The Industrial Revolution In The 19th Century History Essay

Considerably was to be one of the most important historical events that have ever occurred (Zanden, 2009). If it has not been for the industrial revolution we would not have all the new technology we have now. Since the industrial revolution people started to search for faster and better ways of producing more goods, which has increased their economy. However, industrial revolution did have a significant amount of negative fields on the society in which it has brought up within the period of industrial revolution such as slavery, child labour, bad working conditions and treatment of workers.

The Term Industrial revolution is regularly used within the contexts of social and Economic changes that feature a change from a moderate agricultural and profitable society to a modern industrialised society depending on complicated machinery rather than tools. Industrial revolution is used historically to invoke especially to the period of the British history from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century. (Cipolla, 1975).

The process of change:

Life in rural England was difficult. Poverty was overflowing. It was an achievement to make ends meet and people were looking for ways to ease the stress and pressure of the struggle to survive since then the era of the industrial revolution began it was a period of change in the agrarian life and the process of industrialisation and urbanisation. This involved many factors:

One of the main factors leading to industrialisation was the growth of English agriculture around the late seventeenth and mid nineteenth centuries, which is commonly regarded as an outstanding success story from an economical approach (Hudson, 1992). Most accounts hassle the revolutions, the vitality and the increasing production of the sector and attribute to it as an important part in motivating the industrial revolution (Hudson, 1992). Its increasing productivity, compared with continental agriculture, this supported the economy to sustain a large and developing non-agricultural labour force. Moreover, the role of cheap food and flourishing agrarian profits in the expansion of the home market for manufactured goods and services has been highlighted. Historians stress how important landed capital was in the raise of industry as well as urban and transport infrastructures (Hudson, 1992).

While there was great regional diversity and small farms remained shared, there was, by the eighteenth century, no peasantry to compare with that of the area (Hudson, 1992).

The agricultural revolution had also weakened the old feudal pledges that had been the essential requirement of the structure for so long, and had required the collaboration of the peasantry by providing them with both support and protection. New designs were developing and the masses were no longer required (Reeve, 1971).

With the developments of new modern machinery came increased productivity inasmuch that these new machines significantly speeded up the process from sowing to harvesting, so reducing the time it took for the supplies to reach their destination. This formed a much faster link between the produced and the destination (Reeve, 1971).

Another factor of processing the change was the industrial revolution which produced modern technology for the land that then freed the labour which stirred away from rural Britain and into the towns therefore forming a success in the urban population. This urban population boom produced the manpower required for operating the new industrial machinery which would transform production (Reeve, 1971).

Better production in turn produced more money which would be invested into the economy. The money that was made was poured into the economic structure creating more money, as well as the transport structure, both canals and roads. Industrial manufacturing everywhere needed a lot of money, and since it was seen as such a worthy risk, the money was made available (Reeve, 1971).

Capital was to be found everywhere and ready to be invested, the motivations was for those who had a lot of money. England at that time needed change it was a country of out-fashioned and useless methods that have been used a lot for a long time, but this needed change and it about to. As the result of every industrialisation procedure arises the inspiration of a class structure, this was not truer than capitalism which is what the revolution was about the creating of a more productive public that would fill the pockets of the bourgeoisie class at significant speeds. And you can only have a bourgeoisie when you have something to compare it against the waged people at different working class, and arguably the support of society (Reeve, 1971).

The Increase of diseases during the process of change was a major problem in most countries, for example ‘Cholera’ it was caused by contaminated water; spread with speed and with devastating consequences. Not for nothing did the disease get the nick-name “King Cholera”. Britain was hit by an outbreak of cholera in 1831-32, 1848-49, 1854 and 1867. The cause was from sewage water being allowed to come into contact with drinking water and contaminating it. As many people used river water as their source of drinking water, the disease spread easily. An attack of cholera is sudden and painful. In London 7000 people died of the disease in the 1831-32 outbreaks which represented a 50% death rate of those who caught it. 15,000 people died in London in the 1848-49 outbreaks. The disease usually affected those in a city’s poorer areas, though the rich did not escape this disease (Great Britain 1700-1900).

