LUCRARE PENTRU OBTINEREA ATESTATULUI PROFESIONAL LA LIMBA ENGLEZA

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

2020-2021
PROFESOR COORDONATOR : CANDIDAT :
PETROVAN ROXANA PETROVAN ALEX

LUCRARE PENTRU OBTINEREA ATESTATULUI PROFESIONAL LA LIMBA ENGLEZA

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

2
PROFESOR COORDONATOR : CANDIDAT :
PETROVAN ROXANA PETROVAN ALEX

Contents

Précis.......................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Introduction...............................................................................................................................................................5
Important technological requirements.....................................................................................................................6
Textile manufacture..............................................................................................................................................7
Iron industry..........................................................................................................................................................8
Inventors and Entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution..................................................................................10
Edmund Cartwright............................................................................................................................................10
George Stephenson..............................................................................................................................................11
Joseph Locke........................................................................................................................................................12
Social activists of the industrial revolution............................................................................................................13
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels........................................................................................................................13
Charles Dickens...................................................................................................................................................15
Social effects of the Industrial Revolution.............................................................................................................16
Bibliography............................................................................................................................................................18
Web resources..........................................................................................................................................................19

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 Précis

Industrial revolution, in modern history, the process of change from an agrarian and handicraft
economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. This process began in Britain in the
18th century and from there spread to other parts of the world.

Try to imagine your life without any machines working for you. Make a list of the machines in
your house. You might be surprised how many there are. Now imagine young people who grew up before
machines. How did they move from place to place? How did they communicate? What foods did they eat?
The truth is that you can’t really imagine such a world and even if you do, few of us would prefer that to
this one. This is one of the reasons I chose to write about this theme.

Another thing that influenced me was one specific video game that my brother used to play when I
was younger and I always enjoyed watching him. The game I’m talking about is Assassin’s Creed
Syndicate and it’s the ninth major release in the Assassin’s Creed series.

“The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of
civilization.” –Stephen Gardiner

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 Introduction

How did we come to have an idea of a sudden “Industrial Revolution” in Britain, dating from the
late eighteenth century? It’s a question well worth asking, not least because of the issues that this concept
has raised among historians.

Economists have long studied the causes of the Industrial Revolution, relying frequently on
comparisons between England and other European countries to understand “Why England and not France
or the Low Countries?”. Many hypotheses have been advanced – from , to the effect of the slave trades,
to technological change inducing high wages, to a series of institutional shocks leading to innovation and
industrialisation. In a recent paper, we test a subset of the main hypotheses about industrial success across
16,000 villages in England. Aside from measuring a large number of geographical attributes of each
village, we focus on a large shock that hit the English countryside in the mid 16th century – the
Dissolution of the Monasteries. While in the previous literature the subject of study was essentially
England versus the rest of the world, we can explain regional variation in industrial activity across
England.

As a model, it is a good fit for the vicinity of Manchester, but not Birmingham, with its older
industrial development. It reflects the rise of the factory system and Watt’s steam engine, but draws
attention away from the progress of craft industries for many years beforehand.

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 The first intimations of a new account of industrial history can be found in public discussions
during the 1780s. There was a fascination with the recent take-off of the cotton mills, which tended to be
discerned in two ways: the steep rise in exports of cotton goods and imports of raw cotton, and the new
technologies used in the cotton manufacture.

For example, in a passage added to Anderson’s The Origin of Commerce in 1789, the journalist
William Combe wrote that “some years previous to this period, an event happened which portended a
considerable revolution in the manufactures of Great Britain. This was the invention of Mr Arkwright’s
celebrated machine, which is so aptly constructed, and so judiciously planned, that with one great water
wheel, above 4000 threads of cotton yarn are spun at once, of which the finest muslins are manufactured.”

It is worth noting that the word “revolution” was already being used. Also this was framed in
national terms, an example of the widespread national rhetoric in the economic culture of the time – for
Combe, it was a revolution not just in a locality, but in “Great Britain”.

