The Beginning of Industrialization

By 1700, small farms covered England’s landscape. Wealthy landowners, however, bought up much of the land that village farmers had once worked. Beginning in the early 1700s, large landowners dramatically improved farming methods. These agricultural changes amounted to an agricultural revolution. They eventually paved the way for the Industrial Revolution.

Agricultural Revolution

1.  landowners enclosed their land with fences or hedges. The increase in their landholdings enabled them to cultivate larger fields, using new seeding and harvesting methods.
a.  Within these larger fields, called enclosures, landowners experimented to discover more productive farming methods to boost crop yields.
2.  The enclosure movement had two important results.
a. landowners experimented with new agricultural methods.
b.  large landowners forced small farmers to become tenant farmers or to give up farming and move to the cities. 

Crop Rotation

1.  The process of crop rotation proved to be one of the best developments of the scientific farmers.
a.  One year, for example, a farmer might plant a field with wheat, which exhausted soil nutrients. The next year he planted a root crop, such as turnips, to restore nutrients. This might be followed in turn by barley, then clover.
2.  These improvements in farming made up an agricultural revolution.
a.  As food supplies increased and living conditions improved
b.  England’s population increased.
c.  Increasing population boosted the demand for food and goods.
3.  As farmers lost their land to large enclosed farms, many became factory workers.

Britain’s Advantages

1.   The small island country had extensive natural resources. These natural resources included
a.  water power
b.  coal to fuel the new machines
c.   iron ore to construct machines, tools, and buildings
d.  rivers for inland transportation
e. harbors from which its merchant ships set sail.

Inventions Spur Technological Advances

In an explosion of creativity, inventions now revolutionized industry. Britain’s textile
industry clothed the world in wool, linen, and cotton. This industry was the first to be
transformed. Cloth merchants boosted their profits by speeding up the process by
which spinners and weavers made cloth.

Major Inventions in the Textile Industry

1.  several major inventions had modernized the cotton industry. One invention led to another.
a.  James Hargreaves invented a spinning wheel, called the spinning jenny, which allowed one spinner to work eight threads at a time.
b.  Edmund Cartwright’s power loom sped up weaving
2.  Machines took the work of spinning and weaving out of the house.
3.  Wealthy textile merchants set up the machines in large buildings called factories.
4.  England’s cotton came from plantations in the American South
a.  Removing seeds from the raw cotton by hand was hard work.
b.  In 1793, an American inventor named Eli Whitney invented a machine to speed the chore.
c.  His cotton gin multiplied the amount of cotton that could be cleaned. American
cotton production skyrocketed from 1.5 million pounds in 1790 to 85 million pounds in 1810.

Improvements in Transporation

1.  Progress in the textile industry spurred other industrial improvements.
a.  The first such development, the steam engine, was invented by James Watt.
He figured out a way to make the steam engine work faster and more efficiently
while burning less fuel

Water Transportation

1.  Steam could also be used to propel boats.
a.  Robert Fulton ordered a steam engine from Boulton and Watt.  Fulton’s steamboat,
the Clermont, ferried passengers up and down New York’s Hudson River.
2.  In England, water transportation improved with the creation of a network of canals, or human-made waterways.

The Railway Age Begins

1.  Steam-driven machinery propelled English factories in
the late 1700s. A steam engine on wheels—the railroad locomotive—drove English
industry after 1820.

Railroads Revolutionize Life in Britain

1.   Railroads spurred industrial growth by giving manufacturers a cheap way to transport goods.
2.  The railroad boom created hundreds of thousands of new jobs for both railroad workers and miners.
3.   The railroads boosted England’s agricultural and fishing industries, which could transport their products to distant cities.
4.  By making travel easier, railroads encouraged country people to take distant city jobs.

Industrialization Changes Way of Life

Growth of Industrial Cities

1.   Industrialization improves life
a.  More people could afford to heat their homes with coal from Wales
b.  They wore better clothing, woven on power looms in England’s industrial cities.
2.  However, other people suffered from industrialization.
a.   Most of Europe’s urban areas at least doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in population. This period was one of urbanization—city building and the movement of people to cities.

Living Conditions

1.  No plans, no sanitary codes, and no building codes controlled the growth of England’s cities.
2.  Lacked adequate housing, education, and police protection for the people who poured in from the countryside seeking jobs.
3.  Unpaved streets had no drains and collected heaps of garbage.
4.  Workers lived in dark, dirty shelters, whole families crowding into one bedroom.
2.   Sickness was widespread.
a.  Cholera epidemics regularly swept through the slums of Great Britain’s industrial cities.
b. An average life span was 17 years for working-class people in one large city, compared with 38 years in a nearby rural area.

