C HAP TER

21
The Revolution in
Energy and Industry
17801850
CHAPTER LEARNING
OBJECTIVES
After reading and studying this chapter, students
should be able to:
Identify the origins of the Industrial Revolution
in Britain, and explain how it developed between
1780 and 1850.
Discuss the response of continental countries to
the challenge of industrialization after 1815.
Analyze the impact of the Industrial Revolution
on social classes, the standard of living, patterns of
work, and the measures taken to improve conditions
of workers.

ANNOTATED CHAPTER
OUTLINE
The following annotated chapter outline will help
you review the major topics covered in this chapter.
I.

The Industrial Revolution in Britain

A. Eighteenth-Century Origins
1. The industrial changes that occurred
between 1780 and 1850 grew out of a long
process of development.
2. The expanding Atlantic economy of the
eighteenth century served mercantilist

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Britain remarkably well by providing a

growing market for British manufactured
goods.
English farmers were continually adopting
new methods of farming, and increasing
productivity meant a period of bountiful
crops and low food prices.
Not having to spend almost everything it
earned to buy bread meant that the English
family could spend more on manufactured
goods.
Members of the average British family
began redirecting their labor away from
unpaid work for household consumption
toward work for wages that they could
spend on goods.
A canal-building boom greatly enhanced
the easy movement of critical raw
materials, such as Englands and Waless
enormous deposits of iron and coal.
Britains host of assets that helped give
rise to its industrial leadership included an
effective central bank and well-developed
credit markets.
The monarchy and the aristocratic
oligarchy provided a stable and
predictable government that allowed the
domestic economy to operate with few
357

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

controls, encouraging personal initiative,

technical change, and a free market.
9. Britains rural wage earners (whose
numbers increased with a second round of
enclosures) were relatively mobile and,
along with cottage workers, formed a
potential industrial labor force for
capitalist entrepreneurs.
10. All these factors combined to initiate the
Industrial Revolution, a term first coined
by awed contemporaries in the 1830s.
11. The great economic and political
revolutions that shaped the modern world
occurred almost simultaneously, though
they began in different countries.
B. The First Factories
1. Technological innovations in the
manufacture of cotton cloth, brought on
by pressure to produce more goods for a
growing market, led to a new system of
production and social relationships.
2. Under the pressure of growing demand,
the putting-out systems limitations began
to outweigh its advantages for the first
time, especially in the British textile
industry after about 1760.
3. A constant shortage of thread in the textile
industry focused attention on ways of
improving spinning.
4. James Hargreaves invented his simple
hand-powered cotton-spinning jenny
about 1765, at almost the same moment
that Richard Arkwright developed another
kind of spinning machine, the water
frame; by 1790 the new machines were
producing ten times as much cotton yarn
as had been made in 1770.
5. The capacity of Arkwrights water frame
for several hundred spindles meant that
much more powerwaterpowerwas
needed, requiring large specialized mills
that employed as many as one thousand
workers from the very beginning.
6. After Samuel Crompton invented an
alternative technique for spinning cotton
that required more power than a human

arm could supply, all cotton spinning was

gradually concentrated in factories.
7. As cotton goods became much cheaper
and were increasingly bought and
treasured by all classes, the wages of
weavers rose markedly, and large numbers
of agricultural laborers became hand-loom
weavers.
8. In 1785, Edmund Cartwright invented a
power loom that began to fill factories
after 1800.
9. Because adults were reluctant to work in
the poor conditions of early cotton
factories, owners turned to foundlings
who were in the care of local parishes.
10. Apprenticed as young as five or six years
of age, boy and girl workers were forced
by law to labor for their masters for as
many as fourteen years.
11. Working appalling hoursas much as
fourteen hours a day, six days a week
for little or no pay and under brutal
discipline, these orphans experienced
exploitation on an unprecedented scale.
12. This exploitation eventually reinforced
more humanitarian attitudes toward
children, resulting in laws to protect
young workers.
13. Symbolically and substantially, the big
new cotton mills marked the beginning of
the Industrial Revolution in Britain; by
1831 the cotton textile industry accounted
for fully 22 percent of the countrys entire
industrial production.
C. The Problem of Energy
1. In the medieval period, people began to
develop water mills to grind their grain
and windmills to pump water and drain
swamps.
2. More efficient use of water and wind in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
enabled human beings to accomplish
more.
3. Society continued to rely mainly on wood
for energy, and human beings and animals
continued to perform most work, so that

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

no matter how hard people worked, they

could not produce very much.
4. The shortage of energy had become
particularly severe in Britain by the
eighteenth century, with wooda basic
raw material that also served as the
primary source of heat for all homes and
industriesin ever-shorter supply.
5. The iron industrys appetite for wood was
enormous, and by 1740 the British iron
industry was stagnating.
D. The Steam Engine Breakthrough
1. Britain looked toward its abundant and
widely scattered reserves of coal as an
alternative to its vanishing wood.
2. As mines were dug deeper, mechanical
pumps, usually powered by animals
walking in circles at the surface, had to be
installed to pump out water.
3. To overcome the expense of this method,
Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas
Newcomen in 1705 invented the first
primitive steam engines.
4. In 1763 James Watt (17361819),
employed by the University of Glasgow as
a skilled craftsman, was called on to repair
a Newcomen engine being used in a
physics course.
5. After a series of observations, Watt added
a separate condenser to the Newcomen
engine that greatly increased the
efficiency of the steam engine.
6. In 1775, six years after he had patented his
invention, Watt formed a partnership with
Matthew Boulton, a wealthy English
industrialist with adequate capital and
excellent sales skills, and by the late
1780s they had made the steam engine a
practical and commercial success in
Britain.
7. The steam engine, the Industrial
Revolutions most fundamental advance
in technology, put almost unlimited power
at humans disposal and made abundance
a possibility for ordinary men and
women.

359

8. Steam engines drained mines, increasing

coal production, and replaced waterpower
in spinning mills, flour mills, and flint
mills, and steam-driven bellows radically
transformed the iron industry.
9. Henry Corts development of the puddling
furnace and of heavy-duty rolling mills
proved to be a great boon to the British
iron industry.
10. With the production of iron increasing
from 17,000 tons in 1740 to 3 million tons
in 1844, irononce scarce and
expensivebecame the cheap and
indispensable building block of the
economy.
E. The Coming of Railroads
1. Though more and more roads were built in
the second half of the eighteenth century,
overland shipment of freight was still
limited and very expensive.
2. In the 1820s English engineers created
steam cars capable of carrying fourteen
passengers at 10 miles an hour, but the
noisy, heavy steam automobiles damaged
themselves and the roads with their
vibrations.
3. The coal industry had long been using
plank roads and railswhich reduced
friction and allowed for heavier loadsto
move coal wagons in and around mines.
4. A rail capable of supporting a heavy
locomotive was developed in 1816, and
then George Stephenson built an effective
locomotive in 1825.
5. In 1830 Stephensons Rocket sped down
the track of the just-completed Liverpool
and Manchester Railway at 16 miles per
hour.
6. With the financial and technical success of
the LiverpoolManchester line, many
private companies were quickly organized
to build more rail lines.
7. The railroad dramatically reduced the cost
and uncertainty of shipping freight
overland, and markets became larger and
even nationwide.