Important technological requirements

The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is

closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in
the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s the
following gains had been made in important technologies:

 Textiles – mechanised cotton spinning powered by steam or

water increased the output of a worker by a factor of around 500.
The power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over
40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from
cotton by a factor of 50. Large gains in productivity also occurred in
spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as great
as in cotton.
 Steam power – the efficiency of steam engines increased so that
they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel. The
adaptation of stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them
suitable for industrial uses. The high pressure engine had a high
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 power to weight ratio, making it suitable for transportation. Steam power underwent a rapid expansion
after 1800.
 Iron making – the substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered the fuel cost of pig
iron and wrought iron production. Using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces, resulting
in economies of scale. The steam engine began being used to pump water and to power blast air in the
mid 1750s, enabling a large increase in iron production by overcoming the limitation of water
power. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first used in 1760. It was later improved by making it
double acting, which allowed higher blast furnace temperatures. The puddling process produced a
structural grade iron at a lower cost than the finery forge. The rolling mill was fifteen times faster than
hammering wrought iron. Hot blast (1828) greatly increased fuel efficiency in iron production in the
following decades.
 Invention of machine tools – The first machine tools were invented. These included the screw
cutting lathe, cylinder boring machine and the milling machine. Machine tools made the
economical manufacture of precision metal
parts possible, although it took several decades
to develop effective techniques.

Textile manufacture

In 1750 Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of

raw cotton, most of which was spun and woven by
cottage industry in Lancashire. The work was done by
hand in workers' homes or occasionally in shops of master weavers. In 1787 raw cotton consumption was
22 million pounds, most of which was cleaned, carded and spun on machines. The British textile industry
used 52 million pounds of cotton in 1800, which increased to 588 million pounds in 1850.

The share of value added by the cotton textile industry in Britain was 2.6% in 1760, 17% in 1801
and 22.4% in 1831. Value added by the British woollen industry was 14.1% in 1801. Cotton factories in
Britain numbered approximately 900 in 1797. In 1760 approximately one-third of cotton cloth
manufactured in Britain was exported, rising to two-thirds by 1800. In 1781 cotton spun amounted to
5.1 million pounds, which increased to 56 million pounds by 1800. In 1800 less than 0.1% of world cotton

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cloth was produced on machinery invented in Britain. In 1788 there were 50,000 spindles in Britain, rising
to 7 million over the next 30 years.

Wages in Lancashire, were about six times those in India in 1770, when overall productivity in
Britain was about three times higher than in India.

Before the 18th century, the manufacture of cloth was performed by individual workers, in
the premises in which they lived and goods were transported around the country by packhorses or by river
navigations and contour-following canals that had been constructed in the early 18th century. In the mid-
18th century, artisans were inventing ways to become more productive. Silk, wool, and linen fabrics were
being eclipsed by cotton which became the most important textile.

Innovations in carding and spinning enabled by advances in cast iron technology resulted in the

creation of larger spinning mules and water frames. The machinery was housed in water-
powered mills on streams. The need for more power stimulated the production of steam-powered beam
engines, and rotative mill engines transmitting the power to line shafts on each floor of the mill. Surplus
power capacity encouraged the construction of more sophisticated power looms working in weaving
sheds. The scale of production in the mill towns round Manchester created a need for a commercial
structure; for a cotton exchange and warehousing. The technology was used in woollen and worsted mills
in the West Yorkshire and elsewhere.

Iron industry

The pre-revolution iron industry was based on small, localized production facilities sited near
essential ingredients such as water, limestone, and charcoal. This produced multiple small monopolies on
production and a set of small iron producing areas like South Wales. While Britain had good iron ore
reserves, the iron produced was of low quality with plenty of impurities, limiting its use. There was plenty
of demand but not much was produced as wrought iron, which had many of the impurities hammered out,
took a long time to make, and was available in cheaper imports from Scandinavia. Thus, there was a
bottleneck for industrialists to solve. At this stage, all the techniques of iron smelting were old and
traditional and the key method was the blast furnace, used from 1500 onward. This was relatively
quick but produced brittle iron.
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 There is a traditional view that the iron industry failed to satisfy the British market from 1700 to
1750, which instead had to rely on imports and couldn’t advance. This was because iron simply couldn’t
meet demand and over half of the iron used came from Sweden. While the British industry was
competitive in war, when the costs of imports rose, peace was problematic.

