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The Industrial Revolution

What was so revolutionary about the Industrial Revolution?

Vocabulary

Glossary Vocabulary Cards

productivity

interchangeable parts

Bessemer process

domestic system

factory system

mass production

enclosure

monopoly

Introduction

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This historical steam engine-

powered train still operates on a
preserved railway in Britain.

In the 1700s, metalworkers used large amounts of coal, which burned with the
intense heat needed for making iron. Coal suppliers, however, had a problem. Coal
mines, dug deep in the ground, tended to fill with water. A British inventor named
Thomas Newcomen designed an engine to pump water out of the mines. His
engine burned wood or coal to boil water and produce steam. It converted the
steam’s heat energy into mechanical energy to drive the pump. The Newcomen
engine worked, but not very efficiently. The engine required a constant cycle of
heating and cooling of the main piston cylinder to work, which wasted the energy
from the fuel.

In 1764, James Watt had the job of repairing a Newcomen engine. Watt made
scientific instruments for a living, and he had an inventor’s mind. He knew he could
make an engine that did not waste so much of the potential energy of the fuel.
The solution eluded him for months. But then, one day, while strolling through
Glasgow, Scotland, the answer suddenly came to him. Watt set to work right away
building a model, and in 1769, he won a patent for his much more efficient steam
engine. With Watt’s addition of another cylinder that was insulated, all parts of the
engine were able to maintain the correct temperatures and therefore not waste

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energy switching back and forth.

Watt spent the next two decades perfecting his steam engine. By 1790, he had
turned his steam engine into a sturdy, practical, powerful machine. It would be put
to use not only in coal mines, but also in steamboats, locomotives, and factories.
The steam engine would power the Industrial Revolution.

Many scholars are reluctant to call this period of industrialization a “revolution”

because they say it took place over too long a period. Yet the changes brought on
by the shift from muscle power to machine power were enormous and
revolutionary in their scope. This lesson explores the Industrial Revolution,
starting where it all began: Great Britain.

1. Great Britain Leads the Way

The Industrial Revolution, led by Great Britain, completely transformed how work
was done. By the mid-1800s, British manufactures far exceeded those of any
other country. Industrialization happened so quickly in Great Britain that it earned
the nickname “workshop of the world.” Why did the revolution start in this small,
European island nation?

Factors of Industrialization Great Britain became the first nation to industrialize

because it had all of the necessary factors:

Political Stability Britain had a stable government that supported individual

political freedom, property rights, and equality of opportunity. Because of these
traits, entrepreneurs were encouraged to take risks in pursuit of profit.

Labor Britain had plenty of people available for work. British farmers produced so
much food that many of its people were freed to do different kinds of work. Many
of those people went to work in industry.

Raw Materials Britain had plentiful supplies of the raw materials needed in
industry, such as coal for fuel or wool for textiles.

Banking System Britain’s banks provided loans to entrepreneurs to finance large

projects, such as factories, railroads, and coal mines.

Transportation System Britain had a network of navigable rivers and seaside ports.
It built a nationwide system of canals. Later, it developed a railroad network,
making the transportation of goods and raw materials cheaper and faster than
ever before.

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Innovation in Textiles The first industry to be transformed in Great Britain was
textile production. Before industrialization, every step of cloth making had to be
done by hand. The raw fiber, like wool and cotton, had to be cleaned and
untangled. The fibers had to be twisted into thread. Then the threads had to be
woven into cloth. Each step was laborious and time-consuming. Skilled artisans
used simple tools and equipment to make cloth at home.

As textile making became mechanized, it required larger and more expensive

equipment. This eventually shifted the site of fabric production from individual
homes to factories.

In the mid-1700s, English inventors created machines to speed up the cloth-

making process. In 1733, John Kay invented the flying shuttle to automate the
weaving process. Now weaving was faster, but spinners could not spin thread fast
enough to keep up. James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in 1764 to
allow one person to spin dozens of threads at the same time.

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By the time Great Britain

industrialized, it had already built
an extensive network of canals.
Canals were a relatively cheap
and quick way to transport goods.