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

8. In all countries, the construction of

railroads created a strong demand for
unskilled labor and contributed to the
growth of a class of urban workers.
9. The railroad changed the outlook and
values of the entire society as it revealed
the power and increased the speed of the
new age.
10. Massive new train stations became the
cathedrals of the industrial age, and
leading railway engineers such as
Isambard Brunel and Thomas Brassey,
whose tunnels pierced mountains and
whose bridges spanned valleys, became
public idols.
F. Industry and Population
1. In 1851 London hosted an industrial fair
called the Great Exhibition in the newly
built Crystal Palace, an architectural
masterpiece that helped draw millions of
visitors.
2. In 1860 Britain, the workshop of the
world, produced a truly remarkable 20
percent of the entire worlds output of
industrial goods, whereas it had produced
only about 2 percent of the world total in
1750.
3. Although the gross national product
(GNP) of Britain rose roughly fourfold at
constant prices between 1780 and 1851,
the population grew from about 9 million
to almost 21 million during the same
period, consuming much of the increase in
total production.
4. Some historians have asserted that more
people meant a more mobile labor force,
with a wealth of young workers in need of
employment and ready to go where the
jobs were.
5. The contemporary observer Thomas
Malthus (17661834) believed that
population would always tend to grow
faster than the food supply, and in his
Essay on the Principle of Population
(1798), he concluded that prudential
restraint was the only hope of warding

off such positive checks on population

growth as war, famine, and disease.
6. Leading English economist David Ricardo
(17721823) developed the iron law of
wages, which stated that the pressure of
population growth would always cause
wages to sink to subsistence level,
meaning wages would be just high enough
to keep workers from starving.
7. With Malthus and Ricardo setting the
tone, economics was soon dubbed the
dismal science, but they were proved
wrong in the long run.
II. Industrialization in Continental Europe
A. National Variations
1. The process of Western industrialization
proceeded gradually, with uneven jerks
and national (and regional) variations.
2. In 1750 the leading industrialized
countries were fairly close together in
their level of industrialization, with
Britain only slightly ahead of France.
3. Britain opened up a noticeable lead over
all continental countries by 1800, and that
gap progressively widened as the British
Industrial Revolution accelerated to 1830
and reached full maturity by 1860.
4. Belgium, achieving independence from
the Netherlands in 1831 and rich in iron
and coal, experienced a truly
revolutionary surge between 1830 and
1860.
5. Frances relatively good pattern of early
industrial growth was somewhat unjustly
tarnished by the spectacular rise of
Germany and the United States after 1860.
6. Eastern and southern Europe began the
process of modern industrialization later
but made real progress in the late
nineteenth century.
7. European countries industrialized to a
greater or lesser extent even as most of the
non-Western world deindustrialized, a
development that magnified existing
inequalities between Europe and the rest
of the world.

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

B. The Challenge of Industrialization

1. The pace of British industry began to
accelerate in the 1780s, and continental
businesses began to adopt the new
methods as they proved their profitability.
2. Because no wars were fought on British
soil in the early industrial period, Britain
did not experience the physical destruction
or economic dislocation that the continent
did.
3. On the continent, by contrast, the
upheavals that began with the French
Revolution disrupted trade, created
runaway inflation, and fostered social
anxiety.
4. The widening gap in economic production
made it more difficult, if not impossible,
for other countries to follow the British
pattern in energy and industry after peace
was restored in 1815.
5. British technology had become so
advanced and complicated that very few
engineers or skilled technicians outside
England understood it.
6. Continental business people had great
difficulty finding both the large sums of
money the new methods demanded and
enough laborers accustomed to working in
factories.
7. Most continental countries had a rich
tradition of putting-out enterprise,
merchant capitalists, and skilled urban
artisans, which gave them the ability to
adapt and survive in the face of new
market conditions.
8. In many cases, instead of developing new
technology, continental capitalists were
able to borrow the new methods
developed in Great Britain, as well as
engineers and some of the financial
resources these countries lacked.
9. Countries with strong independent
governments, such as France and Russia,
would eventually use the power of the
state to promote industry and catch up
with Britain.

361

C. Agents of Industrialization
1. The British realized the great value of
their technical discoveries and made it
illegal for artisans and skilled mechanics
to leave Britain.
2. Many talented, ambitious workers,
however, slipped out of the country
illegally and introduced the new methods
abroad.
3. William Cockerill and his sons, for
example, moved to Belgium and created a
large industrial enterprise in the Lige
area; Cockerills plants continually
gathered new information and transmitted
it across Europe.
4. In addition to British technicians and
skilled workers being a powerful force in
the spread of early industrialization,
talented entrepreneurs and business
pioneers in other countries pushed to
match Englands achievements.
5. Most continental businesses adopted
factory technology slowly, and handicraft
methods lived on.
6. Indeed, continental industrialization
brought substantial but uneven expansion
of handicraft industry in both rural and
urban areas for a time.
D. Government Support and Corporate Banking
1. Governments helped business people in
continental countries overcome difficulties
in their industrialization efforts through
tariff protection and other measures.
2. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in
1815, for example, France was flooded
with cheaper and better British goods; the
French government responded by
imposing high tariffs on many British
imports in order to protect the French
economy.
3. Continental governments bore part or all
of the cost of building roads, canals, and
railroads to improve transportation.
4. Built rapidly as a unified network,
Belgiums state-owned railroads
stimulated the development of heavy

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

industry and made the country an early

industrial leader.
The Prussian government guaranteed
railroad bonds, which enabled the private
railroad companies to raise capital quickly
from investors who faced little risk.
German journalist and thinker Friedrich
List (17891846) considered the growth
of modern industry of the utmost
importance because manufacturing was a
primary means of increasing peoples
well-being and relieving their poverty.
In his influential National System of
Political Economy (1841), List supported
not only railroad building and the tariff
but also the formation of a customs union,
or Zollverein, among the separate German
states.
By the 1840s Lists economic nationalism,
designed to protect and develop the
national economy, had become
increasingly popular in Germany and
elsewhere.
Banks, like governments, also played a
larger and more creative role on the
continent than in Britain.
In the 1830s two Belgian banks received
permission from the growth-oriented
government to establish themselves as
corporations with limited liability.
Publicizing the risk-reducing advantage of
limited liability for investors, these
Belgian banks attracted many
shareholders; they mobilized impressive
resources for investment in big
companies, became industrial banks, and
successfully promoted industrial
development.
Similar corporate banks, usually working
in collaboration with governments,
became important in France and Germany
in the 1850s and 1860s.
The combined efforts of skilled workers,
entrepreneurs, governments, and industrial
banks meshed to usher in a period of

unprecedented economic growth on the

continent.
14. In the early 1870s, Britain was still
Europes most industrial nation, but a
handful of countries were closing the gap
opened up by the Industrial Revolution.
III. Relations Between Capital and Labor
A. The New Class of Factory Owners
1. Industrial development intensified longstanding problems between capital and
labor in both urban workshops and cottage
industry.
2. The growth of new occupational groups in
industry led to the development of a new
paradigm, or overarching interpretation,
regarding social relationships: individuals
were members of economically
determined classes that had conflicting
interests.
3. Early industrialists operated in a highly
competitive economic system, waging a
constant battle to cut their production
costs and stay afloat while pouring most
of the profit back into the business for
better machinery.
4. Artisans and skilled workers of
exceptional ability had unparalleled
opportunities.
5. Members of ethnic and religious groups
who had been discriminated against in
traditional occupations controlled by the
landed aristocracy jumped at new chances
and often helped each other.
6. As factories and firms grew larger,
opportunities declined, as it became
considerably harder for a gifted but poor
young mechanic to start a small enterprise.
7. Formal education (for sons and males)
became more important as a means of
success and advancement.
8. The wives and daughters of successful
businessmen also found fewer
opportunities for active participation in
Europes increasingly complex business
world.