The size of furnaces remained small in this era, limited output, and the technology was dependent
upon the amount of timber in the area. As transport was poor, everything needed to be close together,
further limiting production. Some small ironmasters tried to group together to get around this issue, with
some success. In addition, British ore was plentiful but contained lots of sulfur and phosphorous, which
made brittle iron. The technology to deal with this problem was lacking. The industry was also highly
labor-intensive and, while the labor supply was good, this produced a very high cost. Consequently,
British iron was used for cheap, poor quality items like nails.
1825 has been called the start of the new Iron Age, as the iron industry experienced a massive
stimulation from the heavy demand for railways, which needed iron rails, iron in the stock, bridges,
tunnels and more. Meanwhile, civilian use increased, as everything which could be made of iron began to
be in demand, even window frames. Britain became renowned for railway iron. After the initial high
demand in Britain dropped, the country exported iron for railway construction abroad.

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 British iron production in 1700 was 12,000 metric tons a year. This rose to over two million by
1850. Although Darby is sometimes cited as the major innovator, it was Cort’s new methods which had
the major effect and his principles are still used today. The location of the industry experienced as big a
change as that of production and technology, as businesses were able to move to coalfields. But the effects
of innovation in other industries on iron (and in coal and steam) cannot be overstated, and neither can the
effect of iron developments on them.

Inventors and Entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution

Edmund Cartwright

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 Edmund Cartwright was an English inventor. He graduated from Oxford University very early and
went on to invent the power loom. He designed his first power loom in 1784 and patented it in 1785, but it
proved to be valueless. In 1789, he patented another loom which served as the model for later inventors to
work upon. For a mechanically driven loom to become a commercial success, either one person would
have to be able to attend to more than one machine, or each machine must have a greater productive
capacity than one manually controlled.

Cartwright added improvements, including a positive let-off motion, warp and weft stop motions,

and sizing the warp while the loom was in action. He commenced to manufacture fabrics
in Doncaster using these looms, and discovered many of their shortcomings. He attempted to remedy
these in a number of ways: by introducing a crank and eccentric wheels to actuate its batten differentially,
by improving the picking mechanism, by means of a device for stopping the loom when a shuttle failed to
enter a shuttle box, by preventing a shuttle from rebounding when in a box, and by stretching the cloth
with temples that acted automatically. His mill was repossessed by creditors in 1793.

In 1792, Cartwright obtained his last patent for weaving machinery; this provided his loom with
multiple shuttle boxes for weaving checks and cross stripes. However all his efforts were unavailing; it
became apparent that no mechanism, however perfect, could succeed so long as warps continued to be
sized while a loom was stationary. His plans for
sizing them while a loom was in operation, and
before being placed in a loom, failed. These
problems were resolved in 1803, by William
Radcliffe and his assistant, Thomas Johnson.

George Stephenson

George Stephenson was a British civil

engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as
the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was
considered by the Victorians a great example of
diligent application and thirst for improvement.
He was born on 9 June 1781

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in Wylam, Northumberland, which is 9 miles (15 km)
west of Newcastle upon Tyne.

In 1815, aware of the explosions often caused in

mines by naked flames, Stephenson began to experiment
with a safety lamp that would burn in a gaseous
atmosphere without causing an explosion. At the same
time, the eminent scientist and Cornishman Humphry
Davy was also looking at the problem. Despite his lack
of scientific knowledge, Stephenson, by trial and error,
devised a lamp in which the air entered via tiny holes,
through which the flames of the lamp could not pass.

Stephenson designed his first locomotive in

1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on
the Killingworth wagonway named Blücher after the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.
It was modelled on Matthew Murray’s locomotive Willington, which George studied at Kenton and
Coxlodge colliery on Tyneside, and was constructed in the colliery workshop behind Stephenson's home,
Dial Cottage, on Great Lime Road.

Altogether, Stephenson is said to have produced 16 locomotives at Killingworth, although it has

not proved possible to produce a convincing list of all 16. Of those identified, most were built for use at
Killingworth or for the Hetton colliery railway. A six-wheeled locomotive was built for the Kilmarnock
and Troon Railway in 1817 but was withdrawn from service because of damage to the cast-iron rails.
Another locomotive was supplied to Scott's Pit railroad at Llansamlet, near Swansea, in 1819 but it too
was withdrawn, apparently because it was under-boiled and again caused damage to the track.

