I | INTRODUCTION |
Industrial
Revolution, widespread replacement of manual labor by machines that began
in Britain in the 18th century and is still continuing in some parts of the
world. The Industrial Revolution was the result of many fundamental,
interrelated changes that transformed agricultural economies into industrial
ones. The most immediate changes were in the nature of production: what was
produced, as well as where and how. Goods that had traditionally been made in
the home or in small workshops began to be manufactured in the factory.
Productivity and technical efficiency grew dramatically, in part through the
systematic application of scientific and practical knowledge to the
manufacturing process. Efficiency was also enhanced when large groups of
business enterprises were located within a limited area. The Industrial
Revolution led to the growth of cities as people moved from rural areas into
urban communities in search of work.
The changes brought by the Industrial
Revolution overturned not only traditional economies, but also whole societies.
Economic changes caused far-reaching social changes, including the movement of
people to cities, the availability of a greater variety of material goods, and
new ways of doing business. The Industrial Revolution was the first step in
modern economic growth and development. Economic development was combined with
superior military technology to make the nations of Europe and their cultural
offshoots, such as the United States, the most powerful in the world in the 18th
and 19th centuries.
The Industrial Revolution began in Great
Britain during the last half of the 18th century and spread through regions of
Europe and to the United States during the following century. In the 20th
century industrialization on a wide scale extended to parts of Asia and the
Pacific Rim. Today mechanized production and modern economic growth continue to
spread to new areas of the world, and much of humankind has yet to experience
the changes typical of the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution is called a
revolution because it changed society both significantly and rapidly. Over the
course of human history, there has been only one other group of changes as
significant as the Industrial Revolution. This is what anthropologists call the
Neolithic Revolution, which took place in the later part of the Stone Age. In
the Neolithic Revolution, people moved from social systems based on hunting and
gathering to much more complex communities that depended on agriculture and the
domestication of animals. This led to the rise of permanent settlements and,
eventually, urban civilizations. The Industrial Revolution brought a shift from
the agricultural societies created during the Neolithic Revolution to modern
industrial societies.
The social changes brought about by the
Industrial Revolution were significant. As economic activities in many
communities moved from agriculture to manufacturing, production shifted from its
traditional locations in the home and the small workshop to factories. Large
portions of the population relocated from the countryside to the towns and
cities where manufacturing centers were found. The overall amount of goods and
services produced expanded dramatically, and the proportion of capital invested
per worker grew. New groups of investors, businesspeople, and managers took
financial risks and reaped great rewards.
In the long run the Industrial Revolution has
brought economic improvement for most people in industrialized societies. Many
enjoy greater prosperity and improved health, especially those in the middle and
the upper classes of society. There have been costs, however. In some cases, the
lower classes of society have suffered economically. Industrialization has
brought factory pollutants and greater land use, which have harmed the natural
environment. In particular, the application of machinery and science to
agriculture has led to greater land use and, therefore, extensive loss of
habitat for animals and plants. In addition, drastic population growth following
industrialization has contributed to the decline of natural habitats and
resources. These factors, in turn, have caused many species to become extinct or
endangered.
II | GREAT BRITAIN LEADS THE WAY |
Ever since the Renaissance (14th century to
17th century), Europeans had been inventing and using ever more complex
machinery. Particularly important were improvements in transportation, such as
faster ships, and communication, especially printing. These improvements played
a key role in the development of the Industrial Revolution by encouraging the
movement of new ideas and mechanisms, as well as the people who knew how to
build and run them.
Then, in the 18th century in Britain, new
production methods were introduced in several key industries, dramatically
altering how these industries functioned. These new methods included different
machines, fresh sources of power and energy, and novel forms of organizing
business and labor. For the first time technical and scientific knowledge was
applied to business practices on a large scale. Humankind had begun to develop
mass production. The result was an increase in material goods, usually selling
for lower prices than before.
