Social studies

• One night in 1811, a crowd gathered on a hill overlooking a factory in Manchester, England. The crowd broke into the factory and destroyed the new steam-powered weaving machines. The attackers were weavers, who feared that the machines would put them out of work. They felt threatened by the technologies that were changing their lives.
• Extraordinary changes took place in Britain, marking the period of the Industrial Revolution


  Between 1760 and 1840
• Industrial Revolution


  • New sources of energy allowed machines to replace the muscle power of humans and animals
  • Transformed the way people lived, traveled, and worked
• Agricultural revolution


  Linked to the Industrial Revolution
• Beginning about 1700, new farming techniques and machinery allowed for increased food production
• Increased food production


  Led to growing populations in Britain and Europe
• Growing population


  Created greater demand for goods such as textiles
• Industrialization of textile manufacturing

  1. Spinning thread and weaving cloth done mostly in the home

  2. Invention of the spinning jenny by James Hargreaves in 1767

  3. Improvements in weaving technology

  4. Merchants built factories to house many workers at once

  5. Use of water power in early textile factories
• Steam power


  • Allowed factories to be built anywhere, not just near waterways
  • Powered factories, mines, ships, and locomotives
• After the 1820s, the steam engine allowed people to travel much greater distances in less time and transport goods further and more quickly
• The Industrial Revolution that began in Britain reached the European continent slowly, hindered by the Napoleonic wars between 1790 and 1815
• In the United States, industrialization spread rapidly in the 1830s
• Early industrialists


  • Needed to spend enormous sums of money for complicated machines and factories
  • Depended on family, friends, or wealthy investors, as well as banks and national governments, as backers
• Agricultural revolution


  Played a role in enabling the Industrial Revolution
• Factory system


  • Replaced home-based production of goods
  • Workers had to labor according to strict rules and schedules set by factory owners
  • Factory owners preferred to employ women and children as they could be more easily controlled and paid lower wages
• Enclosure of land by landowners for commercial farming helped them gain power and wealth, but caused great hardship among the rural poor who were forced to move to cities
• Enclosure helped change Britain into a primarily urban society
• Early industrial cities


  • Were not prepared for the influx of newcomers, leading to overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and spread of diseases
  • Also brought pollution, as described by Charles Dickens
• However, urban centers offered advantages such as access to shipping, railroads, workers, and customers, and greater opportunities compared to life in the countryside
• These houses had no running water or toilets. Until the mid-1800s, the cities had no sewerage systems. Waste was poured into the streets and local rivers. Contaminated water helped spread diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and typhus. In this kind of environment, life was short.
• Charles Dickens: '"... where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in."'
• Advantages of urban centers

  • Businesses had access to shipping and railroads, workers, and customers
  • Even for the poor, city life offered greater opportunities compared with life in the countryside, where famine and poverty were even more widespread
• Enclosure helped change rural life
• Enclosure helped landowners gain power and wealth
• Enclosure led to the use of new farming techniques and investment in machinery and bigger livestock to help feed growing populations
• Enclosure led to hardship among the rural poor, who had to survive by other means
• The Industrial Revolution changed British society. Although the nobility still controlled large amounts of land, the economic importance of this group was declining. Instead, power shifted into the hands of those who owned the factories and businesses.
• The Industrial Revolution created a larger middle class
• A huge industrial working class developed, with millions of unskilled workers forming the majority of this working class
• Industrial workers suffered low pay, harsh working conditions, and lack of unemployment benefits. If workers protested for better pay or working conditions, they were often fired or punished.
• Child factory workers were especially vulnerable, until the 1830s when the British government began limiting the number of hours that children under young could work in a day.
• Enclosure changed rural life

  Landowners gained power and wealth, while the rural poor suffered hardship
• The rapid changes of the Industrial Revolution prompted a range of philosophers and writers to develop new ideas and solutions to the problems the Revolution had created.
• Laissez-faire economics


  The idea that the government should not interfere with the economy, and that the free, competitive marketplace will help everyone
• Supporters of laissez-faire economics, known as champions of economic freedom, were in favor of free trade and opposed government regulation of commerce.
• Labor unions that fought for better pay and working conditions were seen as restricting competition and hurting private enterprise, and were often outlawed in Britain, Europe, and the United States until the late 1800s.
• Socialism


  An economic ideal where the workers, rather than private individuals, would own the farms, factories and other businesses that produce and distribute goods, with the goal of developing a world in which all would benefit from wealth
• Robert Owen, a Welsh mill owner, put his socialist beliefs into practice by offering workers good wages, benefits, and education for their children at his cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland.
• Communism


  An economic and political system in which the government owns all property and makes all economic decisions
• Karl Marx, a German newspaper editor, became one of the most important social philosophers of the 1800s. He viewed the owners of factories and businesses as the abusers of the working class, and believed the working class (the proletariat) would have to overthrow capitalism to attain equality.