jueves, 23 de octubre de 2014
Essays about industrial revolution (4)
Topic: Rural vs. Urban life
Industrialization occurred first in Great Britain. The effect of industrialization was to transform
agricultural societies into industrial societies. Technology had made it possible the
development of machines which raised worker productivity and promoted the
growth of large scale industrial enterprises. Manufactured products could be
turned out more quickly and cheaply than before. In the long run, standards of
living were improved in much of the world. It also generated substantial social
change, which at time became unsettling, even violent. It encouraged
urbanization and migration to cities; although at times city dwellers who
worked in factories lived in squalid conditions. The problems of early
industrial workers led to a number of calls for reform by social critics.
On the one hand, with new shopping districts, houses, transportation,
theatres, taverns, hospitals, prisons and marriage markets, the
eighteenth-century town was both an exciting and dangerous place to live. In
the 1700s, England became the most urbanized of all European countries and
boasted the largest capital city in the world.
Most towns possessed remarkably
young populations. Young people were drawn to urban areas by the offer of
regular and full-time employment, and by the entertainments that were on offer
there: the theatres, inns and pleasure gardens, for example. London in
particular was flooded with thousands of young people every year, many of whom worked
as apprentices to the capital’s thousands of tradesmen. Other new arrivals
gained employment as domestic servants to aristocratic families that began
spending much of their time in elegantly built town houses. Many towns were
grimy, over-crowded and generally insanitary places to be. London in particular
suffered badly from dirt and pollution.
On the other hand, the crisis of the rural cottage industry, the
independent farmer buying local supplies and selling in the local market, led
the shift to an urban way of life and the village youth quit their clean
healthy fields for a region of dirt, stink, and noise. Meanwhile this century
had brought developments of agriculture and the spread of these encouraged experiments in new
methods of planting. The enclosing of land by hedges was prevalent among the
farmers of England. It was frequently legalized by the passing of Enclosure
Acts by Parliament. The land was then re-divided; each tenant had his own
fields in one locality and cut them off from those of his neighbors by neat
hedges. The disadvantages were that the poor landless laborers, who
were used to pasture his
beast on the open common, found it closed against him and the yeoman could be
ousted by the man able to afford the rent of a large enclosed farm.
.jpg)
Despite
this fact, the number of small farmers increased rather than diminished during
this enclosure period, and the new agricultural methods must have provided
plenty of employment.
To sum up, England's commercial boom affected the rural regions and small
villages, and it did so in two significant ways. First, the government imposed
Enclosure Acts encouraged emigration from the villages to the cities. This was
done to meet the increased food demands of the growing population. As a result,
capitalist farmers, often tenants of wealthy landlords came to dominate a world
where all below them were reduced to landless labourers. Second, the higher
wages offered by the urban centers attracted the rural poor. The quantity and
variety of commercial goods coming into and displayed in the cities drew the
attention of those in pursuit of material possessions.
Topic: Transport
.jpg) |
Firstly, transport was greatly improved during the 18th century. Groups of
rich men formed turnpike trusts. Acts of Parliament gave them the right to
improve and maintain certain roads. Travelers had to pay tolls to use them so
as to help to pay the money borrowed to repair the roads. Turnpikes trusts set
up gates on either end of their roads where tolls could be collected. The first
turnpikes were created as early as 1663 but they became far more common in the
18th century.
.jpg)
The earliest railways were wagonways linking coal mines to nearby
navigable rivers. These had wooden rails on which flanged wheels ran. In the
1760s, cast iron plates were laid on the top of the wooden rails and in 1780s a
new system was developed, the plateway where the wagons had unflanged wheels
and the flange was cast ton to the track. This system proved unsatisfactory in
long term because the cast iron plates were liable to break and also because
the track was liable to collect stones or other debris.
