Industrial Revolution in Britain. Chartism. Social Conditions

The Industrial Revolution (more correctly, the First Industrial Revolution) was one of the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural changes in the late 18th and early 19th century resulting from the replacement of an economy based on manual labour to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. The term itself applied to technological change was introduced by Friedrich Engels and Louis-Auguste Blanqui in the second half of the 19th century.

It began in Britain with the introduction of steam power (fueled primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing). The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the nineteenth century enabled the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.

The dating of the First Industrial Revolution is not exact. It occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830 (in effect the reigns of George III, The Regency, and part of William IV). There was no cut-off point for the First Revolution as it merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships and railways, and later in the nineteenth century, of the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation.

The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America, eventually affecting the rest of the world. The impact of this change on society was enormous and is often compared to the Neolithic revolution, when mankind developed agriculture and gave up its nomadic lifestyle.

The causes of the Industrial Revolution were complex and remain a topic for debate, with some historians seeing the Revolution as an outgrowth of social and institutional changes wrought by the end of feudalism in Great Britain after the English Civil War in the 17th century. As national border controls became more effective, diseases spread less, therefore preventing the epidemics common in previous times. The percentage of children who lived past infancy rose significantly as well, leading to a larger workforce. The Enclosure movement and the British Agricultural Revolution made food production more efficient and less labour-intensive, forcing the surplus population who could no longer find employment in agriculture into cottage industry, such as weaving, and in the longer term into the cities and the newly-developed factories. The colonial expansion of the 17th century with the accompanying development of international trade, creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital are also cited as factors, as is the scientific revolution of the 17th century. Technological innovation was another important factor, in particular the new invention and development of the steam engine during the 18th century.

The presence of a large domestic market should also be considered an important catalyst of the Industrial Revolution, particularly explaining why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as France, markets were split up by local regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs on goods traded among them.

The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution also concerns the lead of 30 to 100 years that Britain had over other countries. Some have stressed the importance of natural or financial resources that the United Kingdom received from its many overseas colonies or that profits from the British slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel industrial investment.

Alternatively, the greater liberalisation of trade from a large merchant base may have allowed Britain to utilise emerging scientific and technological developments more effectively than countries with stronger monarchies, such as China and Russia. Great Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the only European nation not ravaged by financial plunder and economic collapse, and possessing the only merchant fleet of any useful size (European merchant fleets having been destroyed during the war by the Royal Navy). The United Kingdom's extensive exporting cottage industries also ensured markets were already available for many early forms of manufactured goods. The nature of conflict in the period resulted in most British warfare being conducted overseas, reducing the devastating effects of territorial conquest that affected much of Europe. This was further aided by Britain's geographical position an island separated from the rest of mainland Europe.

Another theory is that Great Britain was able to succeed in the Industrial Revolution due to the availability of key resources it possessed. It had a dense population for its small geographical size. Enclosure of common land and the related Agricultural revolution made a supply of this labour readily available. There was also a local coincidence of natural resources in the North of England, the English Midlands, South Wales and the Scottish Lowlands. Local supplies of coal, iron, lead, copper, tin, limestone and water power, resulted in excellent conditions for the development and expansion of industry.

The stable political situation in Great Britain from around 1688, and British society's greater receptiveness to change (when compared with other European countries) can also be said to be factors favouring the Industrial Revolution.

Another theory is that the British advance was due to the presence of an entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology and hard work.. The existence of this class is often linked to the Protestant work ethic. Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Great Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market there based on the management of the national debt by the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private financial investment in industrial ventures. Religious dissenters found themselves barred or discouraged from almost all public offices, as well as education at England's only two Universities at the time, Oxford and Cambridge, when the restoration of the monarchy took place and membership in the official Anglican church became mandatory due to the Test Act. They thereupon became active in banking, manufacturing and education, The Unitarians, in particular, were very involved in education, by running Dissenting Academies, where, in contrast to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and schools such as Eton and Harrow, much attention was given to mathematics and the sciences--areas of scholarship vital to the development of manufacturing technologies.