‘Smallpox’ made a major re-occurrence in industrial cities . As Britain continued on its road to a population mostly centred in cities and the agricultural regions became less populated (Great Britain 1700-1900).

‘Typhoid and Typhus’ were as feared as cholera. Both were also fairly common in the Industrial Revolution. Typhoid was caused by infected water whereas typhus was carried by lice. Both were found in abundance in industrial cities (Great Britain 1700-1900).

The greatest killer in the cities was ‘Tuberculosis’ (TB). The disease caused a wasting of the body with the lungs being attacked. The lungs attempt to defend themselves by producing what are called tubercles. The disease causes these tubercles to become yellow and spongy and coughing fits causes them to be spat out by the sufferer (Great Britain 1700-1900).

TB affected those who had been poorly fed and were under nourished. It also affected those who lived in dirty and damp homes. TB can be spread by a person breathing in the exhaled sputum of someone who already has the disease. In the overcrowded tenements of the industrial cities, one infected person could spread the disease very easily (Great Britain 1700-1900).

Though accurate records are difficult to acquire, it is believed that TB killed one-third of all those who died in Britain between 1800 and 1850 (Great Britain 1700-1900).

‘Microbes’ was that disease was spread by bad smells and invisible poisonous clouds (miasmas). Industrial cities were certainly plagued by poor smells from sewage, industrial pollutants etc. The majority of deaths were in the industrial cities. Therefore, doctors concluded, the two went together: death and bad smells/gasses (Great Britain 1700-1900).

Impact of industrialisation on the work place:

The majority of England’s population at the begging of the seventeenth century was working in the industry business for a better conditioned life but a question arises from this. People were gathered in factories for long working hours with bad treatment and working conditions. Yarraantion in 1677 thought there were more people within a range of ten miles of Dudley (Hoskins, 1988).

Englands first true factory was built in 1718-22 for john and Thomas lombe the silk mill for john and Thomas lombe at derby. Employed more than three hundred men levelled at five or six storeys fully powered by water of the river Derwent. Within fifty years there were numerous silk sweatshops using four hundred to eight hundred workers, although the silk industry was of minor importance and did not recruit the factory system. It was when control reached the woollen, cotton, and iron industries that the face of the country really arose to a change on a large scale, and that was not until the 1770s (Hoskins, 1988).

Matthew Boulton opened his great Soho factory. In the still ravished country outside Birmingham, in 1765, and shortly afterwards began the manufacture of steam engines Wedgwood’s new large factory at Etruria in the Potteries was opened in 1769. Richard Arkwright, the greatest of the new industrial capitalists, erected his first spinning mill, worked by horses, at Nottingham in 1768, but his second factory, built on a much larger scale at Cromford on the Derwent in 1771, was driven by water-power (Hoskins, 1988).

All the factories were producing unlimited and continuous goods and was all operated by machinery tools and specialized in a certain skill (Reeve, 1971).

Increasing changes in the social and economic structure took place as ideas and inventions and technological innovations produced and formed the factory scheme of large-scale machine Production and greater economic power more than any other Country (Reeve, 1971).

The Industrial Revolution gave rise to urban centres requiring massive public services. It created a particular and reliant economic life and made the urban worker more completely dependent on the will of the owner than the rural worker had been. Relations between capital and labour were worse, and socialism was one product of this unrest (Reeve, 1971).

But the revolution also brought a need for a new type of state intervention to protect the labourer and to provide necessary services. Laissez faire gradually gave way in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere to welfare capitalism. The economic theories of John Maynard Keynes reflected this change. The Industrial Revolution also provided the economic base for the rise of the professions, population expansion, and improvement in living standards and remains a primary goal of less developed nations (Salter, 1936).

Moreover, Industrial revolution brought up within the work place many negative fields in which it has built up with the time of industrial revolution it provided workers wages that did not fit the time or not enough because of the time they worked at the factory and at bad conditions for instance, less concern for the workers safety and long working hours that could lead to suicide. In addition people started to drink heavily to forget the life they were in which created prostration. Furthermore, child labour and women labour was used excessively unbarring working hours and little wages which were not sufficient for a week.