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

9. Middle-class women were encouraged to

steer clear of undignified work in offices
and factories and concentrate instead on
their proper role as wife and mother.
B. The New Factory Workers
1. As the first country to industrialize,
Britain seemed to suffer the harshest
social consequences of the Industrial
Revolution.
2. The poet William Blake (17571827), one
of the first critics of industrialization,
called the early factories satanic mills
and protested against the hard life of the
London poor.
3. William Wordsworth (17701850)
lamented the destruction of the rural way
of life.
4. In northern England, the Luddites and
other handicraft workers smashed the new
machines, which they believed were
putting them out of work.
5. Doctors and reformers wrote eloquently of
problems in the factories and new towns,
while Malthus and Ricardo concluded that
workers would earn only enough to stay
alive.
6. After studying conditions in northern
England, Friedrich Engels (18201895)
published in 1844 The Condition of the
Working Class in England, a blistering
indictment of the middle classes.
7. According to Engels, the culprit was
industrial capitalism, with its relentless
competition and constant technical
change.
8. Research indicates that the Industrial
Revolution provided little or no increase
in the purchasing power of the average
British worker from about 1780 to about
1820.
9. Only after 1820, and especially after 1840,
did real wages rise substantially, so that
the average worker earned and consumed
roughly 50 percent more in real terms in
1850 than in 1770.

363

10. Historians believe that, to a large extent,

workers earned more simply because they
worked more: 300 days per year by 1830,
with eleven-hour workdays.
11. The difficult war years (17921815), with
more unemployment and sharply higher
prices for bread, were formative years for
the new factory labor force, and they
colored the early experience of modern
industrial life in somber tones.
12. Speaking generally, workers ate somewhat
more food of higher nutritional quality as
the Industrial Revolution progressed.
13. Per capita use of specific goods supports
the position that the standard of living of
the working classes rose, at least
moderately, after the long wars with
France.
C. Work in Early Factories
1. Cottage workers, accustomed to the
putting-out system but not the kind of life
and discipline demanded by factories,
were reluctant to work in the new factories
even when they received relatively good
wages.
2. The similarity between brick factories and
stone poorhouses also increased the
cottage workers fear of factories and their
hatred of factory discipline.
3. Cottage workers reluctance to work in
factories prompted the early cotton mill
owners to turn to abandoned and pauper
children for their labor.
4. Pauper children were often badly treated
and terribly overworked in the mills, as
they were when they were apprenticed as
chimney sweeps, market girls, and
shoemakers.
5. Although semi-forced child labor seemed
necessary and was socially accepted in the
eighteenth century, from our modern
viewpoint it was cruel exploitation and a
blot on the record of the new industrial
system.
D. Working Families and Children

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

1. By the 1790s the use of pauper

apprentices was in decline, and in 1802 it
was forbidden by Parliament.
2. Many more textile factories were being
built, mainly in urban areas, where they
could use steam power rather than
waterpower and attract workers more
easily.
3. As they took on new jobs, working people
did not simply give in and accept the
highly disciplined system of labor that had
formerly repelled them, instead helping to
modify the system by carrying over
familiar traditions.
4. In the same way they had worked on
farms and in the putting-out system,
workers often came to the mills and the
mines as family units.
5. The mill or mine owner bargained with
the head of the family and paid him or her
for the work of the whole family.
6. The preservation of the family as an
economic unit in the factories from the
1790s on made the new surroundings
more tolerable.
7. Adult workers were not particularly
interested in limiting the minimum
working age or hours of their children as
long as family members worked side by
side.
8. Only when technical changes threatened
to place control and discipline in the hands
of impersonal managers did adult workers
protest conditions for their children.
9. Some enlightened employers and social
reformers in Parliament argued that more
humane standards were necessary.
10. Robert Owen (17711858), a successful
manufacturer in Scotland, testified in 1816
that employing children under ten years of
age as factory workers was injurious to
the children, and not beneficial to the
proprietors.
11. The Factory Act of 1833 limited the
factory workday for children ages 913 to

eight hours and that of adolescents ages

1418 to twelve hours.
12. As children under nine began to be
enrolled in the elementary schools
established by factory owners, the
employment of children declined rapidly,
breaking the pattern of whole families
working together.
13. Ties of blood and kinship were important
in other ways: subcontractors, hired by
manufacturers, assembled their own crews
of workers, many of whom were friends
or relatives.
14. This kind of personal relationship had
traditionally existed in cottage industry
and in urban crafts, and it was more
acceptable to many workers than
impersonal factory discipline.
15. Newcomers, who often traveled great
distances to find work, were often held
together by ethnic and religious ties.
E. The Sexual Division of Labor
1. In preindustrial Europe, certain jobs were
traditionally defined by genderwomen
and girls for milking and spinning, men
and boys for plowing and weavingbut
many tasks might go to either sex.
2. Family employment carried over into
early factories and subcontracting, but by
the 1830s a different sexual division of
labor was evolving.
3. By 1850 a new pattern of separate
spheres was emerging in which the man
worked as the familys primary wage
earner, while the married woman was
expected to concentrate on housework,
raising the children, and some craftwork at
home.
4. When married women did work for wages
outside the house, they usually came from
the poorest families, where the husbands
were poorly paid, sick, unemployed, or
missing.
5. Legions of young unmarried women
worked full-time but only in certain jobs,

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

such as textile factory work, laundering,

and domestic service.
6. All women were generally confined to
low-paying, dead-end jobs, while men
predominated in the better-paying, more
promising employments.
7. Some believe this organization of paid
work along gender lines was due to the
deeply ingrained sexist attitudes of a
patriarchal tradition, which predated the
economic transformation.
8. Others see a combination of economic and
biological factors as a better explanation
of the emergence of a sex-segregated
division of labor.
9. Relentless factory discipline conflicted
with child care in a way that labor on the
farm or in the cottage had not.
10. Running a household in conditions of
primitive urban poverty was also
extremely demanding, and shopping and
feeding the family constituted a neverending challenge.
11. Many women might well have accepted
the emerging division of labor as the best
available strategy for family survival in
the industrializing society.
12. Segregation of jobs by gender can also
partly be explained as an effort by older
people to help control the sexuality of
working-class youths.
13. The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited
underground work for all women and girls
as well as for boys under ten.
F. The Early Labor Movement in Britain
1. In 1850 more British people still worked
on farms than in any other occupation;
domestic service was the second-largest
occupation, with more than one million
household servants, 90 percent of whom
were women.
2. Many old, familiar jobs outside industry
provided alternatives for individual
workers and helped ease the transition to
industrial civilization.

