Industrial Revolution

The

Industrial

Revolution

represents

the

biggest

transformation ever happened in European economy and started in

England in the end of eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century. As this kind of event is not possible to happen
by chance, we must explain the premises for it in first place. In
order to be necessary the machines to replace the manual labour,
the demand for goods must have been increased in that period. In
our case it was the demand for cotton textile. The demand for cloth
in England was connected with the constant increase of its
population, which from 5.5 millions in 1750 was over 16 millions
in 1850. The main reason for that to happen was the change in the
living or more exactly the feeding conditions, due to a process of
so called Agricultural Revolution, which started in England during
the seventeenth century. This phenomenon appeared simply
because some English farmers unlike their colleagues from France
and Germany started to look at agriculture more like a science and
not like some boring activity. So in this way they invented new
methods to boost the crop production. The most efficient of them
was the so called crop rotation system. The rotation of the crops
was necessary for restoring the nutrients in the soil and to avoid the

build up of crop specific soil pests and diseases. Until that moment
all around one and the same crop was planted on one and the same
land so after two years the land becomes exhausted and had to be
left unplanted for a year to recover. Other important invention was
the seed drill, it gave the opportunity to seed in the right depth and
in straight lines which is not possible to be done by hand.
Livestock breeders improved their methods too. The sheep meat
was increased by allowing only the best sheep to breed. In that way
the average weight of the lambs climbed from 8 to 22 kilograms
between 1701 and 1786. The result of these developments taken
together was a period of high productivity and low food prices.
And this, in turn, meant that the typical English family did not
have to spend almost everything it earned on bread (as was the
case in France before 1789), and instead could purchase
manufactured goods such as cloth.
The other aspect of the Agricultural revolution was the
enclosure movement. It started due to a high demand for wool in
the international market during seventeenth century. Suddenly
most of the big landowners decided to breed sheep because it was
profitable. In order to make space for the sheep they kicked out the
small tenant farmers and enclosed their lands with fences. Tenth of
thousands were left with nothing to live on and whole villages
disappeared. Creating in this way a serious amount of free labour

force for the upcoming industrialization. Other important premises

were the Great Geographical discoveries started from 15 th century.
Their influence was mainly connected with the resources the
Europeans were searching for in the colonies and it was not a
search for potatoes and spices. Although the potatoes they found
were more useful for the European population than the gold. The
discovery of this plant, which has more calories in its unit of
capacity, was an important factor for the better feeding conditions
of the increasing population in Europe. But now the question is
about the gold which deposits were already exhausted in Europe.
Did the Europeans find some gold in the colonies? Yes they did,
only the ransom paid for the last king of the Incas, Atahualpa, was
in amount of 5.5 tons of gold and 12 tons of silver. The important
point here is, what kind of people managed to reach this kind of
resources? In this case the Geographical discoveries gave the
opportunity for a new social group to accumulate capital. These
people were not aristocrats and landowners, they were simply the
most initiative, ambitious, cruel and risk taking people in Europe.
And the most profitable businesses connected with the colonies
went in their hands, that includes: burglary, piracy, slave and all
other kinds of trading. The Great Geographical Discoveries helped
a new social class to be created, the so called upper middle class
that pushed the aristocracy into the background. How exactly that

happened? The large amounts of cheap gold that came from the
new world to European economy provoked the biggest inflation in
Europe for that time. In this situation most of the incomes for the
aristocracy came from rents. But the rent is a fixed financial
income and this kind of incomes are devaluated the most during
inflation. That means, aristocrats were not able to support their
high standard of living anymore. In this situation a man who is not
initiative enough and not used to work, has only one chance to find
money. And it is to borrow a loan. That is what exactly aristocrats
did. These loans were borrowed from the newly formed middle
class, as they have more free capital at that moment. The overall
effect was that many aristocrats lost their property because they
were not able to return the loans. And from that moment the upper
middle class was the new leading social category in Europe. The
second influence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was the
extension of the international market after the settlement of the
colonies with European population which needed serious amounts
of industrial goods.
Other important premise was the Scientific revolution started
with the discoveries of Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543),
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and
Isaac Newton (1642-1727). The Scientific revolution gave the
important perspective, that man now had the knowledge and

opportunity to completely subdue nature and prepared the way for

new inventions to be applied to industry. No other revolution in
modern times can be said to have accomplished so much in so little
time. The Industrial Revolution attempted to effect man's mastery
over nature. This was an old vision, a vision with a history. In the
17th century, the English statesman and "Father of Modern
Science,

