Industrial Revolution 3

1. Several European countries and the United States had gradually industrialized their economies to varying extents by 1900. In 1750, all countries had similar per capita levels of industrialization. Britain had a great lead over other countries’ levels by 1800, and that continued by 1860. Belgium became independent in 1831 and, with its iron and coal, adopted Britain’s technology and advanced greatly. France developed factory pro-duction more gradually without any acceleration. By 1913, Germany was closing in on Britain’s level, while the United States had passed Britain. All European states, including the United States, Canada, and Japan, increased their per capita levels, while non-Western countries like China and India decreased theirs. Building modern industry was a challenge. Other countries had less agricultural improvement, population increase, ex-panding foreign trade, and growing cottage industry than Britain. The French Revolu-tion’s political and economic upheavals disrupted trade, created high inflation, and fos-tered social anxiety. Britain was able to maintain its industrial momentum through the wars, while communications between Britain and the continent were hindered, allowing Britain to grow faster than the continent.

2. There were difficulties in trying to catch up to British industrial levels. The widening gap between the continent and Britain made industrialization more difficult after 1815. Brit-ish goods were being produced very economically, and these goods had come to domi-nate world markets by 1815. British technology had become so advanced and compli-cated that very few engineers or skilled technicians outside England understood it. Steam power had grown more expensive, requiring large amounts of iron and coal, and railroads later. Continental business people had difficulty finding enough money to in-vest in the new methods. There was a shortage of laborers accustomed to working in factories. Landowners and government officials were suspicious of industrialization and did not encourage it much. However, the continent did have three advantages in achiev-ing their industrial goals. First, most continental countries had a tradition of putting-out enterprise, merchant capitalists, and skilled urban artisans, allowing continental busi-nesses to adapt and survive in the face of new market conditions. Second, continental capitalists did not need to develop their own advanced technology and could instead borrow the new methods and the engineers and financial resources that these countries lacked. Thirdly, some European countries like France and Russia had strong independent governments that did not fall under foreign political control and could establish eco-nomic policies to serve their own interests. Britain realized the value of their technical discoveries, and until 1825, it was illegal for artisans and skilled mechanic to leave Brit-ain and illegal until 1843 to export textile machinery and other equipment. However, many talented, ambitious workers slipped out of the country and introduced the new methods.

3. The first agent of industrialization was British technicians and skilled workers who brought their expertise abroad. William Cockerill, a Lancashire carpenter, and his sons began building cotton-spinning equipment in Belgium in 1799. His son, John Cockerill, bought an old summer palace in Liège in southern Belgium in 1817. He converted the palace into an industrial enterprise that produced machinery, steam engines, and rail-way locomotives as well as established modern ironworks and coalmines. It became a center of industrialization where many skilled British workers illegally worked and founded their own companies throughout Europe. Newcomers brought the latest plans and secrets, allowing his plant to be only ten days behind British ones. A second agent of industrialization was talented entrepreneurs like Fritz Harkort. He served in England as a Prussian army officer during the Napoleonic wars and was impressed with British indu-strialization. He established his own enterprise in the Ruhr Valley. He was forced to hire expensive, British mechanics and buy expensive, English iron boilers. Steam engines had to be built at the works, dismantled, shipped piece by piece, and then reassembled by Harkort’s technicians due to the poor roads. He did sell engines, winning fame and praise, though he had to quit after sixteen years due to debt. Generally, continental businesses adopted factory technology slowly, often with uneven expansion in rural and urban areas. A third agent of industrialization was government, which often helped business people in continental countries overcome some of their difficulties. High tariffs were established to protect domestic goods. Roads and canals were built after 1815 to improve transportation. They helped generously in building railroads, as in Belgium in the 1830s and 1840s. Belgium constructed a state-owned system that developed heavy industry and made the country an early industrial leader. Other smaller German states followed this model. The Prussian government guaranteed that the state treasury would pay the interest and principal on railroad bonds if the closely regulated private compa-nies in Prussia were unable to, giving railroad investors little risk. The French govern-ment was solely responsible for all expenses of acquiring and laying roadbed. The roadbed was leased to a supervised private company, which benefited from a state guarantee of its debts and needed to provide only the rails, cars, and management.

4. German journalist and thinker Friedrich List considered the growth of modern industry very important because it was a means of increasing people’s well-being and relieving their poverty. He was also a nationalist who wanted a strong country to maintain its po-litical independence. His National System of Political Economy called for railroad build-ing and tariffs. He supported the formation of the Zollverein among the separate Ger-man states that came into being in 1834. The Zollverein, with the elimination of all in-ternal tariffs in Prussia in 1818, allowed goods to move between the German member states freely as well as having a tariff against all other countries. List liked high protec-tive tariffs that encourage young industries. He denounced free trade as a way for the British to control the world.

