answer that question is beyond the scope of this
essay, but even if an “Industrious Revolution” occurred that led workers to
labor longer hours, there does not seem to be evidence that the change in the
working conditions should be labeled as labor exploitation.
Key Questions 157

Conclusion
The Industrial Revolution is a very powerful example that our understand-
ing of the past is not absolute and can still be improved in different ways.
Making use of new historical sources that shed new light is one way to do so.
Another means of bettering historical understandings is to implement more
sophisticated methodologies to assess more accurately previous theories.
The question of whether exploitation of the working classes was neces-
sary to have an Industrial Revolution is very challenging. First of all, we
must define what we mean by labor exploitation. Second, we have to ana-
lyze critically the information available regarding real wages, labor produc-
tivity, and living standards as well as qualitative data related to working
conditions in factories, workshops, and mines. Finally, we have to find an
appropriate measure to determine fair remuneration per time unit of labor
for the working classes. Because of these complicated factors, the debate is
still a vivid one.
There is evidence that the increase in economic efficiency and therefore
economic growth was driven by an increase in labor productivity. Real wages
seem to have increased steadily, but only after the end of the Napoleonic wars
in 1815. The issue that remains controversial relates to the working classes’
living standards across the whole period. Although people had access to a
broader range of consumer products, considerable data suggests that they had
to increase the hours they worked to acquire them, therefore reducing leisure
time and very likely their living standards, at least during the first half of the
19th century.
To consider labor exploitation’s potential link to the outbreak of an indus-
trial revolution, we have to dig further into the qualitative data regarding the
actual conditions under which workers were hired. In Britain, the relation-
ship between employers and employees seems to have changed after the con-
clusion of the first Industrial Revolution around 1850 in favor of workers,
with a reduced working day and more holidays. Nonetheless, although evi-
dence for the exploitation of the working classes is not strong, some of the
harsh working conditions imposed on the labor force did not seem to be a
necessary condition for the Industrial Revolution to happen.

ANSWER: Jeff Horn, The Exploitation of the

Working Classes Was Necessary to Have an
Industrial Revolution
Arguments claiming that such exploitation was not required for industri-
alization tend to start their considerations of the evidence in 1800 or 1820
158 The Industrial Revolution

rather than in 1760 or 1780 when the Industrial Revolution began. They
ignore how difficult it was to find people willing to work in the first factories
and they ignore the extraordinary lengths that industrial entrepreneurs went
to in order to ensure a supply of docile labor. Without the exploitation of the
working classes in the first generations of the Industrial Revolution, the Brit-
ish tinkerers who solved the practical problems involved in industrialization
would not have had the time or profit cushion to work out their ideas. Nor
would they have had the incentive to persevere through the inevitable hard
times if they could not skim profits from the wages and working conditions
of their laborers. To execute a relatively rapid transformation that yielded
British industrial domination, the exploitation of the working classes to max-
imize entrepreneurial profits was absolutely necessary.
Until the Industrial Revolution had been underway for about 50 years, the
lives of those who labored in factories suffered from their participation in
the industrialization process. Research has demonstrated conclusively that
the working classes’ standard of living, their measure of well-being, began to
improve only after 1830, a trend that accelerated after 1850. Living standards
fell in the generation from 1760 to 1780, rose marginally until the early
1790s, and then declined once again until around 1820. The standard of
living only began to improve in the 1820s, with most of the improvement
coming after 1830. From 1760 to 1820, the standard of living fell about
16 percent before increasing by over 40 percent between 1820 and 1850. For
the British economy as a whole, real family income, which measures the
amount of goods and services that can be purchased, increased about 30 per-
cent in the entire period, but the first three generations of factory workers
experienced a declining standard of living.
How that increase in income was achieved also matters enormously. Higher
family income stemmed from a surge in the number of hours worked on the
part of men, women, and children alike. In 1760, the average employed Brit-
ish adult worked nearly 50 hours a week. In 1850, British adults labored
more than 61 hours a week with many factory workers and miners putting in
up to 84 hours a week. Despite legislation limiting their hours and potential
places in employment, by that same date, 36 percent of children aged 10–14
worked full time for wages outside the home.
Factories and mines were also deeply unpleasant places to labor—an im-
portant feature of the exploitation of the British working classes. Early indus-
trial machinery was dangerous, cutting off fingers, toes, and limbs: steam
engines were prone to explode, scattering shrapnel. Mine shafts collapsed or
asphyxiated miners. Pollution, extremes of heat and cold, lack of ventilation,
and many other unhealthy factors had a strong impact on the life span and
health of workers. Manchester, in the county of Lancashire, the industrial
Key Questions 159

heart of England, witnessed some of the worst exploitation of the working

classes. With a life-span of only 17 years because of exceptionally high rates
of infant mortality, workers in Manchester could look forward to a mere
43 percent of the life-span of the average British person. In 1850, the average
Briton was physically shorter, less healthy, less literate, and worked much
longer hours than in 1760. They were also subjected to far harsher discipline
as managers and foremen sought to train people to be as tireless and efficient
as the machines they tended. Money is not everything: these considerations
of health and welfare greatly outweigh an increased ability to consume in
determining whether the working classes were exploited.
Factory labor was only a last resort: workers did not voluntarily submit to
their own exploitation. The first factories tended to be located in areas that
were both relatively impoverished and densely populated. They offered wages
that were about 20 percent higher than nonfactory jobs to entice workers
who clearly did not want to submit to industrial discipline. A lack of alterna-
tives other than emigration or starvation drove some into the factories. Jobs
also attracted some to the factories from Ireland and the Highlands of Scot-
land: these workers hoped to earn enough money to return home as soon as
possible.
The factories also relied fundamentally on those with no other options.
Women were offered jobs in the mills, factories, and mines, but never for
wages even remotely equivalent to men’s. In Manchester, the highest paid
woman factory worker made only a quarter of the highest paid male and the
average woman earned nearly 40 percent less than the average man. Children
earned a mere one-sixth to one-eighth of an adult laborer (in proportion to
their gender). With few other choices, women and children comprised the
bulk of industrial labor. In 1818, over half of the workers in English cotton
factories were adult women. Children made up another third of the labor
force. Scottish factories were even more dependent on the labor of women
and children. Many children accompanied their parent(s) into the factories or
mines, but many more were sent there as “apprentices.” Parents committed
children up to the age of 21 to work for their parish (local religious commu-
nity) in exchange for money or other support, paid to the parents, not the
child doing the work. A child could also be apprenticed to a master or entre-
preneur for up to seven years. Thus, a substantial number of young people
under the age of 21 had to work 12–14 hours a day, six days a week, living in
barracks, lofts, or dormitories, often hundreds of miles from home. Without
recourse to parish apprentices, women, and children, entrepreneurs like
Richard Arkwright and Josiah Wedgwood who elaborated the factory system
could not have found workers. Treating those workers poorly and underpay-
ing them drastically was essential to the profits that underlay the rapid spread
160 The Industrial Revolution

of the factory system. The heavy reliance on underpaid, underage, and unfree
workers demonstrates the exploitative nature of the labor system in the first
generations of the British Industrial Revolution.
The necessity of exploitation to the British Industrial Revolution was also
demonstrated by the actions of the Hanoverian state. Legal repression in myr-
iad forms was complemented by military repression whenever workers re-
sisted their exploitation. Workers were legally prohibited from combining or
joining forces in any way, while entrepreneurs were encouraged to form trusts
to set wages and prices. Particularly during the age of the French Revolution
and Napoleon (1789–1815), the average British person lost many of their
customary rights and protections while new repressive laws restricted indi-
vidual liberties. The ability of British entrepreneurs to get the state to make
machine-breaking into a crime carrying the death penalty in 1812 during the
Luddite movement is representative of how the legal system protected the
economic interests of factory owners by disciplining the working classes.
The factual evidence that the English working classes were exploited is
overwhelming. Although some entrepreneurs or apologists like Andrew Ure
attempted to defend the treatment of the working classes, their efforts should
be seen as justifications for a system that earned huge profits for elites at the
expense of the health and welfare of the working classes. The emigration of
significant numbers of people from the British Isles in search of opportunity
demonstrates how dire the situation was and the lengths that people would go
to in order to avoid factory work. As attitudes shifted in the 1820s and 1830s,
the British state eventually began to investigate the treatment of workers. The
testimony of workers, entrepreneurs, and state employees charged with over-
sight and inspection is incontrovertible in demonstrating the abuses of the
system and the reliance on exploitation to maximize profits. That initial at-
tempts at government regulation of the worst of industrial abuses took decades
to become effective as entrepreneurs thwarted both the spirit and the letter of
the new laws in the name of keeping their profits as high as possible reveals the
ongoing exploitation of the British working classes.

