An industrial revolution is a fundamental economic change. Consider first the industrial revolution in England:
- between 1770 and 1850 the economy of England changed from mostly agricultural to mostly industrial
- this was the result not of one key invention but of technological progress in different fields coming together
- its center is the development of factories (which hadn't really existed before this time), but they couldn't have developed without better transportation creating larger markets and better transportation couldn't have existed without the growth of the iron industry, which couldn't have grown without steam engines
- society had a hard time adjusting to the new economic system
Causes of the British Industrial Revolution:
- expansion of trade, mercantile economic policy
- decline of:
- feudalism--farmers were no longer bound to the land
- guild system--the guild for a particular trade could no longer control who set up a new business
- the system of customary prices--the market became more free, instead of the old system where changing the price because of a shortage was seen as profiteering
- agricultural
changes
- enclosure =the abolishment of the old system of communal farming and its replacement with family farms. Supposedly everyone had the same share of land as before, but the smallest farmers didn't have enough to survive as an independent farm and they went out of business and went looking for work. Took place 16th century to about 1820.
- four field crop rotation--wheat, turnips, barley, clover or alfalfa (turnips and hay crops make it possible to keep more livestock)
- new scientific approaches to farming (one of the pioneer scientific investigators of agriculture was an Englishman named Jethro Tull )
- average agricultural surplus per worker doubled from about 25% to about 50%
- workers no longer needed in agriculture were available for industrial jobs (discussion)
Key technological developments in England:
- 1709 Abraham Darby smelted iron with coal
- 1712 Thomas Newcomen invented the first practical steam engine (at least it was practical for pumping water out of coal mines). Link to more on early steam engines .
- 1765 opening of the Duke of Bridgewater's canal started a boom in canal-building ( pictures , detailed story )
- 1779
Iron
Bridge over the Severn Gorge in Shropshire,
England (photos
) - 1783 invention of puddling made economical the production of wrought iron
- James Watt made the steam engine practical for
factories
- Telford was an architect who became a designer of canals, bridges, and other engineering works
- his training was an apprenticeship to a stonemason (engineering schools didn't exist in England yet)
- the first iron bridge had used the same design as used for wooden bridges (closeup )
- developed suspension bridges and iron arch bridges that took advantage of the properties of iron--he studied structural form by doing his own experiments
- notice that Telford has specialized knowledge but he didn't learn it in school, in fact his bridges led others to develop new mathematical theories of structure. Civil engineering was just becoming a recognized profession.
- a series of inventions makes possible water or
steam powered textile factories, particularly cotton
- 1774-1770 Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny
- 1769 Arkwright invents the water frame
- 1774-1779 Crompton invents the mule
- 1786-1788 Cartwright invents the power loom
- factories spread rapidly, using imported cotton and selling much of the product to England's colonies
- by 1845 2/3 of the population of England worked in industry ( statistics )
- an economist named Andrew Ure wrote that: "It is, in fact, the constant aim and tendency of every improvement in machinery to supersede human labour altogether, or to diminish its cost, by substituting the industry of women and children for that of men; or that of ordinary labourers for trained artisans."
- rapid industrialization meant miserable conditions for textile mill workers , who were in 1835 46% women and 15% children under 13
- factory
life
American conditions were very different from those in England:
- different resources: wood is plentiful, resources like ores are very spread out
- shortage of labor: most people wanted to farm, might work a few years to earn money
- people are very spread apart, distances are very large
- shortage of skilled workers, people with knowledge about technology
- people who came to the U.S. were more ambitious, open to new things
- capital was scarce and tended to be invested in plantations
or overseas trade
The industrial revolution was slow to get started in the U.S. because the U.S. was a third world country and England was determined to protect its advantage
- England passed a law in 1765 (repealed 1824-25) prohibiting export of textile machinery and emmigration of skilled mechanics.
- E. I. duPont said in 1802: "The greatest danger to my business is that of attracting the attention of the English... They employ all possible means to prevent the establishment of manufactures here. They burned my predecessor's cotton mill, and might easily try to do the same to my mills."