The Industrial Revolution began in Great
Britain because social, political, and legal conditions there were particularly
favorable to change. Property rights, such as those for patents on mechanical
improvements, were well established. More importantly, the predictable, stable
rule of law in Britain meant that monarchs and aristocrats were less likely to
arbitrarily seize earnings or impose taxes than they were in many other
countries. As a result, earnings were safer, and ambitious businesspeople could
gain wealth, social prestige, and power more easily than could people on the
European continent. These factors encouraged risk taking and investment in new
business ventures, both crucial to economic growth.
In addition, Great Britain’s government
pursued a relatively hands-off economic policy. This free-market approach was
made popular through Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith and his book
The Wealth of Nations (1776). The hands-off policy permitted fresh
methods and ideas to flourish with little interference or regulation.
Britain’s nurturing social and political
setting encouraged the changes that began in a few trades to spread to others.
Gradually the new ways of production transformed more and more parts of the
British economy, although older methods continued in many industries. Several
industries played key roles in Britain’s industrialization. Iron and steel
manufacture, the production of steam engines, and textiles were all powerful
influences, as was the rise of a machine-building sector able to spread
mechanization to other parts of the economy.
A | Changes in Industry |
Modern industry requires power to run its
machinery. During the development of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, coal
was the main source of power. Even before the 18th century, some British
industries had begun using the country’s plentiful coal supply instead of wood,
which was much scarcer. Coal was adopted by the brewing, metalworking, and glass
and ceramics industries, demonstrating its potential for use in many industrial
processes.
A1 | Iron and Coal |
A major breakthrough in the use of coal
occurred in 1709 at Coalbrookedale in the valley of the Severn River. There
English industrialist Abraham Darby successfully used coke—a high-carbon,
converted form of coal—to produce iron from iron ore. Using coke eliminated the
need for charcoal, a more expensive, less efficient fuel. Metal makers
thereafter discovered ways of using coal and coke to speed the production of raw
iron, bar iron, and other metals.
The most important advance in iron
production occurred in 1784 when Englishman Henry Cort invented new techniques
for rolling raw iron, a finishing process that shapes iron into the desired size
and form. These advances in metalworking were an important part of
industrialization. They enabled iron, which was relatively inexpensive and
abundant, to be used in many new ways, such as building heavy machinery. Iron
was well suited for heavy machinery because of its strength and durability.
Because of these new developments iron came to be used in machinery for many
industries.
Iron was also vital to the development
of railroads, which improved transportation. Better transportation made commerce
easier, and along with the growth of commerce enabled economic growth to spread
to additional regions. In this way, the changes of the Industrial Revolution
reinforced each other, working together to transform the British economy.
A2 | Steam |
If iron was the key metal of the
Industrial Revolution, the steam engine was perhaps the most important machine
technology. Inventions and improvements in the use of steam for power began
prior to the 18th century, as they had with iron. As early as 1689, English
engineer Thomas Savery created a steam engine to pump water from mines. Thomas
Newcomen, another English engineer, developed an improved version by 1712.
Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt made the most significant
improvements, allowing the steam engine to be used in many industrial settings,
not just in mining. Early mills had run successfully with water power, but the
advancement of using the steam engine meant that a factory could be located
anywhere, not just close to water.
In 1775 Watt formed an engine-building
and engineering partnership with manufacturer Matthew Boulton. This partnership
became one of the most important businesses of the Industrial Revolution.
Boulton & Watt served as a kind of creative technical center for much of the
British economy. They solved technical problems and spread the solutions to
other companies. Similar firms did the same thing in other industries and were
especially important in the machine tool industry. This type of interaction
between companies was important because it reduced the amount of research time
and expense that each business had to spend working with its own resources. The
technological advances of the Industrial Revolution happened more quickly
because firms often shared information, which they then could use to create new
techniques or products.
Like iron production, steam engines
found many uses in a variety of other industries, including steamboats and
railroads. Steam engines are another example of how some changes brought by
industrialization led to even more changes in other areas.
