CHAPTER IV

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

THE great religious and political revolutions which England had undergone since the Middle Ages had left the country still mediæval in its main features. The English people continued to live, work, and travel in very much the same way as they had in the day of King John. If a larger portion of the people lived in towns than in that day, still they were not the factory towns which one sees now, but rather overgrown country villages. Over a vast portion of the country one could see traces of medieval economy in the primitive common field system of agriculture. Even those who were not engaged in tilling the soil were often not entirely divorced from it, but spent a portion of their time away from their industries working in the fields. The majority of the people were as ignorant as they had been centuries before, and as excluded from the political life of the nation as the peasant in the day when Magna Carta was signed. Suddenly there was introduced a series of inventions which completely altered the old ways of living and working. The cottage workshops gave place to great factories in which were collected the thousands of workmen whose hand-instruments of production were rendered obsolete by the steam engine. Production which had hitherto been carried on for use or exchange in a restricted market gave place to production in which profit was the driving motive. The intellectual and economic rigidity of the Middle Ages was broken by steadily intensifying competition, shifting of population, and constant changes in technical processes. Two new classes sprang rapidly into existence, the owners of the new factories and the workers in them. This far-reaching revolution, whose undreamt-of possibilities are not yet realized, lies

at the bottom of the great political, reform, imperial, and literary movements of the nineteenth century. To study these without their economic foundations is to miss the underlying forces of modern history.

1. The Opening of a New Era1

The period, which opened with Arkwright's mechanical inventions, has been the commencement of a new era in the economic history, not only of England, but of the whole world. It marked one of the great stages in the growth of human power to master nature. The discovery of the New World, and of the sea route to India, had been events which gradually altered the whole method and scale on which European commerce was carried on. The application of water-power and of steam, to do the work which had been previously accomplished by human drudgery, is comparable with the commercial revolution of the sixteenth century, as a new departure of which we do not even yet see the full significance. Physical forces have been utilized so as to aid man in his work; and the introduction of machinery continues slowly, but surely, to revolutionize the habits and organizations of industrial life in all parts of the globe. Half-civilized and barbarous peoples are compelled to have recourse, as far as may be, to modern weapons and modern means of communication; they cannot hold aloof, or deny themselves the use of such appliances. But the adoption of modern methods of production and traffic is hardly consistent with the maintenance of the old social order, in any country on this earth.

England was the pioneer of the application of mechanism to industry, and thus became the workshop of the world, so that other countries have been inspired by her example. The policy of endeavoring to retain the advantages of machinery for England alone was mooted, but never very seriously pursued, and it was definitely abandoned in 1825. The changes which have taken place in England, during the last hundred and thirty years, at least suggest the direction of the movements which may be expected in other lands, as they are drawn more and more to adapt themselves to modern conditions. The time has not yet come to write the history of the industrial revolution in its broader aspects,

1 Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce (1903), Vol. II, Part 2, pp. 609 ff. By permission cf Dr. Cunningham and the Cambridge University Press.

for we only know the beginning of the story; we can trace the origin and immediate results in England, but we cannot yet gauge its importance for the world as a whole.

§ 2. Reasons for English Leadership

It was not an accident that England took the lead in this matter; the circumstances of the day afforded most favorable conditions for the successful introduction of new appliances. Inventions and discoveries often seem to be merely fortuitous; men are apt to regard the new machinery as the outcome of a special and uncontrollable burst of inventive genius in the eighteenth century. But we are not forced to be content with such a meagre explanation. To point out that Arkwright and Watt were fortunate in the fact that the times were ripe for them, is not to detract from their merits. There had been many ingenious men from the time of William Lee and Dodo Dudley, but the conditions of their day were unfavorable to their success. The introduction of expensive implements, or processes, involves a large outlay; it is not worth while for any man, however energetic, to make the attempt, unless he has a considerable command of capital, and has access to large markets. In the eighteenth century these conditions were being more and more realized. The institution of the Bank of England, and of other banks, had given a great impulse to the formation of capital; and it was much more possible than it had ever been before for a capable man to obtain the means of introducing costly improvements in the management of his business. It had become apparent, too, that the long-continued efforts to build up the maritime power of England had been crowned with success; she had established commercial connections with all parts of the globe, and had access to markets that were practically unlimited. Under these circumstances, enterprising men were willing to run the risk of introducing expensive novelties, and inventors could reasonably hope to reap advantage themselves from the improvements they suggested.