Closing
Whether the exploitation of the working classes was necessary to the Indus-
trial Revolution looks very different depending on which period is given prior-
ity. If the emphasis is 1760–1800 or even 1820, then it is much harder to make
the case that the working classes were not exploited, though the issue of neces-
sity remains an open question. For the period after 1820 or 1830, whether the
working classes experienced exploitation is more debatable. However, the ne-
cessity of poor treatment of the working classes is undermined by the example
Key Questions 161

of entrepreneurs like Robert Owen and the ongoing profitability after legisla-
tive protections were finally passed and made effective in the 1830s and 1840s.
Sergio Castellanos-Gamboa takes a more business-friendly, quantitative
approach to determining whether exploitation took place. He points to the
economic relationship between productivity and wages as the best means of
investigating the issue of exploitation and whether it was needed to generate
an industrial revolution. Jeff Horn also deploys statistics, but his approach
centers on how working people actually lived. Given the well-known short-
comings of the data collected in this era, all statistics should be taken with a
rather large grain of salt. The necessity of exploitation is a sensitive subject
that requires further analysis using both quantitative and qualitative data.
Readers are encouraged to consider this question equally from the perspective
of entrepreneurs and managers and from that of the working classes, as well
as considering what might have been best in the short and in the long run for
society as a whole.

Doing More
Online
Burnette, Joyce. “Women Workers in the British Industrial Revolution.” Available
online at https://eh.net/encyclopedia/women-workers-in-the-british-industrial
-revolution/.
Nye, John V. C. “Standards of Living and Modern Economic Growth.” Available
online at http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/StandardsofLivingandModern
EconomicGrowth.html.
Tuttle, Carolyn. “Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution.” Available
online at https://eh.net/encyclopedia/child-labor-during-the-british-industrial
-revolution/.

Print
Clark, Gregory. “The Condition of the Working-Class in England, 1209–2004.”
Journal of Political Economy 113, no. 6 (2005): 1307–40.
De Vries, Jan. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Econ-
omy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Floud, Roderick, and Paul Johnson, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Modern
Britain, vol. 1, Industrialisation, 1700–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
Hobsbawm, Eric. Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution. Lon-
don: Penguin, 1969.
Horn, Jeff. The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution,
1750–1830. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
162 The Industrial Revolution

Humphries, Jane. Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage Books,
1966 [1963].

Question 3: Could an Industrial Revolution

Have Taken Place Without European
Colonialism and Imperialism?
Confronting the global history of the Industrial Revolution has emerged
as vital to understanding this complicated subject. By forcing us to go
beyond evocations of the national or even transnational or regional histories
of industrialization to examine the importance of European colonialism and
imperialism as necessary precursors to industrial transformation, this ques-
tion underscores the growing importance of the emerging global economy.
Although Europe’s global commitments and industrialization are usually
dealt with separately, this question emphasizes the fact that they were actually
intimately linked.
Furnishing raw materials, goods, and markets, Europe’s colonies and glo-
bal trade ties were essential to generating the capital and consumer demand
that enabled industrialization to occur. Emphasis on colonies and imperial-
ism dependent on the slave trade and slavery also raises the issue of exploita-
tion and its link to the Industrial Revolution in a new key. This question also
focuses attention on the role of the state: Mercantilist trade policies and dedi-
cation to war making appear as critical components of government action
that enabled and supported industrialization. The acquisition of Europe’s
largest empire and the most valuable global trade ties by England also goes a
long way in explaining why that nation was the first to experience an indus-
trial revolution.
Trade, especially exchange with the colonies, has always been an important
part of the story of early-modern economic development. Since a growing
percentage of 18th-century English and French commerce was tied to Atlan-
tic trade, colonialism and imperialism were included in the discussion, though
usually as objects rather than subjects, particularly in the literature written
by Europeans. Scholars’ delineation of the changing contours of commercial
interaction between Europe and its colonies and later with other global trad-
ing partners was crucial to understanding how trade, especially trade with the
colonies, sustained the manufacturing economy.
With regard to the colonies, the role of European governments in fostering
industrialization has been misunderstood. Many scholars have accepted Adam
Smith’s attack on mercantilism for slowing down or preventing economic
Key Questions 163

growth as actual English policy rather than a critique of his contemporary

practice. The English observed fundamentally mercantilist trade policies until
the middle of the 19th century, especially when it came to its colonies. By
protecting markets and supplies of raw materials, supporting the British mer-
chant marine, establishing monopolies and encouraging private investors to
seek opportunities abroad, mercantilism was an effective state means of foster-
ing growth in manufacturing. Instead of undermining the possibility of an
industrial revolution, English mercantilism seems to have supported or per-
haps enabled industrialization, especially in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Even the loss of 13 North American colonies, in large measure because of
mercantilist trade policies, did not challenge the basic course or effectiveness of
British state action during the first generations of the Industrial Revolution.
In the last 30 years, however, investigations of trade have placed greater
emphasis on the contributions provided by Europe’s colonies and imperial
trade ties. Growing attention to globalization and the emergence of a true
global economy has shifted the terms of the discussion. In particular, the in-
fluence of slavery in enabling Europe to industrialize at the expense of other
parts of the world has come to the fore. European colonialism and imperial-
ism are now indelibly part of the story of the Industrial Revolution in ways
that these subjects had never been before.
The current contours of this question owe much to the work of Joseph
Inikori. His masterful study of the contributions of slavery and the slave trade
to the Industrial Revolution has been a revelation. With Africans generating
no less than 69 percent (in 1651–1670 and again in 1848–1850) and up to
83 percent (in 1761–1780) of the value of British Atlantic commerce, it is
impossible to ignore the importance of slavery and the slave trade in the ac-
cumulation of capital that made an industrial revolution possible. In the wake
of Inikori’s findings, which ensure greater focus on the issue of exploitation—
primarily of slaves rather than workers—the ever-present dark side of coloni-
alism has received additional attention. Kenneth Pomeranz provided an
additional piece of the global puzzle by arguing that it was domination of the
resources and markets of North and South America that permitted Europe to
leapfrog China on the path to an industrial revolution. By posing this “what
if ” question, Pomeranz concentrated attention on the political economy of
global power relations rather than on solely European concerns or more for-
mal economic issues. Clearly, in these accounts, the slaves who made the west-
ern hemisphere such a profitable possession seem to have been necessary for
an industrial revolution. The empire might even have served as a model for
how the state and entrepreneurs could control rebellious workers at home.
But the complicated challenge to the existing literature posed by Inikori and
Pomeranz is still not fully integrated into most accounts of industrialization.
164 The Industrial Revolution

This question also underscores the need to consider the role of stocks of
capital in industrialization both more critically and more creatively. How
much was needed to enable an industrial revolution? Could it have been ac-
quired elsewhere? Could England, in particular, with its relatively small size
and population, have found an alternative? How long might it have taken?
Would the delay have permitted England’s competitors to steal a march? Put
another way, the essential question is: What was the tipping point in terms of
capital stocks in allowing or even encouraging industrialization? An essen-
tially technical economic analysis ought to be complemented by an answer
that takes cultural attitudes into account. What level of reserves was necessary
to permit investors to support new ways of manufacturing? Did the benefits
of colonialism and imperialism provide governing elites with the experience
and confidence to encourage entrepreneurs and control the working classes?
Such questions are becoming much more prominent in financial considera-
tions of the Industrial Revolution.
Colonialism and imperialism obviously played a major role in the British
Industrial Revolution. The exact nature of that role and whether the contri-
butions of colonialism and empire were necessary to the transformation of
manufacturing that occurred between 1750 and 1850 are much more uncer-
tain. The greatly enhanced attention given to the inputs of Africans in the
Atlantic world has shifted the terms of this question so that scholarly consen-
sus is in flux. What is absolutely clear is that the foundations of European
industrial revolutions must take global trade and colonies into account.
Europe did not industrialize by itself. Manufacturing relied on markets,
resources, and profits from around the globe in order to transform society. In
the 18th and early 19th centuries, Europeans depended on the Atlantic world
for these inputs more than any other global region. In that era and in that
place, European colonialism was inextricably linked to slavery and the slave
trade, which recalls forcibly the issue of exploitation. This question also calls
for analysis of exactly how much capital—either per capita or in total—is
necessary to begin and sustain an industrial revolution.
Sophie Muller’s essay is focused squarely on the Atlantic world. Based on a
variety of factors including mercantilism, she concludes that colonialism in
the so-called New World was necessary to the British Industrial Revolution.
Muller is completing her doctorate in history at the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York. Her dissertation is entitled “Poster Boys: Pater-
nalism, Working-Class Boyhood, and Masculinity in Victorian and Edward-
ian London.” She teaches part-time at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
and the Cooper Union.
The second essay is by Jeff Horn, who recognizes the importance of coloni-
alism and imperialism to the Industrial Revolution but argues comparatively
Key Questions 165

that the profits, markets, and resources garnered through colonialism were
necessary but not sufficient to explain Britain’s industrial transformation.
Horn is professor of history at Manhattan College and the author of five
previous books. His most recent monograph, Economic Development in Early
Modern France: The Privilege of Liberty, 1650–1820 (Cambridge University
Press, 2015) explores these same issues of trade and empire.