A3 | Textiles |
The industry most often associated with
the Industrial Revolution is the textile industry. In earlier times, the
spinning of yarn and the weaving of cloth occurred primarily in the home, with
most of the work done by people working alone or with family members. This
pattern lasted for many centuries. In 18th-century Great Britain a series of
extraordinary innovations reduced and then replaced the human labor required to
make cloth. Each advance created problems elsewhere in the production process
that led to further improvements. Together they made a new system to supply
clothing.
The first important invention in textile
production came in 1733. British inventor John Kay created a device known as the
flying shuttle, which partially mechanized the process of weaving. By 1770
British inventor and industrialist James Hargreaves had invented the spinning
jenny, a machine that spins a number of threads at once, and British inventor
and cotton manufacturer Richard Arkwright had organized the first production
using water-powered spinning. These developments permitted a single spinner to
make numerous strands of yarn at the same time. By about 1779 British inventor
Samuel Crompton introduced a machine called the mule, which further improved
mechanized spinning by decreasing the danger that threads would break and by
creating a finer thread.
Throughout the textile industry,
specialized machines powered either by water or steam appeared. Row upon row of
these innovative, highly productive machines filled large, new mills and
factories. Soon Britain was supplying cloth to countries throughout the world.
This industry seemed to many people to be the embodiment of an emerging,
mechanized civilization.
The most important results of these
changes were enormous increases in the output of goods per worker. A single
spinner or weaver, for example, could now turn out many times the volume of yarn
or cloth that earlier workers had produced. This marvel of rising productivity
was the central economic achievement that made the Industrial Revolution such a
milestone in human history.
B | Changes in Society |
The Industrial Revolution also had
considerable impact upon the nature of work. It significantly changed the daily
lives of ordinary men, women, and children in the regions where it took root and
grew.
B1 | Growth of Cities |
One of the most obvious changes to
people’s lives was that more people moved into the urban areas where factories
were located. Many of the agricultural laborers who left villages were forced to
move. Beginning in the early 18th century, more people in rural areas were
competing for fewer jobs. The rural population had risen sharply as new sources
of food became available, and death rates declined due to fewer plagues and
wars. At the same time, many small farms disappeared. This was partly because
new enclosure laws required farmers to put fences or hedges around their fields
to prevent common grazing on the land. Some small farmers who could not afford
to enclose their fields had to sell out to larger landholders and search for
work elsewhere. These factors combined to provide a ready work force for the new
industries.
New manufacturing towns and cities grew
dramatically. Many of these cities were close to the coalfields that supplied
fuel to the factories. Factories had to be close to sources of power because
power could not be distributed very far. The names of British factory cities
soon symbolized industrialization to the wider world: Liverpool, Birmingham,
Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield, and especially Manchester. In the early 1770s
Manchester numbered only 25,000 inhabitants. By 1850, after it had become a
center of cotton manufacturing, its population had grown to more than
350,000.
In preindustrial England, more than
three-quarters of the population lived in small villages. By the mid-19th
century, however, the country had made history by becoming the first nation with
half its population in cities. By 1850 millions of British people lived in
crowded, grim industrial cities. Reformers began to speak of the mills and
factories as dark, evil places.
B2 | Effects on Labor |
The movement of people away from
agriculture and into industrial cities brought great stresses to many people in
the labor force. Women in households who had earned income from spinning found
the new factories taking away their source of income. Traditional handloom
weavers could no longer compete with the mechanized production of cloth. Skilled
laborers sometimes lost their jobs as new machines replaced them.
In the factories, people had to work
long hours under harsh conditions, often with few rewards. Factory owners and
managers paid the minimum amount necessary for a work force, often recruiting
women and children to tend the machines because they could be hired for very low
wages. Soon critics attacked this exploitation, particularly the use of child
labor.
The nature of work changed as a result
of division of labor, an idea important to the Industrial Revolution that called
for dividing the production process into basic, individual tasks. Each worker
would then perform one task, rather than a single worker doing the entire job.