But threads produced on a spinning jenny often broke.Richard Arkwright solved

this problem in 1769 with his water frame, an invention capable of producing
stronger thread. The water frame was powered by a waterwheel turned by a fast-
flowing river.

These machines were too large and expensive for ordinary workers to use in their
own homes. Owners of textile businesses began building factories where they
could install multiple machines to make textiles faster than ever before. Now
workers would come to the factories to make fabric.

Resources Great Britain had plenty of rivers, and its earliest factories took
advantage of the waterpower they provided. Eventually steam engines replaced
water wheels. These engines were fueled by coal, of which Britain had an
abundant supply. Now factories could be built away from rivers, in more places
than ever before. The later discovery of natural gas and fossil fuels replaced steam
and coal as fuel for factories.

Great Britain also had a steady supply of fiber. Britain had a long tradition of
raising sheep for wool, and wool production more than doubled between 1700 and
1850. British textile merchants also imported cotton from Great Britain’s colonies
in India and the Americas, and later, the United States.

Transportation Great Britain also had a good transportation network. Britain had
many navigable rivers and seaports that had long made coastal trade possible. By
the 1770s, it had built a system of well-maintained toll roads. Moving goods by
road was slow, however, so Britain created a nationwide network of canals. Goods

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and raw materials could travel faster and more cheaply along canals.

Eventually, the steam engine was applied to transportation, resulting in the

development of the steam locomotive and the development of railroads. Soon,
steam locomotives crisscrossed the country on a complex network of rails. By
1852, Great Britain had built some 7,000 miles of track. Railroads carried heavy
loads of food and freight quickly and reliably, helping create a national market for
goods. The economy boomed as manufacturers could create a product in one
location and sell it anywhere in the nation.

2. The Revolution Spreads

Industrialization steadily improved Great Britain’s economy. It increased the
amount of goods produced and greatly raised worker productivity, or the amount
of goods each worker produced on average. Wealth generated by industrialization
enhanced the standard of living for many people. It also made more tax revenue
available to the government. Competing nations took notice and sought to
develop their own industries. Generally, they adopted the elements of the British
model that suited their circumstances.

Belgium Belgium, located across the English Channel from Great Britain, was the
second country to take part in the Industrial Revolution. Belgium borrowed
techniques and technology from the British, but its industrialization followed a
different pattern. The people of Belgium had long been known for their woolen
textile industry. By 1820, they had begun to mechanize that industry. But the
traditional hand weaving of complex designs persisted into the mid-1800s.
Belgium’s textile industry grew, but not as fast as Great Britain’s.

Belgium’s industrialization focused more on its abundant reserves of coal and iron
ore. Exports of coal brought in valuable revenue, and the coal itself fueled the
iron-making process. Belgium used the iron to produce machinery, locomotives,
ships, and weapons. Later, Belgium developed a thriving steel industry.

France France, with the help of British equipment, entrepreneurs, and engineers,
also began to industrialize in the 1820s. It established numerous textile mills for
the production of cotton cloth. Other factories produced machinery, including
steam engines. France later had to import coal from Great Britain and from
Belgium because it lacked significant reserves of its own. As a result, France’s
factories relied more on waterpower than steam power.

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Belgium was the second country to industrialize. Belgium used its abundant coal
reserves to make iron, which was then used to produce machinery, locomotives
such as the one seen here, ships, and weapons.

The United States As in France, early industry in the United States depended on
waterpower, which was abundant in New England. Cotton textile mills
mushroomed in New England in the 1820s. The mills modeled their technology
and organization on those of British factories. Like the British, New Englanders’
raw cotton came from the American South.

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American Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin (short for cotton engine) in 1793.
Here, two slaves are shown operating a cotton gin, which mechanically separated
the cotton fiber from the seed.

New England factories also made metalwork. They used specialized equipment to
produce metal parts for machinery and for guns. They owed their success to the
earlier work of Eli Whitney and Simeon North, who established a method of
manufacturing interchangeable parts. Inventors in these factories devised
machine tools that could cut, plane, and drill part after part to nearly the exact
same size and shape. The use of interchangeable parts allowed the rapid assembly
of machines or other complex devices in a factory, based on a series of simple
operations. This boosted productivity and efficiency in the factories.