ANSWER: Sophie Muller, Colonialism and

Imperialism in the New World Were Essential
to the British Industrial Revolution
In the late 18th century, Britain was the first country to undergo the
Industrial Revolution, in large part due to the resource advantage and in-
creased markets provided by colonization of the New World. The Industrial
Revolution ultimately marked a shift from handicraft goods to rapidly pro-
duced, machine-made goods utilizing unskilled labor. Although many econo-
mies around the world industrialized after 1780, one of the central questions
is: Why did Britain industrialize first? Most commonly, new technologies
and mechanical innovation have been seen as the root. While the invention
of machines to assist production was essential to efficiency in output, it was
Britain’s New World colonialism and Atlantic commercial networks that ex-
panded the supply of resources and markets necessary for industrial growth.
Britain established long-term economic connections to the New World that
yielded a competitive advantage in resources, new captive markets, an in-
creased share of global markets, and a spark for domestic transformation.
Without colonialism and imperialism in the New World, Britain could not
have started and maintained an industrial revolution.
Britain was certainly not the only, or the first, western European country
to conquer an overseas empire in the New World. Spain and Portugal received
significant profits from the removal of precious metals like gold and silver
from their Caribbean and Latin American colonies beginning in the early
16th century. The conversion of Caribbean and South American territories to
first tobacco and then sugar plantations maintained or even increased the
commercial advantage of New World colonialism for western Europe. While
Britain profited from colonies of exploitation in Central and South America
as well as the Caribbean, it was the addition of settlement colonies in North
America during the 17th century that were critical to Britain’s long-term
commercial success.
Spain and Portugal gained significantly in the short term from the re-
sources flowing out of their New World territories, but struggled to open up
markets for the consumption of goods sold by European merchants. These
166 The Industrial Revolution

countries received short-term riches but gained little long-term commercial

benefit. Instead, it was the British, Dutch, and French who ultimately suc-
ceeded in fostering multilateral flows of goods around the Atlantic, through
both formal networks of joint-stock companies as well as informal networks
of private traders, privateers, and pirates. However, the strength and disrup-
tive capacity of British informal networks, as well as political and military
upheavals on the continent, diverted French and Dutch resources, facilitating
British colonial dominance. By the start of the Industrial Revolution, Great
Britain had surpassed the Netherlands as the mercantile and commercial cap-
ital of Europe. Even after the loss of the 13 colonies, Britain had amassed the
most valuable territorial empire in the western hemisphere and was continu-
ing to expand global trade networks utilizing New World advantages. This
dominance was in part responsible for the continuance of Britain’s economic
empire even after U.S. independence in 1783.
The New World’s colonial resources paved the way for Britain’s Industrial
Revolution in a number of ways. The most straightforward of these advan-
tages was that New World territorial conquests increased Britain’s access to
natural resources, the core of the mercantilist economy. Resources like pre-
cious metals, sugar, and tobacco were utilized by Britain to increase domestic
consumption and enhanced Britain’s position in trade with the continent as
well as enabling increased trade with China and India. As China was in the
process of demonetarizing from paper money to metal coins, the only way
to secure high-value luxury items like silks and porcelain was in exchange
for New World silver. The physical geography of Europe’s North American
colonies, often referred to as “ghost acreage,” also provided an answer to the
Malthusian problem of population growth overtaking agricultural resources.
While it was the sugar- and tobacco-producing colonies that provided the ini-
tial economic windfall, trade networks established with the settlement colo-
nies of New England were also a critical investment that later supported
British industrialization. While the New England territories were not imme-
diately profitable in raw materials, they were an important part of Britain’s
Atlantic World trade. New England provided food and goods that supported
Britain’s sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean and South America so
that they could specialize in plantation production. In return, raw materials
and precious metals flowed back to New England and then across the Atlantic
in exchange for British manufactured goods. This multilateral trade strength-
ened Britain’s global position in markets and generated significant profits: the
New England colonies were essential to the strength of the network.
Britain also gained long-term commercial advantages from the protectionist
economic policies put in place within the empire well before industrialization.
Navigation Acts passed in 1651 and renewed in 1662, 1663, 1670, and 1673,
Key Questions 167

lasting at least partly through the mid-19th century, reflected the mercantilist
desire to keep imperial resources within the empire and out of the hands of
foreigners, especially European competitors. While not benefitting from the
lower market price advantage of “free trade,” the requirement that all New
World resources pass through British ports entrenched a trade monopoly
across the Atlantic. North American colonies consumed British manufactured
goods and in return supplied food and resources to Britain’s sugar-producing
colonies, whose resources then flowed back to Britain for trade or production.
Britain gained considerable financial advantages from this controlled trade.
These entrenched networks survived the end of the Navigation Acts and the
independence of the 13 colonies. The continuation of this connection over the
long term had something to do with continued high demand for British con-
sumer goods in the newly independent American states. However, markets do
not tell the whole story.
British investors had long-standing financial relationships with Chesa-
peake tobacco plantation owners. Even after the American Revolution, these
plantation owners remained conduits through which American tobacco made
its way into continental European markets. These British merchants also ben-
efited from the distraction of European military conflicts after 1792. While
no longer obligated to trade, Britain remained America’s primary trading
partner continuing the exchange of New World resources for British manu-
factured goods. At the beginning of the 19th century, Britain continued to be
the conduit through which America conducted most of its overseas trade.
The importance of Britain’s unequal trade relationship with newly independ-
ent and increasingly wealthy America during the early stages of the Industrial
Revolution should not be understated. This network yielded not only in-
creasing export/import income, but also allowed for an increasing flow of
American cotton in the 19th century, enhancing and continuing Britain’s
industrial supremacy in textiles.
Overseas colonial conquests and resource advantages also supported Brit-
ain’s domestic production. Growing resource extraction from the Americas
increased the population of port cities, resulting in the rise in demand for coal
as an urban fuel source. The conquest and protection of colonies, as well as
internal European conflicts, were costly, but increased demand for coal and
iron to manufacture arms thus supported industrial development. Invest-
ment in joint-stock companies and career opportunities from overseas trade
amplified the flow of capital to the British aristocracy and provided new op-
portunities for manufacturing and factory investment, which would be the
foundation of the emerging middle class.
While there was a confluence of factors resulting in Britain being the first
nation to industrialize, at the core of economic advantage and opportunity
168 The Industrial Revolution

were the resources and commercial networks opened up by conquest and

long-term investment in the New World. Resources from the Americas eased
and permitted global trade for Europeans while encouraging the development
of new markets and commercial relationships. Without these trade opportu-
nities and resource advantages—in other words, without colonialism and
imperialism—it would have been impossible for Britain to specialize its man-
ufacturing ahead of other leaders in trade and innovation. Based on mercan-
tilist principles, Britain established long-term commercial relationships with
the 13 colonies that resulted in a highly profitable import/export and invest-
ment relationship with America that survived independence. British manu-
facturing for economic exchange as well as military demand, the latter in part
to maintain colonial holdings, helped fuel domestic industrial production,
setting off what would become a century of industrial dominance.

ANSWER: Jeff Horn, British Colonialism Was

a Necessary but Not Sufficient Cause of the
Industrial Revolution
European colonialism provided the resources and profits that underlay the
Industrial Revolution. Britain, however, did not have to be a major colonial
power. That nation could have initiated industrialization by trading with the
colonies of other European powers. An open exchange of manufactures for
colonial goods might have accomplished the same things, but it seems un-
likely that it would have allowed Britain to be the first industrial nation. Such
counterfactual conjectures can be used to highlight the essential factors in a
complicated process.
England was far from the first European colonial power. Spain and Portu-
gal established colonies and trading stations in several places in the western
hemisphere, Africa, and Asia that enabled them to tap into these areas’ wealth
for their own benefit. The advantages of colonialism were so clear that states
in competition with the Iberian powers, most notably the Dutch, French,
and English, immediately disputed their control and, in the 17th century,
both conquered some of Spain’s or Portugal’s colonies and established others
on their own. It was also in the 17th century that the foundations of planta-
tion agriculture in the so-called New World using slave labor were laid, as that
region’s easily exploitable mineral wealth was exhausted.
The path England took in the 17th century led to an industrial revolution
in the 18th. To acquire or establish colonies required the mobilization of
scarce resources that often had a quite slow return on investment. Competi-
tion with powerful continental military powers like Spain and France or naval
Key Questions 169

