Industrial Revolution

Charles Austin Beard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317828679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

First published in 2005. Taking a look at the Industrial Revolution from 1760 in English Agriculture, Manufacturing and politics and also discussing the mechanical revolution and its economic and social effects., this book puts forward that the civilised world has been changed, and social duties, morals, habits, habitations, and connections all altered by the discoveries of a few dozen able men.

The Indllstrial Revolution

Chapter I

England in 1760—Agriculture, Manufactures, Politics

Sec. 1.—Definition. Owing to the unity of all history, we are compelled to define arbitrarily and set limits when any special field is undertaken. Industrial History is the story of man’s labour with tools and mechanical and power appliances for the satisfaction of his wants. By the Industrial Revolution we mean that great transformation which has been brought about during the past one hundred and fifty years, by discoveries and inventions which have altered fundamentally all the methods of production and distribution of the means of life, and consequently revolutionised all the economic functions of society. Man, who through the long centuries had toiled with his hands, aided by crude implements, to wrest a pitiful subsistence from Nature, suddenly discovered that the blind forces against which he had been struggling could be chained to do his work. Through the countless ages, humanity had been the helpless prey of the vulture elements—consumed by fire, drowned by flood, struck down by lightning, frozen in the winter storms, eliminated by pestilence and famine. Man’s first action was then defensive. He sharpened a bit of wood, polished a flint, kindled a flame—Industrial History was begun. The millions of years which separate the eighteenth century from primeval dawn did not produce, however, as many mechanical and scientific triumphs as have been brought forth in the last century and a half.

Sec. 2.—Mechanical and Social Phases. The Industrial Revolution has two phases : one material, the other social ; one concerning the making of things, the other concerning the making of men. A man’s work and the conditions under which it is performed are tremendous factors in determining his character. Though the Industrial Revolution opened the way for the production of the means of life without the consumption of all human energy, man, startled and stunned by the sudden changes in the methods of working and living, was unable to organise his life so that all might share in the benefits of the new inventions. The Industrial Revolution, with its factory system, and its increased facilities for intercourse, wrought wonderful changes in the social organism. It brought with it long hours, overwork, over-crowding, and other evils. It called into existence suddenly the factory towns, with their want of corporate life, their vile sanitary conditions, and filthy hovels. Men were forced rapidly into new relations, in which the old formulae, maxims, and moralisings became useless and void. The old economic order and basis of life were swept away, and in the confusion—“the wreck of matter and crush of worlds”—it seemed as if man had become utterly powerless to adjust himself to the new conditions, to conquer and control them as he had the forces of Nature. For a while after this industrial convulsion, and the demolition of the old order, man seemed paralysed. Economists, moral teachers, and social leaders groped in darkness amid confusion. Man had become a machine—a producer of things, a commodity to be bought and sold. His character, his powers of love and joy and admiration, his desire for freedom from misery, pain, and wretchedness, were made secondary to the production of marketable commodities. However, the bitter wrongs which called forth the scathing denunciations of Carlyle, Kingsley, and Ruskin were the result not only of the new mechanical developments, but also of the want of a reorganisation of society upon the basis of the new achievements. This process of reconstruction is now going on, and corporate society is the hope of the future. From the standpoint of achievement of human brain and hand, the mechanical revolution possesses a lasting and constantly increasing fascination ; but being inseparably interwoven with the life and labour of the people, it has an interest as deep and abiding as the problems of human health, happiness, character, and power.

