Period of CHAPTER XXIV THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 222. Modern Industrialism THE year 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence and of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, also marks, approximately, the commencement of the Industrial the Industrial Revolution. No other word except "revolution" Revolution so well describes those wholesale changes in manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and other industries which, within a century and a half, have transformed modern life. This revolution originated in Great Britain, spread after 1815 to the Continent and the United States, and now extends throughout the civilized world. Colonial Revolution The rapid expansion of European peoples over Africa, Asia, Australia, and America, as described in the preceding chapter, was itself largely an outcome of the Industrial expansion and Revolution. Improvements in means of transthe Industrial portation — railroads, canals, steam navigation by facilitating travel permitted an extensive emigration from Europe into other continents. Improved communication—the telegraph and the telephone - by annihilating distance made easier the occupation and government of remote dependencies. The growth of manufacturing in Europe also gave increased importance to colonies as sources of supply for raw materials and foodstuffs, as markets for finished goods, and as places of investment for the surplus wealth accumulated by the capitalists whom the Industrial Revolution created. The Industrial Revolution also created a numerous body of wage-earners, who moved from rural districts and villages into the factories, sweatshops, and tenements of the great cities. There, in spite of a crowded, miserable existence they Democracy Revolution gradually learned the value of organization. They formed trade unions in order to secure higher wages and shorter hours. They read newspapers, listened to speeches by agitators, and began to press for laws which would and the improve their lot. Then they went further and Industrial demanded the right to vote, to hold office, to enjoy all the liberty and equality which the bourgeoisie or middle class had won from monarchs and aristocrats. The Industrial Revolution furnished much of the driving power for the revolutionary outbreaks of 1830 and 1848, and especially for that democratic movement which has been so marked in Europe since 1871. It thus reinforced the new ideas of democracy introduced into the world by the American and French revolutions. tion in Great Britain Great Britain took the lead in the Industrial Revolution. Her damp climate proved to be very favorable to the manufacture of textiles, her swift streams supplied The Indusabundant water power for machinery, and beneath trial Revoluher soil lay stores of coal and iron ore. There were other favoring circumstances. Industry in Great Britain was less fettered by guild restrictions than on the Continent. She possessed more surplus capital for investment, more skilled laborers, and a larger merchant marine than any other country. Furthermore, Great Britain had emerged from the Seven Years' War victorious over all her rivals for maritime and commercial supremacy. Her trade in the markets of the world grew by leaps and bounds after 1763. The enormous demand for British goods in its turn stimulated the mechanical genius of British artisans and so produced the era of the great inventions. 223. The Great Inventions Man has advanced from the lowest savagery to the height of civilization chiefly through invention. Beginning in prehistoric times, he slowly discovered how to Invention supplement hands and feet and teeth and nails. by the use of tools. From the tool it was a forward step to the machine, which, when supplied with muscular energy, only needed to be directed by man to do his work. The highest type of machine is that driven by the stored-up forces of nature by wind, waterfall, steam, gas, or electricity. Such machines have been well described as non-human slaves, working without wages and without fatigue. of invention A list of prehistoric tools and machines would include many kinds of implements, first of stone and then of metal; levers, Development rollers, and wedges; bows-and-arrows, slings, and lassos; oars, sails, and rudders; fishing nets, lines, and hooks; the plow and the wheeled cart; the needle, bellows, and potter's wheel; the distaff and spindle for spinning; and the hand loom for weaving. Few important additions were made to this list in antiquity, even by such cultivated peoples as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. The Middle Ages were also singularly barren of inventions. It was only toward the close of the medieval period that gunpowder, the mariner's compass, paper, and movable type reached Europe from Asia. More progress took place during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which produced the telescope, microscope, thermometer, and barometer, clocks and watches run by weights, sawmills driven by wind or water, an improved form of the windmill, and the useful though humble wheelbarrow. Manufacturing, transportation, and agriculture continued, however, to be carried on in much the same rude way as before the dawn of history. The revolution in manufacturing began with the textile industry. Old-fashioned spinning was a slow, laborious process. Old-fashioned The wool, flax, or cotton, having been fastened to spinning a stick called the distaff, was twisted by hand into yarn or thread and wound upon a spindle. The spinning wheel -long known in India and not unknown in Europe as early as the fourteenth century. afterwards came into general use. It enabled the operator by working a treadle to make two threads at once, one in each hand. Weaving was done on the hand loom, a wooden frame to which vertical threads (the "warp") were attached. Hori zontal threads (the "woof") were then inserted by means of an enlarged needle or shuttle. The invention of the "flying shuttle" (1733) enabled the operator by pulling Old-fashioned a cord to jerk the shuttle back and forth without weaving the aid of an assistant. This device not only saved labor but also doubled the speed HARGREAVES'S "SPINNING JENNY" better machine than the spinning wheel. At length, in 1770 James Hargreaves, a poor workman of Lancashire in north ARKWRIGHT'S SPINNING MACHINE ern England, patented what he named the "spinning jenny," in compliment to his industrious wife. It was a very simple affair, operated by a hand wheel, but it carried (at first) eight spindles and thus spun eight threads simultaneously. Meanwhile, Richard Arkwright, a barber, obtained a patent for a spinning machine run by water power and hence called the "water frame." In this machine The "water frame" 1769, and the "mule," 1779 the cotton was drawn out by rollers to the requisite fineness and was then twisted into thread by revolving spindles. Samuel Crompton, ten years later, combined the essential features of the Hargreaves and Arkwright machines into what became popularly known as the "mule," because of its hybrid origin. It has been steadily improved; and at present a spinning machine may carry as many as two thousand spindles. The power loom, 1785 These three inventions again upset the balance in the textile industry, for the spinners could produce more thread and yarn than the weavers could convert into cloth. The invention which revolutionized weaving was made by Edward Cartwright, an English clergyman, who had never even seen a weaver at work. He constructed a loom with an automatic shuttle operated by water power. Improvements in this machine now enable a single operator to produce more cloth than two hundred men could weave on the old-fashioned hand loom. The cotton gin, 1794 Both spinners and weavers needed for the new machinery an abundant supply of raw material. They found it in cotton, which previously had been much less used than either wool or flax. Eli Whitney's cotton gin, patented in 1794, separated the seeds from the cotton fibers more rapidly than fifty negro slaves could do it by hand, thus stimulating enormously the production of cotton for the mills of Great Britain. Cotton manufacture soon became and still remains the leading industry of that country. Many inventors working independently in England, France, and the United States produced the sewing machine. Elias The sewing Howe, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, patented machine, 1846 the first effective lockstitch machine in 1846. Henceforth it was rapidly improved and adapted to every variety of work, from making button-holes to the manufacture of carpets and shoes. The sewing machine run by hand or foot keeps an indispensable place in the home, but in factories steam or electricity provides the motive power. The expansive force of steam, though known in antiquity, had been first put to practical use at the close of the seventeenth century. The earliest steam engine was simply a pump for |