The invention of the steam engine was one of the most important innovations of the industrial revolution. This was made possible by earlier improvements in iron smelting and metal working based on the use of coke rather than charcoal. Earlier in the 18th century the textile industry had harnessed water power to drive improved spinning machines and looms. These textile mills became the model for the organisation of human labour in factories.

There were publications describing technology. Encyclopedias such as Harris's Lexicon technicum (1704) and Dr Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802-1819) contain much of value. Rees's Cyclopaedia contains an enormous amount of information about the science and technology of the first half of the Industrial Revolution, very well illustrated by fine engravings. Foreign printed sources such as the Descriptions des Arts et Metiers and Diderot's Encyclopedie explained foreign methods with fine engraved plates. Periodical publications about manufacturing and technology began to appear in the last decade of the 18th century, and a number regularly included notice of the latest patents.

The factory system was largely responsible for the rise of the modern city, as workers migrated into the cities in search of employment in the factories. For much of the 19th century, production was done in small mills, which were typically powered by water and built to serve local needs. One of the earliest reformers of factory conditions was Robert Owen.

The spinning jenny was one of the innovations that started the revolution.In the early 18th century, British textile manufacture was based on wool which was processed by individual artisans, doing the spinning and weaving on their own premises. This system is called a cottage industry. Flax and cotton were also used for fine materials, but the processing was difficult because of the pre-processing needed, and thus goods in these materials made only a small proportion of the output.

Use of the spinning wheel and hand loom restricted the production capacity of the industry, but a number of incremental advances increased productivity to the extent that manufactured cotton goods became the dominant British export by the early decades of the 19th century. India was displaced as the premier supplier of cotton goods.

Step by step, individual inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning so that the supply of yarn fed a weaving industry that itself was advancing with improvements to shuttles and the loom or 'frame'. The output of an individual labourer increased dramatically, with the effect that these new machines were seen as a threat to employment, and early innovators were attacked and their inventions were wrecked. To capitalize upon these advances it took a class of entrepreneurs, of which the most famous is Richard Arkwright. He nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power first horse power, then water power and finally steam power which made cotton manufacture a mechanized industry.

Coal mining in Britain, particuarly in South Wales is of great age. Before the steam engine, pits were often shallow bell pits following a seam of coal along the surface and being abandoned as the coal was extracted. In other cases, if the geology was favourable, the coal was mined by means of an adit driven into the side of a hill. Shaft mining was done in some areas, but the limiting factor was the problem of removing water. It could be done by hauling buckets of water up the shaft by means of a horse gin, or it could be drained by an adit leading to a stream or ditch at lower level where it could flow away by gravity. The introduction of the steam engine enabled shafts to be made deeper, hence increasing output.

In the early 18th century, small-scale iron working and extraction and processing of other metals were carried out where local resources permitted. Fuel was primarily wood in the form of charcoal, but consumption was starting to be constrained by lack of available timber. At the same time, demand for high-quality iron was dramatically increasing to keep pace with the improvements in military technology and the involvement of Britain in numerous European wars.

Principal suppliers of high-quality iron goods were Sweden and Russia, with Russia being able to command increasingly high prices as Britain's need grew.To fuel the iron smelting process, people moved from wood to coal and coke. Production of pig iron, cast iron and wrought iron improved through the exchange of ideas (although this was by no means a fast process), with the most well-known name being Abraham Darby. The first Abraham Darby made great strides with using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale (1709), although this was principally due to the nature of the coke he was using, and the scientific reasons for the improvement were only discovered later. His family followed in his footsteps, and iron became a major construction material.

Other improvements followed, with Benjamin Huntsman developing a crucible steel technique in the 1740s, and Henry Cort's puddling furnace enabling large-scale production of wrought iron to take place. The reliance on overseas supplies was diminished, and improvements in machine tools and the use of iron and steel in the development of the railways further boosted the industrial growth of Great Britain.

The stationary steam engine had great influence on the progress of the Industrial Revolution, but for the period of the Industrial Revolution many industries still relied on wind and water power as well as horse and man-power for driving small machines.The first steam engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, was used for draining mines or for driving mills by pumping water back to a reservoir that had passed through a water wheel. James Watt's engines added many efficiency improvements especially the external condenser 1776, steam under pressure and the centrifugal governor which enabled steam engines to be used to drive a factory or mill directly.