Sec. 3.—England in 1760. To realise the magnitude of the change wrought in industry, politics, and social organisation, we must turn to England of 1760, and examine the old order. What a strange panorama unrolls before our eyes ! We see not the England of to-day, but a quiet, rural England yet unawakened by the roar of traffic and industry. At the middle of the eighteenth century man produced the necessaries of life—food, clothing, and the like—by the labour of his hands, almost unaided by machinery. The flail, the primitive plough, the spinning wheel, the hand loom, and a few other rude appliances assisted the manual worker in his tasks, while the horse and water furnished the power used to turn the wheels of some small factories. The commodities so produced were transported by slow and tedious methods to the markets. Man seemed to be a helpless pigmy, confined and overawed in his activities by the tremendous forces of an apparently uncontrollable natural world. The great manufacturing cities had not yet sprung up ; there was no “ Black Country,” with its forest of chimney stacks, pouring forth clouds of sulphurous smoke to darken the sunlight; there were no volcanic blast furnaces to make the night hideous ; no trains shrieking and thundering across plain and under mountain ; there were no vast armies of workers even, collected in great factories, stifled by heat and dust, and deafened by the dull, monotonous roar of machinery.

Sec. 4.—Extent of Agriculture. In 1760, one-third of the workers of England were agricultural labourers, and a large number of those engaged in regular manufacturing industries continued to work in the fields during certain portions of the year. It is estimated that 3,600,000, out of a population of 8,500,000, lived in the counrry, and that their income was £66,000,000, out of a total national income of £119,500,000. While these figures are not exact, they show that agriculturalists had more than their proportionate share of the income. This was probably due to the fact that machinery was not yet employed in manufacturing to any great extent, and a large number of workers was required to turn out a comparatively small product. We have no very reliable information as to the amount of land which was actually in cultivation at this time. Gregory King estimated it at about 22,000,000 acres, or about three- fifths of the total area of the country, while, according to the reckoning of a land-agent in 1729, one-half of the country was waste. Though these estimates may be far from accurate, there is sufficient evidence to warrant a conclusion that there were at the close of the eighteenth century throughout England vast stretches of waste and unimproved land which are now fertile and productive fields. A large portion of Essex was covered by Hainault and Epping Forest. Wide tracts of the weald of Surrey lay unused and desolate. The bogs and fens of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire were yet untapped, while barren expanses of land, considered inevitably sterile, were lying unused. “ Robin Hood would have found his forest of Sherwood still covering the greater part of Nottinghamshire. Derbyshire was a black region of ling, and from the northern point of the county to the extremity of Northumberland—a distance of 150 miles—the traveller would, like Jeanie Deans, encounter nothing but wastes. In 1734, the forest of Knaresborough ‘was so thick with wood that he was thought a cunning fellow that could readily find these Spaws’ of Harrowgate. The road from Beverley to Hull was marked out by willows, which showed above the swamp ; at dusk the bells rang from Barton-upon- Humber to guide the traveller; from Sleaford to Brigg, the land lighthouse of Dunstan pillar directed wayfarers across a solitary waste.”

Sec. 5.—State of Agriculture and the System of Cultivation. It is difficult to make any safe generalisations about the state of agriculture in all England, for conditions varied in different parts. In some places we hear of land “cultivated in the most husbandlike manner, richly manured, well-peopled, and yielding a hundred times the produce that it did in its former state.” On account of the lack of general diffusion of knowledge, improvements in fertilising and cultivation used in some portions were unknown in others. In the South Country the cultivation seems to have been uniformly good, while throughout the North there were great tracts of land exhausted by continued crops and ignorant tillers. However, for more than fifty years before the Industrial Revolution there were extensive improvements in the methods of agriculture, brought about, for the most part, by the landed gentry who had acquired a knowledge of experimental farming, and whose capital enabled them to put it to practical test. Root-crops and artificial grasses were adopted to utilise fallow land and poor pastures. The introduction of rotation of crops did away with exhaustion of the soil. “Writers of this time note that country gentlemen talked about land and its properties, the benefit of certain courses, the advantage of turnip fallows, and the economics of agricultural machinery, about breeds of cattle, sheep, and pigs, with the same interest which their fathers and grandfathers used to exhibit on the subjects of the stable and kennel only.”

