INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, The. Down to the middle of the 18th century few mechanical had been made and peo ple were still using the appliances in use at the time of the Pharaohs. The people of western Europe continued to till their fields with crude implements, harvest their grain with a sickle and thresh it with a flail, weave their cloth on hand looms, and saw and plane their boards by hand as their forefathers had done for 3,000 years. Means of transportation and com munication had shown similar stagnation. As an illustration of the backwardness of inven tion we may take the textile industry, which was carried on in every home. From the days of Penelope in the time of Homer. down to 1760 only three improvements had been made in the method of making cloth, and only one of these introduced any considerable change. The first was in the process of fulling the cloth: instead of throwing it into a brook and having it trod into the mud by the bare feet of chil dren it was now fulled by means of a water fuller run by water power. A second really significant change was made in tne 15th cen tury. It was the substitution of the spinning wheel for the distaff and spindle; but while the spinner could spin much more rapidly, she was still unable to spin more than one thread at a time. The third change was the invented by John Kay in 1738, by which the weaver could manipulate his loom more rapidly and easily.
Industrial Revolution in Sud, denly, however, a series of inventions was made in England, beginning about 1760, which com pletely revolutionized the existing methods of industry and introduced a new industrial era. Greater and more far-reaching mechanical changes occurred in the next few decades than in all the world's history before. Machinery was substituted for hand tools, the factory system supplanted the domestic system of home works, and industry gradually assumed the shape that is familiar to us. This series of changes is known as the Industrial Revolu tion, a name first applied by Arnold Toynbee about 1880, but which is now sin general use.
Just why the Industrial Revolution should have occurred at the time when it did, or why it should have taken place in England rather than on the Continent, are difficult questions to answer. Necessity seems to have preceded in vention in this ease as generally, for the need Of improved mechanical appliances was keenly .felt in England,. France, Germany, Switzerland and other countries, and consiglemNi•prcagress had been made in the physical and chemical sciences. England took the lead in industry for several reasons. In the first place she possessed the most important raw materials either at, home (wool, coal and iron) or in her•colonies (sugar, iron, cotton, dye and other woods). All of these were of such a character that they could best be worked up in quantity; there was there fore a demand for machinery for this purpose in England. Her inSular position and the COS sequent ease of waterway communication which was the quickest and cheapest — gave her command of larger markets than any of the continental countries, The- political- situ ation in England was such as to ensure domestic tranquillity and the security of property rights, which were essential to the development of manufactures. In this connection might be men tioned also the breaking down of the restraints of the guild system and the development of •a good system of patent law. Capital was already accumulating in England, much of it won from the colonies by trade, there was a sufficient sue ply of skilled labor, and under. the.domestic
system there had gfown up a class of middle men or enterprisers who could conduct hu,siness on a large scale. The conditions were ripe in England for a rapid industrial development, and when a series of technical improvements was made after the middle of the 1$th century, adjustments in organization quickly followed.
The first important inventions occurred in the textile industry. Under the domestic sys tem, wfiere the processes of spinning and weav ing were both carried on by hand, a principal difficulty had been to provide enough yarn, as it required the work of from 5 to 10 spin ners, each spinning .a single thread, to keep one weaver occupied. In 1767 James Hargreaves invented a machine known as the jenny, which operated eight spindles instead of one; this number was later raised to 80. The follow ing year Richard Arkwright patented a ma clune in which the threads passed through two sets of rollers, of which the second pair was driven at a higher speed and thus drew out the wool or cotton into thread. This roller ma chine was known as the water frame because it was operated:by water power. It had, how ever, one drawback, in that it did not twist the fibre tightly enough to make fine thread. But this difficulty was met in 1779 by Samuel Crompton, who combined the best features of the two earlier machines into one, which be cause of its hybrid origin was named the amule.) As a result of these improvements in spinning machinery the traditional relations be tween the spinners and the weavers was re versed and more yarn could be produced than the hand looms could weave into cloth. In 1784 Dr. Edward Cartwright turned his atten tion to the construction of. a power loom, which he succeeded in perfecting some three . years later. Other improvements were made in the processes of printing and bleaching the cloth, but it remained for an American; Eli Whitney, to complete the series of improvements by his hi vention of the cotton gin in 1792, Whereas only, a, pound of cotton could be cleaned of its seeds in a day by hand, With the aid of the gin a maw could 'clean 300. Unlimited cheap raw material was thus assured manufao turers. The .effects of these inventions upon the textile industry were revolutionary. • But in order that the new inventions might be made serviceable and machinery utilized to the utmost, it was necessary that it be driven by•some non-human power. Indeed it cannot be too strongly emphasized that the vital feature in the Industrial Revolution' lay in the substi tution of power for human muscles. As long as man was confined to the use. of hand tools his powers of production were strictly limited by the number of human hands available for this purpose, but as soon as machinery was invented . and was driven by non-human power, there was no limit placed upon his powers of production through physical limitations. it depended now upon his ability to make the machines and to develop the power. Windmills were well known, but were unsatisfactory -for -this purpose,- and at first water power was resorted to. But not _until the, steam engip was-perfected did man have a effielent instrument for this purpose. With this inven tion mankind entered upon an entirely new phase of development, and one that opens new vistas for the future. .