powerhouses like the Dutch forced the English state to develop greater au-
thority and to implement monopolistic trade policies that would later become
associated with mercantilism. State action could have focused on defense,
trade, and supporting the development of those English industries, crafts, and
productions that were or could become internationally competitive.
When England began to industrialize in the third quarter of the 18th cen-
tury, its empire consisted primarily of Bengal in India and scattered outposts
along the western coastline of Africa, various Caribbean islands of which
Jamaica was the largest and most important, and a large number of colonies
on the mainland of North America like Canada, Florida, and what came
to be known as the 13 colonies. Although Bengal generated considerable
profits for the British East India Company and the 13 colonies yielded quan-
tities of tobacco, indigo, and rice that did not duplicate what Great Britain
itself produced, the vast bulk of British trade was in tropical and semitropical
commodities such as sugar, cotton, chocolate, coffee, and rice from the Car-
ibbean basin. These commodities were re-exported to Europe or exchanged
for luxury goods from Asia. Millions of Africans were traded for European
manufactures and then brought as slaves to the western hemisphere to grow
these commodities. This global trading network was essential to British
industrialization.
Atlantic trade spawned huge profits for Europeans. Britain’s exports, re-
exports, imports, and service grew from an average annual value of £20,084,000
in 1651–1670 to £105,546,000 in 1781–1800 reaching an amazing
£231,046,000 in 1848–1850. About 40 percent of this total was produced by
Britain. According to historian Joseph Inikori, African labor generated more
than half of this wealth, reaching a high point of 83 percent of British Atlantic
commerce in 1761–1780. Not only was Atlantic trade growing rapidly, but
the exchange also intensely favored Europe. Annual profit from British trade
with the 13 North American colonies was £2.64 million out of an already
depressed official total of £9.5 million. Thus, 28 percent of the volume of
trade was European profit.
The effects of this rapid expansion of highly profitable trade were pro-
found. Growing trade encouraged technological innovation. Integrating dif-
ferent territories into a global trading system brought new opportunities that
fostered commercial and industrial diversification. Perhaps more importantly,
demand for manufactured goods was no longer limited to the size of the do-
mestic or even regional market. Commercial profits were often invested in
industrial concerns, and improved forms of business practice including joint-
stock companies and the London stock market were developed to cope with
the tremendous profits. Within Britain itself, entrepreneurs found numerous
ways and means of exercising their skills, and access to addictive commodities
170 The Industrial Revolution

and fashionable luxury goods led some workers to labor more hours in order
to afford coffee, chocolate, or a silk scarf. To carry this expanded trade, Brit-
ain’s merchant fleet emerged as the largest in the world, more than tripling in
tonnage over the course of the 18th century.
The mercantilist policies developed to manage this trade were based on
colonialism, but they did not have to be. Managing foreign trade to keep a
positive balance led the British government to favor producers at both the top
and bottom of the market who could acquire and maintain markets abroad.
The British government successfully favored domestic producers at the ex-
pense of consumers. As a policy approach, free trade was barely considered,
much less implemented before the middle of the 19th century.
The possibility that Britain could have garnered the profits and products
it needed to industrialize without colonialism is provided by trade with the
newly independent United States after 1783. Despite losing political control
of these former colonies, trade burgeoned, reaching almost £30 million in
1800, more than 300 percent higher than when the Declaration of Inde-
pendence was promulgated. Profitable though it was, the benefit from U.S.
trade was small potatoes compared to that from the slave trade. It is impor-
tant to note that British colonists purchased only a small percent of the
human beings that the British brought to the western hemisphere. The colo-
nies of other European powers absorbed the vast bulk of them. Also, while
the East India Company acquired vast swaths of land, not all of Britain’s
chartered companies were colonialist. Indeed, the Muscovy and Levant
companies were highly profitable despite not governing any territory. Mer-
cantilist trade policies supported and encouraged colonialism, but territorial
expansion was not always necessary to their success. The probability of
slower growth because of fewer protected markets, greater competition, and
lowered margins did not preclude British industrialization, but making the
breakthrough to an industrial revolution would have been far more difficult
and, at the earliest, it would have come a generation or two later. The huge
profits generated by the empire, as opposed to colonial trade, came only in
the 19th century, when the British Industrial Revolution was already well
underway.
The great exception to this counterfactual hypothesis is Ireland. Until
1801, Ireland was a colony of first England and then Great Britain. The needs
of the Irish economy were thoroughly subordinated to Britain’s to avoid or
minimize competition. This protected market and source of raw materials
was essential to British economic competitiveness and showed English and
Scottish elites the profit possibilities of colonialism. It is hard to imagine how
Britain could have had an industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centu-
ries without firm control of Ireland.
Key Questions 171

Historian Kenneth Pomeranz argues that it was privileged access to the

resources and markets of the Americas that enabled Europe to industrialize
before China. A huge proportion of the economic value of the western hemi-
sphere in the 18th century was provided by African slavery. Britain did not
have to control territory in order to participate in these benefits. In fact, by
concentrating on developing new technologies to improve production as well
as innovative goods to sell, without incurring the massive expenses of a long
series of colonial wars fought around the globe, Britain might possibly have
become an even more efficient international competitor. In short, colonialism
in the Atlantic world was both necessary and sufficient to European industri-
alization. British colonialism, however, was a necessary but not sufficient
cause of the Industrial Revolution.

Closing
In the 18th and early 19th centuries European colonialism and imperial-
ism centered on the Atlantic world. Following in the footsteps of Portugal
and Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands established outposts and
trade ties in and to various places in Africa and the Americas during the 17th
century. Slavery and the slave trade enabled the development of these links
and colonies. This trade provided products, especially tropical commodities;
consumed a high proportion of Europe’s export of manufactured goods; and
spawned a high percentage of these nations’ commercial profits. It cannot be
doubted that various national industrial revolutions, especially Britain’s, ben-
efited greatly from European domination of these trade relationships.
Both authors agree that colonialism and imperialism were essential con-
tributors to the British Industrial Revolution and that the Atlantic world was
the key to growing European domination of global trade. Where they differ
is on the meaning of those contributions. Muller argues that the economic
advantages provided by the “New World” to Britain were necessary to the
Industrial Revolution by exploring the growth of markets and the provision of
resources including with the independent United States. By deploying coun-
terfactuals as well as thinking comparatively about the emergence of trade rela-
tions in the Atlantic world, Horn believes that through trade Britain could
have accrued the same or similar benefits that it received through colonialism
and imperialism. Without colonies, Britain could still have industrialized,
though the process might have taken longer to get underway. The essays of
Muller and Horn indirectly support the thesis of Kenneth Pomeranz that
domination of the Americas was the key advantage that Europe had in the race
with China to industrialize. Colonialism and imperialism were state policies
that spurred European competitiveness and enabled an industrial revolution.
172 The Industrial Revolution

Doing More
Online
Harley, C. Knick. “Slavery, the British Atlantic Economy and the Industrial Revolu-
tion.” University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History
113, April 2013. Available online at https://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/economics/history
/paper113/harley113.pdf.
Stuchtey, Benedikt. “Colonialism and Imperialism, 1450–1950.” Available online at
http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/backgrounds/colonialism-and-imperialism/benedikt
-stuchtey-colonialism-and-imperialism-1450–1950.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. Available online at http://www.slavevoyages
.org/.

Print
Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Hont, Istvan. Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in His-
torical Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005.
Inikori, Joseph E. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in Inter-
national Trade and Economic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002.
Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660–1800. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the
Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Voth, Hans-Joachim, and Peter Temin. Prometheus Shackled: Goldsmith Banks and
England’s Financial Revolution after 1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of Great Expan-
sion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730s–1840s. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2011.
Selected Annotated
Bibliography

ONLINE SOURCES
Simply typing a term into a search engine on the Internet is likely to get you
sponsored links, Wikipedia, or unreliable material. It is a far better research
strategy to start with a recognized portal or a known scholar with a recog-
nizable, appropriate institutional affiliation and use them to find material
that is reliable, accurate, and appropriately cited. If you must use Wikipe-
dia, follow the links to sites that have experts making sure that the informa-
tion is accurate. Google Books has a vast collection of materials related to
the Industrial Revolution, but separating the wheat from the chaff is diffi-
cult. It is better to find references beforehand to something that might be
available on Google Books than to start searching there. Although there is a
great deal of excellent material available on the Web—and more every
day—much of it, even on sites that purport to be for educators or students,
is rife with errors and amounts to little more than a brief introduction. Re-
garding the Industrial Revolution, as with any other topic, Internet re-
sources must be used with great care and should start with the sites listed
below.

http://echo.gmu.edu/
The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (http://chnm.gmu.edu/) is
an excellent starting point for most historical research. Its links are checked regularly
to make sure that they are working. This institution also works with experts in many
fields related to the study of the past to make sure controversial subjects are linked
appropriately. The digital address above is to ECHO (Exploring and Collecting
174 Selected Annotated Bibliography

History Online), a directory of 5,000 plus Web sites dedicated to science, technology,
and industry. Start here for general sites on the Industrial Revolution.

http://www.econlib.org/index.html
The Library of Economics and Liberty has an encyclopedia that is interesting and
provocative as well as some primary sources, a few books, and several guides to help
find materials. Much of the material and information found on or through this site
has a particular political viewpoint: it can still be valuable, but it should be used with
caution and never uncritically.

http://eh.net/
EH-Net is maintained by a number of highly respected scholarly organizations re-
lated to economic history, broadly speaking. It has several useful resources. The En-
cyclopedia is reputable and useful, though it is hardly comprehensive. The Databases
and How Much Is That? section provide useful information about economic history,
especially related to questions of change or exchanges over time.

http://legacy.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/modsbook14.asp
Fordham University’s Internet Modern History Sourcebook’s collection of primary
sources on the Industrial Revolution is an excellent place for students and scholars to
find accessible, well-edited, and reliable documents. It is quite stable, which means you
can link to it, though things have shifted on occasion. Other subjects like 18th-century
Britain will also have relevant documents, so browsing often repays your effort.