Industry curve cycles:

In the interwar years economists like Beveridge and Schumpeter looked back to late eighteenth century for evidence to support their analyses of the nature of cycles in the twentieth century. Schumpeter was interested in long waves of development (of 30-50 years) in which the upturns were a function of the clustering of innovations sparked by groups of dynamic risk-taking entrepreneurs, whom he saw as the prime movers in growth and change. One major clustering centred on Watt’s engine but there was another wave in the 1830s-1840s associated with railways and a third in the 1870s-1880s associated with steel-making innovations. Schumpeter thus rejected the view that industrial revolution was a unique event or series of events that created a new economic order; it was on a par with similar periods which preceded it (Hudson, 1992).

The concepts of classical management theories:

This list shows the management structure:

Owner manger or chairman of the board.

Department managers.

Line mangers.

Team mangers.

Work Force (Hudson, 1992).

Chain Of Command

The classical-scientific management structure is an organisational pyramid with three stages of management. The Highest management focuses on organising and controlling. It develops long term strategy schemes to get through the business. Medium management organizes the actions of managers and formulates department policies strategic plan and purposes in the overall inexpensive. At the lowest level of the pyramid are the supervisors who are responsible for getting jobs done. These supervisors oversee day-to-day activities and follow the directives of management. There is a moderately small span of control, managers have few workers to control (Hudson 1992).

Division of Labour

The awareness of separation of labour is to take a multifaceted task and break it down into a numeral of simpler tasks, which can be accomplished by workers. Because the tasks are simple or tedious, workers are not required to have a great deal of education. Blackberry divides the complete operation into a number of tasks such as supervising Blackberry Messenger operations, or operating or fixing servers within blackberry messenger, and gives people to help them by using their products and giving them feedback to make it enhanced Hudson, 1992).

Autocratic Leadership Style

The Classical-scientific method near management as a highly repressive leadership style. In this organization management makes all decisions; direction and commands come only from the manager. It is assumed that managers are the foundation of all knowledge and that the only way of achieving production efficiency is to treat employees like machines that need constant direction and guidance (Hudson, 1992).

Current trends and future prospects:

Laurel Delaney states the top 10 global small business trends for 2010 and they are:

Globally integrated future – better known as cheap, quick and global: access to all cheap tools anywhere.

World power people will start using social networking sites to get the word around and gather people in groups such as facebook groups. 

Technologically enabled future everything will be technological from papers turned to ipad or iphone to be more green to books made on ipad or any other tap

China Ltd will amaze the world with all the new physical and non-physical by web technology they will bring to the world.

Thick as a BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China will once considered growth explosive markets soon to become the world’s largest economy.

The Young and the Restless: The Radical Global Entrepreneur starts small business with your own habits.

Come-out-of-nowhere theory. Often referred to as the element of surprise. Look for lots of that in 2010.Projects get tried but fail and make huge success

The Age of Online Factory Direct (OFD) all companies will have to have all the products online as people now tend to like using technology to shop.

Global Small Business Heroes. Hero’s within small business will start to appear

Borderless venture capital (BVC) Watch the money flow in from all over the world.

Conclusion:

Instead of agricultural supremacy there is an overtopping superstructure of manufacturing wealth and population. It is this extraordinary revolution that witnessed incredible innovation and organisation as well as the finance of industry and commerce and technology, and in the urbanisation and demographic behaviour and the disciplining of labour. Government transformed the economy from agriculture to industry and trade. Industrial revolution transformed the ideas of gender and ethnicity as well as class and changes in motivations, aspirations, ideologies and aesthetics. It also brought changes in the labour process and in the relations of production. The industrial revolution brought changes in the economy and society and that makes the period an exciting one to study (Hudson, 1992). Industrial revolution will keep changing and changing not just in one place but it will move around for instance, the British industrial revolution came in its time and finished people will also make fair industrial revolution such as the bad working hours and conditions will need to change to human and peaceful hours for the worker not to pressurize the worker and force them wages that suit the time and the experience they have.