A. K. Sisneros
Prof. Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Western Civilization Since 1493
November 19, 2024
The Industrial Revolution was a momentous period of innovation through the 19th century. Manufacturing processes were refined, and mechanical innovations made harvesting raw materials more efficient. Throughout recorded history, innovation has been linear and incredibly slow. But the Industrial Revolution sparked the beginning of a new human era; an era of rapid development. A mere two hundred years after James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, America sent a man to the moon; and thirty years later, the iPhone was invented. Currently, many workers fear that artificial intelligence (AI) may take their jobs and render them useless in the workforce. Ten years ago, that would have been a fantasy for anyone outside of Silicon Valley. And those are just a few illustrations meant to show the level of exponential development that began during the Industrial Revolution and continues into the modern day.
Britain, in particular, was the hub of the Industrial Revolution. Part of this was because of their natural friendliness towards entrepreneurs and the bourgeois class. Not all of Europe emulated this attitude. For example, the middle class was hated in France, especially during the French Revolution. Those in the merchant class were despised by the poor who were envious, and they were despised by the nobles who regarded them as aspiring gentlemen with ambitions to become renowned through merchant activities and buy their way into de facto nobility. In other words, the nobles regarded the bourgeois as illegitimate, aspiring aristocrats. The British Empire, which was built on international trade, was different. Over there, middle-class merchants were honored. And that created the opportune environment for the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
The textile industry saw a particular “industrial revolution.” Before the 18th century, manufacturing in the West was localized to individual households. One person would take the raw materials, prepare them, and then use them to build the final product. This was all done by one person. But as Henry Ford proved, humans work more efficiently by focusing on specialization. Today, most manufacturing is divided into various steps with different people specializing in each step. That was not the case during the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance and Enlightenment. But that started to change with the evolution of the putting-out system. In the putting-out system, there was a distinction between craftsmen and entrepreneurs. The so-called entrepreneurs would collect the raw materials and give them to craftsmen who would create a given product. Then the entrepreneur would take that product to the marketplace and sell it. Although elementary, this was the beginning of the transition towards an economy of specializing, which saw its fruition with the development of factories.
One of the misconceptions about 19th-century factory workers is that the Industrial Revolution damaged their standard of living. Quite the opposite is true. Although modern Americans might be appalled at the level workers during that era worked, it is unfair to judge their circumstances by contemporary standards. They worked incredibly hard. There is no denying that. The life of a factory worker was grueling and very labor-intensive. However, the Industrial Revolution did not damage their standard of living. Rather, it uplifted people from extreme poverty. For most of history, humans have lived in extreme poverty. Britain was no different moving into the Industrial Revolution. Historically, there were two options to avoid starvation: become a farmer or take up a trade. Farming was just as gruesome—if not more so—than factory work, and few people could afford the tools necessary for specialized trades. But the factories gave people another option: sell their labor. People flocked to the factories because it was their best option. It was their only means of avoiding starvation. According to Nicholas F.R. Craft, real income per capita doubled in England between 1760 and 1860. And for those who counter that only the top one percent earned all that wealth, per capita income for the poorest sixty-five percent of people increased by seventy percent. So the poor were in fact wealthier thanks to the Industrial Revolution; even if working conditions and pay were not up to modern standards, it was at least a step in the right direction.
Asher Sisneros 