The Industrial Revolution

1. The Industrial Revolution Prometheus Unbound

2. The Pre-Modern World • “Bound” economy in which all resources: capital, labor, land--are used to capacity. • Power is homemade • Handmade tools of local materials

3. Power Before the IR • Most important sources of power were derived from animals that ate plants: men, horses, oxen. • 1 horsepower = the ability to lift 33,000 lbs. 1 ft/1 minute. • Let’s try this in class. Measure how many times a student can climb up and down 1 ft in a minute, then multiply by their weight. • Then have them do it again. And again. • The “cost” is 3,500 cal a day. • Draft animals, on the other hand, require between 15,000-20,000 calories a day, but they can work more steadily than humans, and can also derive their energy from hay and other inexpensive grasses that humans cannot digest.

5. In the late 18th century, France leads the way • Napoleonic Code • French communal law • Free contracts • Open markets • Uniform and clear commercial regulations • Standardizes weights and measures • Technical schools • Government encourages and honors technical innovation • Bank of France and a reliable currency • OR DOES SHE?????

6. The Dutch Exception • Wind power makes constant pumping of spongy peat practical • Canals and transport • Intensive farming: Weeding! Fertilizer! Water meadows! Crop rotation! • Peat renewable source of heat: bricks, etc. • Break out of bound economy

7. The English Discover Science • What’s a well-educated English noble to do without money, court society, military drills, or politics? • AND who now depends on the rents from his manors? • Why, become a “Club man,” of course! • Science clubs in the spirit of the Enlightenment. • “Cabinet of Curiosities”

8. “Turnip” Townsend • English ambassador to the Dutch at the beginning of the 18th century • By draining marshes, manuring, planting nitrogen-fixing crops (clover and alfalfa) and high-yield crops (turnips, potatoes, corn), and selective breeding, England almost TRIPLES production of food 1700-1830. • Jethro Tull’s seed drill replaces broadcasting, 1701

9. Glorious Revolution, 1690 • Parliament is now under the control of those same gentry • Hundreds of ENCLOSURE ACTS that allow them to rationalize their land use, e.g. “Turnip” Townshend • Separated by hedgerows

10. The Agricultural Revolution produces capital and labor • Landowners who can experiment with their land make a lot of money • e. g. Coke of Upham raises annual income from his farm from £2,000 to £20,000 from 1750-1790 – much of increase he invests. • And require fewer workers • Average farmer’s income £8 in 1700, £15 in 1750, £22 in 1790, with constant or lowered expenses. Increased disposable income creates a market for goods; but • Depresses worker’s wages as unemployment soars.

11. Case study: Textiles • Single most valuable commodity in pre-industrial world • “Spinsters” spent all spare time spinning (twisting fibers to make thread). Standing wheel like this one for wool--2 miles a day • Three known textiles: wool (controlled by guilds; warm and tough, not washable); linen (washable, pith from rotted flax plants, so used for “body linen”); silk (not washable; huge luxury, usually imported).

12. Hackling rotted linen fibers

13. Weaving • 5 spinners to support one weaver • Because weavers required the expensive investment of a loom, they were usually male. • Notice the • vat for dying fabric • broom for sweeping up dust • scales for weighing skeins of thread, • supply of “splicing” thread to repair breaks.

14. John Kay’s “flying shuttle,” 1733 • The heddle raises and lowers half the threads while the shuttle passes between them. • A “flying shuttle” has a cord attached which allows it to be “thrown” to one side and then pulled back through, resulting in a much more efficient weaving speed.

15. Hargreaves’ “spinning jenny,” 1765 • Named for his wife • One woman could spin 6, 12, or 24 bobbins of high grade thread at once • (From slanted bobbins to sliding carriage to spindles at the back)

16. Richard Arkwright: father of the Factory • Arkwright figures out how to make vertical water wheel drive up and down motion; water loom • This is great, because rocky water streams tend to occur in places that are not good for farming • Water frame, 1769 • Cotton new fiber from India, Egypt, and Americas not subject to guild restrictions

17. Crompton’s mule, 1779 • Samuel Crompton was a mill worker who was impatient with the thread spun by jennies, which broke easily • Invented the “mule,” combined elements of both the jenny and water wheel, which made finer, stronger thread • Supported it by playing homemade violin, but in a world without rigorously applied patents, died poor.

18. Not to mention the cotton gin • Prior to 1793, it took an experienced worker ten hours to extract one pound of cotton lint from three pounds of cotton seed • In 1793, ten days after arriving in the south, Eli Whitney, a Yale-educated tutor, invented the cotton (en)gin(e) • Now a one-armed slave could clean 50-80 lbs. a day

19. Bottom line • Productivity of yarn maker increases 100- fold • Price of yarn drops from 38p/lb. to 6p/lb. between 1760 and 1800 • Value of British cotton production: • £ 0.5 million in 1760 • £ 5 million in 1800 • £ 50 million in 1835 • Who would you hire for your factory?

