Introduction

Starting in the mid-1700s in England, a series of inventions sparked the biggest change in human life since tools first had been used in the growing of crops thousands of years earlier. These inventions caused profound changes in the ordinary lives of people and in the way society is organized. The entire process—technical innovation and social change taken together—is called the Industrial Revolution.

These changes, which are still being felt at the beginning of the twenty-first century, came in two stages. The first stage, sometimes called the first Industrial Revolution, lasted from about 1750 until about 1850 and took place largely in England. It was dominated by two developments in technology: the steam engine driven by coal and machines used to make textiles, or cloth.

The second stage, sometimes called the second Industrial Revolution, lasted from about 1850 until about 1940 and occurred primarily in the United States as well as in continental Europe. It was dominated by two new sources of power: the internal combustion engine and electricity.

In addition to the introduction of new sources of power and machinery, the Industrial Revolution resulted in new ways of thinking about work. The process of making things began to be viewed in terms of a system: machines and people functioning together in workplaces, typically in factories as parts of a factory system. Previously, goods had been manufactured by individual craftspeople working at home. The system approach was introduced gradually, starting in the late 1700s and progressing steadily into the twenty-first century. It is difficult to overemphasize how important this change has been. It has affected the way people view their work and the way they view one another, in the workplace, in society, and in government.

Some observers have suggested that the introduction of computers and the Internet in the last half of the twentieth century will prove to be yet a third stage of the Industrial Revolution, in which a machine takes over parts of human mental activity, just as machines earlier took over parts of human physical activity.

The nature of technical change

Technology was a critical element in the Industrial Revolution, though by no means the only element. The fundamental technical developments associated with the Industrial Revolution occurred in four areas:

  • Mechanical power. Mechanical power was derived first from the steam engine, which burned coal to heat water to create the steam that powered the engine, and later from engines that burned oil (internal combustion engines) or ran on electricity (often generated by burning coal).
  • Manufacturing. Manufacturing resulted in the shift from handmade to machine-made, and from homemade to factory-made, goods.
  • Transportation. Horses, mules, and oxen were replaced by railroads and steamships driven by steam engines, and by cars, trucks, and eventually airplanes powered by oil.
  • Communications. Messages carried by people were replaced by instantaneous communication over long distances via telegraph, telephone, and, much later, the Internet.

Alongside the Industrial Revolution was an agricultural revolution, which brought similar changes to agricultural practices—the introduction of technology to manual farming, new procedures that greatly increased the output of both farmers and their land—and resulted in new attitudes toward the relationship between "natural" and "scientific" farming. The combination of new systems and new technology was first introduced on English farms around 1700 and has over the years greatly increased the productivity of farmers and the land. The agricultural revolution has also changed humankind's relationship to animals and food and, to some extent, to the basic process of eating.

Social changes

Changes in technology helped drive major changes in the way people lived and worked and, later, in the way government was organized and controlled.

The Industrial Revolution changed the relationship of workers to their jobs and to the products they made. Previously, skilled workers ran small family businesses, spinning thread and weaving cloth at home under contracts with merchants. In the late 1700s these so-called cottage industries began to be replaced by much larger enterprises, housed in factories, in which machinery supplemented or replaced human skills and energy. People were hired to operate the machines and were paid wages based on how many hours they worked, rather than on their output. Workers, unlike craftspeople, had no influence on the nature of the products that were being made. The factory system, one of the most important results of the Industrial Revolution, increased worker productivity but also dramatically changed the nature of work.

The factory system also introduced changes in the structure of society. Until the Industrial Revolution, wealth, prestige, and political power lay in the hands of the aristocracy, people who controlled large tracts of land and those living on that land. By the late 1800s many aristocrats had been replaced by a relative handful of extremely wealthy owners of business enterprises. In the United States, where there had never been an established aristocracy, the new power structure gave rise to the "robber barons," as wealthy industrialists were known. They included such men as Andrew Carnegie (steel), John D. Rockefeller (oil), and J. P. Morgan (banking), all of whom used their positions to stifle competition and manipulate prices to their enormous advantage. Such actions prompted the government to move to control the power and influence of the most dominant business owners.

At the level of the individual factory, workers came to be viewed as parts of the larger machine. Factory employees were paid barely enough to stay alive, and it was common for children as young as six to work many hours a day, six days a week. The idea that humans were part of the machinery did not always sit well with the workers, and the resulting tension helped set the stage for new challenges to fundamental ideas of private property and the rights of individuals in the context of a larger society.