Secondly, some rivers, such as the Thames, Severn and Trent were
naturally navigable, at least in their lower reaches. Other rivers were
improved during the 17th and early 18th centuries, improving the transport
links of towns such as Manchester, Wigan, Hereford, and Newbury in England. However, these only provided links towards the coast, not
across the heart of England. It was the canals which were to provide the vital
links in the transport network. As Industrial Revolution canal mania swept
the country, Sankey Brook Navigation, authorized by Acts of Parliament in 1755,
1762 and 1830, opened in 1757 and was probably the first true English canal. It
was in 1759 that Duke of Bridgewater decided to build a canal to bring coal
from his estate at Worsley to Manchester. He employed an engineer called James
Brindley. When it was completed the Bridgewater canal halved the price of coal
in Manchester. Many more canals were dug in the late 18th. They played a major
role in the industrial revolution by making it cheaper to transport goods.
Finally, early railways consisted of wooden tracks linking coal mines to
rivers and canals. Carriages were pulled by horses. The railway industry
developed rapidly once James Watt´s steam engine technology was applied to the
railway. The first steam engine locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in
1804. This train ran on smooth metal rails. The next successful steam
locomotives were the Salamanca built by Matthew Murray in 1812. Railways became
a popular and effective mode of transportation. The main benefit of railways
was the speed at which goods could be transported. Other type of transport was
the sailing vessels which had been used for moving goods around the British
coast. The trade transporting coal to London from Newcastle has begun in
medieval times. The major international seaports, such as London, Bristol and
Liverpool were the means by which raw materials might be imported and finished
goods exported.
.jpg)
Topic: bridge between the rich and the poor
In the late 18th century, the industrial revolution began to transform life
in Britain. England was undergoing the painful transition from a rural
agricultural society to becoming a highly urbanized industrial state. This
century had started the process of creating a more solid social and
geographical boundary between classes. Until then, most people lived in the
countryside and made their living from farming. Industrialization led to
dramatic, sometimes unsettling social change. Masses of people moved to cities,
and new social classes developed. Probably half the population lived as
subsistence or bare survival level and a tiny minority of the population lived
in luxury.
.jpg)
First of all, the concept of social class was an idea of a status hierarchy
instead of class society which was a distinguishing key feature in the 18th
Century. This hierarchy determined everything about a person. Among the
differences in these classes were the attitudes that each one exhibited. Owning
land was the main form of wealth in the 18th century. Political power and
influence was in the hands of rich landowners. Social class
structure was composed by the wealthy landowners, the most powerful group and the smallest amount of
the population; gentry, it included
gentlemen, merchants, wealthy tradesmen, and well-off manufacturers; yeoman, those who owned and worked their own land; middle
class, the upper middle class included
professionals and merchants and the lower middle artisans, shopkeepers, and
tradesmen and the laboring poor which
included all who worked in rural areas, did minimal jobs, and the urban
laboring poor.
In addition, family income determined the degree of comfort and security
one enjoyed. The wealthy typically moved to elegant homes in the suburbs
whereas the working poor lived in crowded areas in the center of cities in
shoddy housing. Many lived in overcrowded tenements where family members were
often forced to share the same bed, which increased the likelihood of
incestuous relationships and disease transmission. The few open spaces
contained pigs which lived in their own dung or depositories for human waste.
Despite the improvements in farming food, for ordinary people remained plain
and monotonous and for them meat was a luxury. In England a poor person's food
was mainly bread and potatoes. The rich built great country houses with
immensely comfort and owned beautiful furniture. However, the poor had
none of these things. Craftsmen and laborers lived in 2 or 3 rooms. The poorest
people lived in just one room. Their furniture was very simple and plain.
During the first 60 years of the Industrial Revolution, living conditions
were, by far, worst for the poorest of the poor. In the eyes of the rich, the
poor appeared a different race, linked by a few miles but separated by a
massive cultural chasm.
The gradations between the rich and poor became ever
more numerous, with a growing of respectable poor, labour aristocrats, and middle
classes. Moreover, in the early 18th century England suffered from gin
drinking. Many people ruined their health by drinking gin. Yet for many poor
people drinking gin was their only comfort. Because of this, the very poor were
often regarded as indistinguishable from a criminal or dangerous class had been
carefully squirreled out of sight. This identification of a distinct criminal
class amongst the poor reached its peak in the middle of the century. The
situation improved after 1751 when a tax was imposed on gin and the middling and
artisanal classes had redefined themselves.