365

3. Within industry itself, the pattern of

artisans working with hand tools in small
shops remained unchanged in many
trades, even as some others were
revolutionized by technological change.
4. Working-class solidarity and classconsciousness developed in small
workshops as well as in large factories.
5. Modern technology and factory
organization had created a few-versus-themany situation, with the few being the
owners and managers who controlled the
conditions of the many workers.
6. The British government attacked
monopolies, guilds, and worker
combinations in the name of individual
liberty.
7. In 1799 Parliament passed the
Combination Acts, which outlawed unions
and strikes.
8. The capitalist attack on artisan guilds and
work rules was resented by many
craftworkers and prompted efforts to build
a modern labor movement to improve
working conditions.
9. Parliament repealed the Combination Acts
in 1824, and unions were tolerated.
10. The next stage in the development of the
British trade-union movement was the
attempt to create a single large national
union.
11. Social reformers such as Robert Owen
experimented with cooperative and socialist
communities, eventually organizing one of
the largest and most visionary of the early
national unions, the Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union.
12. The British labor movement moved in the
direction of craft unions, the most famous
of which, the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, represented skilled machinists.
13. These unions won real benefits for
members by fairly conservative means and
thus became an accepted part of the
industrial scene.

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

14. British workers also engaged in direct

political activity in defense of their own
interests, including involvement in the
Chartist movement, which sought political
democracy.
15. Working people developed a sense of their
own identity and played an active role in
shaping the new industrial system.

CHAPTER QUESTIONS
Following are answer guidelines for the Review
Questions that appear in the textbook chapter, and
answer guidelines for the chapters Map Activity,
Visual Activity, Individuals in Society, Listening to
the Past, and Living in the Past questions located in
the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/
mckaywest. For your convenience, the questions and
answer guidelines are also available in the
Computerized Test Bank.

Review Questions
1. What were the origins of the Industrial
Revolution in Britain, and how did it develop
between 1780 and 1850? (p. 656)
As markets for manufactured goods increased
both domestically and overseas, Britain was able to
respond with increased production, largely because
of its stable government, abundant natural resources,
and flexible labor force. The first factories arose as a
result of technical innovations in spinning cotton,
thereby revolutionizing the textile industry. The
widespread availability and affordability of cotton
provided benefits for many, but also resulted in the
brutal forced labor of orphaned children on a large
scale. The demand for improvements in energy led to
innovations and improvements in the steam engine,
which transformed the iron industry among others. In
the early nineteenth century, transportation of goods
was greatly enhanced when railroads were built,
largely by unskilled farm workers who subsequently
often left their villages for a more exciting life in
towns.
2. How after 1815 did continental countries
respond to the challenge of industrialization?
(p. 665)

For reasons including warfare on home soil

and barriers to trade, continental Europe lagged
behind England in industrialization in 1815. But after
1815, some continental countries, especially France,
Belgium, and Germany, gradually built on Englands
technical breakthroughs, such as textile machinery
and steam engines. Entrepreneurs set up their own
factories and hired skilled urban workers from the
area along with English immigrants experienced in
the new technologies. England tried to limit the
spread of trade secrets, and financing was difficult
for early continental capitalists, but government
intervention, such as tariff protection and
infrastructure, were a great boon to industrialization
on the continent. In addition, newly established
corporate banks worked in conjunction with
governments to invest heavily in railroads and other
industries.
3. How did the Industrial Revolution affect
people of all social classes, and what measures were
taken to improve the conditions of workers? (p. 672)
The rise of modern industry had a profound
impact on people and their lives, beginning in Britain
in the late eighteenth century. Industrialization led to
the growing size and wealth of the middle class, as
factory owners took their place beside successful
merchants and professional people. These early
entrepreneurs at first came from diverse
backgrounds, providing economic opportunities for
religious and ethnic minorities, but by the middle of
the nineteenth century, wealthy industrial families
controlled large enterprises and it was difficult for
the poor but talented person to break in. The modern
industrial working class also developed during this
time, filling the need for vast quantities of labor
power. Rigid rules, stern discipline, and long hours
weighed heavily on factory workers, and
improvements in the standard of living came slowly,
but they were substantial by 1850. Family members
often worked together in early factories, but as
restrictions were placed on child labor, married
women withdrew increasingly from wage work and
concentrated on child care and household
responsibilities. At the same time many young
women worked before they were married, and jobs
for young workers were often separated by gender in
an attempt to control sexual behavior. The era of
industrialization also fostered new attitudes toward
child labor, encouraged protective factory legislation,
and called forth a new sense of class feeling and an
assertive labor movement.

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

Map Activity
Map 21.2 Continental Industrialization,
ca. 1850
Analyzing the Map: Locate the major exposed (that
is, known) coal deposits in 1850. Which countries
and areas appear rich in coal resources, and which
appear poor? Is there a difference between northern
and southern Europe?
Coal resources: The regions with the greatest
coal deposits in continental Europe are Belgium, the
northern German Confederation, and Central Europe,
including the regions around Prague, Krakow, and
Vienna.
Northern and southern Europe: The
southernmost coal deposits were in the south of
France and Bosnia. Southern Germany, Hungary,
Switzerland, and northern Italy had no exposed coal
deposits.
Connections: What is the relationship between
known coal deposits and emerging industrial areas in
Continental Europe? In England (Map 21.1)?
Coal and industry: The major emerging
industrial areas in Europe, Lyons, Liege, Essen,
Prague, Berlin, and Krakow were all located near
major coal deposits. Other industrial centers, like
Mulhouse, Paris, and Milan, were connected to the
coal regions by railroads.
England: Just as on the continent, Englands
major industrial centers in Manchester, Birmingham,
Liverpool, Leeds, and Bristol were located near coal
deposits. Others, like London, were connected to the
coal-mining regions by railroad.

Visual Activity

367

water, and the barefoot woman carrying flowers are

all probably members of the urban working class.
Their clothes, particularly the ragged dress worn by
the flower woman, are not as fine as the other
gentlemen and ladies depicted in the picture. The
working men have their sleeves rolled up, indicating
that they are involved or going to be involved in
physical activity.
Upper class: There are two upper-class
gentlemen standing to the right of the workers, while
several upper-class ladies walk past them on the left.
The top center of the picture contains an upper-class
couple proceeding down the road on horseback.
Their clothes clearly mark them as members of the
this class; some of the men wear fine hats, tightly
buttoned collars with neckties, and matching suits.
The ladies wear elaborate bonnets, gloves, and
shawls and carry parasols or shopping packages. All
of the upper-class figures depicted in the picture are
either standing around watching the laborers or
slowly strolling down the street to their destination;
none are engaged in any sort of work.
Connections: What does this painting and Fords
title for it (Work) suggest about the artists opinion of
the work of common laborers?
Fords opinion: The title itself suggests that
Ford had a positive view of physical labor. This view
is reinforced by the depiction of the laborers,
particularly the men with the shovels. They are
placed at the center, the focal point of the painting,
and their clothes are painted in bright colors to draw
the viewers attention. Furthermore, their depiction
seems to be more detailed than the other figures,
with special attention paid to the creases in their
rolled up sleeves, or tucked shirts, and the definition
of the muscles on their arms. Ford may have
believed that physical labor was an ennobling
activity.

