The textile industry was the very first industry to be advanced. Before the revolution, cloth was typically woven at home, which would take long hours a day to do. With the creation of these new inventions, cloth was made much faster which led to a boost in merchants’ profits. Industrial Revolution Research explains the textile industry during the industrial revolution, “The demand for cloth continued to rise, so merchants had to be in competition with others for their supplies to make it. This caused a problem for the consumers because the products were now at a much higher cost.
The best solution was to try to use machinery, which was cheaper to sell then products that were made by hand (because they took a long time to create), therefore this allowed the cloth to be cheaper for the consumer. In 1813, Francis Cabot Lowell set up what was the first American textile factory. It combined all of the tasks that were needed in order to transform the raw cotton into the finished cotton. One of the most famous new spinning machines to produce the cloth faster was known as the “spinning jenny,” which was invented by Englishman James Hargreaves.
This brand new machine attached several spinning wheels in such a way that up to eight threads could be processed at once. The downfall was that this machine was so beneficial that it eventually replaced workers, and this resulting in riots. In 1789, Samuel Slater remembered the secrets to textile manufacturing and brought them with him over to America in order to build the first water-powered cotton mill in America; which was set up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (industrialrevolutionresearch. com). ” In 1733, a small town machinist named John Kay invented the flying shuttle. This was a oat shaped piece of wood that was attached to some yarn and it sped back and forth on a set of wheels. In 1764, James Hargreaves created a spinning wheel that would let eight spindles spin all at one time. In 1769, Richard Arkwright invented the water frame which was one of the first to use waterpower to spin wheels. Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule (1779) was able to make thread stronger and finer at the same time, and Edmund Cartwright’s power loom (1787) sped up the process of weaving. All of these are major inventions that transformed the textile industry which is still one of the world’s most popular industries.
Transportation is another important industry that was reformed during the revolution. Before the revolution, the transportation industry was barely feasible in America. Most people still got around by horse and carriage if they was lucky enough not to have to walk. The Train was one of the most important inventions of the entire revolution. It not only changed to way that people were able to get from place to place, but it also allowed for a quicker transportation of goods which changed the nation’s economy for the good.
The railroad eventually spread across the nation which allowed access quicker access to anywhere in America with the purchase of a plane ticket. The creation of the railroad was also accompanied by the start of the roads and interstate that stretch across America. America is said to have one of the greatest roadways in the world due to the interstate system, and the creation of this road started during the Industrial Revolution. River traffic, which included steamboats and canals, was also something that revolutionized the traffic industry.
Some of the most notable inventions that influenced the advancements of transportation were the steam engine created by James Watt (1765), the 1st railroad track was built (1821-1825), and a locomotive named the Rocket which was created by George Stephenson and his son in 1829. Schools History summarizes the accomplishments of the revolution on transportation, “Transport developed very rapidly in the period 1700-1900 as a result of an increasing need for better ways of moving goods and people, new technologies and large time investment in the countries infra-structure, or communications network. The developments came in several stages.
The first thing was that Roads were improved, then Canals were developed, and finally the Railway was created. Each improvement had an impact upon life in the country. Each development shortened travel times over longer distances and each allowed industrialists to look for new markets in previously out of reach areas of the country. Likewise they allowed more raw materials and goods to be transported to and from factories, providing even further impetus to the industrial age (schoolshistory. org. uk). ” Even though there are numerous positive effects, the Industrial Revolution also had its fair share of negative effects.
Because of the rise of urbanization, many cities in America, whose outdated infrastructure system could not keep up with the extremely fast population growth, were being overcrowded with people who were looking for jobs. England’s major cities and towns lacked decent housing, had literally no sanitary codes, novice education systems, and inefficient police protection. Many of the workers in the working class had to live in small, dirty shelters where sickness was common and widespread. With the introduction of the steam industry, factory working conditions became even worse. Machines commonly injured the workers.
Many factory owners only cared about getting the cheapest labor possible. In order to do this, factory owners hired specific workers, which was mostly women and children because they did the most work for the cheapest pay, so they could work strenuous long hours for little to nothing wages. The working class saw little to no improvements in living and working conditions. The middle class, which was made up of highly skilled workers, college professionals, local factory owners, and other “well to do” people, saw mainly improvements in their lives because of the industrial revolution.