http://invention.si.edu/
The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian
Institution is a good place to consider issues related to invention in U.S. history. It
provides more technical material on science and technology than almost any other
site.

http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/moa/
The Making of America collection at the Cornell University Library is a well-curated
means of accessing primary sources about early industrialization in the United States,
with particular emphasis on science and technology.

https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
The American Memory project at the Library of Congress is a superb place to look
for primary sources including images on subjects related to U.S. industrialization.
The general collection contains much of interest for those exploring industrialization
in other places.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
The British National Archives provides access to a considerable collection of primary
sources and images. The Find Guides can help you navigate its enormous holdings.
Selected Annotated Bibliography 175

Although focused on the United Kingdom, this repository has documents related to
industrialization around the globe, especially in former and current British colonies.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas Library is a
phenomenal collection of historical maps covering the entire world. The maps are
available in a variety of formats and include many maps specific to resources, trans-
portation, and demography that are directly relevant to the Industrial Revolution.

http://www.spinningtheweb.org.uk/
This is a rich collection of materials related to textile history in Northwest England
where the Industrial Revolution began. As with all good local history sites, there is
material here found nowhere else.

http://www.victorianweb.org/
The Victorian Web has an eclectic collection of primary and secondary source mate-
rials. Many topics cannot be explored here, but those that are present are usually
useful and reliable. It is not always updated and there are some dead links. Not the
best place to start, but a reasonable repository of documents, interpretations, and
links.

PRINT SOURCES
Economic History
Daunton, Martin J. Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain
1700–1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
This book is the most insightful socioeconomic account of this critical century and a
half. Well written, it presents a convincing version of why and how the Industrial
Revolution occurred when and where it did. For a general text, it is highly
recommended.

De Vries, Jan. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Econ-
omy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
This highly controversial book has received a great deal of attention for its provoca-
tive yet problematic linked arguments about the willingness of laborers to work
longer and harder in order to consume more as well as for its emphasis on the role of
this aspect of demand in enabling the occurrence of the Industrial Revolution.

Floud, Roderick, and Paul Johnson, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Modern
Britain, vol. 1, Industrialisation, 1700–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
This book is one of the key interpretations of the British Industrial Revolution.
For economic history, this work by acknowledged experts in the field ought to be
176 Selected Annotated Bibliography

consulted. Although a little less wide ranging than previous versions, in the subjects
it does treat, Floud and Johnson set the standard.

Mokyr, Joel. The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850.

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
Mokyr, one of the finest economic historians alive, turns his focus to the role of the
knowledge economy in fostering the Industrial Revolution. The book emphasizes the
role of culture in economic development.

Pollard, Sidney. The Genesis of Modern Management: A Study of the Industrial Revolu-
tion in Great Britain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
This path-breaking book links contemporary business practice to the age of the
Industrial Revolution. There is still no better place to learn about the role of manage-
ment in fostering the British Industrial Revolution.

Wrigley, E. A. Energy and the English Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2010.
By demonstrating the role of energy in the Industrial Revolution, Wrigley has made
a profound argument about the nature of economic development. Although the ori-
gins of some of his statistics give pause, as does whether they can be compared in the
way he asserts, this brief volume presents a powerful and provocative interpretation
of the British Industrial Revolution.

General Studies of the British Industrial Revolution

Griffin, Emma. A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution. Houndsmills, UK:
Palgrave, 2010.
Griffin’s lively and idiosyncratic account is easy to read and covers the basics with
considerable verve and sufficient evidence. She attacks the views that it was British
education and/or technology that drove the Industrial Revolution.

King, Steven, and Geoffrey Timmins. Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: English
Economy and Society 1700–1850. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
Organized thematically, King and Timmins take on certain issues of daily life that are
rarely found in other volumes. This book is a useful complement to more economi-
cally oriented approaches.

Mantoux, Paul. The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the
Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England, rev. ed. New York: Harper &
Row, 1961.
This classic still provides the best glimpse of the dirt and grit of the early textile mills
and how difficult it was to establish the factory system. The people who made the
Industrial Revolution—entrepreneurs, inventors, managers, foremen, and workers—
mattered enormously to Mantoux. This account is still unmatched for what it does.
Selected Annotated Bibliography 177

The Global Origins of the Industrial Revolution

Allen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Allen’s concise, well-argued volume seeks to explain British leadership by emphasiz-
ing wages, agriculture, and cheap engines. Other scholars may not agree with his
arguments, but they have to respond to them.

Inikori, Joseph E. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in Inter-
national Trade and Economic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002.
Without question, Inikori’s challenge to scholars of the Industrial Revolution has
been one of the most profound of the last generation. His powerful argument about
the exploitative nature of the British Industrial Revolution and its reliance on slavery
has not been adequately dealt with by the scholarship.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the
Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Pomeranz’s provocative assertion that the origins of economic “divergence” between
China and Europe were based on the West’s exploitation of other parts of the world
undermines the complacency of insular scholars of Europe and the United States.

The Industrial Revolution Outside Britain

Broadberry, Stephen, and Kevin H. O’Rourke, eds. The Cambridge Economic History
of Modern Europe, vol. 1, 1700–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010.
This short book is a more general European approach to understanding economic
change and the place of the British Industrial Revolution in its continental context.
It contains 11 chapters by noted experts.

Horn, Jeff, Leonard N. Rosenband, and Merritt Roe Smith, eds. Reconceptualizing
the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
This book contains 15 clearly written chapters that explore the Industrial Revolution
in national context. Multiple chapters consider the British experience and two ex-
plore the United States, while others examine various European countries along with
Japan, India, China, and Brazil. The bibliography also provides useful references.

Hounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The
Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1984.
This ground-breaking examination of the process of technological change spawned a
host of imitators and competitors and is still one of the most highly readable accounts
of U.S. industrialization.
178 Selected Annotated Bibliography

Smith, Merritt Roe. Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of
Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.
This classic examination of the workings of the Harpers Ferry armory and its place in
the story of American industrialization is still rewarding.

Labor
Burnette, Joyce. Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
This powerfully argued book is controversial, but has stimulated important debate.
Burnette asserts that differences in jobs and pay resulted from genuine disparities in
productivity and were therefore a response to market forces.

Humphries, Jane. Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
The best of a large number of similar books, Humphries compiled an unmatched set
of autobiographies of young workers, which underlay an account of the Industrial
Revolution that brings together economic statistics and intimate detail in a unique
way.

Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage Books,
1966 [1963].
This magisterial account set the agenda for studies of the people who made Industrial
Revolution for a generation. Reading this book will give a real sense of the problems
and challenges faced by the working classes during the later stages of the British In-
dustrial Revolution as well as their relationships with management and the state.

Primary Sources
Cole, G. D. H., and A. W. Filson, eds. British Working Class Movements: Select Docu-
ments 1789–1875. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967.
This is an older collection, but it brings together a wonderful set of documents about
how workers attempted to deal with mechanization, new technologies, growing man-
agerial control, and the oppression of the state.

Pollard, Sidney, and Colin Holmes, eds. Documents in European Economic History: Indus-
trial Power and National Rivalry, 1870–1914. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1968.
This venerable collection is particularly strong in demonstrating the role of manage-
ment in the Industrial Revolution, both in Britain and elsewhere.

Science and Technology

Jacob, Margaret C. Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
Selected Annotated Bibliography 179

This concise account investigates the role of culture in yielding scientific and techno-
logical advances in a comparative fashion.

Landes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial De-
velopment in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969.
Landes’s interpretation, with its emphasis on the role of technology, is at the heart of
most modern studies of the Industrial Revolution. Although the analysis also covers
the continent, the British paradigm is at the basis of Landes’s influential account of
economic development.

MacLeod, Christine. Heroes of Invention: Technology, Liberalism and British Identity

1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
This book explores how inventors and invention came to be central to British con-
ceptions of themselves. MacLeod also makes clear both the myths and realities in-
volved in this process and the significance for the emergence of liberal society.

