THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The Industrial Revolution is a phrase used for the change that came over Industry in Great Britain in the 18th and early 19th century. It may be said to have begun about 1750 and to have been completed by 1850. The "Industrial Revolution" was a process, not an event. It was a change in the technique of industry. Up to the Industrial Revolution, economic and social change, though continuous, had been slow; in the days of James Watt and Stephenson it acquired momentum. It was marked by the substitution of steam for hand labour and by the building of factories for the manufacturing processes that were previously done in the homes. Its effect on the world may be compared with Roman civilization, the Renaissance, or the introduction into mathematics of Arabic figures. It tended to begin in England, for since Sedgemoor (1687) there had been no great battle on English soil and the towns could grow apace unhampered by fortifications. And because it was in England that the great change first manifested itself we will study its course from the English stand-point. England set the way, the remainder of the world followed.

Until the eighteenth century Britain was, on the whole, an agricultural, not a manufacturing country. Her staple industry had been wool, essentially a domestic industry. The work was done by hand in country cottages, and the old-fashioned methods of spinning-wheels and hand-looms were sufficient to supply the needs of the population at home. By the end. of the long wars with Louis XIV (1713), Britain had become undisputed mistress of the seas and the volume of her trade and commerce began rapidly to increase. The opening of new markets and the growing demand for goods made it worth while to venture capital in a search for new and more rapid methods of production. Moreover, owing to improvements in medical science the eighteenth century saw a vast increase in the population and agriculture became ever more necessary to support the inhabitants of these islands.

With almost startling suddenness came a series of inventions and discoveries that ended by converting Britain into the workshop of the world. First there was her favoured position on the flank of Europe and a wealth of natural harbours available for the ocean trade-routes. Secondly the compactness of Britain and the fact that the great iron and coal fields of the North and Midlands lie side by side, enabled her to take full advantage of a long start over Continental competitors.

The Revolution in Agriculture.

In Tudor times the development of the wool trade led to the enclosure of pasture. The process was slow and by 1770 three-fifths of the land was still cultivated under the old open-field system of the Middle Ages. Farmers were slow and ignorant, agricultural implements surprisingly clumsy, but Tull, Townshend and Bakewell were introducing scientific methods into farming. Successful experiments were made in the growing of roots and artificial grasses, in the rotation of crops and in the breeding of cattle and sheep, and it was soon beyond dispute that by the new methods enormously increased profits would be gained by the farmers who had the capital to employ them. The establishment of the Board of Agriculture in 1793 shows the increased interest taken by the Government.

But if new methods were to spread, the open-field system must be abolished, for it was impossible for a man to improve his land or stock if he still held the scattered, un-hedged strips allotted him under the old régime. So it came about that in the course of the eighteenth century over 3,000 Enclosure Acts were passed, (The General Act was passed in 1800. In 1740 there were no cotton mills; In 1815 one hundred million lb. were manufactured.) which had the broad effect of taking in land which had been common or waste and causing the disappearance of the small-holder. But scientific farming - meat to the wealthy - was poison to the poor man, and the yeoman farmer was forced to sell his land to the big owner and become either a labourer or seek a livelihood in the rapidly growing towns.

Industry and Invention.

As in agriculture scientific methods were changing the face of the country, so in industry an even greater revolution was wrought which brought into being new classes of society, and filled with a dense population whole areas of the North and Midlands which before had been almost unoccupied. For this change two great discoveries were mainly responsible: the use of coal for smelting iron, and the practical application of steam to the working of machinery.

The most important of these inventions were concerned at first with the processes of spinning and weaving. The invention of the fly-shuttle by Kay of Bury (1733) increased both the pace of weaving and the width of cloth. Spinners could hardly supply weavers fast enough, and the next inventions were applied to spinning. Hargreave's spinning jenny (1763), Arkwright's water-frame (1769) and Crompton's mule (1789), which combined the two, secured far' more rapid production of a finer and stronger yarn. It was now possible for the pure cotton cloths and muslins, hitherto imported, to be produced at home. The next step was to apply power to the new machines. The demand for power led to the building of mills beside the running streams in Lancashire and Yorkshire, but though waterpower had the merit of cheapness the remote position of the mills rendered transport of goods costly.