Further innovations sparked the Industrial Revolution in the United States. One
was the cotton gin, another accomplishment of Eli Whitney. His machine for
cleaning cotton led to a vast Southern expansion of cotton production—and
slavery. The Bessemer process, an inexpensive way to convert iron into higher
quality steel, greatly increased the production of steel.

Cheap steel helped the heavy industries of the American Midwest to expand. They
used the region’s plentiful iron ore and coal to build steel plants and factories that
produced machinery and railroad rails—and the steel girders that, in the 1880s,
made possible the first true skyscrapers.

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The heart of any factory was its machinery, and machinery has moving parts that
interact. Without lubrication, that machinery would overheat and eventually grind
to a halt. Through much of the 1800s, workers lubricated their machines with
whale oil. In the 1850s, scientists developed a new and less expensive lubricant—
coal oil.

Then, in 1859, an entrepreneur in Pennsylvania drilled the world’s first

commercially successful oil well. Products that can be made from oil include
gasoline and kerosene. Kerosene soon became industry’s lubricant of choice. Oil,
also known as petroleum, slowly began to replace coal as the basic energy source
of the Industrial Revolution. Gasoline fueled the automobile, which was powered
by a ground-breaking invention, the internal-combustion engine.

Germany Germany began industrializing fairly late, in part because it consisted

of a number of independent states for most of the 1800s. In 1834, however, many
of those states joined in creating a free-trade zone. Germany soon established
itself as a leader in heavy industry, especially metalwork. Using its abundant coal
and iron ore, Germany produced the rails needed to establish an efficient railway
system.

This illustration depicts the metal works in Germany. Although Germany began
slowly, it industrialized rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century,
focusing on heavy industry.

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Railroads and their support industries, including steel-making, remained the
leading sectors of the German economy through the 1800s. Late in the century,
the chemical, electrical equipment, and weapons industries also prospered. By
1914, Germany was second only to the United States as an industrial power.

Japan Industrialized Western states used their wealth to build up a strong

merchant fleet and navy. They sailed across the world in search of trade. Until the
mid-1800s, Japan had kept itself isolated from outsiders. Increased contact with
Westerners helped push the Japanese into a political revolution. The Japanese
ousted the shogun, or strongest warlord, from power and restored their emperor
to the throne, in what is known as the Meiji Restoration.

The new government followed a course of modernization, including

industrialization, using the West as a model. The Japanese mechanized the silk-
weaving industry and built railroads and ships. Japan quickly gained a position of
economic dominance in East Asia. From its colonies and through concessions
forced from China, Japan extracted resources, such as coal, and found markets for
its industrial products.

Other Nations Industrialize The Ottoman Empire and China also took part in
industrialization, although not to the same extent as other nations. Along with
other industrialized European countries, Great Britain became the leader of an
informal European empire that constrained nations like the Ottoman Empire and
China, limiting their ability to industrialize.

The Ottoman Empire and China also experienced an acceleration in their military
decline, which had already begun by the 1700s. As Great Britain, the United
States, and other more industrialized nations advanced their military technology,
the Ottoman Empire and China were unable to compete.

3. Economic Transformation
The wave of industrialization that began in Great Britain was a slow revolution. It
took decades to blossom. Wherever it spread, the Industrial Revolution
transformed the economy. Ways of crafting goods changed. Ways of growing
crops changed. Different financial and business structures developed.

The Domestic System Long before the Industrial Revolution, some people made
their living at craftwork. Skilled artisans, both in towns and in rural areas, produced
goods needed locally. These included tools, pots and pans, glassware, furniture,
and more. One sign of a shift toward a new form of production was the growth of
cottage industry, also known as the domestic system.
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In the domestic system, cottage workers produced goods in home workshops.
They made goods not for local use, but for national and international markets.
Typical cottage workers lived in the countryside, farmed for most of the year, and
made cloth in the off-season. They provided the cheap labor needed at the time to
meet the demands of a competitive textiles market.

