part0026

The history of the industrial revolution shows how that power passed from the king and the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal schooling reinforced this tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people. For the masses promised to become king.

(Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda )

Science had come full force into European life by the 18th century. Building upon the mathematical and physical principles established by their predecessors, Europe’s best minds were able to create powerful machines intended to increase the labor capacity of its workers. These machines not only made it possible for craftspeople and tradespeople to produce fabrics, foods, and tools more quickly than ever, but they also changed the entire way Europe’s labor force worked.

Until that point, the working people of the continent had used virtually the same techniques as their ancestors, going back generations. Farmworkers plowed with iron tools dragged by horses and oxen then sowed seeds and waited for their crops to grow. In the meantime, they cared for vegetable gardens and livestock, including dairy animals. In the summer and autumn, farmers worked long hours cutting and hauling hay and grain and processing the cereals they harvested from the fields. Winter was a long and well-earned rest before the work started again in the spring.

While men mostly spent their time in the field or working with metals, women did most of the textile work that kept Europe clothed and warm. Traditional wool had been eclipsed by the use of cotton, which was mostly imported from the United States of America. These imports were briefly stalled in the late 18th century during the American Revolution, in which the United States fought against Britain to shake off the imperial rule of the crown, but it picked up again quickly as both sides depended heavily on the cotton trade. Once the United States won the war, it was necessary to continue cotton sales to help recoup the expenses of the military campaign.

With the advent of machines like Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, workers were able to turn out swathes of clean cotton much more quickly. His invention, patented in the United States in 1794, mechanically separated cotton fibers from their seeds, a process that was painstaking and tedious when done by hand. [168] The cleaned cotton fibers were then brushed and spun into threads, which were either sold in spools or used to weave bolts of fabric. These bolts and spools were exported to Europe, along with raw, unprocessed cotton. The latter was considerably cheaper; therefore, it was the choice of many budget-conscious European manufacturers.

Unprocessed cotton or wool was brought to factories mostly in Great Britain, Germany, and Spain, where large textile plants had been constructed. Thanks to the 1764 invention of James Hargreaves of England, spinning no longer depended on slow tools like drop-spindles as it had in the Middle Ages. Hargreaves’ spinning jenny allowed Europe’s mostly female textile workers to create eight threads at once, instead of one. [169] As the invention was fine-tuned, those initial eight threads increased to as many as 120. The spinning jenny and cotton gin, combined with John Kay’s 1733 flying shuttle, completely revolutionized the textile manufacturing process from a cottage industry into a huge manufacturing endeavor. [170]

Though textiles were the main objective of these early industrial capitalists, each of their large-scale businesses was founded on another major invention: the steam engine. Before universal electrical networks, heavy machinery was powered by engines based on a design by Thomas Savery. Savery’s invention, the Miner’s Friend, was built in 1698 to pump water out of a coal mine using the power of superheated steam. The original device was only useful to a certain depth, but the revamped model—invented by Thomas Newcomen and his assistant John Calley in 1712—included a piston to control the movements of a mechanical pump. [171] The improved steam engine was soon used to power everything from the cotton gin to the power loom.

To heat the water and create enough steam to keep a factory full of machines running all day, industrialists needed a lot of coal. Because of the endless need for coal, the mining industry boomed alongside the factory textile industry, and in the space of just a few decades, England was transformed. Sheffield and York were consumed by factories, smokestacks, black smoke, and soot. The pollution pouring out from the spinning, weaving, and sewing factories stuck to homes and public buildings, thickening the air and devastating the air quality of the cities. With citizens choking whenever they went outside, laws were put in place that required factories to build their chimneys higher and higher, dumping the smoke into the clouds to theoretically disperse.

Independent workers and craftspeople were quickly outpaced by the unprecedented output of factory spinners, weavers, and clothmakers. Factory owners packed machines and operators into commercial spaces by the dozens and then by the hundreds, trying to turn bigger and bigger profits. The early days in the Industrial Revolution were disorderly and dangerous, characterized by machine malfunctions, serious accidents, and poorly paid employees. Industry on such a massive scale had never been attempted before, and there were as many problems as there were benefits. Workers struggled with long hours, no health care, and very little training on the machines.

In Great Britain, where the industrial cities of Sheffield and York led the way for the rest of the continent in terms of industry and commercialism, it was a time of incredible growth in terms of cityscapes, population, and even the concept of equality and women’s rights. From one perspective, the Industrial Revolution gave the women of Europe the chance to earn a living for themselves and practice independence out in the city. On the other hand, both women and men were massively undervalued by their employers. Workers began to unionize and make demands of their employers to keep them safe and reasonably paid, and by 1833, Britain’s Factory Act was passed by Parliament. [172]

The Factory Act improved conditions somewhat for early 19th -century laborers, but its standards were shockingly low in comparison with modern industry. One of its tenets, for example, was the rule that no children under the age of nine years could be employed. Of the remaining children—and there were thousands—those under the age of 13 were allowed to work up to 9 hours a day. Children 13 to 18 could work up to 12 hours per day. Conditions were often horrible for adults and children working in these factories, with few breaks and hot, uncomfortable working environments.

Following the Factory Act, inspectors were meant to be on site at every factory to ensure the rules were followed; unfortunately, not even this rule was strictly enforced. The following is a testimony of one such inspector upon visiting a factory without an appointment:

My Lord, in the case of Taylor, Ibbotson & Co., I took the evidence from the mouths of the boys themselves. They stated to me that they commenced working on Friday morning, the 27th of May last, at six A.M., and that, with the exception of meal hours and one hour at midnight extra, they did not cease working till four o’clock on Saturday evening, having been two days and a night thus engaged. Believing the case scarcely possible, I asked every boy the same questions, and from each received the same answers. [173]

Conditions were rarely better in Germany and Spain, where textiles, glassware, and ironworks were being produced in factories. Germany was rich in iron ore and coal deposits, making it an ideal center of industry. The Napoleonic Wars contributed to the lag German industrialists experienced next to their British counterparts, but in the mid-19th century, it was already surpassing Great Britain in terms of output. In the Friedrich Wilhelm Ironworks near Mulheim in Germany, workers used the most modern British methods to streamline the production of high-quality iron. They burned a distilled form of coal, called coke, to more effectively smelt iron from iron ore. Not only did this innovation create pure, high-grade iron, but the emissions produced by burning coke were much cleaner than coal.

Coke-fueled smelting ovens were constructed to keep the iron separate from the fire’s fuel, unlike Iron Age forgers who believed coal made the end product stronger. Keeping the iron free of additives turned out to be a much better method. Friedrich Harkort and Hermann Dietrich Piepenstock also created the puddling process to produce their iron, which increased output even more. Puddling was usually done by simply stirring the molten metal to expose it to oxygen, thereby burning off the excess carbon. These and other smelting innovations resulted in a purity so fine it needed a new name: steel.

The steel form of iron was much stronger than other iron alloys, which made it perfect for industrial-scale building. Ships, skyscrapers, bridges, factories, warehouses, stoves, and furnaces were constructed with the new material, physically changing the European urban landscape even further. Buildings were bigger and stronger, which inspired architects and designers to ever greater heights. While the first part of the Industrial Revolution used mass-produced fine iron purely for infrastructure, the latter part introduced the material in new, more artistic ways.

1779 saw the construction of the aptly named Iron Bridge at Shropshire, England. [174] A century later, in 1889, Gustave Eiffel’s iron tower was constructed in central Paris as a kind of memento of the age. It marked the new era of industry and capitalism. [175]