What is the Industrial Revolution?

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1 What is the Industrial Revolution? So what exactly is the Industrial Revolution? An Industrial Revolution at its core occurs when a society shifts from using tools to make products to using new sources of energy, such as coal, to power machines in factories. It s a shift from the home to the factory, from the country to the city, from human or animal power to engines powered by fossil fuels (coal and, later, oil). The industrial process occurred gradually, but the social and economic changes were so far reaching over generations that, looking back, it becomes clear that they were nothing short of revolutionary. The revolution started in England, with a series of innovations to make labor more efficient and productive. In the new industrial cities, advances in technology and organization allowed the average worker to produce much more than ever before. times the spun thread of a pre-industrial worker. Though it started with labor-saving devices in England, the revolution spread incrementally to other regions of the world. The Industrial Revolution is an era that began in England at the end of the 18th century, but it has yet to end. We can distinguish three phases of the Industrial Revolution in modern world history, based on when various countries and regions went through the process: 1. The first phase (1770s to 1860s) started with Britain and then spread to other countries in Northern and Western Europe and the United States. 2. The second phase (1870s to 1950s) brought in Russia, Japan, other parts of Eastern and Southern Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. 3. The third phase (1960s to present) brought in the so-called Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea) and has seen tentative development in key economic sectors in Turkey, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Why Study the Industrial Revolution? The Industrial Revolution resulted in the most profound, far-reaching changes in the history of humanity. And its influence continues to sweep through our lives today. The last 250 years of industrialization have altered

2 our lives more than any event or development in the past 12,000 years: in where we live, how we work, what we wear, what we eat, what we do for fun, how we are educated, how long we live and how many children we have. In short, the Industrial Revolution is the game changer of modern world history. Consider a few global consequences of industrialization. When the Industrial Revolution started in the 18th century, the great majority of people lived in the countryside. But, the growth of cities coincided with the growth of industry, and rapid urbanization continues to increase in contemporary times. By 2008, for the first time in human history, more people in the world lived in cities than in rural areas ( World Population ). The same 250-year-old process has also resulted in modern technological innovations that generations of people have grown accustomed to such as steam engines, railroads, cars, modern appliances, and computers. Average life expectancy has more than doubled in industrialized nations, while average incomes have increased even more. To be sure, industrialization has improved life in many ways for many people. On the other hand, industrialization has not spread wealth evenly across the globe, and the consequences have often been unjust.in 2006, 10% of the world s wealthiest people controlled 85% of the world s wealth. why study the Industrial Revolution? Study it to understand the major challenges, trends, and successes of the world today high-tech innovations, increased global wealth, social injustices, global migration patterns, and environmental degradation. In short, we cannot hope to understand the modern world without understanding the Industrial Revolution. In this text we pose an essential question that focuses our inquiry: Did the Industrial Revolution improve life? The Industrial Revolution and Population Growth

3 Source: United Nations Population Division, Briefing Packet, 1998 Revision of World Population Prospects; and World Population Prospects, The 2006 Revision. The most prolific evidence of the Industrial Revolution s impact on the modern world is seen in the worldwide human population growth. Humans have been around for about 2.2 million years. By the dawn of the first millennium AD, estimates place the total world (modern) human population at between million, and 300 million in the year 1,000. The population of the United States population is currently 312,000,000 (August 2011). The world human population growth rate would be about.1 percent (.001) per year for the next seven to eight centuries. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700s, the world s human population grew by about 57 percent to 700 million. It would reach one billion in (Note: The Black Plague reduced the world population by about 75 million people in the late 1300s.) The birth of the Industrial Revolution altered medicine and living standards, resulting in the population explosion that would commence at that point and steamroll into the 20 th and 21 st centuries. In only 100 years after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the world population would grow 100 percent to two billion people in 1927 (about 1.6 billion by 1900). During the 20 th century, the world population would take on exponential proportions, growing to six billion people just before the start of the 21 st century. That s a 400 percent population increase in a single century. Since the 250 years from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to today, the world human population has increased by six billion people! Human population growth is indelibly tied together with increased use of natural and man-made resources, energy, land for growing food and for living, and waste by-products that are disposed of, to decompose, pollute or be recycled. This exponential population growthled to the exponential requirements for resources, energy, food, housing and land, as well as the exponential increase in waste by-products. The industrial revolution and Urbanization One of the defining and most lasting features of the Industrial Revolution was the rise of cities. In pre-industrial society, over 80% of people lived in rural areas. As migrants moved from the countryside, small towns became large cities. By 1850, for the first time in world history, more people in a country Great Britain lived in cities than in rural areas. As other

countries in Europe and North America industrialized, they too continued along this path of urbanization. By 1920, a majority of Americans lived in cities.

