The Industrial Revolution (1942)

Here, tools of wood, of bone, tools of stone, of bronze and iron. Material progress has been largely in improving these tools and finding new uses for them. However, after long ages, until three centuries ago, the masses of people were still tied down to hand labor and crude machines in their efforts to provide the necessities of life. They had to build their own shelter from materials in their immediate locality. After thousands of years of man's development, people still had to make their own clothing. The work of hands and human muscles still prevailed. Until recently in the story of mankind, changes have usually come about very slowly. We measure the more recent part of man's history by this bar. Note that a greater change in ways of living than had occurred in all time previously was to take place in an astonishingly brief space of time. The period between 1750 AD and today. This we call the Industrial Revolution. This amazing change began in England of the late 17th century. England with her ships, coal, timber, iron, money and laborers. Continental Europe at this time was torn by wars. In one year alone, in 1685, 50,000 refugees fled to freedom across the English Channel. Workers in textiles, metals, paper and glass. England now had the physical foundations of an industrial nation. For to all her rich natural resources, a surplus of skilled craftsmen had been added. There also existed in England relative freedom of thought, use of the scientific method, and invention. The first sign of the revolution in industry appeared in improvements in metals, steam engines, and textile machines. To keep one weaver busy in the England of the early 18th century required the work of eight spinners, and only a few yards of cloth could be woven each day. But with the new flying shuttle, weavers could make four to eight times as much cloth as before. Then in 1748, Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which spun from eight to 48 threads simultaneously. Now one spinner could more than keep one weaver busy. The weaving process could expand greatly, could produce many times more cloth than make it cheaper than before. In 1769, Arkwright's water frame came upon the scene, and water power began to be used to operate the textile machines. The next important textile invention was the mule in 1799. It was faster than the jenny, and it spun a finer, harder thread. The spinners again produced faster than the weavers, and too finer cloth could be made. Throughout the empire, there were increasing demands for the finer cloth, and production again increased. Next, the power of steam, which had been known for centuries, was put to work about this time in the first practical steam engines. With steam and water power, textile production in England expanded further. Factories sprang up, equipped with power machinery for making textiles. The factory whistle awakened people in the mornings and measured off their long days of toil. Building new factories meant more work for masons, for carpenters. Machinery meant greater use of iron, more work for blacksmiths. Machinery meant greater use of coal and coke for smelting iron and for power, more work for miners and foundry workers. Factories meant more products for more people at less cost than before. Factories meant more people working full time at specialized tasks, compelled to buy necessities they formerly provided for themselves. But they now had money with which to buy more necessities, enough money to raise their standard of living. The rapid industrial development called for more transportation and more ships to bring in raw materials and carry back finished products. Thus in a short time, England became the leading industrial nation of the world. Meanwhile, westward across the Atlantic, a new land was rapidly developing. It was blessed with varied resources, forests, water power, coal, iron, gold, silver, copper, oil and gas, fertile soil, a vast array of materials, many of which were to be developed by generations to come. Along the Atlantic seaboard, the English factories and machines were quickly copied by the alert Americans. In the South, cotton long had been raised. Good cloth could be made from its fluffy staple, and there was an abundance of slave labor. But one slave could separate only about a pound of staple from seed per day. The saw-toothed Eli Whitney's cotton gin could separate from 50 to 100 lb per day. The cotton gin saved the South from bankruptcy. Quickly, land in the South increased threefold in value. Cotton became king. The spinning and weaving mills of the Northeast were multiplied and enlarged. Thousands of added workers went into the textile mills. More cloth, better cloth, cheaper cloth became available to more people. Other thousands must now go into other factories, for example, for making shoes. For the textile workers had no time to make many of the things they needed, but they did have money with which to buy them. Next, there came a great surge of invention. In a single decade, from 1840 to 1850, 6,000 patents were granted, the most important being the telegraph and the sewing machine. Other new factories began to produce new machines and tools based upon these inventions. More factories demanded more iron for machines, more coal. The iron and coal industries grew. Population grew with the westward movement of Native Americans and with the arrival of European immigrants to help work in mines and factories, to help raise food on the farms. Machines constantly came into wider use. The rich soil of the Midwest was increasingly cultivated to feed the teeming populations of growing factory centers. America perfected labor-saving farm equipment. The Bessemer furnace in 1856 replaced brittle pig iron with hard steel. More delicate machines, more precise, more powerful machines could now be built. For example, better railroad rolling stock to help make possible this growth of American railroads by 1870. The factory cities needed an increasing supply of raw materials, which railroads often had to haul long distances. Transcontinental rail lines encouraged the improvement of steam engines in ocean-going ships. The development of steam power made possible the spread of a railroad network that today in the United States alone is in excess of 250,000 mi. The great distances likewise called for rapid communication and gave reason for the long experimentation out of which developed the world's greatest system of telegraph and telephone lines. The advent of the internal combustion engine virtually created both the modern petroleum industry and the automobile industry. Machines using petroleum products greatly contribute to our modern age of power. So too, steam-driven machines are symbolic of our power age. Likewise, electrically powered machines. All these are part of a modern age of machines powered by petroleum, coal, and electricity. Power and the highly important standardization of parts and mass production with its assembly lines have created more mechanical slaves for man. Transportation servants, power transportation on land, power transportation on the sea, power in the air. Power-driven mechanical servants, delicate and complex machines to make man's clothing for him. Mechanical spinners and weavers that now make thousands of times as much clothing as could have been made 200 years ago if everyone then on Earth worked at spinning and weaving. Power machines to help process and preserve food and to transport it so that neither season nor distance can shut off an adequate supply. Mechanical slaves in the machine tool industry, created by man to create more mechanical slaves for increasing his control of the world about him. In these machines, after a few short centuries of the Industrial Revolution, the average man in the United States today is said to have at his beck and call 20 mechanical slaves. Yet, the industrial laboratory, without which the changes of today and of tomorrow could not come to pass, is only a symbol of the handicrafts of the past. We have by no means passed out of the age of the hand, the eye, the mind, and the spirit. The machine age is just beginning, and the hand, which early in man's history was used directly in providing life's bare necessities, is today acquiring newer, more intricate skills. It is learning to direct man's growing army of mechanical slaves. Hey.