How did Britain and then the USA be-come the world’s first industrial pow-ers? Structure Britain and the first Industrial Rev-olution The USA and the second Industrial Revolution • British decline • Concentration of busi-ness • The agrarian revolution (twice) • The first industrial revolution • The new assembly line • Notions Vocabulary

HISTORY

CS1 A new economy :

two industrial nations

Farming equipment. Victorian advertising trade card.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway. M.B. Cotsworth, York, 1831.

UK occupations 1841 and 1911. Source: Mitchell & Dean, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, 1962.

Next we notice the relative and positive decline in the agricultural population. In 1811 it constituted 35 per cent. of the whole population of Great Britain; in 1821, 33 per cent.; in 1831, 28 per cent. And at the same time its actual num-bers have decreased. In 1831 there were 1,243,057 adult males employed in agriculture in Great Britain; in 1841 there were 1,207,989. In 1851 the whole number of persons en-gaged in agriculture in England was 2,084,153; in 1861 it was 2,010,454, and in 1871 it was 1,657,138. […] Still, in spite of this, it was said in 1813 that during the previous ten years agricultural produce had increased by one-fourth, and this was an increase upon a great increase in the preceding generation.

Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England by Arnold Toynbee 1884.

Passing to manufactures, we find here the all-prominent fact to be the substitution of the factory for the domestic system, the consequence of the mechanical discoveries of the time. Four great inventions altered the character of the cotton manufacture. […] In fifteen years the cotton trade trebled itself; from 1788 to 1803 has been called its 'golden age". […] Meanwhile, the iron industry had been equally revolu-tionised […]. In the eight years which followed 1788, the amount of iron manufactured nearly doubled itself. A further growth of the factory system took place inde-pendent of machinery, and owed its origin to the expansion of trade, an expansion which was itself due to the great advance made at this time in the means of communication.

Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England by Arnold Toynbee 1884.

In 1851 England had a monopoly of the manufactur-ing industries of the world. She produced more than she used, other nations almost produced nothing. The world had to buy from her ; they could not buy any-where else. But British employers have neglected new processes and inventions ; they relied on cheap labour rather than on efficient organisation. Consequently automatic ma-chinery is more used in America than here. Up-to-date factories have enabled Americans, paying the highest wages known in the world, to produce steel plates at a cost of three shillings per ton for labour and averaging 225 tons per working shift. Our mills cannot do this. Consequently, since 1872 our export trade has grown by £22 million. In that time, USA export have grown by £110 million and German exports by £56 million.

Joseph Chamberlain, speech to Parliament, 6 October 1903.

Changing occupational distribution in the USA (% of working age population)

Source: Comparative occupation statistics 1870-1940, U.S. Bureau of the Census.

Rockefeller as an industrial emperor, Puck Magazine, 1901.

Assembly. Detroit Publishing Co., 1913, Library of Congress.

1870 1880 1890 1900 1910

Agriculture 53.5 50.0 43.4 38.2 31.6

Extraction & minerals

1.4 1.7 1.9 2.4 2.6

Manufacturing 20.5 22.1 23.7 24.8 28.5

Transportation & communications

4.2 4.8 6.0 6.7 7.1

Trade 6.8 7.9 8.8 10.6 9.7

Service 13.6 13.7 16.3 16.4 19.9

How did Britain and then the USA be-come the world’s first industrial pow-ers? Structure Britain and the first Industrial Revo-lution The USA and the second Industri-al Revolution • British decline • Concentration of busi-ness • The agrarian revolution (twice) • The first industrial revolution • The new assembly line • Notions Vocabulary

HISTORY

CS1 A new economy :

two industrial nations

The change to scientific management means an enormous saving of time through eliminating unnecessary, slow and inefficient motions for the workers. It involves studying what is the proper speed for doing the work i.e. a motion study followed by minute study with a stop-watch of the time in which each workman should do his work. It also includes a remodelling of the tools in the workshop. Over a period of nearly thirty years, a large range and diversity of industries have gradually changed to scientific management. At least 50,000 workmen in the United States are now employed under this system; and they are receiving from 30 per cent to 100 per cent higher wages daily, while the companies employing them are more prosperous. In these companies the output, per man and per machine, has on an average been doubled.

Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911).

The growth of systematic monopoly is the sign of the times in industry and commerce. The Oil Trust, the first great success of the kind, has hun-dreds of imitators, and the markets for metallic and textile wares, building materials, railways, cars and ships, are controlled, or are in imminent dan-ger of control by combinations already formed, able to defy and crush individual enterprise. […] On the other hand, the growing unrest of labor is another sign of trouble. And the statesman which shall end monopolies, and re-establish free indus-trial competition is the supreme need of the times. It is the only solution of all threatening social problems, including the restoration of contentment and prosperity, to the masses from whose peaceful labor all wealth must come.

"A Romance of the New Era", Harper's New Monthly Magazine, November 1894.

Farmers abandoned small, worn-out farms in the East and developed new, larger, and more fertile farms in the Midwest and West. They invested not in labor but in technology, particularly improved plows, reapers, and threshers. With westward expansion onto the prairies, a single family with a reaper could increase acreage and thus production without large amounts of hired labor. The expansion of agricultural lands led to what superfi-cially seems a paradox: the more farmers there were—and the more productive farmers became—the smaller was agriculture’s share of the economy. Farmers pro-duced more than the country could consume with smaller and smaller percentages of its available labor. They ex-ported the excess, and the children of farmers migrated to cities and towns.

Richard White, The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900, 2004.

How did the British and American populations adapt to new living condi-tions? Structure Urban growth and inequalities in Britain Urban growth and inequalities in the USA • Migration and urban growth • Urban growth • Urban growth and glamour • Urban squalor • Wealthy upper middle class • Working-class terrible living con-ditions Notions Vocabulary

HISTORY

CS2 New societies :

two urban societies

It is somewhat surprising, when one sees the crowded overflowing Middlesbrough of to-day, to realize that so late as 1801 it only had twenty-five inhabitants. […] In 1831 the population was 154, then the railways were begun and in 1841 the population was 5,463. In 1850 the ironstone was discovered in the Cleveland Hills, ten miles from Middlesbrough, and then the great town we have described rose on the banks of the Tees, within reach, on the one hand, of the Durham coal-fields, and on the other of the Cleveland ironstone. There could not have been a more favourable place for an ironmaking centre. The population grew from 18,892 (1861) to 39,284 (1871) and 91,302 (1901). And at the moment of writing, the census of 1911 gives the population as 104,787. Lady Florence Bell, At the Works, a study of an industrial town, 1911.

The working people greatly outnumber the rest of the inhabitants of Middles-brough, since they amount to five-sixths of the whole population […]. But of whatever age or class, all are directly or indirectly concerned in the iron trade. […] But towards the centre and the north, serried together in and out of the better quarters, there are hundreds of little streets with cheap, small, hastily erected, instantly occupied houses, in which lives a struggling, striving, crowd-ed population of workmen and their families. It is a population recruited by the incessant influx of fresh workers who must live near their work. To live under healthy conditions is, unhappily, a side issue for the workman. The main object of his life is to be at work : that is the one absolute necessity.

Lady Florence Bell, At the Works, a study of an industrial town, 1911.

Urban and rural populations in England and Wales, 1801-1911. Source: R. Lawton, “Rural Depopulation in Nineteenth Century Eng-land”, Mills D.R. (eds) English Rural Communities, London, 1973.

Capital and Labour. John Leech, Punch Magazine, May 1843.

Rent Day for the urban labourer. John Leech, Pictures Of Life And Character, London, 1855.

The working people greatly outnumber the rest of the inhabitants of Middles-brough, since they amount to five-sixths of the whole population […]. But of whatev-er age or class, all are directly or indirectly concerned in the iron trade. […] It is a matter of ordinary experience that as a man succeeds in his business he moves his home farther away from it, and that the distance he lives from his daily work is in direct proportion to his success in it. In compliance with this instinctive custom, the more successful and prosperous citizens of Middlesbrough have gradu-ally moved their abodes towards the outskirts, and there have grown up round the town detached villas with gardens, forming agreeable semi-country abodes which will one day no doubt be engulfed and surrounded by houses.