The production of wool cloth usually followed a certain process. A textile

merchant, based in a town, bought wool from a sheep farmer. He delivered this
raw material, along with instructions about what he needed, to a household in the
countryside. Family members carded the wool, spun it, and wove it into cloth on a
hand loom. The merchant paid them for their work and took the cloth to another
workshop, where skilled workers dyed the cloth and otherwise completed the
processing. The merchant then retrieved the finished fabric, which was ready for
sale in the textile market.

Workers in factories performed a

single, specialized task all day
long. This picture was taken in a
wool-combing factory in
Bradford, England, in the late
19th century.

The Factory System The domestic system naturally gave way to the factory
system. Instead of traveling from cottage to cottage, some cloth merchants
decided that they could save themselves time and better meet rising demand by
gathering workers together in a single factory. The merchants provided their
workers with spinning wheels and looms and whatever other equipment they
needed. In time, many other goods besides textiles were made in factories.

The factory system had several advantages over the domestic system.In a factory,
merchant-entrepreneurs could supervise their workers. They could also take

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advantage of innovations in technology and new sources of energy, especially the
steam engine. In short, they could make the revolutionary shift from muscle
power to machine power.

In addition, factory owners developed new ways of organizing work. They saw
that when individual skilled workers carried out all the tasks to make a product,
each worker needed a variety of different tools, but most of the tools sat idle
much of the time. In the factory system, unskilled or semi-skilled workers
specialized in just one of the tasks needed to make a product. Each worker did
only that task, all day long, and they learned to do it rapidly. The invention of large
scale, repetitive-motion machines powered by new sources of energy, such as coal
and steam, aided in these individual tasks. This led to an improvement in
production of goods, and enabled the expansion of markets.

The factory and the shift to simplification were two key aspects of what became
known as mass production. Another was the use of interchangeable parts. Factory
workers could sit at their station with a pile of standardized parts in front of them
and know that the parts were all the same and that any one of them would fit
properly.

The desire to speed up the manufacturing process even more led to the use of the
moving assembly line. An assembly line carried a product on a conveyer belt or
track from one station to the next. Workers added one new part at each station.
Starting in 1913, Henry Ford of the United States built his Model-T automobile
using an assembly line. He was the first to apply assembly-line principles to large-
scale manufacturing. The practice soon spread to other industries.

All of these changes increased efficiency and productivity. They also lowered the
cost to produce many goods. Lower costs meant lower prices for consumers. By
the late 1800s, incomes were rising, especially among the middle class in
industrialized countries. This helped strengthen consumer demand for
manufactured goods.

A Revolution in Agriculture The mechanization that took place in industry also

helped transform agriculture. No longer did farmers have to harvest their grain
with hand tools. In the 1830s, the American inventor Cyrus McCormick developed
a horse-drawn mechanical reaper that could cut and collect the grain. In the years
that followed, a variety of other machines appeared to help farmers plant, harvest,
and process crops. Through mechanization, farmers could expand their production
while cutting back on the amount of labor needed to produce food.

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One of the results of the Industrial Revolution was the mechanization of

agriculture. Here, a variety of machines are being used to harvest wheat.

Starting in the 1500s in England,

landowners revoked the
traditional peasant right to farm
on common land and enclosed
their land with fences or hedges,
as seen here. The enclosure
movement left many peasants
landless, and they became an
available workforce for early
factories.

Besides using new machinery, farmers used new agricultural methods. They
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improved the soil with chemical fertilizers and cover crops. Cover crops, such as
clover, add nutrients to the soil when plowed under. Farmers also worked to
control pests, increase irrigation, and breed superior livestock. The agricultural
revolution helped expand the population by making more healthful food available,
and it helped farmers produce enough food to feed the growing population.

The agricultural revolution coincided with a changing perspective on land rights.

Traditionally, peasants had raised crops and grazed animals on so-called common
lands. But technically, the land was private property. Peasants who farmed the
land paid dues to the landowner.

Beginning in the 1500s in England, and spreading elsewhere in the 1800s,

landowners took back the rights to their land. Historians call this the enclosure
movement. Landowners, often under force of law, enclosed their land with hedges
or fences to mark its boundaries.