The development of machine tools such as the planing and shaping machine enabled all the metal parts of the engines to be easily and accurately cut. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, inland transport was by navigable rivers and roads, with coastwise vessels employed to move heavy goods by sea. Railways or wagon ways were used for conveying coal to rivers for further shipment, and canals were beginning to be cut for moving goods between larger towns and cities.

During the Industrial Revolution, these different methods were improved and developed. All the major rivers were made navigable to a great or lesser degree. The Severn in particular was used for the movement of goods to the Midlands which had been imported into Bristol from abroad, and the export of goods from centres of production in Shropshire such as iron goods from Coalbrookdale. Small sailing vessels which could pass the various shallows and bridges in the river. These could navigate the Bristol Channel to the South Wales ports and Somerset ports, such as Bridgwater and even as far as France.

Sailing vessels had long been used for moving goods round the British coast. The trade transporting coal to London from Newcastle had begun in medieval times. The major international seaports such as London, Bristol and Liverpool were the means by which raw materials such as cotton might be imported and finished goods exported. Transporting goods onwards within Britain by sea was common during the whole of the Industrial Revolution and only fell away with the growth of the railways at the end of the period.

Canals began to be built in the late eighteenth century to link the major manufacturing centres in the Midlands and north with seaports and with London, at that time the largest manufacturing centre in the country. Canals were the first technology to allow bulk materials to be easily transported across county. A single canal horse could pull a load dozens of times larger than a cart at a faster pace. By the 1820s, a national network was in existence. Canal construction served as a model for the organisation and methods later used to construct the railways. They were eventually largely superseded as profitable commercial enterprises by the spread of the railways from the 1840s on.Britain's canal network, together with its surviving mill buildings, is one of the most enduring features of the early Industrial Revolution to be seen in Britain.

Much of the original British road system was poorly maintained by thousands of local parishes, but from the 1760s turnpike trusts were set up to charge tolls and maintain some roads. New engineered roads were built by John Metcalf, Thomas Telford and John Macadam. The major turnpikes radiated from London and were the means by which the Royal Mail was able to reach the rest of the country. Heavy goods transport on these roads was by means of slow broad wheeled carts hauled by teams of horses. Lighter goods were conveyed by smaller carts or by teams of pack horses. Stage coaches transported rich people. The less wealthy walked or paid to ride on a carriers cart.

Wagonways for moving coal in the mining areas had started in the 17th century, and were often associatad with canal or river systems for the further movement of coal. These were all horse drawn or relied on gravity, with a stationary steam engine to haul the wagons back to the top of the incline. Horse-drawn public railways did not begin until the early years of the 19th century. Steam-hauled public railways began with the Liverpool and Manchester and Stockton and Darlington Railways of the late 1820s. The construction of major railways connecting the larger cities and towns began in the 1830s but only gained momentum at the very end of the Industrial Revolution.After many of the workers had completed the railways, they did not return to their rural lifestyles, but instead remained in the cities, providing additional workers for the factories.

The industrial revolution led to a number of social problems within the newly developed working class. Children worked under miserable conditions and the families lived in bad housing. Child labour existed before the Industrial Revolution, and in fact dates back to prehistoric times, but during the Industrial Revolution it grew far more abusive than ever before Politicians tried to limit child labour by law. Factory owners resisted; some felt that they were aiding the poor by giving their children work from the age of five years onward, and others simply welcomed the cheap labour. In 1833, the first law against child labour, the Factory Act of 1833, was passed in England: Children younger than nine were not allowed to work, children were not permitted to work at night and the work day of youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. Factory inspectors supervised the execution of this law. About ten years later, the employment of children and women in mining was forbidden. These laws improved the situation; however child labour remained a problem in Europe up to the 20th century.

In 1832, James Phillips Kay, an Edinburgh doctor, published a detailed report on the working conditions of the poor and describes worker's housing establishments as follows: Here, without distinction of age or sex, careless of all decency, they are

crowded in small and wretched apartments; the same bed receiving a succession

of tenants until too offensive for their unfastidious senses.