Mokyr, Joel. The Level of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
This short volume is full of insight into the relationship of technological improve-
ment and economic development. It is clear and is still one of the best books on why
some inventions matter more than others and that how people use an invention
sometimes matters as much or more than its technical superiority.
Index

Agriculture (Agricultural Revolution), Brindley, James, 9

xxiv, 1–3, 22–24, 26–27, 64, 69; Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, 10–12
colonial products and, 22–24;
consumption, and, 26–27; trade Canal, 8–9, 63, 84, 99, 100–101
and, 1–3, 69 Capital, xxiv, 2, 30–32, 85, 103, 143,
American system of manufactures/ 154, 164, 168
production, 3–4, 8, 39, 57, 84, Cartwright, Edmund, xxv, 12–13, 29
103–104, 109 Chaptal, Jean-Antoine, 14–15, 44
Apprentice(s), 6, 38, 47–48, 51, 81, Child, children, 13, 17, 36, 40, 47–49,
107, 111–112, 122, 137, 152, 159 51, 55–56, 73, 91, 102–104,
Arkwright, Richard, xxv, 5–6, 12, 29, 110–113, 119–121, 121–125, 127,
31, 37, 50–51, 62, 67, 70, 86, 94, 136–137, 152–154, 159; discipline,
145, 159 36, 47–49, 102–104, 111–112,
Armory practice, 3, 6–8, 39, 58, 109 121–125, 127; government action,
Ashley-Cooper, Anthony (7th Earl of and, 17, 47–49, 91, 111, 113,
Shaftesbury), 17, 48, 121–126 121–25, 136–137, 159; productivity,
Ashton, T.S., xxi, 141 and, 13, 17, 55–56, 110–113
Asia, 22, 25–26, 163, 166, 169, 171 Child, Josiah, 115–117
Clark, Gregory, 155–156
Babbage, Charles, 61 Coal, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, 15–18, 62, 93,
Bank of England, xxii, 31–32, 81, 142 99, 102, 145–146, 148, 167
Beaumont, Jerónimo de Ayanz y, 93 Cockerill, William, 19–20,
Belgium, 18, 19–20, 41 Colonialism, colonies, xxi, xxii,
Berthollet, Claude, xxv, 29 xxvi, 20–24, 68–69, 85, 97, 143,
Blanc, Honoré, 58 148–150, 162–
Boulton, Matthew, 43, 95, 105–106 Colt, Samuel, 34
Bridgewater, Duke of (Francis Consumer Revolution, consumption,
Egerton), 8–10, 99 xxi, xxviii, 18, 22–23, 25–27, 33,
182 Index

40, 42, 51, 55–56, 68–69, 85, 88, Energy, 15–18, 62, 76, 106, 145–146,
91–92, 132, 149, 153, 156–157, 148, 150
159, 162, 165–167, 170–171; Engels, Friedrich, 89, 113, 128–129,
demand and, xxviii, 18, 22–23, 42, 156
51, 91, 156–157, 159, 162, 165, England. See Great Britain
170–171; Industrious Revolution, Enlightenment, xxiv, 8, 42, 45–47,
and, 55–56, 91, 153, 159, supply 70–71, 83, 88, 130–131, 147;
and, xxi, 22–23, 33, 68–69, 85, 132, education and, 42, 45, 84, 130–131;
149, 165–167, 170–171 influenced by, 8, 46, 70–71, 83, 88,
Cort, Henry, xxv, 59 130–131, 147
Cotton, xxiii, xxiv–xxv, 5, 12, 27–30, Entrepreneur(s), 7, 13, 15, 19–20, 26,
51, 54, 55–57, 63, 66–67, 70, 35, 37, 51, 52–53, 54–55, 62–63,
86–87, 94, 102–104, 108–109, 64–65, 99, 101, 106–108, 108–110,
112, 128–129, 135, 148, 167; 110–114, 143–144, 146, 152–153,
demand for, 28–30, 63, 86, 102, 158, 160, 164, 169; difficulties
148; novelty of, xxiv, 28–29, for, 19–20, 51, 52–53, 54, 107,
55–57; production of, 5, 12, 108–109, 111–112, 144, 158,
27–30, 51, 54, 66–67, 70, 86–87, 160; innovation by, 7, 15, 26, 37,
94, 102–103, 108–109, 112, 51, 52, 54, 62–63, 64–65, 99, 101,
128–129, 135 106–108, 109, 110–113, 146, 152,
Crafts, Nicolas, 142 158, 160, 169; state and, 35, 53,
Credit, 30–32, 101, 115–117, 147 55, 62–63, 64–65, 107–108, 109,
Crompton, Samuel, xxv, 12, 29, 145 111, 113–114, 152–153, 158, 160
Crystal Palace Exhibition, 4, 10, Environment, 45, 73–75, 152
33–35, 83
Factory, factory system, xxvii–xxviii,
D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 46 5–6, 12, 35–36, 38, 50–52, 66–67,
Darby, Abraham, 59 70–71, 86–87, 93–94, 103–104,
De Vries, Jan, 55, 153 107, 119–121, 126–127, 145–146,
Diderot, Denis, 46 156, 158–160; discipline and,
Discipline, xxvii, 6–7, 35–38, 107, 35–36, 38, 51, 66–67, 71, 103–104,
110–113, 122–125, 152–161 107, 119–121, 126–127, 158–160;
Disease, 17, 21, 73–75, 123, 136 establishment of, xxvii–xxviii, 5–6,
Division of labor, 3, 6, 7, 38–40, 51, 38, 50–51, 86–87, 93–94, 107, 145;
112, 129, 138–140 regional, xxvii, 50, 66–67, 103, 107,
Domestic industry/manufacture, 13, 119, 146, 158
28, 40–42, 51 Factory Acts, 47–50, 71, 158
Fertility, xxiv, 92
Eden, Frederick Morton, 117–118 Fitch, John, 52–54, 100
Education, 14–15, 42–45, 46, 48, Fourier, Charles, 88
64–65, 70–71, 83, 87, 119, 124, France, 14–15, 17, 25–26, 43–44,
130–131, 137, 146 52–53, 57–58, 61–62, 69, 84–85,
Emigration, xiv, 19, 33, 35, 84, 86, 92, 97, 100, 147–149, 166, 168;
112, 152–153, 159–160 competition and, 14–15, 43–44,
Index 183

57–58, 61, 84–85, 97, 100, Gribeauval, Jean-Baptiste, 57

147–149; education and, 14–15, Grimshaw, Robert, 12
43–44, 84–85; fashion and, 25–26; Guns. See Weapons
resources and, 17, 69, 85, 149,
166, 168 Hall, John Hancock, 58
Frederick II (King of Prussia), Hargreaves, James, xxv, 5, 28, 50,
130–131 54–55, 62, 67, 145
Fulton, Robert, 52, 100–101 Harley, C. Knick, 142
Health, xxiv, 17, 73–75, 91, 110–111,
German lands, 18, 19–20, 41, 64–65, 122–124, 129, 136–137, 152,
84–85, 97–98, 130–131 158–160; improvements in, xxiv,
Gilbert, James, 9 137; public health, 75, 111
Globalization, xxiv, 22, 84–85, Hobsbawm, Eric, 153
162–171 Huntsman, Benjamin, 60
Gold and silver, 23, 165–166
Goodyear, Charles, 34 Incentives, xxii, 1, 61, 87
Government. See State action Indenture, 38, 122
Great Britain (England and United Industrious Revolution, 26–27, 55–57,
Kingdom), xxii, xxiii, xxiv, 16–17, 91, 153, 156
25–26, 31–32, 33–34, 36, 42–44, Inikori, Joseph, 21–22, 163, 169
47–50, 50–52, 54–56, 59–60, Innovation, xxvii, 10–11, 25, 27,
62–63, 65–67, 68–69, 73–75, 28–30, 57–58, 59–60, 61–62, 72,
75–77, 78, 79–82, 83, 84–85, 81–82, 86–87, 93–95, 104–106,
91–92, 96–97, 101–102, 105–106, 107–108, 108–110, 138–140, 142,
111, 113, 115–117, 117–118, 145, 150, 165; entrepreneurs and,
121–125, 128–129, 132–135, xxvii, 25–25, 28, 61, 72, 86–87,
135–137, 141–151, 152–161, 93–94, 104–106, 107–108,
162–171; capital and, 31–32, 50, 109–110, 142, 145; production
81, 115–117, 154, 164, 167; and, xxvii, 29–30, 57–58, 59–60,
colonies or empire, xxii 33–34, 59, 61, 72, 86–87, 93–95, 105, 107,
68–69, 80, 96–97, 148, 162–170; 109–110, 138–140, 145, 165; the
consumption and, 25–26, 33–34, state and, 10–11, 25, 28–29, 61,
55–56, 91, 153, 166; population, 72, 81–82, 86–87, 105–106, 108,
and, xxiii–xxiv, 33, 63, 73, 85, 109–110
92; productivity, xxiii, 50, 56, 60, Interchangeable parts, 4, 6, 57–59,
62, 76–77, 78, 80, 91, 97, 113, 109–110
132–134, 135–137, 143, 144, Invention, xxv, 5–6, 10–11, 12–13,
155–157; resources and, 16, 26, 28–30, 53, 54–55, 61–62, 72,
59–60, 62, 74, 121–125, 128–129, 82, 93–95, 103, 104–106, 107,
145–146, 147–148; science and 108–110, 145; labor and 6, 12,
technology and, 16, 33–34, 42–44, 54, 61, 107; textiles and, xxv, 12,
51, 63, 74–75, 76–77, 83, 84–85, 28–30, 54–55, 61, 94–95, 103,
101, 105–106, 141–142, 146, 150, 105–106, 109, 145; the state and, 5,
165, 171 29, 53, 61, 72, 82, 105–106, 108,
184 Index

