The Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution?

• Sudden?

• Meaning?

• Costs vs. Benefits?

Economic Productivity

• Cotton textiles, iron, steam engine

Prerequisites

• Agricultural expansion

• Transportation

Canal Building

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

Availability of Capital

• Empire matters

• Investors looking for solidity, not bubbles

• Reinvestment of profits

Inventiveness

• Inventors

• Attitude

• Enlightenment

Natural Resources

• Coal, iron, water

What made Britain different?

• Single common market

• Common coinage

• Common system of weights and measures

• No internal tolls

• Lack of regulation

Labor Mobility

• Geographically

• Socially

Primogeniture

Dissenters’ Schools

• Modern curriculum

• Business open

Dissenting innovators

• Thomas Newcomen

• James Watt

Costs

• Old jobs lost

• Societal disruption (mass society)

• Emphasis on punctuality

• Consumer culture

• Pollution

Benefits

• Work load eases

• Material goods

Process vs. Span of Time

The Period

• Poverty just more noticeable?

• Population growth and urbanization

Conclusions

• Mechanical labor replaces human labor

• Change made permanent

• Expectation of progress

• Division of labor

• Socialism

• Science weds industry