In 1842, a Sanitary Report was produced by Edwin Chadwick: "In a cellar in Pendleton, I recollect there were three beds in the two apartments of which the habitation consisted, but having no door between them, in one of which a man and his wife slept; in another, a man, his wife and child; and in a third two unmarried females.(...)I have met with upwards of 40 persons sleeping in the same room, married and single, including, of course, children and several young adult persons of either sex."

The rapid industrialization of the English economy cost many craft workers their jobs. The textile industry in particular industrialized early, and many weavers found themselves suddenly unemployed since they could no longer compete with machines which only required relatively limited (and unskilled) labour to produce more cloth than a single weaver. Many such unemployed workers, weavers and others, turned their animousity towards the machines that had taken their jobs and began destroying factories and machinery. These attackers became known as Luddites, supposedly followers of Ned Ludd, a folklore figure. The first attacks of the Luddite movement began in 1811. The Luddites rapidly gained popularity, and the British government had to take drastic measures to protect industry.

Conditions for the working class were so bad during the industrial revolution, unions were formed to help protect the rights of the working man. The main method the unions used to effect change was strike action. Strikes were painful events for both sides, the unions and the management. The management was upset because strikes took their precious working force away for a large period of time, and the unions had to deal with riot police and various middle class prejudices that striking workers were the same as criminals, as well as loss of income. The strikes often led to violent and bloody clashes between police and workers. Factory managers usually reluctantly gave in to various demands made by strikers, but the conflict was generally long standing.

In England, the Combination Act forbade workers to form any kind of trade union from 1799 until its repeal in 1824. Even after this, unions were still severely restricted. In 1842, Cotton Workers in England staged a widespread strike.

The Industrial Revolution had significant impacts on the structure of society. Prior to its rise, the public and private spheres held strong overlaps; work was often conducted through the home, and thus was shared in many cases by both a wife and her husband. However, during this period the two began to separate, with work and home life considered quite distinct from one another. This shift made it necessary for one partner to maintain the home and care for children. Women, holding the distinction of being able to breastfeed, thus more often maintained the home, with men making up a sizeable fraction of the workforce.

With much of the family income coming from men, then, their power in relation to women increased further, with the latter often dependent on men's income. This had enormous impacts on the defining of gender roles and was effectively the model for what was later termed the traditional family. However, the need for a large workforce also pressured many women into industrial work, where they were often paid much less in relation to men. This was in large part due to a lack of organised labour among women to push for benefits and wage increases, and in part to ensure women's continued dependence on a man's income to survive.

Karl Marx saw the industrialization process as the logical dialectical progression of feudal economic modes, necessary for the full development of capitalism, which he saw as in itself a necessary precursor to the development of socialism and eventually communism. According to Marx, industrialization polarizes societies into the bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production, e.g., the factories and land) and the much larger proletariat (the working class who actually perform the labour necessary to extract something valuable from the means of production). Marx asserts that the relationship between the two classes is fundamentally parasitic, insofar as the proletariat are always undercompensated for the true value of their labour by the bourgeoisie (according to the labour theory of value), which allows the bourgeoisie to grow absurdly wealthy through nothing more than the wholesale exploitation of the proletarians' labour.

Marx believed that the industrial proletariat would eventually develop class consciousness and revolt against the bourgeoisie, leading to a more egalitarian socialist and eventually Communist state where the workers themselves would own the means of industrial production. The year of 1848 went down in history for 2 reasons: it was the birthday of Communist Manifesto: this year was also noted for the peak of Chartist movement, a less radical political trend.

Chartism followed earlier Radical movements which demanded a widening of the franchise, and came after the passing of the Reform Act 1832, which gave the vote to the majority of the male middle classes, but not to the "working class" which was then emerging from artisan and labouring classes. Many Radicals made speeches on the "betrayal" of the working class and the "sacrificing" of their "interests" by the "misconduct" of the government. Chartism included a wide range of organizations. Hence it can be seen as not so much a movement as an era in popular politics in Britain, when "thousands of working people considered that their problems could be solved by the political organization of the country."

In 1838, six members of Parliament and six working men formed a committee, which then published the People's Charter, containing the following objectives: