Modern World History: Historical Summary: Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution changed the way people lived and worked and created a world where average people
enjoy a quality of life that was unimaginable even for the wealthiest people in the past. For example, would you trade
places with Louis XIV of France if it meant living with 17th century medicine, where a simple infection could kill you?
Many things, like cars, airplanes, cell phones and antibiotic medicines – which are now so common that even poor people
have access to them – could only imagined a hundred years ago. The Industrial Revolution is important because it began
the process of “modern economic growth” where societies began to improve technology, became more productive and
enjoy more material wealth (i.e. stuff). The basic point is that for thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution
almost everyone was poor. The, the parts of the world that went though the Industrial Revolution started to become
wealthy and the lives of average people in the countries that went through the Industrial Revolution became much more
comfortable. Essentially, the Enlightenment created many of the ideas that shaped the modern world and the Industrial
Revolution created the style of life that is associated with “modern living”. More importantly, the process of
technological improvement and increased productivity begun by the Industrial Revolution continues today, allowing
people to hope for an even more prosperous future.
The process of modern economic growth begun by the Industrial
Revolution was the beginning of process that is still happening around the world
as poor countries imitate the process that first began in Europe. The technology
and ideas that marked the Industrial Revolution first happened in England, and
then spread to the rest of Europe, the United States and Japan. This process
modern economic growth continues to cause large changes around the world as
more countries, like China adopt many of the ideas of the Industrial Revolution.
As a result, many of the issues that affected the Industrial Revolution in Europe
in the nineteenth century (and are described in this unit) are currently major
issues in China.
In order to fully appreciate the impact of the Industrial Revolution, it is
important to consider what life was like before the Industrial Revolution. First,
the world was very poor because everything had to be made by hand. Every
GDP stands for “Gross Domestic Product”
stitch of clothing, every nail and every plate (as well as everything else) was
- It is a measure of the total amount
made by a craftsperson. There was no mass production of goods by machines.
produced by an economy. This graph
Most people were farmers because they needed to grow the food for their own
shows the dollar amount of GDP each
survival. As a result, people would spend all their time and use all their energy
person would have if it was divided
making the basic things they needed to live. Second, the world was very slow.
equally among the population in different
The only way to travel was on foot, on horseback or by sailboat – basically,
years. Clearly, the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution in 1800 was an
nothing moved at speeds over 10 miles per hour over any distance. As a result,
important point in history.
most people did not travel very far and it could take a lot of time for news to
cross long distances. Third, it was dark. When the sun went down, the only
source of light were candles and oil lamps – both of which were expensive (especially for poor peasants) – which meant
that the night was a scary and fearful time. In the world before the Industrial Revolution, things seldom changed and most
people were poor peasants living their entire lives in the same small village in which their parents and grandparents had
lived.
The Industrial Revolution began with the development of the steam engine. This simple machine could turn the
heat from burning wood or coal into steam power that could be used to drive machinery that could be used to do work.
Up to this point in history, all energy used for work had been powered by human, animal, and to a small extent wind and
water – none of which was strong or could be used at anywhere and at anytime. In contrast to this, the steam engine
developed by the British inventor James Watt could be set to work anywhere and never tired. It was a source of constant
power. The steam engine was the power source on which the entire industrial revolution was built upon. Steam engines
were first used to pump water out of coal and iron mines, which is important because coal was the power source for steam
engines and iron was the metal used to make steam engines and other forms of machinery. James Watt was able to design
a steam engine that was more powerful and compact and could be used to power trains, ships and factories, allowing
people to produce more and move faster
The first industry to go through the Industrial Revolution was the textile industry. Before the Industrial
Revolution, all clothes were made by hand by skilled weavers in their own houses. However, during the Industrial
Revolution, inventors, like Richard Arkwright, developed machines that could be run by unskilled workers and could
weave cloth faster than the skilled weavers could ever do by hand. These new machines were much larger than the simple
machined used by home weavers and used a steam engine as a power source. An important point in the Industrial
Revolution was when business owners, like Richard Arkwright, took advantage of these changes and began building
factories full of machines that were driven by steam engines and run by unskilled workers. Because the factories could
produce more cloth at a lower price, the weavers working out of their home were put out of business. This created a
social problem because the factories were making society wealthier (because there was more clothes), but it was coming
at the expense of the weavers who were becoming poorer. It was not long before the “factory system” was applied to
other industries.
The Industrial Revolution created many new groups in society. One group was the capitalists. The term “capital”
means money invested in business with the goal of getting a profit. Capitalists were the business people who invested in
building and running factories. When the factories were successful, the capitalist would get the profits that they could
then re-invest in new factories. However, if the business did badly, they would suffer the losses – and could lose all of
their money and become bankrupt. Many business owning capitalists supported the ideas of the Enlightenment
philosopher Adam Smith, who argued that the government should not control business. The thought that the profits from
factories would encourage more investment in factories and that more factories would produce more goods, which would
make society better off.