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 Joseph Locke

Joseph Locke  was a notable

English civil engineer of the nineteenth
century, particularly associated with
railway projects. He was born
in Attercliffe, Sheffield in Yorkshire,
moving to nearby Barnsley when he was
five. By the age of 17, Joseph had already
served an apprenticeship under William
Stobart at Pelaw, on the south bank of the
Tyne, and under his own father, William.
He was an experienced mining engineer,
able to survey, sink shafts, to construct
railways, tunnels and stationary engines.

George Stephenson carried out the original survey of the line of the Liverpool and Manchester
Railway, but this was found to be flawed, and the line was re-surveyed by a talented young
engineer, Charles Vignoles. Joseph Locke was asked by the directors to carry out another survey of the
proposed tunnel works and produce a report. The report was highly critical of the work already done,
which reflected badly on Stephenson. Stephenson was furious and henceforth relations between the two
men were strained, although Locke continued to be employed by Stephenson, probably because the latter
recognised his worth. Despite the many criticisms of Stephenson's work, when the bill for the new line
was finally passed, in 1826, Stephenson was appointed as engineer and he appointed Joseph Locke as his
assistant to work alongside Vignoles, who was the other assistant. However, a clash of
personalities between Stephenson and Vignoles led to the latter resigning, leaving Locke as the sole
assistant engineer. Locke took over responsibility for the western half of the line. One of the major
obstacles to be overcome was Chat Moss, a large bog that had to be crossed. Although, Stephenson
usually gets the credit for this feat, it is believed that it was Locke who suggested the correct method for
crossing the bog.

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 Social activists of the industrial revolution

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx (1818–83) was born in Germany into an assimilated Jewish family. As a brilliant
young university student, he trained in philosophy and was greatly influenced by the thinking of the
German philosopher, Hegel, who had developed a philosophy of history. He met Frederick Engels
(1820–95), son of a wealthy industrialist, in Paris in 1844 and they became lifelong friends and
intellectual partners. During the revolutions which swept Europe in 1848, they prepared the
Communist Manifesto, an analysis of the emergence of industrial capitalism, a program for its
overthrow and a plan for its replacement by a communist society in which the workers owned all
enterprises and took over the reins of government. During the 20th century, these ideas became the
basis for communist revolutions and states from Russia to Cuba.

Marx and Engels were early critics of the effects of the modern factory system, predicting its
end as the workers rose up and took control of a system which exploited them so badly and treated
them as appendages to machines.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels describe the emergence of a new industrial
society and the unequal relationships between its different social classes. This inequality, they
believed, would breed hostility between two most important classes, the ruling or bourgeois class,
which owned the ‘means of production’, and the working class or proletarians, who were worked to
the bone to create the wealth of the bourgeoisie.

“[T]he modern working class … [is] a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work …
These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of
commerce, and are exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of proletarians has lost
all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of
the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is
required of him …

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 Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great
factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like
soldiers. As privates in the industrial army they are placed under the command of the perfect
hierarchy of officers and sergeants … They are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the
overseer, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this
despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and more
embittering it is …”

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 Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam was a significant figure in

the timeframe of the Industrial Revolution and is
remembered today as a famous writer and social critic. 
For example, he wrote some of the most famous stories in
the English language and his stories are still read and
studied today.  More specifically, he wrote: ‘Oliver
Twist’, ‘A Christmas Carol’, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and
‘Great Expectations’.  Many of his stories focused in on
the realties of life for working-class people in industrial
England.  As such, his works are often considered to be a critique on government policy in England during
the Industrial Revolution.