Ford Maddox Brown, Work

Analyzing the Image: Describe the different types
of work shown. What different social classes are
depicted, and what kinds of work (or leisure) are the
members of the different social classes engaged in?
Types of work: The painting depicts mostly
manual labor. There are workers digging a hole,
different men carrying tools to the site, and a woman
carrying flowers or greens somewhere for sale.
Urban workers: The two laborers digging a
hole, the man to their right who seems to be carrying
at toolbox, the man behind him carrying a pail of

Individuals in Society
Josiah Wedgwood
1. How and why did Wedgwood succeed?
Innovation: Wedgwood pioneered new, unique
glazes for his pottery, providing something to
consumers that his competitors could not.
Quality: Wedgwoods innovations were quickly
copied by other pottery makers, so he cultivated an
image of refined quality around his product.

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

Trendsetting: By emphasizing the high quality

of his products, Wedgwood was able to sell a set of
pottery to the queen. He then advertised this sale, and
aristocrats suddenly felt they too needed to buy
Wedgwood pottery.
Diverse product line: Wedgwood was able to
make even more money by selling slightly lowerquality pottery (the more affordable, useful ware
class of products) to the middle class on the strength
of his reputation among the elite.
2. Was Wedgwood a good boss or a bad one?
Why?
Mostly good: Wedgwood had an authoritarian
streak, and was not above imposing fines for any sort
of infraction. He claimed he wanted his workers to
act like machines who would not make mistakes.
Despite the control he exercised over his workers, he
was also generous with them. He encouraged
workers to receive ongoing training, housed working
family groups in company row houses with space to
raise vegetables and chickens, and paid workers
relatively high wages with pensions and some
benefits.
3. How did Wedgwood exemplify the new class
of factory owners?
New class of factory owners: Like some other
new industrialists, Wedgwood was born poor. He
became wealthy by utilizing new technology, taking
advantage of internal improvements like canals,
innovating in a new market, and capitalizing on the
tastes of the trendsetting elite.

Listening to the Past

The Testimony of Young Mine Workers
1. How does Paynes testimony compare with
that of Ann Eggley and Patience Kershaw?
Vast difference: Payne insists that the children
work no more than six or seven hours a day, and that
they are not overworked past the point of exhaustion.
While he admits that some workers have loose
morals, he suggests that things have been improving
thanks to the efforts of the local clergyman. The
workers interviewed, however, tell a different story.
They are forced to work for twelve or more hours a
day, sometimes having to skip their meal time, and
suggest that the work is too strenuous for them to
handle. They cannot read or write, and they dont

have much of an understanding of religion. Kershaw

says that the miners are frequently naked in the
mines, and suggests that some of the boys sexually
abuse her.
2. Describe the work of Eggley, Kershaw, and
Wilson. What strikes you most about the testimonies
of these workers?
Workers testimony: The testimony of the
three workers suggests that working in the mines was
strenuous and dangerous. They talk about the
physical strain, the injuries, and the illnesses they
and their friends suffer from the work. It is striking
to note how little time the workers have to rest and
recharge. They seem to work twelve hours a day, six
days a week. They rarely have time to stop work to
eat a meal, and when they return home, they are too
exhausted to do much more than fall asleep. Isabel
Wilson suffered five miscarriages during her career
as a coal putter, and she worked the night before one
of her children was born. None of the children have
any time for education.
3. The witnesses were responding to questions
from middle-class commissioners. What did the
commissioners seem interested in? Why?
Physical condition and sexual morals: While
the commissioners asked about the physical
condition of the workers, they were probably more
concerned with the sexual morals of workers from
the mine. During the Industrial Revolution, the old
system of working in family units generally came to
an end; as the factory system developed, so too did
the chance that working-class young people of both
genders might mix on the job, resulting in increased
sexual contact. Such a situation conflicted with the
commissioners ideal perceptions of proper middleclass, lady-like behavior. Essentially, the
commissioners were looking for a way to control the
sexuality of working-class youths.

Living in the Past

Visiting the Crystal Palace Exhibition
1. Describe the Crystal Palace. In what ways
was it a revolutionary building?
Iron and glass construction: The Crystal
Palace was made entirely from iron and glass, which
had previously been fairly rare commodities.
However, the Industrial Revolution lowered the cost

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

and difficulty of producing both materials, allowing

them to be used in the creation of such a massive
structure.
2. Compare the products that Britain and France
presented. How do you explain the differences?
Different products: According to this account,
Britain presented mostly machine tools and other
exhibits to highlight factory production. France,
however, exhibited luxury products, like furniture,
that appealed to the rising middle class. This
difference in products is attributable to the fact that
the Industrial Revolution essentially began in Britain,
and as it progressed the country maintained a much
higher level of industrial production than France.
While industrial production grew steadily in France,
it was not able to compete on the same level as
Britain. Instead, artisan production of luxury goods
increased in France as rising middle-class income
created an international demand for them.
3. The Crystal Palace Exhibition exceeded all
expectations. How do you account for its success?
Exciting new technology: Much of the success
of the Crystal Palace Exhibition was probably due to
the newness of everything involved in the exhibit.
The construction of the Crystal Palace was unique.
The sophisticated industrial products on display had
probably never been seen before by most visitors.
Even the newly introduced idea of public toilets
probably surprised many visitors. People were drawn
to the exhibition to see exciting new wonders of the
Industrial Age, and they were not disappointed.

LECTURE STRATEGIES
See also the maps and images for presentation in
Additional Bedford/St. Martins Resources for
Chapter 21, below.

Lecture 1: Wealth and Poverty: The Industrial

Revolution in a Global Context
Unless a student has traveled much in the developing
world, he or she takes for granted the benefits of
industrialization. Cars, trains, and buses seem to be a
natural part of the landscape, and electric lights,
household gadgets, and endless consumer goods are
simply expected. One way to help students think
historically about industrialization is to approach the
topic comparatively, emphasizing the various
timelines and reasons that some nations became rich

369

and highlighting examples of nations that still

struggle with poverty.
Begin by defining the characteristics of a
modern industrial economya diminished role for
agriculture, the rise of a mining and manufacturing
sector, the use of machines and inanimate sources of
power, and so onand then introduce students to a
developing nation, like Nicaragua or Namibia, where
many people still live in primitive conditions, draw
water from streams, and earn meager wages doing
piece work. Make the connections between
industrialization and wealth creation. Why are these
countries still poor, while other neighboring
countries (like Costa Rica and the Republic of South
Africa) are so much richer? What historical
circumstances help to create wealth?
Introduce students to the analytical categories
economic historians use to answer these questions.
No one single factor is decisive; a combination of
factors are necessary to produce economic growth,
for example, natural resources, an efficient labor
force, stable government, good transportation
networks, technology, cultural values that support
education, hard work, and entrepreneurship. With
this analytical framework in place, move to a
discussion
of
nineteenth-century
economic
development in Europe, giving examples of both
early leaders and what Rondo Cameron dubs the
latecomers and no shows. As Alexander
Gerschenkron warned, however, avoid a teleological
framework that assumes a single pattern and casts
some countries as backward.
The British example, of course, takes
precedence, but augment the information in the
textbook by exploring how Britains colonial
markets in the new world helped sustain economic
growth. The cotton textile industry in Manchester
would not have grown so steadily without Britains
substantial exports to Europe (200 million yards of
cotton in 1840), as well as to Africa, Asia, and the
Americas (529 million yards, with still more going
directly to the United States). Then turn to other
European examples, focusing on unique patterns of
development in each region.
Other examples from the global context can round
out the lecture. In the eighteenth century, India
produced more cotton textiles than Britain, and China
boasted a highly developed market economy. Yet
neither country experienced an industrial takeoff like
Britain or Belgium, and some historians have argued
that the industrialization of Britain led to the deindustrialization of India. Explaining the reasons for
this will easily occupy the rest of the lecture.

