12: The Industrial Revolution in England
A quote from an economist (McCloskey) regarding the industrial revolution in England: "So strange were these events that before they happened they were not anticipated, and while they were happening they were not comprehended." The events of the industrial revolution are well known and reasonably well agreed upon, but their interpretation remains hotly contested to this day, and there is generally no agreement on the causes or broader significance.
In this chapter the author intends to present the major events of the industrial revolution and his argument that its origins were a few hundred years prior as agrarian societies gradually turned toward a more economically oriented mindset. In general, the appearance of a sudden shock to the system was created instead by a string of accidents and contingencies, the aggregated effect of which was dramatic.
The Details of the Industrial Revolution
The defining factor of the industrial revolution is a sudden increase in efficiency, characterized by a greater value of output (price per unit) per unit of input (unit production cost). The precise details of the calculation can become complex, but the basic principle is that simple.
The author presents a table of growth rates in various sectors of the English economy, and while coal and iron made some contribution, the major sectors of the economy that grew significantly were agriculture, textiles, and transportation.
Textiles were "the flagship industry of the Industrial Revolution" as advancement in this industry reflected a range of activities (growing, spinning, carding, weaving, dying, tailoring, and related transportation) and productivity increases in this sector were dramatic: it took about 18 man-hours to transform a pound of raw cotton into finished cloth in 1760, but only 1.5 hours to do so in 1860.
The reasons for this transformation came from a stream of technological innovations, chiefly related to machinery that automated and expedited the tasks involved in making cotton: the flying shuttle (1733), spinning jenny (1769), water frame (1769), power loom (1785), cotton gin (1793) self-acting mule (1830). It's also noted that only one of the inventors of these devices made much money from it, some made a modest profit, and most of them made nothing or as a result of their inventions, though this is likely due to the lack of patent support, such that once an invention was discovered, anyone could use it and its inventor gained no competitive advantage.
Similar tales can be told of other industries during the same period. For example, English coal output was nearly twenty times as greater in the 1860's than in the previous century - indicating not only innovations in mining and transportation to increase production, but societal changes that would create significant demand for coal to power the machinery of the revolution.
Data is provided to support the assertion that the beneficiary of all this innovation was mainly the consumer, in the form of lower prices and greater availability of goods. This was attributed to the surge in supply.
The author speaks of the notion of an "agricultural revolution" that occurred at the same time, but there is no evidence that this actually occurred. The productivity growth rate in agriculture was modest, about 0.27% per year, during the same period. And while this is considerably faster growth than in 1200-1800, it does not compare to the growth in other sectors. There are likewise no great inventions in Agriculture at that time, with the exception of the mechanical grain thresher.
Why Did the Industrial Revolution Appear So Dramatic?
The author proposes that the dramatic changes that occurred during the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries in England likely had more to do with reproduction that productivity. It is estimated that the rate of productivity growth was likely on the order of 0.3% per year - a very modest increase in output per person, but appearing dramatic because of the significant increase in the number of persons.
Between 1740 and 1860, the population of Britain more than tripled, going from a nation of six million to one of over twenty million, while other countries in Europe also experienced population increases, but not to the same extreme degree. France, for example, experienced a 75% increase in population during the same time.
The population explosion seems unrelated to productivity gains in manufacturing - the population growth began much sooner. This may have been what alarmed Malthus: as he wrote in the 1780s, the population of Britain was burgeoning at a time before domestic productivity took off, and it became apparent that the pace of growth was untenable.
The cause of this sudden burst in fertility was that in the early 1700s women began to marry at a younger age, fewer women remained unmarried, illegitimate births began to increase significantly, child mortality decreased, and deaths during childbirth decreased. In aggregate, the net reproduction rate of 1650 was only 1.93 children per woman, but by 1800 it had become 2.68. Looking at parish records, the increase was not localized, but appeared to be occurring across all areas and social classes.
There is little sign that England was gaining significant productivity or income per person relative to the Netherlands in the industrial era - it was generally higher overall, and personal income increased by 44% during the first half of the nineteenth century, but this was only about 11% more than increases in other nations in which the industrial revolution did not take hold. Dramatic differences (64%) did not evidence themselves until the last half of the nineteenth century.
