The Age of Industrialisation
The pace of change and workers' lives
Explain why hand labour stayed important and how workers lived.
How fast did industry change? Slower than you might think.
- Cotton led until the 1840s; then iron and steel took over, as railways spread (in England from the 1840s, in the colonies from the 1860s). By 1873, Britain's iron and steel exports were worth about £77 million, double its cotton exports.
- Even at the end of the 19th century, less than 20 per cent of workers were in technologically advanced industries. Much textile work was still done at home.
- 'Traditional' industries like food processing, building, pottery, glass, tanning and furniture grew through small, ordinary improvements, not steam power.
Machines spread slowly. New machines were expensive, often broke down, were costly to repair, and did not always work as well as claimed. James Watt improved Newcomen's steam engine and patented it in 1781; his friend Matthew Boulton made it. But for years, nobody bought it. At the start of the 19th century, England had no more than 321 steam engines: 80 in cotton, nine in wool, the rest in mining, canals and iron works. The typical worker in the mid-19th century was a craftsperson or labourer, not a machine operator.
Why industrialists preferred hand labour.
- Labour was plentiful and cheap: poor peasants poured into cities looking for work. Why spend big money on machines?
- Seasonal demand: gas works and breweries were busiest in winter; bookbinders and printers before Christmas; ship repairs in winter. For a few busy months, hiring hands was easier than buying a machine that would sit idle.
- Variety and skill: Britain made 500 kinds of hammers and 45 kinds of axes; machines made only standard goods.
- Taste: Britain's upper classes preferred hand-made goods as a sign of class; machine-made goods went to the colonies.
In America, where workers were scarce, industrialists were keen on machines. Britain had no such problem.
Workers' lives. Hundreds walked to the cities on news of jobs. Getting one depended on friends and relatives already working there. Those without contacts waited weeks, sleeping under bridges or in night shelters (Night Refuges, or the Casual Wards of the Poor Law). Will Thorne described walking to London in 1881, sleeping under a haystack, until a friend got him a job at a gas works.
- Seasonal work meant long spells with no income.
- Wages rose a little, but when prices rose (as in the Napoleonic War), wages bought less. Income also depended on how many days you got work.
- Even in good times, about 10 per cent of town people were extremely poor; in a slump like the 1830s, unemployment reached 35 to 75 per cent in different regions.
Fear of machines. Afraid of losing work, workers opposed new machines. The Spinning Jenny, made by James Hargreaves in 1764, let one worker turn one wheel and spin many threads at once. Women hand-spinners, who lived by spinning, attacked these machines; a magistrate in 1790 reported colliers' wives marching to cut one to pieces.
New jobs after the 1840s. Cities began building: roads widened, railway stations and lines, tunnels, drains and sewers, river embankments. Transport jobs doubled during the 1840s, then doubled once more over the following 30 years.
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