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

Sources: Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell Jr.,

How the West Grew Rich: The Economic
Transformation of the Industrial World (1986);
Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in
Global Perspective (2009); Peter N. Stearns, The
Industrial Revolution in World History (1993);
Rondo Cameron, A Concise Economic History of the
World (1993); Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic
Backwardness in Historical Perspective (1962);
Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World
(2007).

Lecture 2: Railways and the Popular

Imagination
The railway (as the British call it) became a
metaphor of its age. While it is doubtful many
railway nerds (Bill Brysons term) remain among
todays college students, they will find much that is
compelling in this lecture. The railway serves as a
prism through which to view nineteenth-century
industrial development, social change, and cultural
innovation. You might also note the many parallels
between the railway and the Internet in their power
to fascinate and transform an age.
Begin with some basics about the railways
economic development. During the first twenty years
after the opening in 1830 of the ManchesterLiverpool line, 6000 miles of track were laid,
connecting all major British cities. The process
boosted the steel and iron industry, spurred the
development of the telegraph, expanded markets, and
created thousands of jobs.
Then discuss the social and cultural changes
fostered by railway building. Movement became
easier: it allowed people of all classes to traverse the
country, leading to a greater sense of national
cohesion and identity. The railway helped create
commuter suburbs, made possible holidays to
Scotland and Wales, and facilitated communication
through faster mail delivery. Class and class
consciousness were heightened by the distinctions in
ticket prices and railway cars.
Examine the way in which the physical
landscape was transformed by viaducts, bridges,
tunnels, crisscrossing tracks, and telegraph wires;
train stations became the new cathedrals of the age
(show pictures of St. Pancras/Kings Cross station of
Harry Potter fame). Noisy whistles punctuated calm
country villages, and clocks were now necessary to
regulate time.
Include information about how the mental
landscape of Europeans was also affected. Cultural
critics like Anthony Trollope criticized the filth of

train stations, and John Ruskin complained that the

railway made him feel like he was being sent, like a
parcel. The dangers of railway travel also make for
some riveting tales. Assumptions about the role of
government were also affected by railway building.
Many governments (especially on the European
continent) underwrote private investments, redirected
tax dollars toward railway building, and regulated
the industry (e.g., the Railway Regulation Act of
1844 in Britain stipulated that everyone on the train
had to be sheltered from the rain).
End the lecture with examples of the artwork,
cartoons, childrens books, music, games, puzzles,
and other paraphernalia that were inspired by the
railway and served to socialize young people into the
railway age. Pictures are quite helpful for this
lecture.
Sources: Michael Freeman, Railways and the
Victorian
Imagination
(1999);
Wolfgang
Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey (1977).

Lecture 3: Women, Work, and Family in the

Industrializing World
Discussions of industrialization can easily focus on
the nonhuman aspects of the process, with financial
and technological innovations slipping into center
stage. In this lecture, highlight some of the dynamic
research in the fields of social and cultural history
about how women, gender, and the family were
central to the process of industrialization. There are
two central issues: the role of sexual difference in
shaping how men and women experienced and
reacted to industrialization, and the importance of
gender to the ways in which people made meaning
out of their experiences.
You might focus first on the changes underway
for women in the new middle class. Discuss the new
domestic ideology that became a unifying cultural
ideal and removed middle-class women from most
public forms of economic life. Yet, like their
working-class counterparts, middle-class wives and
mothers continued to fulfill economic rolesthey
brought capital into marriages, ran busy households,
and furthered their husbands careers by maintaining
respectability. Avoid slipping into generalities by
introducing specific individuals and families, like the
successful jeweler James Lucock of Birmingham,
whose wife supported his business with her
accounting skills and household management (found
in Family Fortunes). Make sure to include
information on how the domestic ideal shaped the
lives of single women, too.

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

Women and girls in the working class faced new

challenges as the family economy gave way to the
family wage economy, and a familys survival
depended not on each members work but rather
their income. Discuss the various employment
opportunities open to women and the experiences
they brought. Employment outside of the home
introduced greater freedoms but also increased
vulnerability. You might share some examples from
Rachel Fuch and Leslie Mochs work on single
French women in nineteenth-century Paris (the title
says it all).
In addition to looking at how women were
affected by the industrial revolution, you might
examine how they contributed to it. Women were the
vast majority of workers in the textile industry,
which comprised almost half of Britains industrial
output in 1831. They worked in the cotton, silk, and
wool industries, in pottery factories, and in mills and
mines. Womens long hours and low wages made
possible the cheap consumer goods that the middle
class came to depend on.
Sources: Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women,
Work, and Family (1978); Elinor Accampo,
Industrialization, Family Life, and Class Relations,
Saint Chamond, 18151914 (1989); Leonore
Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men
and Women of the English Middle Class, 17801850
(1987); Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods (1991);
Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman
(1995); Rachel G. Fuchs and Leslie Page Moch,
Pregnant, Single, and Far From Home: Migrant
Women in Nineteenth-Century Paris, American
Historical Review 93:4 (October 1990): 10071031;
Maxine Berg, What Difference Did Womens Work
Make to the Industrial Revolution? History
Workshop Journal 35 (Spring 1993): 2240.

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
AND DIFFICULT TOPICS
1. Class and Class Consciousness
Help students use these terms with some sensitivity
to underlying theoretical formulations. Admittedly,
they are complicated. As Ira Katznelson has
observed, Debates about class often become
conversations in which people talk past each other
because they are talking about different dimensions.
Karl Marx himself, the patron saint of class, uses the
term in different ways. While he first defines class as

371

something determined by ones relationship to the

means of production, he also distinguishes between a
class in itself and class for itself, the latter
denoting a class that has become conscious of its
position and seeks to act on its own behalf. E. P.
Thompson built on this conception in his
monumental The Making of the English Working
Class: Class is something that happens in human
relationships; it is not a structure, nor a category;
class is determined by productive relations. To
Thompson, class is not a measurable sociological or
economic category determined by income level or
type of work, it is a relationship of power.
Furthermore, class consciousness is not intrinsic but
rather is formed through opposition and struggle.
More contemporary historians, like Ira Katznelson,
have since expanded and refined, but not dislodged,
these conceptualizations.
Sources: Ira Katznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg,
eds., Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century
Patterns in Western Europe and the United States
(1986); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English
Working Class (1963).