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), believed that natural

philosophy (what we call science) could be applied to the solution

of practical problems, and so, the idea of modern technology was
born. For Bacon, the problem was this: how could man enjoy
perfect freedom if he had to constantly labor to supply the
necessities of existence? His answer was clear - machines. These
labor saving devices would liberate mankind, they would save
labor which then could be utilized elsewhere. "Knowledge is
power," said Bacon, and scientific knowledge reveals power over
nature.
Our next point will be about the consequences of the
Industrial Revolution and we will divide them in two groups,
social and economic. May be the most important social one you
can observe in present days is the constant rising of the living
standard. For the first time after the start of the industrialization,
there was an economy trying to satisfy the needs and the demands
of more and more consumers. Till that moment the economy in

Europe was working only for the Aristocracy and if you happed
not to be an aristocrat, the only thing that was working for you was
the religion. In this case the Christianity was used to train the
ordinary people to be patient and to expect to start living a better
life, eventually after death when they were promised to enter some
kind of paradise. But after the Industrial Revolution, a new
meaning of life appeared and that was the materialism. Nowadays
most of the people are motivated to live mostly by material things
rather than by spiritual.
But the positive effects of the industrialization did not reach
too many people in the first years of industrialization. So first we
will speak about the negative ones. For instance, the duration of
the working day increased dramatically. Most of the peoples
working day till that moment was determined by the rise and the
sunset, because they worked in the open fields. But no one from
the factory owners cared about the sunset anymore. All of them
wanted, if it was possible the work to be done night and day
without stopping. As this was not possible, the working day was
between 16 and 18 hours a day 6 days a week. In the factories were
hired mostly people that can be less paid and easy to manipulate,
that means women and children from ages 6 and above. The
population in the industrialized cities rose dramatically, especially
in Manchester and Liverpool, where this rise was above 1000% for

a period of 50 years, between 1801 and 1850. In London the rise

was from 1 million to 2.3 millions for the same period. Thus
London became worlds largest city with twice as many people, as
its closest rival Paris. Most of all that people, lived in terrible
conditions in dark dirty shelters and it was calculated, that there
was one toilet for 215 people in Manchester. So the epidemics and
sickness were widely spread there. Soon the factory owners
realized that the only way to raise the incomes and the economy as
a whole, is to create more consumers and that was not possible
with low salaries and terrible working conditions. So the positive
effects started to appear. The workers salaries started to grow,
during the first quarter of the 19th century. The first labour laws
were passed. The so called Factory Act from 1833 made it illegal
to hire children under 9 years old. According to it, children from
ages 9 to 12 could not work more than 8 hours and these from 13
to 17 no more than 12 hours. In 1842 the Mines Act prevented
women and children from working under ground. The first social
insurance companies were established in the middle of the 19 th
century. There aim was to guarantee the survival of the working
class, in case of losing the ability to work due to sickness injury or
age.
The economic consequences from the Industrial Revolution
were mostly connected with the capital circulation and the world

trading system. As the industry is the most capital demanding

business and in one economy the free capital is never where it is
needed the most, a fast development of the banking system has
started. The role of the banks was to distribute capital to areas
where it was needed, drawing it from areas where there was a
surplus. Important changes also occur in the world trading system.
After the machines were introduced, the amounts of goods to be
traded were constantly increasing and in most cases they were
traded without their presence. This kind of trade was impossible to
be done in open markets. So the stock exchange became the place
where the world trade took place. Stock exchanges were
established in big harbor cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam,
Marseille, Hamburg, London and New York.