Such division of labor greatly improved productivity, but many of the simplified
factory jobs were repetitive and boring. Workers also had to labor for many
hours, often more than 12 hours a day, sometimes more than 14, and people worked
six days a week. Factory workers faced strict rules and close supervision by
managers and overseers. The clock ruled life in the mills.
By about the 1820s, income levels for
most workers began to improve, and people adjusted to the different
circumstances and conditions. By that time, Britain had changed forever. The
economy was expanding at a rate that was more than twice the pace at which it
had grown before the Industrial Revolution. Although vast differences existed
between the rich and the poor, most of the population enjoyed some of the fruits
of economic growth. The widespread poverty and constant threat of mass
starvation that had haunted the preindustrial age lessened in industrial
Britain. Although the overall health and material conditions of the populace
clearly improved, critics continued to point to urban crowding and the harsh
working conditions for many in the mills.
III | THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN THE UNITED STATES |
The economic successes of the British soon
led other nations to try to follow the same path. In northern Europe, mechanics
and investors in France, Belgium, Holland, and some of the German states set out
to imitate Britain’s successful example. In the young United States, Secretary
of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton called for an Industrial Revolution in his
Report on Manufactures (1791). Many Americans felt that the United States
had to become economically strong in order to maintain its recently won
independence from Great Britain. In cities up and down the Atlantic Coast,
leading citizens organized associations devoted to the encouragement of
manufactures.
The Industrial Revolution unfolded in the
United States even more vigorously than it had in Great Britain. The young
nation began as a weak, loose association of former colonies with a traditional
economy. More than three-quarters of the labor force worked in agriculture in
1790. Americans soon enjoyed striking success in mechanization, however. This
was clear in 1851 when producers from many nations gathered to display their
industrial triumphs at the first World’s Fair, at the Crystal Palace in London.
There, it was the work of Americans that attracted the most attention. Shortly
after that, the British government dispatched a special committee to the United
States to study the manufacturing accomplishments of its former colonies. By the
end of the century, the United States was the world leader in manufacturing,
unfolding what became known as the Second Industrial Revolution. The American
economy had emerged as the largest and most productive on the globe.
A | American Advantages |
The United States enjoyed many advantages
that made it fertile ground for an Industrial Revolution. A rich, sparsely
inhabited continent lay open to exploitation and development. It proved
relatively easy for the United States government to buy or seize vast lands
across North America from Native Americans, from European nations, and from
Mexico. In addition, the American population was highly literate, and most felt
that economic growth was desirable. With settlement stretched across the
continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, the United States
enjoyed a huge internal market. Within its distant borders there was remarkably
free movement of goods, people, capital, and ideas.
The young nation also inherited many
advantages from Great Britain. The stable legal and political systems that had
encouraged enterprise and rewarded initiative in Great Britain also did so, with
minor variations, in the United States. No nation was more open to social
mobility, at least for white male Protestants. Others—particularly African
Americans, Native Americans, other minorities, and women—found the atmosphere
much more difficult. In the context of the times, however, the United States was
relatively open to change. It quickly adopted many of the technologies, forms of
organization, and attitudes shaping the new industrial world, and then proceeded
to generate its own advances.
One initial American advantage was the
fact that the United States shared the language and much of the culture of Great
Britain, the pioneering industrial nation. This helped Americans transfer
technology to the United States. As descriptions of new machines and processes
appeared in print, Americans read about them eagerly and tried their own
versions of the inventions sweeping Britain.
Critical to furthering industrialization
in the United States were machines and knowledgeable people. Although the
British tried to prevent skilled mechanics from leaving Britain and advanced
machines from being exported, those efforts mostly proved ineffective. Americans
worked actively to encourage such transfers, even offering bounties (special
monetary rewards) to encourage people with knowledge of the latest methods and
devices to move to the United States.
