Discussion 8

Lecture 17

The Origins of the Industrial Revolution in

England

The political and moral advantages of this country, as a

seat of manufactures, are not less remarkable than its

physical advantages. The arts are the daughters of peace

and liberty. In no country have these blessings been

enjoyed in so high degree, or for so long a continuance,

as in England. Under the reign of of just laws, personal

liberty and property have been secure; mercantile

enterprise has been allowed to reap its reward; capital

has accumulated in safety; the workman has "gone forth

to his work and to his labour until the evening;" and, thus

protected and favoured, the manufacturing prosperity of

the country has struck its roots deep, and spread forth its

branches to the ends of the earth. [Edward Baines, The

History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, 1835]

In the eighteenth century, a series of inventions

transformed the manufacture of cotton in England and

gave rise to a new mode or production -- the factory

system. During these years, other branches of industry

effected comparable advances, and all these together,

mutually reinforcing one another, made possible further

gains on an ever-widening front. The abundance and

variety of these innovations almost defy compilation, but

they may be subsumed under three principles: the

substitution of machines -- rapid, regular, precise, tireless

-- for human skill and effort; the substitution of inanimate

for animate sources of power, in particular, the

introduction of engines for converting heat into work,

thereby opening to man a new and almost unlimited

supply of energy; the use of new and far more abundant

raw materials, in particular, the substitution of mineral for

vegetable or animal substances. These improvements

constitute the Industrial Revolution. [David Landes, The

Unbound Prometheus, 1969]

The Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th

centuries was revolutionary because it changed --

revolutionized -- the productive capacity of England, Europe

and United States. But the revolution was something more

than just new machines, smoke-belching factories, increased

productivity and an increased standard of living. It was a

revolution which transformed English, European, and

American society down to its very roots. Like the Reformation

or the French Revolution, no one was left unaffected.

Everyone was touched in one way or another -- peasant and

noble, parent and child, artisan and captain of industry. The

Industrial Revolution serves as a key to the origins of modern

Western society. As Harold Perkin has observed, "the

Industrial Revolution was no mere sequence of changes in

industrial techniques and production, but a social revolution

with social causes as well as profound social effects" [The

Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880 (1969)].

The INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION can be

said to have made the European

working-class. It made the European

middle-class as well. In the wake of

the Revolution, new social

relationships appeared. As Ben

Franklin once said, "time is money."

Man no longer treated men as men,

but as a commodity which could be bought and sold on the

open market. This "commodification" of man is what bothered

Karl Marx -- his solution was to transcend the profit motive by

social revolution (see Lecture 24).

There is no denying the fact that the Industrial Revolution

began in England sometime after the middle of the 18th

century. England was the "First Industrial Nation." As one

economic historian commented in the 1960s, it was England

which first executed "the takeoff into self-sustained growth."

And by 1850, England had become an economic titan. Its

goal was to supply two-thirds of the globe with cotton spun,

dyed, and woven in the industrial centers of northern

England. England proudly proclaimed itself to be the

"Workshop of the World," a position that country held until

the end of the 19th century when Germany, Japan and United

States overtook it.

More than the greatest gains of the Renaissance, the

Reformation, Scientific Revolution or Enlightenment, the

Industrial Revolution implied that man now had not only the

opportunity and the knowledge but the physical means to

completely subdue nature. No other revolution in modern

times can be said to have accomplished so much in so little

time. The Industrial Revolution attempted to effect man's

mastery over nature. This was an old vision, a vision with a

history. In the 17th century, the English statesman and

"Father of Modern Science, Francis Bacon (1561-1626),

believed that natural philosophy (what we call science) could

be applied to the solution of practical problems, and so, the

idea of modern technology was born. For Bacon, the problem

was this: how could man enjoy perfect freedom if he had to

constantly labor to supply the necessities of existence? His

answer was clear -- machines. These labor saving devices

would liberate mankind, they would save labor which then

could be utilized elsewhere. "Knowledge is power," said

Bacon, and scientific knowledge reveals power over nature.

The vision was all-important. It was optimistic and

progressive. Man was going somewhere, his life has direction.

This vision is part of the general attitude known as the idea of

progress, that is, that the history of human society is a

history of progress, forever forward, forever upward. This

attitude is implicit throughout the Enlightenment and was

made reality during the French and Industrial Revolutions.

With relatively few exceptions, the philosophes of the 18th

century embraced this idea of man's progress with an

intensity I think unmatched in our own century. Human

happiness, improved morality, an increase in knowledge were

now within man's reach. This was indeed the message, the

vision, of Adam Smith, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Thomas

Jefferson and Ben Franklin (see Lecture 10).

"Tremble all ye oppressors of the world," wrote Richard Price -

- and tremble they did (see Lecture 14). The American and

French Revolutions, building on enlightened ideas, swept

away enthusiasm, tyranny, fanaticism, superstition, and

oppressive and despotic governments. "Sapere Aude!"

exclaimed Kant -- Dare to know!. With history and

superstition literally swept aside, man could not only

understand man and society, man could now change society

for the better. These are all ideas, glorious, noble visions of

the future prospect of mankind. By the end of the 18th

century, these ideas became tangible. The vision was reality.