4 countries in Europe and North America industrialized, they too continued along this path of urbanization. By 1920, a majority of Americans lived in cities. In England, this process of urbanization continued unabated throughout the 19th century. The city of London grew from a population of two million in 1840 to five million forty years later This process of urbanization stimulated the booming new industries by concentrating workers and factories together. And the new industrial cities became, as we read earlier, sources of wealth for the nation. Despite the growth in wealth and industry urbanization also had some negative effects. On the whole, working-class neighborhoods were bleak, crowded, dirty, and polluted. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French traveller and writer, visited Manchester in 1835 and commented on the environmental hazards. From this foul Drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilization works its miracles and civilized man is turned almost into a savage. (Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 44) Living conditions Working in new industrial cities had an effect on people s lives outside of the factories as well. As workers migrated from the country to the city, their lives and the lives of their families were utterly and permanently transformed.

They were their own bosses. But, after the Industrial Revolution, the living conditions for skilled weavers significantly deteriorated.

5 For many skilled workers, the quality of life decreased a great deal in the first 60 years of the Industrial Revolution. Skilled weavers, for example, lived well in pre-industrial society as a kind of middle class. They tended their own gardens, worked on textiles in their homes or small shops, and raised farm animals. They were their own bosses. But, after the Industrial Revolution, the living conditions for skilled weavers significantly deteriorated. They could no longer live at their own pace or supplement their income with gardening, spinning, or communal harvesting. For skilled workers, quality of life took a sharp downturn: A quarter [neighborhood] once remarkable for its neatness and order; I remembered their whitewashed houses, and their little flower gardens, and the decent appearance they made with their families at markets, or at public worship. These houses were now a mass of filth and misery (269). In the first sixty years or so of the Industrial Revolution, working-class people had little time or opportunity for recreation. Workers spent all the light of day at work and came home with little energy, space, or light to play sports or games. (government food aid). During the first 60 years of the Industrial Revoltuion, living conditions were, by far, worst for the poorest of the poor. In desperation, many turned to the poorhouses set up by the government. The Poor Law of 1834 created workhouses for the destitute. Poorhouses were designed to be deliberately harsh places to discourage people from staying on relief

Public Health and Life Expectance In the first half of the 19th century, urban overcrowding, poor diets, poor sanitation, and essentially medieval medical remedies all contributed to very poor public

6 Public Health and Life Expectance In the first half of the 19th century, urban overcrowding, poor diets, poor sanitation, and essentially medieval medical remedies all contributed to very poor public health for the majority of English people. The densely packed and poorly constructed working-class neighborhoods contributed to the fast spread of disease. As we read in Engels first hand account of working-class areas in Manchester, these neighborhoods were filthy, unplanned, and slipshod. Roads were muddy and lacked sidewalks. Houses were built touching each other, leaving no room for ventilation. Perhaps most importantly, homes lacked toilets and sewage systems, and as a result, drinking water sources, such as wells, were frequently contaminated with disease. Cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, and influenza ravaged through new industrial towns, especially in poor workingclass neighborhoods. In 1849, 10,000 people died of cholera in three months in London alone ("Public Health Timeline"). Tuberculosis claimed 60,000 to 70,000 lives in each decade of the 19th century (Robinson). People who received medical treatment in the first half of the 19th century likely worsened under the care of trained doctors and untrained quacks. Doctors still used remedies popular during the Middle Ages, such