The most dramatic early example of a
successful technical transfer is the case of Samuel Slater. Slater was an
important figure in a leading British textile firm who sailed to the United
States masquerading as a farmer. He eventually moved to Rhode Island, where he
worked with mechanics, machine builders, and merchants to create the first
important textile mill in the United States. Slater had worked as an apprentice
under Richard Arkwright, and Slater’s mill used Arkwright’s innovative system of
mechanized spinning. The firm of Almy, Brown, and Slater inspired many imitators
and gave birth to a vast textile industry in New England.
The lure of the open, growing United
States was strong. Its opportunities attracted knowledgeable, ambitious
individuals not only from Britain but from other European countries as well. In
1800, for example, a young Frenchman named Eleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours
brought to the United States his knowledge of the latest French advances in
chemistry and gunpowder making. In 1802 he founded what would become one of the
largest and most successful American businesses, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and
Company, better known simply as DuPont.
B | American Challenges |
Soon the United States was pioneering on
its own. Because local circumstances and conditions in the United States were
somewhat different than those in Britain, industrialization also developed
somewhat differently. Although the United States had many natural resources in
abundance, some were more plentiful than others. The profusion of wood in North
America, for example, led Americans to use that material much more than
Europeans did. They burned wood widely as fuel and also made use of it in
machinery and in construction. Taking advantage of the vast forest resources in
their country, Americans built the world’s best woodworking machines.
Transportation and communication were
special challenges in a nation that stretched across the North American
continent. Economic growth depended on tying together the resources, markets,
and people of this large area. Despite the general conviction that private
enterprise was best, the government played an active role in uniting the
country, particularly by building roads. From 1815 to 1860 state and local
governments also provided almost three-quarters of the financing for canal
construction and related improvements to waterways.
When the British began building
railroads, Americans embraced this new technology eagerly, and substantial
public money was invested in rail systems. By 1860 more than half the railroad
tracks in the world were in the United States. The most critical 19th-century
improvement in communication, the telegraph, was invented by American Samuel F.
B. Morse. The telegraph allowed messages to be sent long distances almost
instantly by using a code of electronic pulses passing over a wire. The railroad
and the telegraph spread across North America and helped create a national
market, which in turn encouraged additional improvements in transportation and
communication.
Another challenge in the United States
was a relative shortage of labor. Much more than in continental Europe or in
Britain, labor was in chronically short supply in the United States. This led
industrialists to develop machinery to replace human labor.
C | Changes in Industry |
Americans soon demonstrated a great
talent for mechanization. Famed American arms maker Samuel Colt summarized his
fellow citizens’ faith in technology when he declared in 1851, “There is nothing
that cannot be produced by machinery.”
C1 | Continuous-Process Manufacturing |
An important American development was
continuous-process manufacturing. In continuous-process manufacturing, large
quantities of the same product, such as cigarettes or canned food, are made in a
nonstop operation. The process runs continuously, except for repairs to or
maintenance of the machinery used. In the late 18th century, inventor Oliver
Evans of Delaware created a remarkable water-powered flour mill. In Evans’s
mill, machinery elevated the grain to the top of the mill and then moved it
mechanically through various processing steps, eventually producing flour at the
bottom of the mill. The process greatly reduced the need for manual labor and
cut milling costs dramatically. Mills modeled after Evans’s were built along the
Delaware and Brandywine rivers and Chesapeake Bay, and by the time of the
American Revolution (1775-1783) they were arguably the most productive in the
world. Similar milling technology was also used to grind snuff and other tobacco
products in the same region.
As the 19th century passed, Americans
improved continuous-process technology and expanded its use. The basic principle
of utilizing gravity-powered and mechanized systems to move and process
materials proved applicable in many settings. The meatpacking industry in the
Midwest employed a form of this technology, as did many industries using
distilling and refining processes. Items made using continuous-process
manufacturing included kerosene, gasoline, and other petroleum products, as well
as many processed foods. Mechanized, continuous processing yielded uniform
quantity production with a minimum need for human labor.