More than one-half of the land in use was cultivated on the primitive system of common field tillage. Though the Peasants’ Revolt and other economic forces had broken up the old manorial system, the village organisation as the centre of open field farms still existed over a large portion of the country. The land attached to the village was composed of arable, meadow, and pasture. Though the average holding consisted of about eighteen acres of arable, two of meadow, and common pasture rights, in reality the holdings varied greatly in size and character of tenure. The farmers were tenants by freehold, copyhold, leasehold, at will, or from year to year. The arable land was laid off into three fields, and each field was subdivided by balks into strips about three yards wide, containing an acre or a half-acre. Each farmer held at least one strip in each field. One of the arable fields was left fallow every year ; while, in the other two, wheat and barley, oats, beans, pease were grown. The acre and half-acre holdings of each individual were scattered throughout the three fields. The meadow land was also laid off in strips, for which the villagers drew lots. When the hay had been taken off, the meadow land was thrown open to the village herd. The waste land about the village was also common pasture.

The evils of this system were numerous ; but the most grievous may be summed up as follows :—(1) Rotation or change of crops was almost impossible, as such action could only be taken with the assent of the entire community; (2) an immense amount of land was wasted by the balks and footpaths; (3) common pasturage of the arable land made it impossible to grow winter crops; (4) a vast deal of time was consumed by labourers “ in travelling to many dispersed pieces of land from one end of the parish to the other”(5) quarrelling and litigation over the little strips were continuous; (6) the common herding of cattle and sheep made it impossible to prevent disease and to improve the breed. On the whole, the old communal system of agriculture, however picturesque and Arcadian it may appear to some people at this distant day, made radical improvement impossible, and from the standpoint of scientific production was wasteful and laborious. The enclosure of commons, which did more than anything else to break up the old open field system, had been going on since early in the Middle Ages; but the practice increased rapidly in the eighteenth century. Between 1710 and 1760, 334,974 acres were enclosed, and between 1760 and 1843 the enclosure amounted almost to 7,000,000 acres.

Whatever injustice the enclosure may have wrought, it is evident that intensive agriculture and the production of the greatest amount of stuff with the least expenditure and waste of energy were absolutely impossible under the old system. The intensive agriculture added greatly to the output; but it certainly did work hardship to the poor, who were cleared off the land to make room for the vast field system and sheep and cattle raising. A few individuals were made rich, prices were probably lowered; but the poor at large suffered in several ways.

Sec. 6.—Life in the Agricultural Village. The condition of the agricultural labourers was, comparatively speaking, good. Wages ranged from 8s. to 10s. per week, while the cost of board was 5s. or 6s. Rents were low, foodstuffs and clothing abundant, and the regular wages could be supplemented with earnings from spinning, weaving, and lace-making. Communities were isolated through lack of facilities for communication, life was simple, and education certainly not wide-spread; for we are told by a contemporary that “ not one farmer in five thousand reads at all.” Indeed, there was little necessity for communication with the world at large. The villages were almost entirely self-sufficing, because they produced and prepared their own food, clothing, shelter, and implements. “ Each village had its mill, generally the property of the lord of the manor; almost every house had its oven and brewing cauldron. Women spun wool into coarse cloth; men tanned their own leather. Wealth existed only in its simplest forms, and natural divisions of employment were not made, because only the rudest implements of production were used. The rough tools required for the cultivation of the soil, and the rude household utensils needed for the comfort of daily life, were made at home.”

Sec. 7.—Agricultural Implements. These were by no means of an improved type, although about this time several labour-saving tools and machines were invented. Eden, writing about 1797, states that the plough used in many parts of England differed but little in description from the old Roman plough, and that agricultural machinery of all others had received the least improvement. Wheat flailing was being superseded by the thresher; hand and horse-drills were used to sow and plant seeds. The sickle still held sway in the harvest fields, and feed and root cutting were done by hand machines. Wooden ploughs were still generally used, waggons were narrow-wheeled and small, and, on the whole, the implements were primitive and wretched.