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England on February 7th, 1812.  As a child, Charles
Dickens is said to have read continually and had a fairly positive childhood afforded by his father’s (John
Dickens) work as a Navy Pay Officer.  Despite this, the family was actually quite poor due to his parents
overspending and living beyond their means.  Because of this, the Dickens family incurred a great deal of
debt and by the time Charles Dickens was twelve years old, his father had been sent to prison for not
being able to pay back these debts. Charles’ mother (Elizabeth), and seven siblings were sent away in
hopes of a better life, but Charles, being the eldest boy, was sent to work in a blacking factory. The job
involved putting labels on pots, and paid Dickens just six shillings per week. The conditions of the
blacking factory were horrible, and Dickens was often cold and very lonely whilst working. After three
years of hard work, he was lucky to be able to return to school.  His experience in the factory, as a child
laborer, was important as it served as inspiration for several of his stories, including: Oliver Twist and A
Christmas Carol.

One of his most famous works include Oliver Twist, which was about the young boys who
worked as chimney sweepers. This was, in a way, reflective of his childhood. His works gave the reader a
glimpse of how difficult it was to live and work during this time in history where everything converted
from traditional, manual labour to machine-driven, highly-productive labour and often more dangerous
and life threatening.

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17
 Social effects of the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution created a great deal of change in society. One major change was the
shift from work being done at home by hand in cottage industries to work being done in factories. There
were harsh and unsafe working conditions in these early factories. The machines posed a significant threat
to workers’ lives. Even more deadly was work performed in coal mines. Owners of mines and factories
had considerable control over the lives of laborers who worked long hours for low pay. An average
worker would work 14 hours a day, six days a week. Fearful of losing their jobs, workers would typically
not complain about the horrible conditions and low pay. Owners realized that they could pay women and
children less than men. Child labor increased because it kept the costs of production low and the profits
high. As a result, the working class lived in poverty, while the bosses who made up the middle class grew
wealthy.

During the 1800s, working

people began to demand reforms.
Workers joined together in
voluntary labor associations called
unions. A union represented
workers in a particular trade.
Unions engaged in collective
bargaining as well as negotiations
between workers and their
employers. Unions would ask for
better working conditions, fewer
hours, and higher pay. One of the
greatest tools of labor unions was
worker-organized strikes, refusing
to work if demands were not met.
Unions also lobbied for laws to
improve the lives of workers,
including women and children. By
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 the 1830s and 1840s, the British and U.S.
governments began to pass laws protecting
workers. The earliest laws focused on
helping child labors. Though it was a very
slow process, eventually laws would help
all workers.

The Industrial Revolution had

many positive effects. Among those was
an increase in wealth, the production of
goods, and the standard of living. People
had access to healthier diets, better
housing, and cheaper goods. In addition,
education increased during the Industrial
Revolution. Due in part to the Edward
Jenner’s invention of the smallpox vaccine
and Louis Pasteur’s discovery of bacteria,
health care increased, and people began to
live longer. The middle and upper classes
benefited immediately from the Industrial
Revolution. For workers, it took much longer. However during the 1800s, workers formed labor unions
and gained higher wages and better working conditions. As a result, they began to see the benefits of the
Industrial Revolution as well.

The Industrial Revolution marked a dramatic change for women as many of them entered the work
force for the first time. Women had to compete with men for jobs. Female factory workers often made
only one-third as much as men. Women began leading reforms to change this. As women became more
involved in politics, some began to demand suffrage, the right to vote. By 1918, Great Britian granted
women over 30 the right to vote. The United States granted women suffrage with the passing of the 19th
amendment in 1920.

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 Bibliography

 Acemoglu, D, S Johnson, and J A Robinson (2005), “The Rise of Europe:

Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Economic Growth”
 Allen, R C (2009), The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective,
New York: Cambridge University Press.
 Fernihough, A, and K H O'Rourke (2014), “Coal and the European Industrial
Revolution”, NBER Working Paper no. 19802.
 Anderson Adam "Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of
Commerce"
 Philip Riden "The Output of the British Iron Industry before 1870"
 Marx Karl, and Frederick Engels. 1848 (1973). ‘Manifesto of the Communist
Party.’

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 Web resources

 https://www.lcps.org/cms/lib4/VA01000195/Centricity/Domain/10599/Social
%20Effects%20of%20the%20Industrial%20Revolution.pdf
 https://www.thoughtco.com/iron-in-the-industrial-revolution-1221637
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Cartwright
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stephenson
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Locke
 https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-3/karl-marx-and-fredrick-
engels-on-industrial-capitalism
 https://www.historycrunch.com/charles-dickens.html#/

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