It was left for the genius of James Watt to inaugurate the age of steam. He did not invent the steam-engine; his work was to improve and transform the earlier models of Savery and Newcomen - which were first used for pumping water from mines - so as to provide an engine that would wear well and work accurately and economically. By 1774 he had done this, in conjunction with Matthew Boulton, whose workmanship and business aptitude ensured immediate commercial success. Once steam-power was given to the world there was no limit to its application in every branch of industry. By 1781 Boulton could write "the people of London are all steam-mill mad." (Steam was first used In a cotton mill at Papple. wick, Notts., in 1785.)

For better or worse the day of the cottage industry and the handicraftsman was over; the centre of gravity must shift from country to town. The coming of the steam-machine brought an enormous demand for coal and iron. Their juxtaposition enabled Britain to make the most of her inventions. The use of coke and then of coal for the smelting of iron led to the introduction of blast furnaces, and from these it was only a short step to the wholesale output of pig-iron, which up to this time had actually been imported. At nearly the same time came the casting of steel. In 1779 the first iron bridge was built at Broseley (Shropshire) and in 1787 the first iron vessel - a canal barge.

Side by side with the changes wrought by the use of coal and iron and steam came many other notable inventions which all tended to make Britain industrially supreme. The application of chlorine to the process of bleaching effected in a few days what had been the process of months. Bell's machine for cylinder printing is also worthy of note, as further increasing the pace of output in the textile trades. Josiah Wedgwood, designer and maker of pottery, established his famous works at Etruria, Staffordshire, at the same period.

Transport.

With the volume of trade which now began to develop there came an urgent call for improved communications and rapid transport. The work of scientific road-making had halted curiously behind in. an age of inventive fertility, for although men like Rennie and Telford made a great advance in road and bridge construction, it was not until 1815 that Macadam taught the world the secret of the "permanent way." The problem of transporting heavy goods cheaply was solved by the cutting of canals, a work in which we lagged sadly behind the Dutch and French. The father of the movement was James Brindley (1717-1772.). His first achievement was the Duke of Bridgewater's canal from Worsley to Manchester which, like most of the older canals, was projected mainly for the carriage of coal.

Results of the Industrial Revolution.

By 1800 the transformation of Britain into the workshop of the world was complete. A few figures will best show what the Industrial Revolution had accomplished in the course of the past hall-century. In 1720 Britain's exports were short of £8,000,000; in 1800 they exceeded £34,000,000. The National Debt had increased from £130 millions (during the Seven Years' War) to upwards of £861 millions. Britain's survival of that burden and the drain of revenue involved is the measure of the wealth she had amassed.

More significant still was the increase and changed distribution of the population. Up to about 1750 the greater part of the North and Midlands was poor and sparsely populated. The chief centres of. population still lay in and round London, in the home and some of the western counties. After 1770 the balance had entirely shifted, and a teeming population of town-dwellers had sprung up in Lancashire, the West Riding, Durham, Northumberland, and the Black Country. With this new race there arose a new set of baffling social problems - problems of poverty, problems arising from the displacement of labour, the abuse of free competition, and the yawning gulf fixed between labourer and employer. All these problems were born of the Industrial Revolution, and the twentieth century has yet to discover their final solution.

Britain's industrial greatness was bought at a high price. The fittest, financially, alone survived. The factory "hand" knew no more freedom than the medieval serf, and the conditions under which he worked were far less wholesome. The factories were too often unventilated and unsanitary, the machinery unfenced, the hours of labour cruelly long, and the wages ridiculously low. The remedies were, of necessity, slow in coming.

The influence of wars, however, in developing British commerce must not be forgotten. In every war Britain's imports and exports increased; and, above all, there was an immense extension of her merchant shipping, which was to become, in the nineteenth century, her most important industry.

The development of commerce was particularly striking during the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815) British shippers had the monopoly of the carrying trade because under no other European flag were goods even moderately safe. British manufacturers were encouraged by the needs of war and by the practical suspension of manufactures in many parts of the Continent. British farmers, secure from foreign competition, obtained high prices for their corn. Great Britain indeed obtained during those years a lead which she was not to lose for some time.