The middle class was now capable of having enough money to purchase things that the wealthy only had access to, such as servants and nannies. Beginning in the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution had unfortunately created a major wage/ lifestyle gap between the wealthy and the poor. Many of the reformers during this time felt that the government needed to do something vital In order to improve the way of living for the working class and the poor. Many ideas and philosophies that surrounded government and lifestyle were created as a result or reaction to the Industrial Revolution.
One of the most notable, an economic system known as socialism, prospered during the 1800s as a result of the Industrial Revolution. It called for more state influence in the government, equal rights for all, and an end to the concept of inhumanity, which strongly opposed individualism and laissezfaire politics. Laissez-faire philosophy (otherwise known as capitalism), which was first thought of by a man named Adam Smith, suggested that owners of industry and business should be able to set their own private working conditions without the government being able to intervene.
Other major social movements, including communism movement, a form of complete and total socialism where all ways of production would be owned by the people leaving only a very small number of manufacturers and companies controlling the wealth of the nation. The concept of communism was proposed by Karl Marx, a well-known utilitarianism. Utilitarianism judged concepts and ideas, various institutions, and a person’s actions based on their utility and supported that government actions should solely promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Utilitarianism was introduced by Jeremy Bentham but led by John Stuart Mill. The overall proponents of the Industrial Revolution points to amazing new inventions, clever technological advances, and an overall increased global wealth. Global GDP per capita, the most common and accurate measurement of national wealth, has increased nearly 800% over just the past 200 years in 1990 dollars (“The Contours of World Development”).
The majority of people in the world experience better quality education than they did 200 years ago. 0% of the United Nation member countries had a literacy rate greatly above 50% in 2011, and just around half of the countries in the entire world had a literacy rate near or above 90% (“Literacy Rate of Countries”). On the other hand, the large abundancy of Europeans before 1850 were pretty much illiterate. Healthcare also drastically improved. Certain diseases that destroyed human populations in the past have now pretty much been defeated through scientific and technological advances which were made possible by the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions.
Life expectancy in most countries has definitely improved, as mentioned earlier. Could you imagine what our lives would be like without railroads, cars, modern medicine, inoculations, computers, and the Internet? Critics of the Industrial Revolution, however, point out a global economic system that seems exploitive, unsustainable, and unreliable. They point out how the wealth has been obviously unequally distributed around the entire world and that the wealth gap has dramatically grown over time.
In 1820, the European countries had an average income level that was nearly twice that of the rest of the world. But in 1998, Europe had an average income level which was seven times that of the rest of the world (“Contours of World Development”). Another big concern is that as more than two billion people in the countries India and China enter into the so called “take off” period of industrialization, their steady growing middle classes desire the consumer products that Americans and the other more developed countries have got to enjoy.
This leads way for a new question about society; what will happen if the rest of the world replicates our amount and pace of consumption? Well, in 2010, the United States, with less than 5% of the entire global population, overwhelmingly used about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources, which was mostly oil and coal (“The State of Consumption Today’). Fossil fuels are not infinite. They will eventually run out. Yet they are considerably the most important resources that drive current industrialization and the economy. And they are also very powerful pollutants.
If billions of people duplicate this degree of consumption, they will eventually run out which would then lead to ecological and economic disaster. Another major concern is that multinational corporations owe their loyalty not to any nation but to solely the profit motive. So if this happens, who or what will keep them from creating vast quantities of pollution or exploiting weak and desperate countries? Who will stop the happening of global resource depletion? We have clearly seen how pure capitalism in England led to exploitation of the weakest and most vulnerable people.
Will that story repeat now on a much more global scale? The Industrial Revolution left an everlasting mark on this nation’s society and economy. Life in the 18th century shifted fast and dramatically which caused the social classes to shift, wealth to increase, and all nations to begin takin their own national identities. The Industrial Revolution caused the world to finally come to face with many social consequences and economic changes that still have an effect on all of us today. The Industrial Revolution is known as one of the important events in all of history.