C2 | The American System |
In a closely related development, by
the mid-19th century American manufacturers shaped a set of techniques later
known as the American system of production. This system involved using
special-purpose machines to produce large quantities of similar, sometimes
interchangeable, parts that would then be assembled into a finished product. The
American system extended the idea of division of labor from workers to
specialized machines. Instead of a worker making a small part of a finished
product, a machine made the part, speeding the process and allowing
manufacturers to produce goods more quickly. This method also enabled goods of
much more uniform quality than those made by hand labor. The American system
appeared first in New England in the manufacture of clocks, locks, axes, and
shovels. Around the same time, the federal armories used an advanced version of
this same system to produce large numbers of firearms, coining the term
armory practice.
Soon a group of knowledgeable mechanics
and engineers spread the American system. Many industries began to use
special-purpose machines to produce large quantities of similar or even
interchangeable parts for assembly into finished goods. The American system was
used by inventor and manufacturer Cyrus Hall McCormick to produce his innovative
reapers; Samuel Colt used it to make revolver pistols; and inventor Isaac Merrit
Singer produced his popular sewing machines using this system. These kinds of
products won prizes and attracted much attention at the Crystal Palace
exhibition of 1851.
D | The Second Industrial Revolution |
As American manufacturing technology
spread to new industries, it ushered in what many have called the Second
Industrial Revolution. The first had come on a wave of new inventions in iron
making, in textiles, in the centrally powered factory, and in new ways of
organizing business and work. In the latter 19th century, a second wave of
technical and organizational advances carried industrial society to new levels.
While Great Britain had been the birthplace of the first revolution, the second
occurred most powerfully in the United States.
With the second revolution came many new
processes. Iron and steel manufacturing was transformed in the 1850s and 1860s
by vastly more productive technologies, the Bessemer process and the open-hearth
furnace. The Bessemer process, developed by British inventor Henry Bessemer,
enabled steel to be produced more efficiently by using blasts of air to convert
crude iron into steel. The open-hearth furnace, created by German-born British
inventor William Siemens, allowed steelmakers to achieve temperatures high
enough to burn away impurities in crude iron.
In addition, factories and their
production output became much larger than they had been in the first stage of
the Industrial Revolution. Some industries concentrated production in fewer but
bigger and more productive facilities. In addition, some industries boosted
production in existing (not necessarily larger) factories. This growth was
enabled by a variety of factors, including technological and scientific
progress; improved management; and expanding markets due to larger populations,
rising incomes, and better transportation and communications.
American industrialist Andrew Carnegie
built a giant iron and steel empire using huge new plants. John D. Rockefeller,
another American industrialist, did the same in petroleum refining. Soon there
were enormous advances in science-based industries—for example, chemicals,
electrical power, and electrical machinery. Just as in the first revolution,
these changes prompted further innovations, which led to further economic
growth.
It was in the automobile industry that
continuous-process methods and the American system combined to greatest effect.
In 1903 American industrialist Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. His
production innovation was the moving assembly line, which brought together many
mass-produced parts to create automobiles. Ford’s moving assembly line gave the
world the fullest expression yet of the Second Industrial Revolution, and his
production triumphs in the second decade of the 20th century signaled the crest
of the new industrial age.
D1 | Organization and Work |
Just as important as advances in
manufacturing technology was a wave of changes in how business was structured
and work was organized. Beginning with the large railroad companies, business
leaders learned how to operate and coordinate many different economic activities
across broad geographic areas. During the first phase of the Industrial
Revolution, many factories had grown into large organizations, but even by 1875
few firms coordinated production and marketing across many business units.
Leaders such as Carnegie and Rockefeller changed this, and firms grew much
larger in numerous industries, giving birth to the modern corporation.