Thomas
Jefferson: fear of the misery of industrial cities in England and
belief that an agricultural nation was essential for democracy.
Felt that farmers were by nature virtuous. He wasn't against
technology--he had a lot of machines on his plantation, but he was
against industrialization until the blockades starting in 1807 that
lead to the war of 1812 convinced him that the U.S. couldn't afford to
be dependent on other countries for manufactured goods. - Early efforts to smuggle in machines weren't very successful, eg. disassembled mule that arrived in Philadelphia in 1783 was never successfully assembled. The first useful drawings of textile equipment were not available until 1812, published description of how to run machinery not until 1832
- shortage of labor, shortage of capital, shortage of skills
Slater Mill
- Samuel Slater had served a 7 year mill apprenticeship in England. Came to the United States to make his fortune and made a partnership with a hardware merchant--Moses Brown--in Pawtucket, RI
- Slater put up his expertise and his partners put up the money, and Slater got half ownership
- set up in an old fulling mill in 1790, then build a new mill in 1793. 100 spindles, spinning only, Arkwright water frames, little innovation. Metal parts made by local blacksmiths, relying on Slater's knowledge of critical dimensions, gearing, settings, surfaces.
- At first used almost entirely child labor--hired 7 boys and 2 girls between the ages of 7 and 12 in 1790. By 1800 he had more than 100 employees, and he relied on recruiting families and providing housing for them around the mill (fathers often worked as hand loom weavers, not in the mill).
- Slater owned or had an interest in 13 textile mills, and left an estate of $690,000 when he died in 1835.
- By 1810 there were 54 mills in Massachusetts, 26 in Rhode Island, 14 in Connecticut--all small mills without integration
- British immigrants made up about half the managers and machine-makers before 1830.
the green line points to the location of Lowell north and west of Boston
map from National Atlas of the United States
- Boston merchants became interested in textile factories after the War of 1812 showed the advantages of diversification. Boston Manufacturing Co.: Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, Francis Cabot Lowell
- hired an English mechanic named Paul Moody to build a power loom and set up a factory on the Charles river in Waltham. Opened in 1815--first complete cotton factory in the US. Capitalized at $400,000 (10x Slater). The steps in making textiles
- Needed more water power in order to expand, and wanted to build a new town to avoid the corrupt city.
- Lowell, Mass, at the beginning of the Middlesex canal. First mill opened in 1822--built by more than 500 Irish laborers who were subject to such discrimination that they were not allowed to work in the mill. They lived in a shanty town called The Acre
Boots Mill, Lowell
- land was cheap in the United States and people wanted to own their own farms, not work in mills. Where to find a workforce for a large mill?
- hire young women from the countriside to work for a few years before they get married. Women lived in heavily supervised dormitories, were required to attend church, followed many factory rules, and made good wages for women at the time.
- The women averaged $3.60 a week in 1836, at which point they were paying $1.50 a week for room and board. This compared favorably to $1 a week for domestic work.
- until the mid 1840s the work was not stressful, although they worked 73 hours hours a week (a 12 to 14 hour day, six days a week, 309 days a year, with only three holidays). Timetable from a page about Lowell workers . Intermittent labor, mostly fetching and carrying.
weaving (image #10)
- Lowell population
- 1820--200
- 1830--6,000
- 1850--33,000
- The Boston Manufacturing company returned an average annual dividend of 19% from 1816 to 1826. Even in the more competative 1850s the Merrimack Company (which operated some of the Lowell mills) averaged 12% annual return for most of the decade.
- Competition began to result in a worse deal for the workers as early as the 1830s--in 1836 there was a strike in reaction to a cut in wages of $1 a week. Speed-up made the work damaging to health
- immigrant workers began to be hired in the 1840s: immigrant workers in mills: 1845--8%, 1850--33%, 1860--60% (of those 47% were Irish--potato famine started in 1845).
This page written and copyright Pamela E. Mack