7 as bloodletting and leeching. Even though there were more doctors in the cities, life expectancy was much lower there than in the country. Poor nutrition, disease, lack of sanitation, and harmful medical care in these urban areas had a devastating effect on the average life expectancy of British people in the first half of the 19th century. The Registrar General reported in 1841 that the average life expectancy in rural areas of England was 45 years of age but was only 37 in London and an alarming 26 in Liverpool (Haley). These are life-long averages that highlight a very high infant mortality rate; in the first half of the 19th century, 25 to 33% of children in England died before their 5th birthday (Haley). Responses to Public Health Challenges Fortunately, healthcare did gradually improve during the Industrial Revolution through advances in science and technology that focused on preventions and cures. Eventually, sound scientific research and experimentation established the basis for a professional medical community. During the 1850s and 1860s, diagnostic aids that doctors typically use today the stethoscope, the ophthalmoscope, and the thermometer came into common use. Microscopes improved enough to allow for the examination of microorganisms. During the 1880s and 1890s doctors began to use preventive inoculations to systematically control contagious diseases. And by the end of the 19th century, hospitals began to use general anesthesia and antiseptic, which allowed physicians more carefully to perform surgery and greatly reduced the amount of hospital deaths (Haley). The British government addressed public health by passing regulatory laws to curb the ills of working-class urban living. The Public Health Act of 1848 set up local health boards, investigated sanitary conditions nationwide, and established a General Board of Health. The local boards had the responsibility of ensuring that water supplies were safe. And in the 1875 Public Health Act, the government took on more responsibility for public health, adding housing, sewage, drainage, and contagious diseases. This Each new law was a big step forward for modern medicine and public

8 health, and a far cry from the medieval bloodletting that had occurred only decades earlier (Haley). Because of advances in medicine and public health, life expectancy increased over the course of the 19th century. Life expectancy at birth, in the high 30s in 1837, increased to 48 by 1901 ( Victorian Medicine ). Much of this change was due to improvements in keeping infants alive. Polluted water and damp housing in new urban areas were probably the main causes of high infant mortality rates in the first era of the Industrial Revolution. By the mid-19th century, the infant mortality rate decreased from 150 out of 1000 children killed by age 1 in 1840 to 100 in 1870, a 50% drop over30 years. (Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire 160) The Emerging Middle Class Gradually, very gradually, a middle class, or middling sort, did emerge in industrial cities, mostly toward the end of the 19th century. Until then, there had been only two major classes in society: aristocrats born into their lives of wealth and privilege, and low-income commoners born in the working classes. However new urban industries gradually required more of what we call today white collar jobs, such as business people, shopkeepers, bank clerks, insurance agents, merchants, accountants, managers, doctors, lawyers, and teachers. [Middle-class people tended to have monthly or yearly salaries rather than hourly wages.] One piece of evidence of this emerging middle class was the rise of retail shops in England that increased from 300 in 1875 to 2,600 by 1890.Another mark of distinction of the middle class was their ability to hire servants to cook and clean the house from time to time. Not surprisingly, from 1851 to 1871, the number of domestic servants increased from 900,000 to 1.4 million. This is proof of a small but rising middle class that prided themselves on taking responsibility for themselves and their families. They viewed professional success as the result of a person s energy, perseverance, and hard work.

Most middle-class adult women were discouraged from working outside the home. They could afford to send their children to school.

9 In this new middle class, families became a sanctuary from stressful industrial life. Home remained separate from work and took on the role of emotional support, where women of the house created a moral and spiritual safe harbor away from the rough-and-tumble industrial world outside. Most middle-class adult women were discouraged from working outside the home. They could afford to send their children to school. As children became more of an economic burden, and better health care decreased infant mortality, middle-class women gave birth to fewer children. Wealth and Income Historians disagree about whether life improved for the working class in the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, from 1790 to E.P. Thompson argued in The Making of the English Working Class that life clearly did not improve for the majority of British people: The experience of miseration came upon them in a hundred different forms; for the field labourer, the loss of his common rights and the vestiges of village democracy; for the artisan, the loss of his craftsman s status; for the weaver, the loss of livelihood and of independence; for the child the loss of work and play in the home; for many groups of workers whose real earning improved, the loss of security, leisure and the deterioration of the urban environment (Thompson 445). Historians do not even agree if real wages increased for workers during this time period. E.P. Thompson argues that they did not. However, most agree that real wages adjusted for inflation stayed basically steady from 1790 to

10 1840. Thompson argues that this fails to account for the vast numbers of unemployed. But, after 1840 or 1850, as England entered the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, it appears that real wages began to increase. For example, one study showed that real wages, adjusted for inflation, increased 50% between 1830 and 1875 (Feinstein).

Untitled Document. Effects of the Industrial Revolution

Untitled Document. Effects of the Industrial Revolution Untitled Document Effects of the Industrial Revolution Working Conditions Living Conditions Urbanization Public Health and Life Expectancy Child Labor Working Class Families and the Role of Women The Emerging