2. Victorian Perceptions of
Poverty
If students know anything about Victorian views of
poverty, they have learned it from reading Charles
Dickens. Make sure they have historical information
to augment the fictional representations. Under the
Elizabethan poor law, everyone without means had
been eligible for relief, regardless of ability. But the
Victorians, influenced by the theories of Thomas
Malthus, approached poverty differently. As
Gertrude Himmelfarb and others have shown, the
New Poor Law (1834) distinguished in both theory
and policy between the independent poor and
dependent poor, the industrious poor and the
idle poor, the deserving and the undeserving. The
new law eliminated so-called outdoor relief and
forced all paupers into workhouses, often
demoralizing the inmates and contributing to the
stigma of pauperism. Benjamin Disreali famously
declared that the New Poor Law announced to the
world that in England poverty was a crime, and
William Cobbett bemoaned the loss of a social
contract, but the reformers believed the new system
would make useful distinctions and encourage selfhelp. After the 1880s poverty became increasingly
recognized as a problem of the system rather than of
the individual.

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

Sources: Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty

(1984); David Englander, Poverty and Poor Law
Reform in Nineteenth Century Britain 18341884
(1993); Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Poor
Law History (1963; first published 1927); Trevor
May, The Victorian Workhouse (2005).

IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES
Using Film and Television in the
Classroom
The history of banking and finance might not sound
like a compelling topic for the big screen, but several
documentaries prove otherwise. Noted historian
Niall Ferguson transforms arcane financial topics
into lucid narratives in The Ascent of Money: The
Financial History of the World (2009, 240 min.),
based on his book by the same name. The earlier
segments are useful for illuminating the importance
of trade and finance in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. James Burke is also charming as the
narrator of the documentary series The Day the
Universe Changed (1986), with one segment on the
industrial revolution, Credit Where Credit is Due:
The Factory and Marketplace Revolution, providing
a fast-paced and witty analysis of the connections
among
agricultural,
religion,
transportation,
technology, and consumer spending. The one-hour
program is worth showing in its entirety. The eightepisode BBC series What the Victorians Did For Us
(2001) is particularly strong on placing technological
innovations in their social context. Episode one
(The Speed Merchants) explores the various
technological innovations that led to faster travel and
quicker production, focusing as much on the
successes (railways, steam ships) as on the failures
(early flying machines and swimming devices).
Episodes are available online (http://www.ovguide
.com/tv/what_the_victorians_did_for_us.htm). The
series spun off a sequel, What the Industrial
Revolution Did for Us (2003), also produced by the
BBC, which goes further in depth and places the
industrial revolution in a global context.
Architectural historian Dan Cruickshank narrates the
six thirty-minute episodes, which can be purchased
or rented from Films for the Humanities and Social
Sciences. Simon Schamas A History of Britain
(2002) also features an episode that works well for
teaching the industrial revolution, Forces of Nature,
ca. 17801832 (60 min.). A number of other

documentaries exploring the industrial revolution in

other countries can be found through the BFI film
index (http://www.bfi.org.uk/).
If documentaries do not serve your pedagogical
purposes, try a feature-length film. Nearly every
Charles Dickens and Jane Austen novel has been
turned into a movie (with varying degrees of
success).

Class Discussion Starters

1. What role did Europes population growth
play in industrial development?
Europe was not the only region of the world to
experience population growth in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. Chinas population
was also growing at a hectic pace. But the two
regions underwent different patterns of development.
Guide students in a discussion of how population
growth could both spur and act as a drain on
economic development.

2. What were the ecological effects of

industrialization?
Pollution was not created by the industrial
revolution, but it certainly rose during this time
period. Explore examples of the ways in which fossil
fuels contributed to air, water, and land pollution in
the nineteenth century. The effects of coal smoke
were visible in all major European cities, and sulfur
dioxide emissions from coal production damaged
trees and produced acid rain. The Ruhr area in
Germany serves as a good example of the toxic
effects of industrialization.

3. What caused the gender division of labor?

Remind students that the gender division of labor
refers to the practice in which men and women
increasingly worked apart, held different kinds of
jobs, and were paid differently for their services.
Women tended to work in textile and garment
production, for example, and men concentrated in
metallurgy and mining. Help students think through
why this was the case. Historians have identified a
number of possible reasons for increasing sex
segregation: biological factors (e.g., womens
delicate fingers could a thread a needle more easily
than a man); structural factors (womens tenure in
the workforce was often temporary); legal factors
(marriage bars and protective labor legislation

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

prevented women from entering certain professions);

and cultural factors (middle-class factory owners
imposed bourgeois notions of domesticity on their
female workers). Some also point to capitalism itself
as the source of womens subordination.
Sources: Sonya Rose, Limited Livelihoods (1991);
Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender
and the Making of the British Working Class (1995).

4. What strategies did the working class use to

survive?
By removing work from the home and separating
people from the land, the industrial revolution forced
families to devise new strategies for survival. As the
family economy gave way to the family wage
economy, survival depended not on each members
labor but rather their income. In this new situation,
child labor was a working-class survival strategy, as
were trade unions and self-help organizations.
Fertility control, such as rudimentary birth control
and infanticide, were also survival strategies.

Historical Debates
Students can learn a great deal about historical
evidence and reasoning by investigating the standard
of living debate. Did individuals and families in the
lower social ranks benefit from industrialization?
Perhaps the best way to engage students is to send
them directly to primary sources to search for
evidence of change over time. A number of printed
and online document collections have great materials
to get them started. Urge students to be close
observers and careful thinkers as they consider the
views of contemporary observers (like Andrew Ure
and James Kay), compare conditions in guilds to
those of factories, and analyze household
consumption. Make students aware of the variety
indices to consider: wage levels, cost of living,
working conditions, rates of unemployment, quality
of living, consumption patterns, health and mortality,
and personal perceptions and attitudes.
Once students have drawn some preliminary
conclusions (and taken a position of optimist or
pessimist), give them additional background from the
ongoing scholarly debates. Observers have debated
the effects of industrialization on the working classes
since the 1830s. While Andrew Ure spoke of the
pleasure children took in their exhilarating
factory labor, Fredrick Engels pointed to accidents,
ill health, and absence of family life. By the late

373

nineteenth century (a period of deep depression and

rising socialism), classic pessimists like J. L. and
Barbara Hammond revived the debate, drawing
attention to new evidence like the poor diet of the
new urban laborers. Following World War I,
modern optimists like Trevor Ashton and J. H.
Clapham argued that purchasing power and life
expectancy rose with industrialization, but by the
1950s their arguments were challenged by the new
pessimists like Eric Hobsbawm, who focused on
psychological issues: even if social indices indicate
progress, why did workers feel worse off? And the
debate has continued with neo-optimists and new
pragmatists introducing ever more refined data.
Ultimately, the evidence does seem to point to a rise
in the standard of living, but only slowly, painfully,
and with many sacrifices.
Sources: Kenneth Morgan, The Birth of Industrial
Britain: Social Change, 17501850 (2004); E. J.
Hobsbawm, The British Standard of Living, 1790
1850, in Labouring Men (1964).

