EARLY INDUSTRIAL EUROPE Population: Sharp rise after 1730. France – 50% in 50 years; Britain and Prussia 100% in 50 years Poverty: Especially France and Italy. 25% of the population of Bologna begged for a living Enclosures (England) Cottage industry and wage labor Inventions and innovations: 1760s – steam engine; 1780s – puddling; use of coal/coke as fuel, development of railways (from 16 miles/hour in 1830 to 50 miles/hour in 1850). Rise of factory system: Concerns of British labor, new values of punctuality and hard work, worker resistance, surge in production (cotton textile production in Britain tripled between Conservatism in the early 19 th century: Metternich and the Concert of Europe Gustave Dore: London, 1872
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EARLY INDUSTRIAL EUROPE
Population: Sharp rise after 1730. France – 50% in 50 years; Britain and Prussia 100% in 50 years
Poverty: Especially France and Italy. 25% of the population of Bologna begged for a living
Enclosures (England)
Cottage industry and wage labor
Inventions and innovations: 1760s – steam engine; 1780s – puddling; use of coal/coke as fuel, development of railways (from 16 miles/hour in 1830 to 50 miles/hour in 1850).
Rise of factory system: Concerns of British labor, new values of punctuality and hard work, worker resistance, surge in production (cotton textile production in Britain tripled between
Conservatism in the early 19th century: Metternich and the Concert of Europe
Waning of mercantilism, rise of free trade philosophy
Manchester, 1847. Left: except the cathedral, all the buildings are industrial. Right: cotton warehouse
REDHILL STREET MILL, MANCHESTER
Commissioned in 1790 and constructed in 1818 as a spinning mill.
One writer, Alexis de Tocqueville, described Redhill Street Mill in 1835 as "...a place where some 1500 workers, labouring 69 hours a week, with an average wage of 11 shillings, and where three-quarters of the workers are women and children".
Eight storeys high, it was the tallest iron-framed building in the world in its day.
In 1865 the building was altered by the new owner, Sir William Fairbairn, to install larger automated spinning mules. By this time it was the biggest mill in the Manchester region.
Further buildings were added in 1868 and 1912 to cope with the demand for increased output.
URBAN PROBLEMS: PUBLIC HEALTH & POVERTYLeft: a London sewer. Centre: scavenger at sewer. Right: vagrants
NumberWeekly Wages
MALES
11000
pounds per year
Mill manager (also got 3 per cent of the profits)
26 15s-32s Overseers and clerks
6 17s-25s Mechanics and engine drivers
3 14s-21s Carpenters and blacksmiths
1 15s Lodge keeper
16 14s-15s Power loom machinery attendants and steamers
18 10s-15s Mill machinery attendants and loom cleaners
5 5s-12s Spindle cleaners, bobbin stampers and packers, messengers, sweepers
- 7s-10s Watchmen
- 5s-10s Coachmen, grooms and van driver
38 2s-4s Winders
114 Total Males
NumberWeekly Wages
FEMALES
4 10s-11s Gauze examiners
4 9s-10s Female assistant overseers
16 7s-10s Warpers
9 7s-10s Twisters
4 6s-9s Wasters
589 5s-8s Weavers
2 6s-7s Plugwinders
83 4s-6s Drawers and doublers
188 2s-4s Winders
899 Total Females
1013 GRAND TOTAL WORK FORCE
This is an 1860 chart of the workforce of the Courtauld Silk Mill, built in 1825 in Halstead, Essex (southeast England). Wages are in shillings.
Before the industrial revolution, Halstead was an agricultural community with a cottage industry producing woolen cloth.
In Halstead, as elsewhere in England, unemployment among depressed farming households and former wool workers forced people to find work outside the home. Because their labor was cheap, women more than men were recruited into the textile factories that sprang up all over Britain in the 19th century.
http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/textile.html
WORKING CLASS RESPONSE
Leeds Woollen Workers’ Petition, 1786
Luddites, early nineteenth century (myth of Ned Ludd)
Urban migration: Population of London by 1850: 2.4 million
Trade unions: Britain tried to outlaw workers’ organizations in 1800. Use of methods like strikes. Led to moderate reforms in 1832 (only 1/30 of population represented in Parliament; existence of laws like Poor Law, which forced people to find work)
Reforms: Edwin Chadwick’s report in 1842, more decisive reforms in 1867. Repeal of Corn Laws motivated by free trade philosophy rather than concern for poor.
Chartist movement (late 1830s to 1848): radical demands - universal male suffrage, remuneration for Members of Parliament, annual sessions of Parliament
Manifesto of the Communist Party: class struggle, role of the bourgeoisie, relations of production, global nature of industrial economy, overproduction, constantly expanding markets, alienation of labor, rise of proletariat, revolution, internationalism
Poster published in 1911
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRluddites.htm
Producing the raw material of the first industrial revolution
Free trade? Or “drain of wealth”?CHINAImpoverishmentAddictionWeakened armyOpium Wars; “unequal treaties
INDIADeath of Indian textile industry; loss of employmentIndians forced to buy British goods—no investment or industrializationHeavy taxes on even the poorest peasantsFamines, deaths
BRITAIN
NORTH AMERICA
LATIN AMERICAPlantation economyImport of manufactures
EUROPE
Private remittances
Indian taxpayers’ money
Tea, jute, indigo
Tea, silkPr
ofits
Fact
ory-
mad
e cl
oth
Tea
Profits
Tea
Pro
fits
Profits
Factory-made cloth
THE WORKSHOP OF THE WORLDBritish cotton textile exports to various parts of the world
24
56
128
10 113
17
32
279
200
75
145
30 30
010
20304050
607080
90100110
120130140
150160170180
190200210
220230240
250260270280
290300
USA SpanishAmerica
Europe Africa EastIndies
China Various
1820
1840
By 1851, Britain produced one half of the world’s coal and manufactured goods.
Britain’s cotton textile industry produced as much as that of all other European countries put together
Production of cotton textiles tripled between 1780 and 1850
THE GREAT EXHIBITION, LONDON, 1851
On May 1, 1851, Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition of Works of Industry of All Nations in London's Hyde Park. The first world's industrial fair, the exhibition brought together the best manufactured products of 77 nations. The building in which it was held,
nicknamed the "Crystal Palace," was itself a technological marvel of iron and glass devised by Joseph Paxton. More than six million people from many nations visited the
exhibition during its five and a half-month run.http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/british/brit-5.html
