Industrial Revolution

American and England: Chapter 7, 8, 14

What is the Industrial Revolution?

• Revolution in –Work–Living conditions–Class structure

Proto-industrialization

Whitney’s Cotton Gin, 1793

Before the cotton gin, to separate one pound of lint from three pounds of cotton seed took ten hours of hand work. Whitney's cotton gin was capable of maintaining a daily output of 23 kg (50 lb) of cleaned cotton.

Energy Revolution

• Humans, animals, watermills, windmills

• 1769 – James Watt improved steam engine

• Power source for the Industrial Revolution

Steam engine

• Silk Mill on the River Derwent • First industrial factory?

Factories – coal power

• How did industrialization change life – Where and how people lived (urban)– How they worked– And how they got along with each other

(classes, unions, etc)

Urbanization, chapt 22.4• Life got better:• a. Country life could be harsh• b. Wages even in bad weather• c. Heat homes with coal• d. Eat more variety of food• e. Had more clothing – most people in England could not

afford “body linen” (underwear) but now most could afford cotton underwear

• But life also got much worse:• Urban and unsanitary, • fast-paced, dangerous work, and • class inequality

• Generally poor:– Urban slums– Now services or

healthcare– Large tenement blocks

of small apartments– Poor food– No insurance or labor

unions

Living Conditions for Workers

Working conditions

Child Labor

Child "hurriers" working in mines. From official report of the parliamentary commission.

The displaced working classes, from the seventeenth century on, took it for granted that a family would not be able to support itself if the children were not employed. In Defoe's day he thought it admirable that in the vicinity of Halifax scarcely anybody above the age of 4 was idle. .

Girl pulling a coal tub in mine. From official report of the parliamentary commission.

Isabella Read, 12 years old, coal-bearer.

Father has been dead two years. Mother bides at home, she is troubled with bad breath, and is sair weak in her body from early labour. I am wrought with sister and brother, it is very sore work; cannot say how many rakes or journeys I make from pit's bottom to wall face and back, thinks about 30 or 25 on the average; the distance varies from 100 to 250 fathom.I carry about 1 cwt. and a quarter on my back; have to stoop much and creep through water, which is frequently up to the calves of my legs. When first down fell frequently asleep while waiting for coal from heat and fatigue.

Response to Industrialization

• Unions – and strikes • Chartists – universal male suffrage • Luddites – rejected mechanization of laborTheorists:• Adam Smith – optimistic, “invisible hand”• Thomas Malthus – “iron law of nature” • David Ricardo – “iron law of wages”