109–110; Transportation and, 94; labor and, 66–67, 103–104,

10–11, 53, 94–95, 105–106 110, 112, 132–134
Ireland, 2, 24, 37–38, 152, 170 Mercantilism, xxii, 23, 41, 68–70,
Iron and steel, xxiii, xxv–xxvi, 4, 80–82, 115–116, 162–163,
17–20, 33, 59–60, 62–63, 84, 167–170
94–95, 125, 142, 148, 167; Metalwork, metallurgy, 3, 6–8, 16,
invention and, xxv–xxi, 4, 18, 33, 19–20, 25, 34, 57–58, 94, 101, 105,
59–60, 94–95, 142, 167; regional 108, 145; mechanization and, 3,
character of, xxiii, 17, 19–20, 59, 6–8, 19–20, 57–58, 94, 105, 108,
62–63, 148 145; skill and, 6–8, 16, 19–20,
57–58, 101, 105, 145
Jacquard (Charles), Joseph-Marie, 29, Midlands, xxiii, 65, 132–33, 156
61–62 Mine(s), mining, xxiii, 9, 16–17, 20,
Jenner, Edward, 74 22, 33, 67, 73–74, 78, 81, 91, 93,
Juffroy, Claude de, 100 110–111, 121–126, 131, 145,
152–153, 158; colonialism and, 20,
Lancashire, xxiii, 8–9, 28, 51, 54, 22; labor in, 17, 67, 73–74, 81,
62–64, 65–67, 128–129, 133–134, 110, 121–126, 158; output, 16,
146, 158 145; regional nature of, xxiii, 9,
Landes, David, 141–142 111, 152–153
Leibniz, Gottfried, 45 Mortality, xxiv, 2, 73–75, 92, 159
Liebig, Justus von, 64–65 Murdock, William
Linen, 23, 40
Linné, Carl von, 46 Napoleon Bonaparte, 14, 19, 61
Liverpool, 8–9, 62–63, 78, 99 Need, Samuel, 5, 50
Locke, John, 46 Netherlands, 25, 69, 166, 168–169
Lowell, Francis Cabot, 102 Newcomen, Thomas, 93, 145
Luddites, 37, 65–68, 132–134 Newton, Isaac, 45–46

Machine-breaking, 12, 37, 54, 61, Owen, Robert, 48, 70–71, 88–89,
132–134, 152 134–137, 160
Manchester, 8–9, 63, 70, 73, 79, 94,
99, 127, 128–130, 158–159 Patent, xxii, xxv–xxvi, 5–6, 12–13,
Market(s), 1, 4, 21–24, 25–26, 29, 52–53, 54–55, 61, 72–73, 81,
27–28, 40–41, 69, 139, 147, 149, 93–94, 100, 104–106, 109–110
164–165 Peel, Robert, 47, 54
Marx, Karl, 39, 88–89, 113, 153, 155 Pollution, 17, 73–75, 129, 158
McCormick, Cyrus Hall, 34 Pomeranz, Kenneth, 23, 163, 171
Mechanization, xxv, xxviii, 3–4, 6, 7, Population, xxii, xxiii, xxvi, 1, 21, 34,
38, 50–51, 66–67, 86–87, 94, 40, 63, 90–91, 135; demand and,
103–104, 110, 112, 132–134; xxii, xxvi, 91; economic growth,
factory system and, xxviii, 38, and, xxii, 34, 63, 90; pressure, 1,
50–51, 86–87, 94, 103, 112; 40, 135
invention and, xxv, 3–4, 6–7, 51, Portugal, 20–21, 165, 168
Index 185

Poverty, 5–6, 37, 40–41, 51, 62, 71, 147; Education and, 15, 43–44, 45,
74, 81, 92, 116–118, 122, 124, 139; 64–65, 82, 83, 130–131, 146;
work, and, 5–6, 37, 51, 81, 118, Enlightenment and, 45–46, 83,
122, 124, 139; domestic industry 130–131, 146, 147; industry and,
and, 40–41, 62, 118 15, 25, 43–44, 46, 64–65, 84,
Productivity, xxiii, 2, 35, 38, 56, 71, 142–143, 146, 147
75–77, 81, 138–140, 145, 150, Scotland, xxiii, 2, 37–38, 152, 159
155–157; growth in, xxiii, 76, 156; Second Industrial Revolution, 39, 42,
labor, 2, 35, 38, 56, 71, 76–77, 81, 60, 78, 80, 84–86, 90, 97–98, 103
138–140, 145, 155–157 Shipley, William, 83
Profit(s), 1, 2, 8, 23, 35, 51, 71, 78, Shipping, 22, 68–69, 100–101, 170
103, 113, 127, 143, 145, 152, 154, Skill, xxvii–xviii, 3, 12, 16, 19, 35, 39,
156, 158, 160, 165–166, 169–170; 51, 109, 122, 127
agricultural, 1–2, 143, 166, Slave(s), slavery, xxiv, 21–23, 25, 143,
169–170; commercial, 23, 143, 163–164, 168–171
166, 169–170; industrial, 35, 51, Slater, Samuel, 86–88
71, 103, 113, 127, 145, 152, 154, Smeaton, John, 94
156, 158, 160; mining, 20–21, Smith, Adam, 14, 39, 69, 138–140,
165, 168; transport, 78 145
Socialism, socialist, xxvii, 70–71,
Quesnay, François, 2 88–90, 155
Spain, 20–21, 165, 168
Railroad, xxvi, 10–11, 63, 78–79, 84, Standard of living, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxvii,
94, 100 1, 17, 33, 36, 47–49, 56, 73–75,
Raw materials, xxvi–xxvii, 8, 14, 90–93, 113, 117–118, 119–121,
21–22, 30–31, 62–63, 74, 78, 121–125, 128–129, 132–134,
84, 96–97, 118, 143, 147–148, 135–137, 142–144, 153, 155–158;
162–163, 166–167, 170; British children, and, 17, 36, 47–49, 56,
advantage, xxvi, 14, 21–22, 31, 62, 73–75, 91–92, 119–120, 121–125,
96–97, 143, 147–148, 162–163, 135–137, 153, 158; factory system
166–167, 170; colonies and, xxi, and, xxvii, 33, 36, 47–49, 73–75,
21–22, 30, 78, 97, 143, 147, 162– 90–92, 117–118, 119–120,
163, 166–167, 170; transportation 121–125, 132–134, 135–137;
and, 8, 63, 78, 84, 148 profit and, xxii, 36, 91, 113, 117,
Roberts, Richard, 29 119, 144; urbanization and, xxiv,
Royal Society of Arts, 13, 33, 43, 33, 73–75, 92, 125, 128–129, 137
83–84, 105 State (or government) action, xxii,
2, 3, 5, 6–7, 14–15, 17, 22–24, 27,
Sadler, Michael, 48 30–32, 36–38, 43–44, 47–49,
Saint-Simon, count de (Claude-Henri 57–58, 59–60, 61–62, 66–67,
de Rouvray), 88–89 68–69, 72, 73–75, 79, 79–82, 83,
Savery, Thomas, 93 84–85, 86–87, 91–92, 94–95,
Science, 15, 25, 43–46, 64–65, 82–84, 95–98, 105–106, 106–108, 109,
105–106, 130–131, 142–143, 146, 111–114, 121–126, 130–131,
186 Index

133–134, 135–137, 143, 147–150, water, 8–9, 10–11, 52–53, 81,

152–153, 158–161, 162–171; 84–85, 95, 98–102, 146, 148; state
colonies and, 2, 22–24, 59, 68–69, and, 10–11, 30, 53, 79, 81, 99–100
80, 97, 158, 162–163; education Trevithick, Richard, xxvi, 78
and, 14–15, 43–44, 83, 85, 124–
125, 130–131, 143, 165–170; United States (North American
incentives, xxii, 5, 6–7, 15, 57–58, colonies), xxiv, xxv, 3–4, 6–8, 17,
61, 72, 81, 86–87, 94–95, 105, 25, 52–53, 57–58, 59–60, 78–79,
106–108, 109; institutions and, 84–85, 86–87, 97–98, 100–101,
31–32, 43–44, 58, 72, 74–75, 81, 102–104, 108–110, 118–121, 165,
82, 83, 94–95, 105–106, 107, 167; invention, and, xxv, 3–4, 6–7,
111–113, 130–131, 135–137, 52–53, 57–58, 78, 84–85, 86–87,
152; labor and, 17, 36–38, 47–49, 109–110; state and xxv, 3–4, 6–7,
66–67, 72, 81, 107, 109, 111–113, 52–53, 58, 79, 84, 86–87, 97,
121–125, 133–134, 135–137, 147, 100, 109–110; Second Industrial
150, 152, 158–161; trade, xxii, Revolution and, 4, 60, 84–85,
22–24, 27, 59, 68–69, 80, 82, 85, 97–98; trade and, 25, 59, 79, 86,
87, 95–98, 149, 162, 165–170 97, 100–101, 109–110, 165, 167
Steamboat, xxvi, 11, 52–53, 78, 84, Urbanization, 2, 18, 73–75, 92, 118,
94, 99–101 128–129, 136–137
Steam engine, xxvi, 12, 18, 19–20, 43, United Kingdom. See Great Britain
63, 78–79, 93–95, 104–106, 145 Ure, Andrew, 126–128, 160
Steel. See Iron and steel
Stephenson, George, 78 Voigt, Henry, 100
Steuart, James, 27 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 46
Strutt, Jebediah, 5, 31, 50, 86
Supply and demand, xxi, xxiv, 2–3, Wage(s), xxvii, 41–42, 56, 86–87,
18, 22, 26, 41, 55–56, 156 90–92, 102–104, 107, 112–113,
117–118, 126–127, 133–134,
Tariff(s), 4, 80, 85, 87, 95–98, 108, 144–145, 150, 152–159; high,
166–167 xxvii, 91, 107, 112, 127, 144–145,
Technology, xxi, xxvi, 16, 26, 27, 33, 150, 153, 156, 159; Low, 41–42,
43, 65–67, 72, 76–77, 83, 93–95, 56, 86–87, 92, 102–104, 113,
141–147, 150, 165, 171; State and, 117–118, 133–134, 152, 156, 158
xxi, 33, 43, 66–67, 72, 83, 94, 143, Waltham System, 102–104, 118–121
146, 150, 165, 171; transportation, Water power, xxv, 5, 17, 50, 62, 79,
xxvi, 94–95 86–87, 94, 102–104, 148
Tennant, Charles, 30 Watt, James, xxvi, 43, 93–94,
Thompson, E.P., 153 104–106, 145
Trade and commerce, xxii, xxvi, 21–23, Weapons (guns, muskets), 3–4, 7–8,
68–69, 115–116, 147, 162–171 81, 109–110, 167
Transportation, 8–9, 10–11, 30, Wedgwood, Josiah, 106–108, 159
52–53, 76, 78–79, 81, 84–85, Whitney, Eli, xxvi, 3, 29, 58,
93–95, 98–102, 146, 148; by 108–110
Index 187

