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 (1752-1842) 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. 

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