One reason for enclosure was economic. Large landowners realized that they
could earn more from growing cash crops such as grain, or raising sheep for the
growing textile industry, than they could from renting the land to peasants. The
enclosure movement had several important consequences. Many peasants were
left with no land to cultivate. The same was true for many smallholders—farmers
owning smaller amounts of land. Because of economic downturns or the expense
of fencing in their land, they sold their plots to wealthier landowners. On their
estates, many large landowners established commercial farms.

Some peasants and former smallholders stayed on the land as wage laborers.
Others turned to manufacturing in their homes and later in independent shops or
small factories. But many became landless and unemployed—or, at best, seasonally
employed—workers. As countries began to industrialize, these former farmers
provided a ready workforce for the early factories as they migrated to urban areas
in search of work.

The enclosure movement had moral and legal effects as well. It helped develop
the notion that making a profit from one’s land—even if that meant ending
traditional land rights of peasants—was acceptable. Enclosure marked the
appearance of capitalist agriculture, or the large-scale growing of crops and raising
of animals for profit. Throughout the years, this commercialization of agriculture
led to the establishment of a legal system that would support the rise of industrial
capitalism.

Financing Industry Without capitalism, there might not have been an Industrial
Revolution. As the saying goes, it takes money to make money. Wealthy
individuals, or capitalists, saw the potential profits to be made by investing in
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factories and machinery. Their money helped boost industrialization. A broader
pool of investor-owners developed with the rise of corporations. A corporation
could accumulate great amounts of investment capital. The more money that
capitalists had to invest in businesses, the larger the businesses could grow. This
allowed for the formation and expansion of the huge enterprises that came to
dominate the Industrial Revolution.

The banking system also played a key role in industrialization.Through loans to

industrialists and manufacturers, private banks directed customers’ savings into
projects such as the building of railroads and factories and the mining of coal. They
encouraged the formation of capital in its physical form—the buildings, machines,
tools, and equipment used to manufacture goods. Governments also set up
national banks to improve domestic and international trade. Together, private and
national banks provided financial backing that stimulated the growth of industry.

One result of industrialization

was that powerful corporations,
such as John Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil, came to control
entire industries. This American
cartoon from 1905 criticizes big
business. It shows a “corporate
vulture” controlling government
with its wealth.

Big Business Industry grew, along with the companies that thrived in the
competitive, capitalist world. They won a greater share of the profits available
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from selling in a national market. Their wealth allowed them to buy up smaller
competitors, merge with them, or drive them out of business. By the late 1800s,
corporations dominated industrial economies.

In the United States, several firms and the industrialists who ran corporations
gained enormous wealth and power. In the oil business, John D. Rockefeller
established a monopoly with his Standard Oil Company. Andrew Carnegie built his
Carnegie Steel Company into the world’s largest corporation. Powerful companies
ruled other economies as well. France had its Parisian Gas Company and Great
Britain its Midland Railway. In Japan, big business consisted of firms known as
zaibatsus. Through investment, they controlled many of Japan’s industries and
banks.

Corporations were able to gather enough capital to meet the needs of a growing
consumer market. They built huge factories and filled them with hundreds of
workers. They mass-produced goods at lower prices to meet rising consumer
demand—and increase their own profits. A growing assortment of shops and
stores sold the many new products that appeared. They included the sewing
machine, typewriter, telephone, phonograph, light bulb, bicycle, dishwasher, radio,
vacuum cleaner, and washing machine.

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Summary
In this lesson, you read about the Industrial Revolution, which began in Great
Britain and spread to countries throughout the world. Industrialization
fundamentally transformed the way that people worked and lived.

Economic Structures The Industrial Revolution transformed economies by

mechanizing manu-facturing and agriculture and shifting from the domestic
system of producing goods to the factory system. The need for a means of
financing industrialization led to the rise of industrial capitalism.

Social Structures In the cottage industry, family members worked together to

produce goods at their own pace. Factory work called for much more discipline.
Each worker did only that task, all day long, and they learned to do it rapidly.

Human-Environment Interaction New technology, such as the steam engine,

made the factory system practical. Factory work attracted migrants from rural
areas and from other countries.

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