England's Industrial Revolution

England's industrial revolution

Prior to the industrial revolution Britain was a rural country, most of the population were farmers living in villages far from the soon to be megalopolis. The nation is dormant, famine and disease are recurrent, and child mortality sky high. If the renaissance pulled most part of Europe out of the dark middle age, most of the British population living conditions are barely humane.. However a few innovations will soon launch, in the cold grey areas of northern England, what can arguably be characterized today as the most important discoveries in the history of contemporary mankind.

The inventions of the spinning jenny in 1764 by James Hargreaves and the water powered factory in 1789 by Richard Arkwright are the very first step toward the modern factory, the mass production and the end of economies sole based on manual labor or manual powered industrial units. These already advanced factories, boosted by Watt's steam engine were second to none by 1800. By the mid 19th century Britain claimed the position of the world's first superpower. The textile industry is not the only thing carrying them. Their much-celebrated navy plays a big role in the rise to prominence. It "feed" the blossoming economy with raw and rare materials imported from the precious English colony, mainly North America and India. The effectiveness of the navy also helped when the country needed to sell or exchange with other countries the surplus of their production for money or other goods they were lacking. Thanks to the international trade the market for British is now everlasting.

Although the changes brought by those inventions help speed up and multiply tenfold the production of their industries man power is still heavily needed. That is how thousands of farmers, who until led miserable lives dictated by the seasons, seed in spring, collect by summer and hibernate the rest of the year leave their homes and lands to try their luck in the cities offering jobs, unfailing salary and most importantly hope of a better life. The rural flight/exodus brings a constant flow of people to urban areas. The perfect example of a little city overnight transformation into an industrial behemoth is Manchester. Dirty, overcrowded, polluted, infected these soon to be asphalt jungles are not prepared one bit to host such a huge population on such short notice. Indeed Manchester will see something of exponential growth and almost triple its population from 1811 to 1851 going from 126,066 to 303,382. However the dream of most of these fortune seekers is shattered when they realize that they exchanged vast fields, fresh air as well as the luxury of working around their own timetable for incredibly long working hours, confine in ridiculously undersized and sweltering warehouses surrounded by hazardous machines ejecting all kind of harming smoke. This working class living standard, working conditions, rights as workers and citizens will originate one of the most important and passionate debates of our civilization, equal or second only to the abolition of slavery.

Inasmuch as this conflict between classes, here the emerging middle class and the exploited working class, has several aspects, versions and sides to it, I will detail them separately.

In order to understand the life led by those low-end workers, one has to picture the physical description made in the text "The Benefit of the Factory Legislation" . Some of the words used are shocking, spine chilling. The author describes the encounter he had with some of them and I think the next sentence is enough to move, disturb the coldest heart: "They stood or squatted before me in all the shapes of the letter of the alphabet." He described the kids working in those factories as "...stunted, crippled, deformed, useless." All are words strong enough to stick an image in your head, strong enough to make you react. Now the author of the quotes cited here was a senator with an agenda, probably trying to pass a bill for limitations in child labor, whether he is doing it out of righteousness or to get back at some colleagues who were mine of factory owners is unclear. Nevertheless it is safe to say that making such accusations in front of the parliament without valid proof is senseless, so there has got to be some truth

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