Chapter 11: Reaction Versus Progress, 1815-1848

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Chapter 11 Reaction Versus Progress, 1815-1848

• 11.52 The Industrial Revolution in Britain

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Todays Agenda

• Collect Homework
• Return and go over Quiz
• 11.52 slide show

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Industrial Revolution
Treaty of Paris end 7 Years War
Industrial Revolution Begins
Lists National System of Political
Economy -Mines Act (1842)
Hargreaves invents Spinning Jenny (1765)
Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace
Luddites Revolt
1763 1769 1775 1780 1798 1812 1830
1841 1851
Population explosion begins in GB
James Watt invents Steam Engine
Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population
Industrial Rev. begins on Continent (1815)
Factory Act (1833)
American Revolution Begins
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Why did it begin in Great Britain?

• Atlantic Economy
• Vast colonial empire (raw materials, markets)
• Controlled slave trade (colonial labor)
• Geography
• No part of GB further than 20 miles from H2O
• Canal network enhanced water transportation
  (after 1770s)
• Natural Resources
• Iron coal deposits
• No internal tariffs
• Agriculture Revolution
• Low prices for food
• More disposable income
• Strong Central Bank and Credit
• Stable government
• Laissez Faire
• Allowed for innovation, person initiative
• Large mobile labor force
• Enclosure acts

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The Industrial Revolution In Britain

• Work was done with hand tools until 1800
• Industrial Revolution is the process of shifting
  from hand labor to machine labor
• Shift occurred gradually (and is still occurring)
  
• What brings about this change?
• IE.People are by nature conservative
• dont just alter their lives, where they live,
  ect. Without a strong motivator.
• Government
• Soviet government was form of state pressure
  (motivating force) to mobilize population
• Mobile population is important pre-requisite for
  industrialization
• Britain experienced a long trend of moving toward
  a mobile labor class
• Agricultural base

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The Agricultural Revolution in Britain

• Landowners were in control of Parliament
• push for experiments in agriculture which reduced
  labor demands
• Population density required most efficient
  farming
• Adopted enclosure, crop rotation, heavy manuring
  by mid 1600s
• Urban growth offered markets to farmers
• English learned about swamp drainage
• Jethrow Tull
• Advocated drilling seed
• Better husbandry of horses
• By 1870 English farmer produced 300 more than
  1700

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The Agricultural Revolution in Britain

• Enclosure Acts (18th and 19th Centuries)
• joining the strips of the open fields to make
  larger compact units of land. These units were
  then fenced or hedged off from the next person's
  land. In this way a farmer had land in one farm,
  rather than in scattered strips.
• Between 1760 and 1780, some 900 Enclosure acts
  were passed
• farmers enclose land in order to produce a
  greater amount, thereby earning bigger profits.
  Also, where land was enclosed, landlords could
  charge tenants higher rents
• ending the commons and communal cultivation
• Fencing in large tracts of land (fences, walls,
  hedges)
• More efficient, more productive
• yielded more meat, cereals
• food supply increased with smaller of the
  population needed
• Freed labor and created a more mobile class of
  workers

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Industrialization in Britain Incentives and
Inventions

• England had new colonial markets, control of seas
• Profit, Profit, Profit fueled the search for more
  rapid methods of production
• Ie. Woolen had been a staple export
• but more production possibilities were limited
• Cotton held huge possibilities
• Wealthy land owners (from enclosure) could afford
  to divert some profits to experimenting with
  industry
• Only a country already wealthy from commerce and
  agriculture could have been the first to initiate
  the machine age
• Wealth from commercial activity fueled the growth
  of industrialism in England

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First Factories

• Cottage Industry
• Plagued by constant thread shortages
• James Hargreaves
• Invented cotton spinning jenny (1765

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Inventions in textiles

• flying shuttle
• John Kay in 1733 made machine that required 1 not
  2 to weave cloth on loom
• created strong demand for yarn
• spinning jenny
• invented in 1760s allowed yarn production to
  increase
• James Hagreaves (hand powered)
• Richard Arkwright in 1769 harnessed water power
  to operate jennies
• A female dominated job
• jennies overwhelmed loomers with yarn
• Took place in mill (factory) near water source
• power looms allowed them to catch up
• this production put a strain on supply of raw
  cotton
• cotton gin
• Eli Whitney was a Conn tutor on plantation in
  Georgia in 1790
• 1820 it makes up half of British exports (cotton
  textiles)

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

• Orphaned or abandoned children
• Parish officers apprenticed them out
• 5-6 years of age
• Food, shelter, schooling provided
• 14 hour days with no pay
• Brutal discipline
• Robert Owens Testimony (see page 746)