Another new group created by the Industrial Revolution was the workers who worked in the factories. These
people were often peasants and craftspeople who left their villages and moved to the cities to work in factories. The
industrial workers were often poor and uneducated and they would work for long hours (10 hour days) in dirty noisy
factories for little pay. The wages were so low entire families worked together in factories just so a family had enough to
eat and afford a room to live in. Statistics demonstrate the physical hardship that accompanied industrial work. In 1842,
the life expectancy of working class British people was 17 years while for the rural poor it was 38 years. It is important
to keep in mind that life in villages before the Industrial Revolution was also hard and poor. The sad reality was that
many workers thought that the low wages for factory work was an improvement over rural poverty, despite the shorter life
expectancy.
In northern England, where the first factories were built, cities began to grow up around the factories as the
workers moved to live close to the factories. These cities were crowded, dirty (sanitation was terrible – with little clean
water and trash pilling up in the street), badly built and filled with crime. This was because the workers were often poor
and could not afford good housing. There houses were badly build with many people crowded into small rooms. In one
London slum, 63 people lived in 9 rooms! In addition, the burning of coal to power steam engines polluted the air and
covered everything in soot. The filth of these industrial cities was deadly. In the city of Liverpool, more than 52 percent
of children died before their fifth birthday. The British writer Charles Dickens described the hard and difficult lives of the
people living in the industrial cities in his books “Hard Times” and “Oliver Twist”. In contrast to the living conditions for
the poor workers, the capitalist owners of the factories often lived in large houses in parts of cities that were kept nice and
clean.
The Industrial Revolution created a conflict between the capitalist owners of factories and the factory workers
over how to split the benefits of the Industrial Revolution. The basic problem was that the money made by the factory
could either be used to pay the workers’ wages or could be profits for the capitalist owners. The factory owners tried to
pay the workers as little as possible so profits would be higher. This made the capitalist owners wealthier and they could
use the profits to build more factories. At the same time, the workers tried to demand the higher wages so they did not
have to live in poverty. In the conflict, the workers had little bargaining power because the factory jobs required few
skills and factory owners could hire the workers who were willing to work for the lowest wages. In addition, even if a
factory owner was generous and gave the workers high wages, their prices would then be higher than their competitors
and they would not be able to compete and would go out of business and the workers would lose their jobs. As a result,
the workers in the Industrial Revolution worked long hours and for low wages.
Many workers recognized that no matter how hard they worked, they would stay poor because their wages were
so low. These workers began to organize into labor unions that organized groups of workers to protest for higher wages.
Capitalist owners fought back against this by having laws created that made labor unions illegal. In response, workers
began to support communist ideas that the government should take over the factories and run them to the benefit of the
workers so they would not live in poverty. The communists believed that “all profit was theft.” The ideas of communism
were developed by Karl Marx, a philosopher, argued that the workers should overthrow the capitalist owners in a violent
revolution and create a communist society where people would “work according to their ability and receive according to
their needs”. Marx summed up his call for revolution by saying, “The Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win. Workers of all countries, unite!”
Not all the supporters of capitalism thought that government should not have some control over business. There
were many liberal reformers who were troubled by the low wages, terrible working conditions and dirty cities. John
Stuart Mill was one of the leading liberal reformers who wrote about changing capitalism so that it would create a society
that created the “greatest happiness for the greatest number of people”. Mill and other reformers argued that the
government should try to improve the lives of the poor workers through limiting working hours, setting minimum wages
and providing all children with an education.
While life in the industrial factories and cities was hard, over time things began to slowly improve. This was
because the industrial factories allowed people to make more things, so there was more to go around. Over time, workers’
wages improved and they no longer lived in poverty, child labor was outlawed and public schools were opened (educated
children were able to get better jobs than their parents) and city governments built sewers and parks which made cities
nice places to live. Unlike village life, where things seldom changed, in the industrial cities gave people opportunities to
move from being workers to managers and business owners.
In addition, the pace of technological change continued, which drove more economic growth. Michael Faraday
developed electricity so that it was able to be used as a source of power for machines, communication by telegraph and
later telephone and lighting. As a result, it became inexpensive to communicate over large distances and to light up the
night. Electricity also helped in the invention of the internal combustion engine, which was smaller and more powerful
than steam engines and ran on gasoline. This invention resulted in the development of the car and airplane in the early
twentieth century.
The Industrial Revolution meant that in less than one hundred years, average people went from living in villages
where the fastest thing was a horse and candles were the source of light to living in cities with to electric lights and being
able to travel at long distances in comfort on trains – and later cars and airplanes. As a result average people were able to
live longer, healthier and more enriching lives than ever before. The reason many countries, like China, are trying to go
through the process of change in the Industrial Revolution is to get the higher standard of living associated with the
countries that have gone through the Industrial Revolution.