Given the dramatic increase in population at that time, the increase was likely more attributable to supply and demand of goods rather than efficiency: by the middle of the nineteenth century, England went from a market in which food and raw materials were plentiful to one in which both were in short supply domestically - manufacturing and trade were booming, but raw materials production (and the lower incomes they provide) were shifted offshore to colonies and the United States, which meanwhile experienced a boom in agriculture. If Britain produced materials internally, its economic growth would have been significantly less. In effect, Britain had become "the workshop of the world."
How Gradual Was the Transition to Modern Growth Rates?
The information available about productivity levels between the preindustrial and postindustrial world does not provide sufficient evidence to speculate about the growth rate.
The author then considers some of the significant developments in science, architecture, and the arts as evidence of societies that had sufficient productivity to allow certain of its people to pursue fields that do not contribute to sustenance.
A list of innovations between 1120 and 1665 contain an amazing number of accomplishments, few of which would make little contribution to productivity: Gothic architecture, windmills, gunpowder, mechanical clocks, crown glass, spectacles, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, the harpsichord, printing press, quadrant, Arabic numerals, muskets, global navigation, knitting frames, opera, ballet, telescopes, thermometers, pendulum clocks, and microscopes.
However notable, the specific accomplishments of a few individuals is not necessarily the best measure: many inventions fail to have an impact on the mass of people for many years (William Gilbert did a systematic study of electricity in 1600, Edison's bulb was patented in 1878, and electric lighting was not widely in use until the mid-twentieth century). Also consider that inventions tend to be primitive: Gutenberg's printing press of 1436 was a considerable advance, as it could produce 100 pages per hour in an age in which a skilled copyist could copy at a rate of about one page per hour. However, it is painfully slow compared to the rotary press of 1844 (8,000 pages per hour), and pathetic compared to modern presses (160,00 pages per hour)
It's also necessary to consider whether the value produced was accessible (affordable) to those who might make use of it. Consider that the price of a pound of nails in the early thirteenth century was more than a day's wages for a craftsman. By 1850, the price of nails dropped such that a day's wages would buy more than twelve pounds of nails. The same can be said of paper, glass, clocks, spectacles, paints, spices, textiles, tobacco, and gunpowder.
The economic welfare of a people results from the compound effect of how much they earn and how much they must spend - and with wages rising and the cost of goods falling, the net effect of the two was a dramatic increase in the quality of life, which began even before the industrial era in England. The purchasing power of the average person tripled between the medieval period in 1860 - suggesting a far more gradual transition that is often depicted.
The Switch to Inorganic Technologies
Another contrast in advancement during the industrial era is a switch from organic technologies (using plants and beasts of burden) to more inorganic technologies (metals, coal, and oil).
Organic production draws resources from the system - a device made of wood required cutting down in a tree, generally in proximity to the place where the device would be fashioned and used. The availability of those resources severely restrained potential output.
It is also suggested that organic systems adapt to resist usefulness to man - for example, it is supposed that rye was an evolution of another grain crop designed to help the species survive by being less palatable and nutritious to human "predators." While this may seem a bit specious, consider that the Irish potato famine and the Phylloxera attach on European crops of the 1860s were essentially caused by nature attempting to fend off man's predation.
Finally, the innovation and experimentation requires longer periods of time in organic systems. To experiment with a different spindle in a mill requires retooling machinery, which can be done in a relatively short time and results are immediately evident. Experimenting with a different approach to agriculture, or a different breed of animals, takes much longer to set up and witness.
Hence, the switch to inorganic technology hastened the rate of innovation and the speed of change to more productive approaches.
The Transition to the Modern World
The author's perspective here is that, while the industrial revolution was a dramatic period in British history, the transformative changes that took mankind from the agrarian to industrial era did not occur during this relatively short amount of time, but were a process that gathered steam slowly over a few centuries and in a broader range of countries.
Likewise the transition from the earlier industrial era has been as constant build - a few moments of intense activity, but the time between these bright flashes has not been stagnant, just less dramatic.