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Most often, the word exploitation is used to refer to economic exploitation; that is, the act of using another persons labor without offering them an adequate
compensation.
2.5 Industrial Revolution in England
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition
included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power,
the increasing use of steam power and the development of machine tools. It also included the change from wood and other bio-fuels to coal.
It was in England that the industrial revolution first took hold. England’s economy had progressed further than that of any other country in in the direction of
abundance.
2.5.1 Important Technological Developments
The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the
1830s the following gains had been made in important technologies: •
Textiles – Mechanized cotton spinning powered by steam or water increased the output of a worker by a factor of about 1000. The power loom increased the
output of a worker by a factor of over 40. The cotton gin increased productivity or removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50. Large gains in productivity also
occurred in spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as great as in cotton.
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• Steam power – The efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used
between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel. The adaption of stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them suitable for industrial uses. The high pressure
engine had a high power to weight ratio, making it suitable for transportation. Steam power underwent a rapid expansion after 1800.
• Iron making – The substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered the fuel
cost of pig iron and wrought iron production. Using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces, resulting in economies of scale. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first
used in 1760. It was later improved by making it double acting, which allowed higher furnace temperatures. The paddling process produced a structural grade iron
at a lower cost than the finery forge. The rolling mill was fifteen times faster than hammering wrought iron. Hot blast 1829 greatly increased fuel efficiency in iron
production in the following decades. Metallurgy - A major change in the metal industries during the era of the Industrial
Revolution was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal. For a given amount of heat, coal required much less labor to mine than cutting wood, and coal
was more abundant than wood.
2.5.2 Social Effects Standards of living
The history of the change of living conditions during the industrial revolution has been very controversial, and was the topic that from the 1950s to the 1980s
caused most heated debate among economic and social historians. A series of 1950s essays by Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins later set the academic
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consensus that the bulk of the population, which was at the bottom of the social ladder, suffered severe reductions in their living standards.
During the period 1813–1913, there was a significant increase in worker wages.
Food and nutrition
Chronic hunger and malnutrition were the norm for the majority of the population of the world including Britain and France, until the latter part of the 19th
century. Until about 1750, in large part due to malnutrition, life expectancy in France was about 35 years, and only slightly higher in Britain. The U.S. population of the
time was adequately fed, were much taller and had life expectancy of 45–50 years. In Britain and the Netherlands food supply had been increasing and prices
falling before the Industrial Revolution due to better agricultural practices; however, population was increasing as well, as noted by Thomas Malthus. Prior to the
Industrial Revolution, advances in agriculture or technology soon led to an increase in population, this again strained food and other resources, limiting increases in per
capita income. This condition is called the Malthusian trap, and it was finally overcome by industrialization.
Transportation improvements, such as canals and improved roads, also lowered food costs. Railroads were introduced near the end of the Industrial
Revolution.
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Housing
Living conditions during the Industrial Revolution varied from the splendor of the homes of the owners to the squalor of the lives of the workers.
In The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 Friedrich Engels described backstreet sections of Manchester and other mill towns where people lived
in crude shanties and shacks, some not being completely enclosed, some with dirt floors. These shantytowns had narrow walkways between irregularly shaped lots and
dwellings. Sanitary facilities were nonexistent. These slum areas had extremely high population densities. It was common for groups of unrelated mill workers to share
rooms in very low quality housing where eight to ten people may occupy a single room, which often had no furniture, with the occupants sleeping on a pile of straw or
sawdust. These homes would share toilet facilities, have open sewers and would be at
risk of developing pathologies associated with persistentdampness. Disease was spread through a contaminated water supply. Conditions did improve during the 19th
century as public health acts were introduced covering things such as sewage, hygiene and making some boundaries upon the construction of homes. Not
everybody lived in homes like these. The Industrial Revolution created a larger middle class of professionals such as lawyers and doctors. Health conditions
improved over the course of the 19th century because of better sanitation; the famines that troubled rural areas did not happen in industrial areas. However, urban
people—especially small children—died due to diseases spreading through the cramped living conditions. Tuberculosis spread in congested dwellings, lung
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diseases from the mines, cholera from polluted water and typhoid were also common.
Clothing and consumer goods
Consumers benefited from falling prices for clothing and household articles such as cast iron cooking utensils, and in the following decades, stoves for cooking
and space heating.
Population increase
According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, the population of England and Wales, which had remained steady at 6 million from 1700 to 1740, rose
dramatically after 1740. The population of England had more than doubled from 8.3 million in 1801 to 16.8 million in 1850 and, by 1901, had nearly doubled again to
30.5 million. As living conditions and health care improved during the 19th century, Britains population doubled every 50 years. Europes population increased from
about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900. The Industrial Revolution was the first period in history during which there was a
simultaneous increase in population and in per capita income.
2.5.3 Labor Conditions Social structure and working conditions