In the seventeenth century such an expansion had hardly been possible at all; the dominant principles were still in favor of a well-ordered trade, to be maintained by securing special concessions; the interlopers, who were prepared to contest such privileges and to force their business on any terms they could, were still regarded as injurious to the sound and healthy development of commerce. But after the revolution, England entered on a new

phase of mercantile life; and the keen competition which had been allowed free play temporarily during the Interregnum, with disastrous results, came to be accepted as the ordinary atmosphere of trade. The principles, which the interlopers had practised, were being more generally adopted, and all merchants became agreed that it was by pushing their wares, and selling goods that were better and cheaper than those of other countries, that new markets could be opened up and old ones retained. The "well-ordered trade" of the merchant companies would hardly have afforded sufficient scope for the introduction of mechanical improvements in manufacturing. In the civic commerce of the Middle Ages, and during the seventeenth century, merchants had looked to well-defined and restricted markets in which they held exclusive rights. So long as this was the case, attempts were made to carry on industrial production so as just to meet these limited requirements, and to secure conditions for the artisan, by guarding him from competition and authoritatively assessing his wages. As merchants and manufacturers realized that they could best gain and keep foreign markets, not by special privileges, but by supplying the required goods at low rates, they aimed at introducing the conditions of manufacture under which industrial expansion is possible. This opinion commended itself more and more to men of business and legislators, but it penetrated slowly among the artisans, who preferred the stability of the life they enjoyed under a system of regulation and restriction. Workmen were inclined to oppose the introduction of machinery in so far as it tended to upset the old-established order of the realm, while others seem to have hoped that machinery would confer on England a monopoly of industrial power so that she would be able to dictate her own terms to foreign purchasers, and to rear up a new exclusive system.

$3. Decline of the Regulative Policy

The old ideas, which had given rise to the trade institutions of the Middle Ages, and which had continued to be dominant in the seventeenth century, were not dead at the opening of the nineteenth century, but they no longer appealed either to the capitalist classes or to the intelligence of Parliament. No authoritative attempt was made to recast the existing regulations so as to suit the changing conditions. To do so was not really practicable; only two courses lay open to the legislators. They could either forbid the introduction of machinery, as Charles I had done, for

fear that people would be thrown out of work, or they could smooth the way for the introduction of the new methods by removing the existing barriers. The House of Commons chose the latter alternative, since the members had come to regard all efforts to prevent the use of mechanical appliances as alike futile and inexpedient.

In the absence of any enforcement of the old restrictions, in regard to the hours and terms of employment, the difficulties of the transition were intensified; and the laborers, who had never been subjected to such misery under the old régime, agitated for the thorough enforcement of the Elizabethan laws. The working classes, for the most part, took their stand on the opinions as to industrial policy which had been traditional in this country, and were embodied in existing legislation. To the demand of the capitalist for perfect freedom for industrial progress, the laborers were inclined to reply by taking an attitude of impracticable conservatism; it was not till many years had elapsed, and freedom for economic enterprise had been secured, that serious attempts were made, from an entirely different point of view, to control the new industrial system so that its proved evils should be reduced to a minimum. The artisans were so much attached to the traditional methods of securing the well-being of the laborer that they hung aloof for a time from the humanitarian effort to remedy particular abuses by new legislation.

84. Extent and Character of the Industrial Changes

We have no adequate means of gauging the rapidity and violence of the industrial revolution which occurred in England during the seventy years from 1770 to 1840; it commenced with the changes in the hardware trades, which have been already described, but the crisis occurred when inventive progress extended to the textile trades. Despite the gradual development, it seems likely enough that, while centuries passed, there was little alteration in the general aspect of England; but the whole face of the country was changed by the industrial revolution. In 1770 there was no Black Country, blighted by the conjunction of coal and iron trades; there were no canals, or railways, and no factory towns with their masses of population. The differentiation of town and country had not been carried nearly so far as it is to-day. All the familiar features of our modern life, and all its most pressing problems, have come to the front within the last century and a quarter.