Another part of the story involves how business was organized. At first, individual entrepreneurs (people who start and own businesses) bought machines and hired people to work them. Later, groups of individuals pooled their funds to purchase expensive machines and build factories, and to share their profits. These enterprises were called "corporations," a word that implies that the business has some of the characteristics and rights of a person. Eventually, the interests of this artificial person, the corporation, came to dominate the interests of any one person working there. While individual managers might question the morality of certain actions or policies, the corporation has no emotions or feelings, just a set of numbers that tells its shareholders whether it is making a profit.

The combined results of the Industrial Revolution and the agricultural revolution meant that over a period of two hundred years, vastly more people came to live in cities, where the majority of the factories were being built, as opposed to the countryside, where increased farm productivity lessened the need for agricultural workers. And as the total population of industrialized countries grew enormously, society changed drastically: a society coming to be dominated by thickly settled cities was quite different from one that had been dominated by people living on farms or in small towns.

The Idea of Progress

For many people in the twenty-first century, time seems to progress along a straight line. We can look back, thanks to history books, and see a previous time (say, 1800) that was "then" and envision a future time (for example, 2100) that will be different. A whole category of books called science fiction is about the future, rather than about the present or the past.

But several hundred years ago, time was not envisioned as a straight line. Instead, it was seen as a circle, largely based on the seasons. People living on farms planted in the spring, watched crops grow in summer, harvested in the autumn, and rested in the winter until the cycle began all over again. Each year was much like the one before and the one after. Life did not change from year to year, not even from generation to generation. Of course, new individuals would fulfill certain roles in society: a king or another aristocrat might die and be succeeded by his son (for a long time, women were not allowed to own property and rarely held positions of importance), but the basic social roles of the king, the aristocrat, the farm laborer, and the craftsperson were the same year after year. Any changes that might come about—such as those effected by the Magna Carta (1215), a document that gave more influence to the British aristocrats at the expense of their king—seemed remote from the lives of most people.

This cyclical aspect of life affects the way people think. If there has been no real change for generations, people tend not to think about bringing about change, except perhaps on the individual level (a farmer's son might become a craftsman in town, for instance). The idea of progress does not exist; it does not describe anyone's practical experience.

Cultural and political developments starting with the Renaissance (a period of intellectual and artistic rebirth from about 1400 to 1700) and leading up to the Industrial Revolution changed people's way of thinking, just as everyday life started changing dramatically. One key element was a new invention, the steam engine, which came about in part because in Britain, ancient forests of oak had all been chopped down for firewood, and a new means of heating homes was needed. Coal was found to be a substitute, but mining coal required pumps to keep the mines free from the groundwater that seeped into them. Thus a mechanized pump was the motivation for the first practicable steam engine built by Thomas Newcomen in 1712.

Now time began to be viewed differently, as a straight line, in which the machinery available in one year might be different, and better, the next year, or in five years. One machine inspired an improved version, or the application of the same principle to some other activity. These modifications brought changes to people's lives, the first in hundreds of years. Farmers found themselves living in towns or cities. Craftspeople saw factories producing cloth and other goods. Merchants became factory owners. And these changes in the way people lived led to changes in the way they governed themselves. People could imagine a future that might look very different from the present, and they started pushing for improvements in all aspects of their lives. Humankind's perception of time itself had undergone a revolution.

Political changes

The dislocations brought about by the movement of people to cities and the rise of factories as a source of wealth came together to diminish the power and influence of the old aristocracy, including kings and queens, that had arisen in Europe in the Middle Ages (roughly 500 to 1400). Instead, business owners and, later, workers assumed domination over government. At first, factory owners fought for a greater voice in and influence over government affairs. Later, beginning in the mid-1800s, voices were raised on behalf of the rights of workers. The dramatic changes affecting workers raised a number of questions: Does ownership of a machine or factory give the owner the right to abuse his workers? To what extent should government interfere in the voluntary relationship between a business owner and his employees? Should workers have the right to join together to assert influence over their conditions of employment? If workers have that right, what about factory owners?

The struggle between business owners and workers for political influence and power continues, even as the landowning aristocracy of the Middle Ages is largely a thing of the past except perhaps in the British House of Lords, part of Britain's Parliament, or governing body. Modern notions of democracy are firmly rooted in the social changes resulting from the Industrial Revolution.