Using Primary Sources

1. Contemporary Observers
Critical thinking skills will get a workout with a
close reading of contemporary assessments of
industrial life and work (most of which distort the
experience). Andrew Ure in The Philosophy of
Manufacturer (1835) and James Kay in The Moral
and Physical Condition of the Working Classes
(1832), for example, come to radically different
conclusions about the effects of industrialization on
the men, women, and children at work in
Manchesters textile factories. Have students attempt
to explain how two contemporary observers could
disagree. Was one right and the other wrong? Other
possible sources to critique include Sir F. M. Eden,
The State of the Poor (1797); Patrick Colquhoun,

A Treatise on the Wealth, Power, and

Resources of the British Empire (1815); Edward
Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture of
Great Britain (1836); William Cobbett, Rural
Rides (1830); William Cook Taylor, Notes of a
Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of
Lancashire (1842); Peter Gaskell, Artisans and
Machinery (1836); Francis Place, Handloom
Weavers and Factory Works in J. A. Roebuck, ed.,
Pamphlets for the People (1835); Nassau W.
Senior, Letters on the Factory Acts (1837); and

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C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the WorkingClass in England in 1844 (1892).

Cooperative Learning Activities

2. Nineteenth-Century Social Novels

1. Business Tycoons

Long yet entertaining and enormously instructive,

the social novels of the early and mid-nineteenth
century often work well in history classrooms. A
good choice is Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854).
Set in the fictitious Coketown in northern England,
the novel satirizes the theory of Utilitarianism
through such memorable characters as Mr.
Gradgrind, Josiah Bounderby, and Mrs. Sparsit.
Discuss the connections between the common people
in Hard Times and the historical experience of
industrialization: how does Dickens portray women,
and what seems to be Dickens' view of the impact of
industrialization on the family? What position does
Dickens' appear to take on education, trades unions,
political economy, and state policy? Other possible
novels include Dickenss Oliver Twist or A
Christmas Carol; Elizabeth Gaskells Mary Barton
or North and South; Emile Zolas Germinal;
Benjamin Disraelis Sybil; Charles Kingsleys
Alton Locke; Charlotte Brontes Shirley; and
Frances Trollopes Michael Armstrong.

Help those students who see history as merely a

requirement and dream about success in the business
world to develop a historical perspective on their
chosen profession by researching some early
nineteenth century tycoons: Josiah Wedgwood,
Richard Arkwright (a cotton mill owner who earned
a fortune and a knighthood), Isambard Kingdom
Brunel (the flamboyant railway builder), and Alfred
Krupp (the German steel magnate) are just a few
examples. Ask students to look closely at their
business methods, speculate on the reasons for their
success, and present their business models to the
class.

3. The Poets Eye

Introducing a poem or two from the nineteenth
century can spur a conversation about contemporary
responses to the challenges of industrialization.
Students often express discomfort with poetry, but
they might find William Blake tremendously
appealing (he was influential on the beat poets of the
1950s and the counter-cultural artists of the 1960s).
Try assigning Holy Thursday, The Chimney
Sweeper, London, The Little Black Boy, or
selections from his longer works, such as Vala, or
the Four Zoas (describing the work of the sons of
Urizen) and Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant
Albion. Equally effective is the poetry of William
Wordsworth: The French Revolution, Composed
Upon Westminster Bridge, Michael, The
Solitary Reaper, The World Is Too Much With
Us, or excerpts from Excursions. Ask students to
reflect on Blakes views on religion, his
revolutionary ideals, and how his role as an artisan
shaped his perspectives. If using Wordsworth, have
students consider his views of nature, traditional
society, and the emerging new society. Provide some
basic biographical information on each mans life so
students can assess how Blakes and Wordsworths
own experiences are reflected in their work.

2. A Factory Visit
Invite students to share their experiences of factory
work, if they have any, prodding them to think about
the parallels to nineteenth century industrial labor.
Alternately, plan a site visit to a local factory or a
museum of industry. To draw out the significance of
their experience, assign E. P. Thompsons classic
essay Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial
Capitalism, Past and Present (1971), which
analyzes the connections between new manufacturing techniques, the synchronization of labor,
and new pressures of time routines. Factories
brought not only the division of labor, but also bells,
clocks, fines, and constant supervision.

3. Luddites
With all the current discussion about the detrimental
effects of technology on our lives, this topic is sure
to resonate. Ask students to research the Luddite
protests and/or Captain Swing riots and then to write
and stage a play about these early nineteenth-century
attempts to resist and protest the onslaught of
technology. Dozens of primary and secondary
sources are available.
Sources:
Eric Hobsbawm and George Rud,
Captain Swing (1969); Eric Hobsbawm, Labouring
Men: Studies in the History of Labour (1964); Brian
J. Bailey, The Luddite Rebellion (1998); Kevin
Binfield, Writings of the Luddites (2004); Nicols
Fox, Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite
History in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives
(2003); Steven E. Jones, Against Technology: From
Luddites to Neo-Luddism (2006).

C HAPTER 21 T HE R EVOLUTION IN E NERGY AND I NDUSTRY

Web Resources
Building Americas Industrial Revolution
(www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/
21boott/21lrnmore.htm)
Crystal Palace: The Great Exhibition of 1851
(www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/
318visual_1851.htm)
1833 Factory Act: Did It Solve the Problems of
Children in Factories? (www.nationalarchives
.gov.uk/education/lessons/lesson13.htm)
1834 Poor Law: What Did People Think of the New
Poor Law? (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
education/lessons/lesson08.htm)
The Industrial Revolution (www.fordham.edu/
halsall/mod/modsbook14.html#The%
20Industrial%20Revolution)
The Life of the Industrial Worker in NineteenthCentury England (www.victorianweb.org/
history/workers1.html)
The Newcomen Steam Engine (technology.niagarac
.on.ca/people/mcsele/newcomen.htm)
The Victorian Web (www.victorianweb.org)
The Workhouse (www.workhouses.org.uk)

Additional Bedford/St. Martins

Resources for Chapter 21
Instructors Resource CD-ROM
The chapter-specific resources on this disc are useful
for presentation, handouts, and quizzing from within
lecture presentations. The disc includes a chapter

375

outline in PowerPoint format, multiple-choice

questions in Word and PowerPoint format for use
with the i>clicker classroom response system, as
well as the following maps and images from the
textbook, in both PowerPoint and jpeg formats:
Ford Maddox Brown, Work
Map 21.1: The Industrial Revolution in
England, ca. 1850
Map 21.2: Continental Industrialization, ca.
1850
Spot Map 21.1: Cottage Industry and
Transportation in Eighteenth-Century England
The PowerPoint chapter outlines with embedded
images and maps are also available in the online
instructors resource section of the book companion
site at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywest. These
maps and selected images are also available in jpeg
format from the Make History section of the book
companion site.

Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/

mckaywest
The Online Study Guide helps students review
material from the textbook as well as practice
historical skills. Each chapter contains assessment
quizzes, short-answer and essay questions, and
interactive activities accompanied by page references
to encourage further study. The following map,
visual, and document activities, based on textbook
activities and special features, are available in the
Online Study Guide for this chapter as assignable
quizzes:
Visual Activity: Ford Maddox Brown, Work
Map Activity: Map 21.1: The Industrial
Revolution in Europe, ca. 1850