5. The fourth agent of industrialization was banks. Before, most European banks had been private, organized as secretive partnerships. All the active partners were liable for all the debts of the firm. Because of the possibility of all financial loss, the partners were usually conservative and content to deal with only a few rich clients and a few big merchants. In the 1830s, two Belgian banks received permission from the government to establish themselves as corporations where their stockholders could only lose their original investments. These banks attracted many large and small shareholders and promoted industrial development. Similar corporate banks occurred in France and Germany in the 1850s and 1860s. They worked with governments and established and developed many railroads and companies that specialized in heavy industry. The Crédit Mobilier of Paris used the savings of thousands of small investors and the resources of big ones to build railroads all over France and Europe. All the agents of industrialization caused rapid economic growth on the continent between 1850 and 1873. In Belgium, Germany, and France, key industries increased at average annual rates of 5 to 10%.

b.
1. The Industrial Revolution created a new group of factory owners and industrial capital-ists. These people strengthened the wealth and size of the middle class. Also created was a much larger group, the factory workers. Large numbers of men, women, and children became united as workers with complicated machinery for a single owner or a couple owners. The growth of this group created a new thinking about social relations, a new paradigm. This paradigm argued that individuals were members of economically determined classes, which had conflicting interests. The public came to see itself as the backbone of the middle class, and thus transformed into the modern working class. Con-flicting classes existed because the individuals believed they existed and developed a sense of class feeling.

2. Most early industrialists used their families and friends for labor and capital, but they all came from a variety of backgrounds. Many were from well-established merchant fami-lies while others were of modest means. Ethnic and religious groups who had been dis-criminated against in the traditional occupations controlled by the aristocracy were ea-ger for new chances and to help each other. Scots, Quakers, and other Protestants were important in Britain while Protestants and Jews dominated banking in France. Oppor-tunities, however, declined in well-developed industries, as gifted but poor people had difficult times establishing a small enterprise and becoming rich. Formal education for sons and males became more important for success and advancement, though it was expensive at the advanced level. In industrialized countries by the mid-1800s, leading industrialists were more likely to have inherited their enterprises, and they were more financially secure and had a greater sense of class-consciousness. The wives and daugh-ters of successful businessmen did not contribute to the family-owned enterprise but were valued for their ladylike gentility. By 1850, some respected women writers and most businessmen assumed that middle-class wives and daughters should stay away from offices and factories. Instead, a middle-class lady should protect and enhance her femininity and work to be a good wife.

3. Since Britain was the first to industrialize, it is there where criticism of it first began. Romantic poets like William Blake criticized it and protested the life of the London poor. William Wordsworth was saddened by the destruction of the rural way of life and the pollution. Some people, mostly the Luddites, smashed the new machines that they be-lieved were putting them out of work. Doctors and reformers wrote of problems in the factories and new towns, while Malthus and Ricardo wrote that workers would earn only enough to stay alive. Friedrich Engels shared this pessimistic view in his 1844 The Condition of the Working Class in England. He charged the English middle classes with mass murder, robbery, and other crimes. He believed the new poverty of industrial workers was worse than the old poverty of cottage workers and agricultural laborers. He put all blame on industrial capitalism, with its competition and technical change. Andrew Ure wrote in 1835 that conditions in most factories were not harsh but were rather good. Edwin Chadwick believed that the workers were increasingly able to buy more necessities and minor luxuries. However, the majority of people believed that working conditions were getting worse.

4. Statistical studies have weakened the idea that the condition of the working class got much worse with industrialization. However, recent studies confirm that the early years of the Industrial Revolution were difficult for British workers. There was little or no in-crease in the purchasing power of the average British worker from 1780 to 1820, with 1792 to 1815 being very difficult. Food prices rose faster than wages, and the living con-ditions of the workers declined. After 1820, and especially after 1840, real wages rose greatly, allowing for the average worker to earn and consume 50% more in real terms in 1850 than in 1770. However, increased purchasing power meant more goods but not necessarily greater happiness. Work was still dangerous and monotonous. Statistical studies do not include the level of unemployment. The hours in the average workweek increased, which may have simply made workers earn more. Primary sources could be used to fill the gaps that statistical studies left out.

5. The first factories were cotton mills around the 1770s. Cottage workers were reluctant to work in factories because factory work was different than the putting-out system and unappealing. Workers in factories had to keep up with the machine and follow its speed, work every day and long hours, and adjust their daily lives around their work. Early fac-tories resembled English poorhouse, where poor people went to live on welfare. The similarity between the ways they looked increased the cottage workers’ fear of factories and their hatred of factory discipline. Instead of cottage workers, the early cotton mill owners turned to abandoned and pauper children for their labor. The owners contracted with local officials to employ large numbers of these children. Pauper children were often mistreated and overworked in the mills.

6. By 1790, the use of pauper apprentices was in decline and forbidden by Parliament in 1802. Many more factories were being built, mostly in urban areas, where they used steam power and could attract a workforce more easily than in the countryside. People came from far away to work in the cities, as factories workers and as laborers, builders, and domestic servants. However, instead of being assimilated to the working life, they brought their old, familiar working traditions.