Even Karl Marx understood this when he wrote, "Philosophers

have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point,

however, is to change it."

Engines and machines, the glorious products of science

began to revolutionize the idea of progress itself. If a simple

machine can do the work of twenty men in a quarter of the

time formerly required, then could the New Jerusalem be far

behind? When you view the Industrial Revolution alongside

the democratic revolutions of 1776 and 1789, we cannot help

but be struck by the optimism so generated. Heaven on Earth

seemed reality and no one was untouched by the prospects.

But, as we will soon see, while the Industrial Revolution

brought its blessings, there was also much misery.

Revolutions, political or otherwise, are always mixed

blessings. If we can thank the Industrial Revolution for giving

us fluoride, internal combustion engines, and laser guided

radial arm saws, we can also damn it for the effect it has had

on social relationships. We live in the legacy of the Industrial

Revolution, the legacy of the "cash nexus," as the mid-19th

century Scottish critic Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) put it,

where the only connection between men is the one of money,

profit and gain.

The origins of the Industrial Revolution in England are

complex and varied and, like the French Revolution, the

Industrial Revolution is still a subject of a vast historical

debate over origins, developments, growth and end results.

This debate has raged among historians since at least 1884,

when Arnold Toynbee (1852-1883), an English historian and

social reformer, published the short book, Lectures on the

Industrial Revolution in England. Toynbee was in a fairly good

position to assess the revolution in industry -- England had,

by the 1880s, endured more than a century of

industrialization.

Still, like any revolution, the Industrial Revolution leaves us

with many questions: was the revolution in industry simply an

issue of new machinery or mechanical innovation? did young

boys and girls work and live shoulder to shoulder for more

than twelve hour a day? was industrial capitalism nothing

more than a clever system devised by clever capitalists to

exploit the labor of ignorant workers? was the revolution in

industry the product of conscious planning or did it appear

spontaneously? I can't answer all these questions in one

lecture -- indeed, an entire course of study on the subject

would perhaps get us no closer to the answers to these

important questions. However, we can make one serious

confession -- what the Industrial Revolution accomplished

was nothing less than a structural change in the economic

organization of English and European society. This is what

made the Revolution revolutionary. In other words, England,

then the Continent and the United States, witnessed a shift

from a traditional, pre-modern, agrarian society to that of an

industrial economy based on capitalist methods, principles

and practices.

In general, the spread of industry across England was

sporadic. In other words, not every region of England was

industrialized at the same time. In some areas, the factory

system spread quickly, in others not at all. Such a

development also applies to the steam engine -- one would

think that once steam engines made their appearance that

each and every factory would have one. But this is clearly not

the case. The spread of industry, or machinery, or steam

power, or the factory system itself was erratic. I imagine the

reason why we assume that industrialization was a quick

process is that we live live in an age of rising expectations --

we expect change to occur rapidly and almost without our

direction. Late 20th century developments in technology are

perhaps most responsible for this attitude. We know that

technology supplies a constant stream of products that are

"new and improved." We know that the moment we bring

home a top of the line computer that within six months it will

become not necessarily obsolete but "old."

Historians are now agreed that beginning in the 17th century

and continuing throughout the 18th century, England

witnessed an agricultural revolution. English (and Dutch)

farmers were the most productive farmers of the century and

were continually adopting new methods of farming and

experimenting with new types of vegetables and grains. They

also learned a great deal about manure and other fertilizers.

In other words, many English farmers were treating farming

as a science, and all this interest eventually resulted in

greater yields. Was the English farmer more enterprising than

his French counterpart? Perhaps, but not by virtue of

intelligence alone. English society was far more open than

French -- there were no labor obligations to the lord. The

English farmer could move about his locale or the country to

sell his goods while the French farmer was bound by direct

and indirect taxes, tariffs or other kinds of restrictions. In

1700, 80% of the population of England earned its income

from the land. A century later, that figure had dropped to

40%.

The result of these developments taken together was a

period of high productivity and low food prices. And this, in

turn, meant that the typical English family did not have to

spend almost everything it earned on bread (as was the case

in France before 1789), and instead could purchase

manufactured goods.

There are other assets that helped make England the "first

industrial nation." Unlike France, England had an effective

central bank and well-developed credit market. The English

government allowed the domestic economy to function with

few restrictions and encouraged both technological change

and a free market. England also had a labor surplus which,

thanks to the enclosure movement, meant that there was an

adequate supply of workers for the burgeoning factory

system.

England's agricultural revolution came as a result of

increased attention to fertilizers, the adoption of new crops

and farming technologies, and the enclosure movement.

Jethro Tull (1674-1741) invented a horse-drawn hoe as well as

a mechanical seeder which allowed seeds to be planted in

orderly rows. A contemporary of Tull, Charles "Turnip"

Townshend (1674-1738), stressed the value of turnips and

other field crops in a rotation system of planting rather than

letting the land lay fallow. Thomas William Coke (1754-1842)

suggested the utilization of field grasses and new fertilizers

as well as greater attention to estate management.