20. What social challenges would this pose?

22. Canals • Previously breakables survived about 15 miles overland • Duke of Bridgewater, FRS, builds a canal from coal mine on his property to Manchester (1759) –price of coal in Manchester drops 90% • Grand Trunk Canal begun 1766 –investors include Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, Matthew Boulton, James Watt–all members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham

23. The difference canals made • Instead of being covered in miserable thatch, cottages are now covered with tiles or slates brought from Wales or Cumberland. The fields which used to be barren are now drained; by covering them with manure, carried on the canal toll-free, they have become green and fertile. Places which rarely obtained coal now have plentiful cheap supplies. The corn merchants are prevented from charging high prices because a line of communication has been opened up between Bristol and Hull. This canal, being through counties of abundant grain, makes the carrying of corn easier than in past ages. --Thomas Pennant, 1782

24. Improvements to overland transport • Robert MacAdam invents “macadamization” c. 1800. • Layers of 7” then 3” stones in the roadbed, topped with a smooth surface of pebbles mixed with earth that were “cambered,” which means they sloped towards drainage ditches on either side. • And public stagecoaches

25. Energy shortage • Great medieval forest is pretty much gone by the end of the Middle Ages • Coal, which has more energy per unit than wood, replaces it about 1630 • High water table meant mines needed to be pumped; Newcomen’s engine, 1710 • 80% of energy lost because water is heated and condensed in the same container, so not practical anywhere but in a coal field

26. Coke • Burning wood with limited oxygen makes charcoal, which contains more energy per mass unit than wood and thus is a higher quality fuel. • In 1701, Darby does the same thing to coal, resulting in coke, which burns hotter and without smoke. His blast furnaces can make thinner, stronger, cheaper cast iron goods Charcoal production

27. James Watt’s improvements, 1769 • Instrument maker and member of Lunar Society • Birmingham also the home of iron blast furnaces--like Wilkinson steel and partner Matthew Boulton • Separate chamber for condensing

28. Transporting a mine’s worth of coal five miles to the canal

29. Tramways • first wooden and later cast iron rails, which the wagons would run along.

30. George Stephenson’s ‘Rocket,’ c. 1839 As a rule of thumb, by 1850 rail journeys took about 1/4 of the time that stagecoach journeys did.

31. Institutional support • State ownership of some industries, particularly on the continent (Belgian and German railroads) • Protective tariffs, like the British Corn Laws • National Banks granted a monopoly on issuing bank notes (Bank of England and Napoleon’s Bank of France) • Companies required to register with the government & publish annual budgets. • Corporations--legally individuals, allowing investors to have limited liability • Postal systems. • Elimination of internal tolls/barriers to trade, e. g. Prussian Zollverein

32. Industrialization in Europe, c. 1850

33. Standard of living up or down? Depends who you ask…

34. Skilled artisans lose out: the Luddites • Rioting against machines 1811-1816 • Will return with construction of railroads and “eminent domain” in 1830s and 40s • (Remember Greg Kinnear in You’ve Got Mail?)

35. Wedgwood’s showrooms • Better quality goods at a cheaper price means that middle class people live better • Standard of living initially dips for working class; this will change as the century wears on

36. Staffordshire, where the pottery is actually made

37. Overwhelmed cities • Displacement, isolation, and disease in overcrowded cities without family and village social networks (this political cartoon is from 1858) • Charles Dickens, for example, was forced to go to work at a blacking factory and live in London on his own at the age of 12 when his father was imprisoned for debt.

38. Critics of Capitalism: Robert Owen and New Lanark, 1799 • My intention was not merely to be a manager of cotton mills, but to change the conditions of the people who were surrounded by circumstances having an injurious influence upon the character of the entire population .... The community was a very wretched society and vice and immorality prevailed to a monstrous extent.

39. He built new houses for his workers, instituted street-cleaning, and established a reasonably-priced company store: • The houses of the poor working classes generally are altogether unfit for the training of young children; the children are therefore spoken to and treated just the reverse of the manner required to well-train and well-educate children.

40. Refused to put children to work before age ten • Children at this time were admitted into cotton, wool, flax and silk mills, at six and sometimes even five years of age. The time of working, winter and summer were unlimited by law, but usually it was fourteen hours per day - in some fifteen, and even, by the most inhuman and avaricious, sixteen hours. • Emphasized new methods of teaching, inc. pictures, maps, dancing, music, and games. • Adult education in evenings

41. Robert Owen • Reduced working hours to ten a day, despite the objections of his investors. • In 1824, discouraged by the slow pace of reform, he left Britain for America, where he established the Utopian community of New Harmony in Indiana, which lasted for four years and many of whose members later influenced early LDS church (United Order). • Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, 1832-4

42. Summary of first Industrial Revolution • Agricultural Revolution (1690 to 1789) provided capital and mobile labor • Industrial Revolution itself was about mechanization, courtesy of new, more efficient forms of power, especially coal- and coke- fueled steam. • TRANSPORT • Factories: urban centers, proletariat, social instability • Tamara Haravan’s distinction between factory and family time • Clean, inexpensive, fashionable clothes and more time for mother • Most innovations do NOT directly impact daily life for middle class, but are wrenching for working class