Essays about Industrial Revolution (5)
Topic: Children exploitation
.jpg)
During the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Great Britain became the first
country to industrialize. Because of this, it was also the first country where
the nature of children’s work changed so dramatically that child labor became
seen as a social problem and a political issue. Children of poor and
working-class families had worked for centuries before industrialization,
helping around the house or assisting in the family’s enterprise when they were
able. Children performed a variety of tasks that were auxiliary to their
parents but critical to the family economy whereas children as young as four
were employed in production factories with dangerous, and often fatal, working
conditions.
First of all, Factory owners were looking for cheap,
malleable and fast-learning work forces and found them among the children of
the urban workhouses. The two most common forms of child labor were labeled as Parish apprentice children and free labour
children. The Parish apprentice children were some of the first children to be
brought into the factory setting. These were children who had been taken in by
the government and placed in orphanages.
.jpg)
Rich factory owners approached parish
leaders with the idea of them taking in children and feeding, housing and
providing for those children in exchange for the children’s work in their
factories. These children were not paid a wage for the work they did; the
compensation in basic needs was considered enough and in many cases just barely
enough to survive on. These children were subject to unhealthy working
conditions, long hours, and harsh punishment.
The second form
of child labour was the case for many of the mills that were located along
waterways and many times not in the larger cities. The children were often
taken to these mills from larger towns. When the steam engine was
invented and mills moved to larger towns a new option for workers came about,
the children of the lower class. These people were hardly making it by and they
could use any extra income possible.
.jpg)
The factory owners started employing these
children for extremely low wages, in some case a mere penny a day. These
children were given the title of free labour children and they
were hired children to work in these factories preparing and spinning
cotton, flax, wool and silk. Children worked under deplorable conditions and
were being exploited by the industrialists. They worked six days a week without
recess for meals in hot, stuffy, poorly lit, overcrowded factories to earn as
little as four shillings per week.
Summing up, the
Industrial Revolution was a time that brought about major changes to the
manufacturing and economic societies of the entire world. The technological
advances of the time were quite extraordinary but with such advances they
brought a new social order. During this revolution children were one of the
groups that were affected because they were called to work in the factories.
Children became the next best option for the workforce because they were young
and easily taught new task while being obedient and respectful of authority.
Parliament passed several child labor laws, the three laws most impacted were
the Cotton Factories Regulation Act of 1819 (which set the minimum working age
at 9 and maximum working hours at 12), the Regulation of Child Labor Law of
1833 (which established paid inspectors to enforce the laws) and the Ten Hours
Bill of 1847 (which limited working hours to 10 for children and women).
Topic: Technological improvement:
inventions and Industries: cloth, coal, iron
and metal
inventions and Industries: cloth, coal, iron
and metal
The effect of
new technology depends upon which group or class controls it, and for what
purposes it is being used. The most important sector of English manufacturing
at the time was textiles and the mid and late 1700s saw a phenomenal rate of
technological innovation. Some of the most important technical advances (John
Kay's "flying shuttle' developed in 1733, James Hargreaves' 'spinning
jenny' in 1767) involved the automation and taking over by machines of tasks that
had from immemorial time been used by craftsmen. There were two ways in which
these innovations disrupted traditional ways of life of the old 'hand-loom'
weavers based in the countryside.
.jpg)
Firstly, the
first industry to become mechanized was the textile industry. In 1771 Richard
Arkwright opened a cotton-spinning mill with a machine called a water frame,
which was powered by a water mill. Then, in 1779, Samuel Crompton invented a
new cotton-spinning machine called a spinning mule.
.jpg)
Finally in 1785, Edmund
Cartwright invented a loom that could be powered by a steam engine. As a result
of these new inventions cotton production boomed. The new technology could
produce cloth faster and more cheaply than traditional processes. Because of
this, the old hand-loom weavers could not compete with the new machines, their
incomes fell and thousands were plunged into poverty. By the 1820’s, the power
loom had replaced hand weaving. A weaver working two power looms could produce
fifteen times the cloth as the fastest hand weaver. By 1830, 500,000 people
worked in the cotton business. Cotton cloth represented forty percent of
Britain’s export market.
Secondly,
Iron production also grew rapidly. In 1784, Henry Cort (1740-1800) invented a
better way of making wrought iron, the puddling process. Until then men had to
beat red hot iron with hammers to remove impurities while with this process the
iron was melted in an extremely hot furnace and stirred of 'puddled' to remove
impurities. The result was a vast increase in iron production. The introduction
of steam-driven machinery brought new industries or transformed older ones.
