Notes
Outline
The Industrial Revolution.
When?
1780-1830.
Was it a “revolution”?
No: Cameron.
Yes: Landes.
The Industrial Revolution.
Industrialization vs. economic growth.
U. S. wealthier than Britain in 1800, but little industrialization.
Growth can come from improvements in traditional activities, e.g., agriculture.
Per capita growth not “revolutionary” during industrial revolution.
Steady balanced growth.
But denominator growing rapidly.
Increased output sustains rapid population growth.
Did growth in “new” sectors contribute to growth in “old” sectors?
The Industrial Revolution.
Technological transformations.
Energy: animal to water and steam power.
Materials: wood to iron and steel.
Organizational Transformation.
The factory system.
Britain in 1700.
Population on England and Wales: 5.2 million.
Would grow to 9.1 million by 1800.
Would almost double again to 17.8 million by 1850.
Britain in 1700.
Britain in 1700.
Increased extent of the market.
Large internal market.
Merchant fleet spurs international trade.
Relative wealth of peasantry.
Focus on standardized, low-cost items.
Useful also in trade with Asia, Africa, and Americas.
Quantity not quality: search for lower costs.
Manufacture in 1700.
Local crafts shops.
But pressure on urban guilds from rural industry.
The putting-out system.
Woolens dominate.
70% of English exports in 1700.
50% in 1770.
Not localized: spread all over England.
Link to labor freed by enclosure.
The putting-out system.
Merchant clothier.
Commissions spinners and weavers.
Provides wool.
Hires workers for finishing and dyeing.
Cottagers.
Own tools: handloom, spinning wheels.
Division of labor within household.
Men weave, women spin.
Children and hired labor.
Paid on piece-rate basis.
May have garden, cows, etc.
Continue to participate in agriculture.
Early textile innovation.
John Kay’s flying shuttle (1733).
The cotton textile industry.
Cotton arrives in Britain from India.
Efficient, skill-intensive hand production.
Instant popularity of colorful calicoes.
Woolens industry clamors for protection.
Act of 1700 forbids import of printed fabrics.
Act of 1719 forbids wearing calicoes.
British entrepreneurs seize opportunity.
Using linen for warp and cotton for weft.
Ancient right to produce fustian.
The cotton textile industry.
Import prohibitions encourage development of indigenous British cotton textile industry.
Originally, cotton cloth produced by domestic system, on woolens model.
Rise of the “fustian masters.”
Tendency of weaving to concentrate.
Manchester and Lancashire.
Favorable ground for mechanical invention.
Cotton more easily mechanized than wool.
Trajectory of mass production.
Innovation in cotton spinning.
Hargreaves’ jenny.
Patented 1770.
Basically a multi-spindle spinning wheel.
Powered by a single human.
Innovation in cotton spinning.
Hargreaves’ machines smashed by angry spinners.
Patent held invalid.
Hargreaves flees to Nottingham and dies in 1778.
By 1788, 20,000 jennies in England.
Completely ousts spinning wheel in Lancashire, which gives up wool for cotton.
Innovation in cotton spinning.
Itinerant barber and hair merchant.
Persuades Nottingham hosiers to back large-scale water-driven factories.
Makes strong warp thread, allowing all-cotton cloth.
Arkwright dies with a fortune of £500,000.
Innovation in cotton spinning.
Combined principles of water frame and jenny.
Produced thread with fineness of jenny and strength of water frame.
A “dominant design”: improved but never superseded until the late nineteenth century.
Innovation in cotton spinning.
Innovation in weaving.
Power loom: Edmund Cartwright (1787).
Catches on slowly as engineering standards improve.
Speed/breakage tradeoff.
Technical advantage of 7.5:1 by 1820.
Single operative tends more looms rather than increased output per loom.
The British textile industry.
Import substitution turns into export powerhouse.
Leads British economic growth into 19th century.
Surpasses woolen trade as principal export by 1803.
More export oriented than woolens.
Britain surpasses India in 1790 as largest exporter of calico, not to be overtaken until 1933 (by Japan).