Working Conditions

1.  The average worker spent 14 hours a day at the job, 6 days a week.
2.  Industry also posed new dangers in work.
a.  Factories were seldom well-lit or clean.
b.  Machines injured workers in countless ways.
c.  There was no government program to provide aid in case of injury.
2.  The most dangerous conditions of all were found in the coal mines.
a.  A miner’s life span was ten years shorter than that of other workers.

Class Tensions

1. Though poverty gripped Britain’s working classes, the Industrial Revolution created
enormous amounts of money in the country.
2.  Most of this wealth lined the pockets of factory owners, shippers, and merchants. A.  These wealthy people made up a growing middle class—a social class of skilled workers, professionals, businesspeople, and wealthy farmers.

Positive Effects of the Industrial Revolution

1.   the Industrial Revolution eventually had a number of positive effects.
a.  It created jobs for workers.
b.  It contributed to the wealth of the nation.
c.  It fostered technological progress and invention.
d.  It greatly increased the production of goods and raised the standard of living.
2.  The Industrial Revolution produced a number of other benefits as well.
a.  These included healthier diets; better housing; and cheaper, mass-produced clothing.
b.  It expanded educational opportunities.

An Age of Reformation

The Philosophers of the Industrial Revolution

1.  The term laissez faire refers to the economic policy of letting owners of industry and business set working conditions without interference.
a.  That policy favors a free market unregulated by the government.
b.  The term comes from a French phrase that means “let do,” and by extension, “let people do as they please.”

Laissez Faire Economics

1.   French economic philosophers criticized the idea that nations grow wealthy by placing heavy tariffs on foreign goods.
a.  Argued that government regulations only interfered with the production of wealth.
2.  Adam Smithdefended the idea of a free economy, or free markets, in his book The Wealth of Nations.
a.  He claimed that economic liberty guaranteed economic progress and that government need not interfere in the economy.

The Ideas of Malthus and Ricardo

1. Capitalism is an economic system in which money is invested in business ventures with the goal of making a profit.
a.  These ideas helped bring about the Industrial Revolution.

Socialism and Marxism

In socialism, the factors of production are owned by the public and operate for the welfare of all.
a.  Argued that the government should actively plan the economy rather than depending on free-market capitalism to do the job.
b.  Argued that government control of factories, mines, railroads, and other key industries would abolish poverty and promote equality.

The Communist Manifesto

1.   Karl Marx introduced the world to a radical type of socialism called Marxism.
a.  argued that human societies have always been divided into the “haves” or employers, called the bourgeoisie, and the “have-nots” or workers, called the proletariat
b.  The wealthy controlled the means of producing goods, the poor performed backbreaking labor under terrible conditions.

The Future According to Marx

1.  Marx believed that the capitalist system would eventually destroy itself.
2.  Marx described communism as a form of complete socialism in which the means of production—all land, mines, factories, railroads, and businesses—would be owned by the people.
a.  Private property would in effect cease to exist.
b.  All goods and services would be shared equally.
3.  Published in 1848, The Communist Manifestoproduced few short-term results until the 1900s.
a.  Marxism inspired revolutionaries such as Russia’s Lenin, China’s Mao Zedong, Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
b.  These revolutionary leaders adapted Marx’s beliefs and arguments to their own specific situations and needs.
c.  In the pamphlet, Marx condemned the inequalities of early industrial economies.

Unionization and Legislative Reform

The Union Movement

1.  A union spoke for all the workers in a particular trade. 
a.  Unions engaged in collective bargaining—negotiations between workers and their
employers.
b.  They bargained for better working conditions and higher pay.
c.  If factory owners refused these demands, union members could strike, or refuse to work.
2.  British unions had shared goals of raising wages and improving working conditions.

Reform Laws

1.  New laws reformed some of the worst abuses of industrialization.
a.  Parliament passed the Factory Act, which made it illegal to hire children under 9 years old.
b.  The Mines Act prevented women and children from working underground.
c.   The Ten Hours Act of 1847 limited the workday to ten hours for women and children who worked in factories.

Other Reform Movements

Abolition of Slavery

1.  Parliament passed a bill to end the slave trade in the British West
Indies in 1807.
2. Britain finally abolished slavery in its empire in 1833.
3.  In the United States the movement to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of
Independence by ending slavery grew in the early 1800s.

Women Fight for Change

1.  Women factory workers usually made only one-third as much money as men.
2.  Women formed unions in the trades where they dominated.
a.  served as safety inspectors in factories where other women worked.
b.  In the United States, college-educated women like Jane Addams ran
settlement houses. These community centers served the poor residents
of slum neighborhoods.
3.   The movement for women’s rights began as they demanded suffrage.