Within the business unit, Americans
pioneered novel ways of organizing work. Engineers studied and modified
production, seeking the most efficient ways to lay out a factory, move
materials, route jobs, and control work through precise scheduling. Industrial
engineer Frederick W. Taylor and his followers sought both efficiency and
contented workers. They believed that they could achieve those results through
precise measurement and analysis of each aspect of a job. Taylor’s The
Principles of Scientific Management (1911) became the most influential book
of the Second Industrial Revolution. By the early 20th century, Ford’s mass
production techniques and Taylor’s scientific management principles had come to
symbolize America’s place as the leading industrial nation.
D2 | Changes in Agriculture |
As it had done in Britain,
industrialization brought deep and often distressing shifts to American society.
The influence of rural life declined, and the relative economic importance of
agriculture dwindled. Although the amount of land under cultivation and the
number of people earning a living from agriculture expanded, the growth of
commerce, manufacturing, and the service industries steadily eclipsed farming’s
significance. The proportion of the work force dependent on agriculture shrank
constantly from the time of the first federal census in 1790. From that time
until the end of the 19th century, farm workers dropped from about 75 percent of
the work force to about 40 percent.
New technology was introduced in
agriculture. The scarcity of labor and the growth of markets for agricultural
products encouraged the introduction of machinery to the farms. Machinery
increased productivity so that fewer hands could produce more food per acre. New
plows, seed drills, cultivators, mowers, and threshers, as well as the reaper,
all appeared by 1860. After that, better harvesters and binding machines came
into use, as did the harvester-threshers known as combines. Farmers also used
limited steam power in the late 19th century, and by about 1905 they began using
gasoline-powered tractors. At about the same time, Americans began to apply
science systematically to agriculture, such as by using genetics as a basis for
plant breeding. These techniques, plus fertilizers and pesticides, helped to
increase farm productivity.
E | Changes in Society |
As in Britain, the Industrial Revolution
in the United States led to major social changes. Urban population grew, rural
population declined, and the nature of labor changed dramatically.
E1 | Growth of Cities |
As a result of the shift in economic
importance from agriculture to manufacturing, American cities grew both in
number and in population. From 1860 to 1900 the number of urban areas in the
United States expanded fivefold. Even more striking was the explosion in the
growth of big cities. In 1860 there were only 9 American cities with more than
100,000 inhabitants; by 1900 there were 38. Like the British critics of the
preceding century, many Americans viewed these industrial and commercial centers
as dark and dirty places crowded with exploited workers. But whatever the
drawbacks of city life, urban growth in the United States was unstoppable,
fueled both by the movement of rural Americans and a swelling tide of immigrants
from Europe. In 1790 only about 5 percent of the American population lived in
cities; today more than 75 percent does. This long-term trend is characteristic
of societies experiencing industrialization and is evident today in regions of
Asia and Latin America that are now undergoing an industrial revolution.
E2 | Effects on Labor |
Industrialization brought to the United
States conflicts and stresses similar to the ones encountered in Britain and in
Europe. Those who had a stake in the traditional economy lost ground as
mechanized production replaced household manufacturing. Often, skilled workers
found their income and their status under attack from the new machines and the
relentless division of labor. Businesses had always enjoyed considerable power
in their relationships with the labor force, but the balance tipped even more in
their favor as firms grew larger.
In order to counter the power of
business, workers tried to form trade unions to represent them and bargain for
rights. Initially they had only limited success. Occasional strikes, sometimes
violent, appeared as signs of underlying tensions. Until the Great Depression of
the 1930s, skilled craft workers were almost the only groups able to sustain
unions. The most successful of these unions were those in the American
Federation of Labor. They did not seek fundamental social or economic change,
such as socialists advocated; instead they accepted industrial society and
concentrated on improving the wages and working conditions of their members.
Eventually the United States digested
the tensions and dislocations caused by the coming of industry and the growth of
cities. The government began to enact regulations and antitrust laws to counter
the worst excesses of big business. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was
created to prevent corporate trusts, monopoly enterprises formed to reduce
competition and allow essentially a single business firm to control the price of
a product. Laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, enacted in 1938, mandated
worker protections, including the maximum 8-hour workday and 40-hour workweek.