In order for these "high farmers" to make the most efficient

use of the land, they had to manage the fields as they saw fit.

This was, of course, impossible under the three field system

which had dominated English and European agriculture for

centuries. Since farmers, small and large, held their property

in long strips, they had to follow the same rules of cultivation.

The local parish or village determined what ought to be

planted. In the end, the open-field system of crop rotation

was an obstacle to increased agricultural productivity. The

solution was to enclose the land, and this meant enclosing

entire villages. Landlords knew that the peasants would not

give up their land voluntarily, so they appealed by petition to

Parliament, a difficult and costly adventure at best. The first

enclosure act was passed in 1710 but was not enforced until

the 1750s. In the ten years between 1750 and 1760, more

than 150 acts were passed and between 1800 and 1810,

Parliament passed more than 900 acts of enclosure. While

enclosure ultimately contributed to an increased agricultural

surplus, necessary to feed a population that would double in

the 18th century, it also brought disaster to the countryside.

Peasant formers were dispossessed of their land and were

now forced to find work in the factories which began

springing up in towns and cities.

England faced increasing pressure to produce more

manufactured goods due to the 18th century population

explosion -- England's population nearly doubled over the

course of the century. And the industry most important in the

rise of England as an industrial nation was cotton textiles. No

other industry can be said to have advanced so far so quickly.

Although the putting-out system (cottage industry) was fairly

well-developed across the Continent, it was fully developed in

England. A merchant would deliver raw cotton at a

household. The cotton would be cleaned and then spun into

yarn or thread. After a period of time, the merchant would

return, pick up the yarn and drop off more raw cotton. The

merchant would then take the spun yarn to another

household where it was woven into cloth. The system worked

fairly well except under the growing pressure of demand, the

putting-out system could no longer keep up.

There was a constant shortage of thread so the industry

began to focus on ways to improve the spinning of cotton.

The first solution to this bottleneck appeared around 1765

when James Hargreaves (c.1720-1778), a carpenter by trade,

invented his cotton-spinning jenny. At almost the same time,

Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) invented another kind of

spinning device, the water frame. Thanks to these two

innovations, ten times as much cotton yarn had been

manufactured in 1790 than had been possible just twenty

years earlier. Hargreaves' jenny was simple, inexpensive and

hand-operated. The jenny had between six and twenty-four

spindles mounted on a sliding carriage. The spinner (almost

always a woman) moved the carriage back and forth with one

hand and turned a wheel to supply power with the other. Of

course, now that one bottleneck had been relieved, another

appeared -- the weaver (usually a man) could no longer keep

up with the supply of yarn. Arkwright's water frame was

based on a different principle. It acquired a capacity of

several hundred spindles and demanded more power -- water

power. The water frame required large, specialized mills

employing hundreds of workers. The first consequence of

these developments was that cotton goods became much

cheaper and were bought by all social classes. Cotton is the

miracle fiber -- it is easy to clean, spin, weave and dye and is

comfortable to wear. Now millions of people who had worn

nothing under their coarse clothes could afford to wear cotton

undergarments.

Although the spinning jenny and water frame managed to

increase the productive capacity of the cotton industry, the

real breakthrough came with developments in steam power.

Developed in England by Thomas Savery (1698) and Thomas

Newcomen (1705), these early steam engines were used to

pump water from coal mines. In the 1760s, a Scottish

engineer, James Watt (1736-1819) created an engine that

could pump water three times as quickly as the Newcomen

engine. In 1782, Watt developed a rotary engine that could

turn a shaft and drive machinery to power the machines to

spin and weave cotton cloth. Because Watt's engine was fired

by coal and not water, spinning factories could be located

virtually anywhere.

Steam power also promoted important changes in other

industries. The use of steam-driven bellows in blast furnaces

helped ironmakers switch over from charcoal (limited in

quantity) to coke, which is made from coal, in the smelting of

pig iron. In the 1780s, Henry Cort (1740-1800) developed the

puddling furnace, which allowed pig iron to be refined in turn

with coke. Skilled ironworkers ("puddlers") could "stir" molten

pig iron in a large vat, raking off refined iron for further

processing. Cort also developed steam-powered rolling mills,

which were capable of producing finished iron in a variety of

shapes and forms.

Aided by revolutions in agriculture, transportation,

communications and technology, England was able to

become the "first industrial nation." This is a fact that

historians have long recognized. However, there were a few

other less-tangible reasons which we must consider. These

are perhaps cultural reasons. Although the industrial

revolution was clearly an unplanned and spontaneous event,

it never would have been "made" had there not been men

who wanted such a thing to occur. There must have been

men who saw opportunities not only for advances in

technology, but also the profits those advances might create.

Which brings us to one very crucial cultural attribute -- the

English, like the Dutch of the same period, were a very

commercial people. They saw little problem with making

money, nor with taking their surplus and reinvesting it.

Whether this attribute has something to do with their

"Protestant work ethic," as Max Weber put it, or with a

specifically English trait is debatable, but the fact remains

that English entrepreneurs had a much wider scope of

activities than did their Continental counterparts at the same

time.