Sec. 8.—Manufactures in 1760. The woollen trade, which was regarded as “ the basis of our wealth,” was the most important, and composed more than one-fourth of the entire export. The industry was not concentrated in any one part of the country, but was distributed among centres, large and small, throughout England. The cotton industry, which was as yet quite unimportant, centred in Lancashire. The manufactured goods at Manchester and Bolton consisted largely of cotton stuffs. We are told that the number of spinners employed in and out of Manchester was immense, and that they reckoned 30,000 souls in that town, and 50,000 “ manufacturers” employed out of it. A large portion of the cotton output, as to-day, went to America. However, the value of the cotton export amounted to only about one-twentieth of that of the woollen export. Next in importance to the woollen industry was the iron trade which, according to Hobson’s estimate, employed, in all its branches, about 200,000 persons. The chief centre of production was in Sussex, where ten furnaces yielded an annual output of 1400 tons. Five miles from Newcastle-on-Tyne were iron works which ranked among the largest in Europe, and Rotherham was also famous for its iron foundries. At the middle of the eighteenth century, the industry was not as great as it had been at the close of the seventeenth century, owing to the fact that smelting by wood had led to such waste that the whole trade was discouraged by legislation. In 1695 the output was nearly 180,000 tons, but in 1740 it had fallen to 17,350 tons. To show the comparative insignificance of the iron industry, it is only necessary to point out that the export alone in 1881 was 8,320,315 tons of iron and steel. Staffordshire was the home of the potteries which employed about 10,000 persons. Hardware and cutlery were manufactured chiefly at Sheffield and Birmingham which had become, even by this time, large industrial centres. About 30,000 persons were employed in brass and copper industry in 1720, and silk, hosiery, linen, glass, and other minor industries were increasing in importance.

Sec. 9.—Mechanical Inventions before 1760. In the most important industry—woollen manufacture—very primitive machinery was used. Spinning and weaving were, of course, done by hand, though a few improvements had been made in textile machinery. In 1730, Wyatt had invented roller spinning; but it did not come into immediate use. In 1738, Kay of Bury made an important contrivance known as the fly-shuttle which enabled one man to do the work of two. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, calico printing had been so well developed that “ all the mean people—the maid servants and indifferently poor person” could clothe themselves in calico or printed linen. Waterpower was used by many of the larger mills, such as those at Sheffield and Newcastle-on-Tyne. Some labour-saving machinery propelled by water used in the iron shops is described by Young as follows:—“As to the machinery accelerating several operations in the manufacture, copper rollers for squeezing bars into hoop, and the scissors for cutting bars of iron, the turning cranes for moving anchors into and out of the fire, the beating hammer lifted by the cogs of a wheel—these are machines of manifest utility, simple in their construction, and all moved by water.” The age of invention was yet to come, and, comparatively speaking, work had to be done almost without the aid of power-driven, mechanical devices.

Sec. 10.—The Organisation of Industry. There were few factories and vast accumulations of capital in industry in England before the coming of machinery. Even those engaged in other than agricultural pursuits very often lived in cottages in the country, and held small strips of land for cultivation. The metal workers of West Bromwich and the cutlers of Sheffield were not yet divorced from the soil, and the various industries throughout England were more or less combined with agriculture. Manufacturing was carried on for the most part under what is called the domestic system. Industry was not concentrated in the hands of great “ captains,” but was distributed among innumerable cottagers and small masters who had close relationship with their workers. It is easy, however, to underestimate the developments which had already been made in the direction of the factory system before the age of mechanical inventions. It is erroneous to suppose that the factory system is entirely the result of machine and steam-power industry, because there are other conditions which lead to specialisation and large industrial organisation. These conditions have been aptly classified by Hobson under three heads : (1) Physical Aptitudes of Soil. For instance, since wood was used by smelting, iron works very naturally were built near forests. Industries requiring water-power sprang up along the hill streams of the North, and so on. (2) Facility of Market. It was natural that around the large towns which afforded markets certain specialised industries should arise. (3) Nature of Commodity. Where transportation was slow and inadequate, there was naturally little specialisation in heavy or perishable goods.

Defoe, in his tour through Great Britain (1724–26), draws a graphic picture of industrial life near Halifax, Yorkshire, at that time. “ The land was divided into small enclosures from two acres to six or seven acres each, seldom more, every three or four pieces having a house belonging to them; hardly a ho...