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Other Innovations

• Steam
• Alternative source of power was needed
• Medieval forests were depleted
• because of a lack of hydropower (started to
  experiment with steam power in 1700s)
• Coal used to heat homes since 1640
• coal difficult to get because of deep shafts
  filled with water
• Thomas Newcomen 1705 coal mine pump engine (a
  coal guzzler)
• James Watt of Un. Of Glascow 1763 more efficient
  engine for factories
•  Still engines were quite cumbersome and
  stationary only
• 1807 Fulton 1800 created a steam boat on Hudson
  from Bolton and Watt engine

English inventor Thomas Newcomen built the first
successful steam engine in 1712. It was used to
pump water out of mines.
BBC - History - 'Stephenson's Rocket' Animation
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Railroads

• Horse/canals had been used for heavy freight
• Slow, expensive, limited market potential
• Rails had been used in mines to reduce friction
• George Stephenson 1829
• Created the Rocket locomotive on Liverpool and
  Manchester Railway that only reached 16 mph
• Significance
• Reduced cost of shipping
• Broadened markets
• Encouraged larger factories
• Workers who built RR usually settled in city and
  became factory workers
• Factory system
• England is still rural but factory system
  (especially in textiles) is growing by 1780

Joseph MW Turner (1775-1851) 
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Some Social Consequences of Industrialism in
Britain

• Changes in population
• Grew from 10 mil in 1750 to 30 mil in 1850
  (England and Ireland)
• Change in Location
• used to be concentrated in southern England
• with coal and iron in Midlands and north new
  cities rose
• Change in Growth (urbanization)
• 1785 only 3 cites had 50 thou or more
• 1845 31 this size

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Manchester

• 1772 25,000 by 1851 455,000
• No legal status (had no legal method of
  incorporating cities until 1835)
• This created problems providing public services
  to rapidly growing urbanization
• Dirty, dark, sooty, drab, cloudy climate anyway
• Tenements, entire families in 1 room, swarming
  with ragged children (who had nicknames only)
• Factories only needed unskilled laborers
• Unskilled labor devalued former trades people
• Child labor- work so mechanical that children as
  young as 6 worked
• Women
• 14 hour work days of tedious regimented
  conditions
• very few holidays except layoffs were often
• workers had little in common and were not
  unionized

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Cotton Lords

• first industrialists
• often self-made, intelligent
• not ostentatious
• hard working thought that landed gentlemen were
  idlers and poor lazy
• believed that they did poor a favor by hiring
  them
• detested public regulation of their business
• 1802 Factory Act tried to regulate conditions of
  pauper children in textiles by England had to
  class of trained, paid administrators to check
• conscientious and independent

TABLE 4 STARTING AGE OF WORK IN COTTON MILLS (Manchester cotton workers starting work 1816-18) TABLE 4 STARTING AGE OF WORK IN COTTON MILLS (Manchester cotton workers starting work 1816-18) TABLE 4 STARTING AGE OF WORK IN COTTON MILLS (Manchester cotton workers starting work 1816-18) TABLE 4 STARTING AGE OF WORK IN COTTON MILLS (Manchester cotton workers starting work 1816-18)
ages males () females ()  
10 under 70.8 39.3  
11-13 17.8 17.3  
14-19 5.8 24.2  
20-29 3.6 14.7  
30 over 2.0 4.5  
of obs 445 491  
Source Lords Report (1818, 1819, appendices). Source Lords Report (1818, 1819, appendices). Source Lords Report (1818, 1819, appendices). Source Lords Report (1818, 1819, appendices).
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Classical Economics Laissez-Faire

• Manchester School
• Economic philosophy of Thomas R. Malthus and
  David Ricardo (both were Adam Smith followers)
• Free hand of the market and free trade (Smith)
• in free market regulation comes from natural laws
  (law of supply and demand, diminishing returns)
• all people should follow their own enlightened
  self interests which will generate general
  welfare and liberty of all
• govs job is to preserve security of life and
  property (reasonable laws, reliable courts)
• no tariffs
• Population growth (Malthus) Iron law of wages
  (Ricardo)
• when workers earn more than subsistence wage they
  breed more children who eat up the excess and
  reduce working class to subsistence level

Thomas R. Malthus
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Experiences of the workers

• Hard labor was not new
• Concentration of labor made needs of labor more
  evident
• in cities workers obtained more knowledge of
  world and developed a sense of solidarity (led to
  collective bargaining)
• Britain was unchallenged in for most of a century
• began to export capital
• London became the worlds financial clearing
  house
•  

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