Above all, the rising incomes and high rates of economic growth proved calming.
Material progress convinced most Americans that industrialization had been a
positive development, although the challenge of balancing business growth and
worker rights remains an issue to this day.
IV | THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AROUND THE WORLD |
After the first appearance of
industrialization in Britain, many other nations eagerly pursued similar
changes. In the 19th century the Industrial Revolution spread not only to the
United States, but also to Germany, France, Belgium, and much of the rest of
western Europe. Often, skilled British workers and knowledgeable entrepreneurs
moved to other countries and taught the manufacturing techniques they had
learned in Britain.
Change happened somewhat differently in each
setting because of varying resources, political conditions, and social and
economic circumstances. In France, industrial development was somewhat delayed
by political turmoil and a lack of coal, but the central government played a
more active role in development than Britain’s had. Both countries created
railroad networks, for example, but the British did so entirely through private
companies, while the French central government funded much of its country’s
railways. Craft production, in which people make decorative or functional items
by hand, also remained a more significant element in the French economy than it
did in Britain. In some industries, such as furniture manufacturing, the extent
of mechanization was not as great as it had been in Great Britain.
In Germany the central government’s role was
also greater than it had been in Great Britain. This was partly because the
German government wanted to hasten the process and catch up with British
industrialization. Germany used its rich iron and coal resources to develop
heavy industry, such as iron and steel manufacture. It also proved to be an
environment that encouraged big businesses and cooperation among large firms.
The German banking sector, for example, was dominated by a few large banks that
coordinated efforts to increase industry.
In Russia, the government made repeated
efforts to enable industrialization, sometimes hiring foreigners to build and
operate whole factories. On the whole, however, industrialization spread more
slowly there, and the Russian economy remained overwhelmingly agricultural for a
long time. Even in largely industrialized areas, such as western Europe and the
United States, some areas lagged behind in industrial development. Southern
Italy, Spain, and the American South remained largely agrarian until much later
than their neighbors. In Asia, industrialization varied, although as a whole it
came much later than Western European development.
In Japan, the first industrial Asian nation,
the central government made industrialization a national goal during the late
19th century. Industrialization in some areas of China began in the early 20th
century and increased near the end of the century. Other Asian and Pacific Rim
countries, such as South Korea and Taiwan, began to industrialize after the
1960s.
In Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa,
India, and much of Latin America—areas that were colonies of Western nations, or
that were dominated by other nations for long periods—industrialization was much
more delayed than in many other areas. The legacies of colonialism made
widespread change difficult because the society and economy of colonies were
heavily controlled by and dependent on the parent country.
Although different cultures produced
distinctive variations of an industrial revolution, the similarities are
striking. Mechanization and urbanization were central to each area in which the
Industrial Revolution succeeded, as were accompanying tensions and disruptions.
In most societies, the truly revolutionary changes came during the first 75 to
100 years after the process of industrialization began. After that, factory
production dominated manufacturing, and most people moved to cities.
V | COSTS AND BENEFITS |
The modern, industrial societies created by
the Industrial Revolution have come at some cost. The nature of work became
worse for many people, and industrialization placed great pressures on
traditional family structures as work moved outside the home. The economic and
social distances between groups within industrial societies are often very wide,
as is the disparity between rich industrial nations and poorer neighboring
countries. The natural environment has also suffered from the effects of the
Industrial Revolution. Pollution, deforestation, and the destruction of animal
and plant habitats continue to increase as industrialization spreads.
Perhaps the greatest benefits of
industrialization are increased material well-being and improved healthcare for
many people in industrial societies. Modern industrial life also provides a
constantly changing flood of new goods and services, giving consumers more
choices. With both its negative aspects and its benefits, the Industrial
Revolution has been one of the most influential and far-reaching movements in
human history.
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