Coal was replacing wood as a fuel especially in England and northern France.
New demands stimulated growth in the coal-mining industry and the pressure on
fuel supplies came not only from domestic heating requirements and
metallurgical trades but also from the brickmaking, brewing, dyeing, and
glassmaking industries. Metalworking trades also underwent rapidly. Steel and
steam together led to improvements in transportation technology too.
.jpg)
Traditional weaving had been a family business. With the new
machinery created a new division of labour was implemented. This completely disrupted the old way of life. Weaving
was no longer part of the activity of the family but rather certain members of
the family would be employed as wagelabourers by the employer in the factory which would be some distance away.
The advancement of the textile industry was a key development in Britain's
industrialization. It was consequently this industry that first employed the
factory system.
The raw materials used were essentially the same ones used under the domestic system, mainly featuring wool and cotton. It was possible to make enormous amounts of fabric in less time and for less money. Yet while advancements in this industry brought huge profits, and were therefore very good for the economy.
The raw materials used were essentially the same ones used under the domestic system, mainly featuring wool and cotton. It was possible to make enormous amounts of fabric in less time and for less money. Yet while advancements in this industry brought huge profits, and were therefore very good for the economy.
Life at the beginning and end of the 18th century
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Britain experienced
change in all aspects of life, as a result of the Industrial Revolution.
Scientific advances and technological innovations brought growth in
agricultural and industrial production, economic expansion and changes in
living conditions. The most dramatic changes were witnessed in rural areas,
where the provincial landscape often became urban and industrialized following
advances in agriculture, industry and changes in the life style of most people.
First of all, Agriculture had dominated the British economy for
centuries. During the 18th century, after a long period of enclosures, new
farming systems created an agricultural revolution that produced larger
quantities of crops to feed the increasing population. New tools,
fertilizers and harvesting techniques were introduced, resulting in increased
productivity and agricultural prosperity. Indeed, despite the phenomenon of
urbanization and industrialization, agriculture remained a principal provider
of employment in the provinces, both supporting and being supported by
industry. Geographical specialization of products was established, with
south-eastern England specializing in grain, for example, and Scotland or
Leicestershire in breeding cattle and sheep.
By the mid-18th century, population growth and increasing foreign trade
created a greater demand for manufactured goods. Mass production was achieved
by replacing water and animal power with steam power, and by the invention of
new machinery and technology. Among other innovations, the introduction of
steam power was a catalyst for the Industrial Revolution. The improvements to
the steam engine were crucial for industrial production. Coal became
a key factor in the success of industrialization; it was used to produce the
steam power on which industry depended. Improvements in mining technology
ensured that more coal could be extracted to power the factories and run
railway trains and steamships. Britain’s cotton and metalworking industries
became internationally important, but the manufacture of glass, soap and
earthenware also flourished.
Moreover, the industrial and economic developments of the Industrial
Revolution brought significant social changes. Industrialization resulted in an
increase in population and the phenomenon of urbanization, as a growing number of people moving to urban centres in
search of employment. A class of prosperous industrialists, ship owners and
merchants dominated, accumulating great wealth, but at the same time the
working classes had to live with minimum comforts in overcrowded environments.
Children were sent to work in factories, where they were exploited and
ill-treated; women experienced huge changes in their lifestyle as they took
jobs in domestic service and the textile industries, spending less time in the
family home. This period also saw the creation of a middle class that enjoyed
the benefits of the new prosperity. People started spending their free time
entertaining themselves in theatres, concert halls and sports facilities or
enjoying the countryside.
Summing up, the Industrial Revolution brought fundamental changes in the
British way of life. Scientific innovations and technological improvements
contributed to the advancement of agriculture, industry, shipping and trade and
to the expansion of the economy. With the increase of capital and the need for
credit, banking developed not only in London but also in the countryside.
Industrialists, shipbuilders, merchants and other private manufacturers
established provincial banks and issued paper money in the form of bills of
exchange and notes, primarily in order to provide payment for labour and for
the purchase of raw materials.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)