Women, 35–36, 38, 40, 47–49, 51, 126–127, 126–127, 128–129,

55–56, 73, 87, 91, 102–104, 132–134, 135–137, 140, 151–162;
110–113, 119–121, 122–125, discipline of, xxvii, 35–38, 39,
153–154, 159; reliance on, 38, 40–42, 47–49, 81, 102–104,
40, 51, 55–56, 87, 110–111, 159; 110–114, 119–120, 121–125,
wages and, 91, 102–103, 112–113, 128–129, 152, 155, 158; growth
120–121, 159; working conditions of, 13, 40–42, 51, 55–56, 103, 111,
and, 35–36, 47–49, 73, 87, 104, 113, 128–129, 152, 158–160;
112–113, 119–121, 122–125, 159 resistance by, 58, 104, 112–113,
Wool, woolens, xxiii, 13, 19, 23, 40 120–121, 132–134, 135, 153
Workforce, xxvii, 13, 35–38, 38–40, Wrigley, Edward Anthony, 145
40–42, 47–49, 51, 55–56, 58,
70–71, 81–82, 102–104, 110–114, Yorkshire, xxiii, 65–67
117–118, 119–121, 121–126, Young, Arthur, 2, 46
About the Author and
Contributors

THE AUTHOR
JEFF HORN is Professor of History at Manhattan College. He is the author
or editor of five previous books including Economic Development in Early
Modern France: The Privilege of Liberty, 1650–1850 (Cambridge University
Press, 2015). He is working on the biography of a terrorist in the age of
the French Revolution and will soon embark on writing a global history text-
book A People’s History of the World to be published by Oxford University
Press.

THE CONTRIBUTORS
SERGIO CASTELLANOS-GAMBOA is a third-year PhD candidate at
Bangor University, UK. His main areas of research interests include consumer
finance, economic history, and financial macroeconomics. His current re-
search aims at analyzing the evolution of consumer credit in Britain after
World War II.

SOPHIE MULLER is a PhD Candidate in History at the Graduate Center,

CUNY. She is a scholar of Victorian and Edwardian Britain with a specializa-
tion in childhood, masculinity, and class. She is completing her dissertation
titled “Poster Boys: Paternalism, Working-Class Boyhood, and Masculinity in
Victorian and Edwardian London.” She also adjuncts at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice and the Cooper Union.

ÉTIENNE STOCKLAND is a doctoral candidate in the History Depart-

ment at Columbia University. His current research project is on the environ-
mental and economic history of livestock in the South of France during the
18th century.

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The - Industrial - Revolution by Jeff Horn

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The - Industrial - Revolution by Jeff Horn

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The Industrial Revolution

Recent Titles in Crossroads in World History

The Enlightenment: History, Documents, and Key Questions

Crossroads in World History

Alphabetical List of Entries vii

The Industrial Revolution: A to Z1

Primary Documents 115

Resisting Mechanization: The Luddites: The Writings of

Key Questions 141

Selected Annotated Bibliography 173

Iron and Steel

RAW MATERIALS AND INVENTIONS

on theoretical constructs rather than on the historical record. That major

1624 First English patent law.

1771 Richard Arkwright’s mechanized factory at Cromford is

1799 Napoleon Bonaparte becomes the ruler of France.

1832 Sadler Committee investigates child labor in factories and

The Industrial Revolution transformed European and ultimately world soci-

economic growth. The most convincing estimates of the percentages of an-

AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION Between 1600 and 1750, an “Agri-

The Agricultural Revolution had remarkable economic consequences. The

benefits of agricultural transformation did not continue during the Industrial

AMERICAN SYSTEM OF MANUFACTURES The American System of

ARKWRIGHT, RICHARD Richard Arkwright developed the water frame

See also: Cotton; Discipline; Division of Labor; Domestic Industry; Factory

ARMORY PRACTICE The term armory practice refers to manufacturing

especially in metalworking, to accept factory labor. The habits inculcated in

These production methods, like the acceptance of factory discipline, spread

See also: American System of Manufactures; Discipline; Division of Labor;

BRIDGEWATER, DUKE OF Francis Egerton, third Duke of Bridgewa-

See also: Coal; Lancashire; Transportation by Water

“The Bridgewater Canal: The Duke’s Cut.” Available online at http://www.canalar

BRUNEL, ISAMBARD KINGDOM Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a

In Brunel’s all-encompassing transportation plan, the Great Western Rail-

CARTWRIGHT, EDMUND The Reverend Edmund Cartwright was a

See also: Arkwright, Richard; Cotton; Division of Labor; Domestic Industry;

CHAPTAL, JEAN-ANTOINE Jean-Antoine Chaptal was the architect of

See also: Education; Mercantilism; Role of the State; Document: “Adam

especially in Great Britain. With wood increasingly expensive, England began

consumer products especially in the growing cities, which necessitated ever

COCKERILL, WILLIAM English mechanic William Cockerill emigrated

John moved to Berlin where he set up a wool-spinning factory, established

COLONIALISM European states began establishing colonies to the south

Atlantic trade was founded on the conquest and expropriation of native

competition from the 13 North American colonies in such key products as

See also: Consumer Revolution; Cotton; Credit; “Industrious Revolution”;

CONSUMER REVOLUTION The Consumer Revolution describes a

See also: Agricultural Revolution; Colonialism; Cotton; Credit; “Industrious

domestic-made goods by banning the import of cotton goods from India,

occurrence, in 1799, British chemist Charles Tennant made this continental

See also: Cartwright, Edmund; Consumer Revolution; Division of Labor;

CREDIT Industrialization cost money. Even wealthy entrepreneurs rarely

See also: Colonialism; Mercantilism; Railroads; Role of the State; Transpor-

CRYSTAL PALACE “The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all

See also: American System of Manufactures; Armory Practice; Consumer

Picard, Liza. “The Great Exhibition.” Available online at http://www.bl.uk/victorian

DISCIPLINE Labor discipline made extraordinary contributions to man-

attempts by groups of workers to influence hiring and firing practices or

Extensive legal, military, and political oppression had dramatic economic

See also: Arkwright, Richard; Coal; Cotton; Division of Labor; Domestic

DIVISION OF LABOR The division of labor refers to breaking down

undermined workers’ independence of thought and action, as both Adam

See also: American System of Manufactures; Armory Practice; Discipline;

DOMESTIC INDUSTRY “Domestic industry” refers to the manufacture

See also: Agricultural Revolution; Consumer Revolution; Cotton; Disci-

EDUCATION Education played an indirect role in supporting the initial

land, which provided a practical education in modern languages and mathe-

See also: Chaptal, Jean-Antoine; Enlightenment; Role of the State; Royal

ENLIGHTENMENT The Enlightenment, a fundamentally new way of

See also: Agricultural Revolution; Education; “Industrious Revolution”; Pro-

FACTORY ACTS From 1802, the British Parliament passed a series of

See also: Discipline; Education; Factory System; Owen, Robert; Pollution,

FACTORY SYSTEM The seemingly inexhaustible demand for cotton tex-

See also: Arkwright, Richard; Cartwright, Edmund; Coal; Consumer Revo-

FITCH, JOHN After a successful trial of his steamboat on the Delaware

See also: Patent(s); Role of the State; Steam Engine; Transportation by

Alphabetical List of Entries vii

The Industrial Revolution: A to Z1

Primary Documents 115

Key Questions 141

Selected Annotated Bibliography 173

See also: Arkwright, Richard; Cartwright, Edmund; Cotton; Discipline; Har