Lady Florence Bell, At the Works, a study of an industrial town, 1911.

How did the British and American populations adapt to new living condi-tions? Structure Urban growth and inequalities in Britain Urban growth and inequalities in the USA • Migration and urban growth • Urban growth • Urban growth and glamour • Urban squalor • Wealthy upper middle class • Working-class terrible living con-ditions Notions Vocabulary

HISTORY

CS2 New societies :

two urban societies

Three-quarters of New York City’s people live in tenement hous-ing of about five or six stories tall. Owing to overcrowding, inade-quate provision for clean air and water, and lack of public sanitation, dwellers in tenement blocks on the Lower East Side are ridden by tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, and scarlet fever. In such environ-ment, criminals and paupers multiply while workers find it impossi-ble to maintain a healthy home atmosphere. The Exhibit aimed at informing a concerned citizenry of these evils in the expectation that an civic conscience would lead to re-forms such as revised standards of sanitation and fire protection, the addition of baths, public inspection of housing and the expropri-ation of "irremediably unsanitary houses." The Exhibition called also for the clearing of spaces for public parks and playgrounds. Lawrence Veiller, "The Tenement-House Exhibition of 1899," Charities Review

10 (1900-1901).

Between 1877 and 1900, there was a net immigration of approximately 7,348,000 people into the United States and the population of the country increased by about 27 million people, from about 49 million in 1880 to 76 million in 1900. They settled in northeastern and midwestern cities and on western and midwestern farms. Immigrants avoided the South where freed African-Americans provided low-paying wage labor, which led to their migrating to northern industrial cities. By the end of the century, migration from rural to urban areas dwarfed both foreign migration and westward migra-tion, with people moving from the countryside to the cities in droves. In 1800, only 6 percent of the population lived in cities but by 1900, that number had increased to 40 percent. By 1920, the vast majority of Americans lived in cities.

Richard White, The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900, 2004.

During the 1890s, every man was a potential Andrew Carnegie, and Americans who achieved success celebrated it as never before. Industrial titans from across the country displayed their massive wealth by building lavish mansions along New York’s Fifth Avenue. The opera, the theatre, and extravagant parties consumed the ruling class' leisure hours. By the 1910s, however, wealthy and middle-class people had moved to new towns on the outskirts of the city. They wanted to escape from the difficulties of modern urban life but still be close enough to enjoy many of its advantages. Consequently, blocks of what was known as “Vanderbilt Alley,” named after the steamship and railroad pioneer who had built mansions in the same area, were replaced by skyscrapers.

Jonathan Rees, “Industrialization & urbanization in the USA, 1880-1929”, Oxford Encyclopaedia, July 2016.

“Electrification”. The modern city, Boston, 1897.

"East and West Shaking Hands at Laying Last Rail". Andrew Joseph Russell, May 10, 1869, Yale University Libraries. The completion of the First Trans-

continental Railroad, Promontory Summit, Utah.

“5 cents a spot in a Bayard Street tenement,” New York City, 1889. Jacob Riis, How the

Other Half Lives, 1890.

How did the British and Americans fight for more rights? Structure Social and political reform in Brit-ain Social and political reform in the USA • Political reform: Vote for the middle class • Political reform: Vote for the skilled workers • The African-American issue • The birth of labour unions • The first trade unions • The US towards de-mocracy • Notions Vocabulary

HISTORY

CS3 New societies :

two fairer societies?

The Labour Representation Committee supported MPs sponsored by trades unions and became the

Labour Party in 1906.

Trades-Unions have taught workmen, by organisation and self-help, to rely upon themselves. […] English Trades-Unions resort to a constitutional agitation which involves no danger to the State; indeed, […] their action averts violent industrial dislocations. The largest Unions have sanctioned the fewest strikes; the Amalgamated Engineers, who have 46,000 members, and branches in Canada and India, ex-pended only six per cent of their income on strikes from 1867 to 1877. […] And beyond this, Trades-Unions have achieved positive successes for the cause of labour. Factory legislation has raised the condition of women and children by imposing a limit on the hours of work, and especially the sanitary envi-ronment of the labourer.

Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England by Arnold Toynbee 1884.

I say, sir, that there are countries where the condition of the labouring-classes is such that they may safely elect members of the Legislature. If the labourers of England were in that state […] the principal objections to universal suffrage would be removed. […] But, unhappily, the lower orders in England are occasionally in a state of great dis-tress.... For the sake, therefore, of the whole society, for the sake of the labouring-classes themselves, I hold it that the right of suffrage should depend on a pecuniary qualification. I oppose universal suf-frage, because I think that it would produce a destructive revolution. I support this measure [give the vote to the middle classes], because I am sure that it is our best security against a revolution.… That we may exclude those whom it is necessary to exclude, we must admit those whom it may be safe to admit.…

Lord Macaulay (1800-1859), Speech On The Reform Bill of 1832, March 2, 1831.

For universal franchise. Votes for Women, Friday, November 20, 1915.

The argument against the enfranchisement of the working class was this - and no doubt it is a very strong argument - the power they would have in any election if they combined together on questions of class interest. Well, at the last election, I carefully watched the various contests that were taking place and I saw no tendency on the part of the working classes to com-bine on any special question. On the contrary, they seemed to me to take a genuine political interest in public questions ... The working classes have given proofs that they are deeply desirous to do what is right. Now, the agitation has reached a point which might be described as alarming. I have no desire to see the agitation assume a revolutionary character which it would certainly assume if it continued much longer....

George Goschen, speech in the House of Commons, 3 March, 1884.

Enfranchised population

Before 1831 10% of the male population

After 1831 18% of the male population

After 1867 29% of the male population

(urban & paying 10£ rent a year)

After 1884 67% of the male population

(+ rural & paying 10£ rent a year)

Racist violence. Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, October 24, 1874.

Women Suffrage before the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920

Working in factories. Indiana Glass Works, Lewis Hines, 1908-1912.

How did the British and Americans fight for more rights? Structure Social and political reform in Britain Social and political reform in the USA • Political reform: Vote for the middle class • Political reform: Vote for the skilled workers • The African-American issue • The birth of labour unions • The first trade unions • The US towards de-mocracy • Notions Vocabulary

HISTORY

CS3 New societies :

two fairer societies?

What Abraham Lincoln said of the United States is true of the colored people. They cannot remain half slave and half free. You must give them all or take all from them. Until this half-and-half condition is ended, there will be just ground of complaint. You will have an aggrieved class, and this discussion will go on. […] Until the colored man's pathway to the American ballot box, North and South, shall be as smooth and as safe as the same is for the white citizen, this discussion will go on. […] Until the trades-unions and the factories of the country shall cease to proscribe the colored man, this discus-sion will go on. Until the American people shall make character, and not color, the criterion of respectability, this discussion will go on.

Address by Frederick Douglass, delivered in Washington, D.C., 16 April 1883.

These modern organizations of capital and labor are gradually destroying the ancient inequality of employer and employee. In the old days the em-ployer said to the working-man: "I will pay you so much in wages." —and the working-man accepted or starved. […] To-day the representatives of organized labor meet the representatives of organized capital, discuss profits and markets, and agree upon a scale of wages. Thus, little by little consolidated labor is becoming a partner with consolidated capital. If a great corporation to-day reduces unjustly the wages of labor, it is confronted with a strike; and where that strike is just it is supported by the public opinion of the Nation. Not only is consolidated labor becoming a partner of consolidated capital, but the Nation is becoming the arbiter.

Speech, Albert J. Beveridge, “The organization of American business”, September, 1902.

The unity of the American people is further promoted by the equality of the citizen. One man’s right is every man’s right. The people are not emasculated by feeling that their own country decrees their inferiority, and holds them unworthy of privileges accorded to others. No ranks, no titles, no hereditary dignities, and therefore no classes. No privilege any-where in all the laws. Suffrage is universal, and votes are of equal weight. Representatives are paid, and political life thereby open to all. Thus there is brought about a community of interests and aims which a Briton, accustomed to monarchical and aristocratic institutions, dividing the people into classes with separate interests, aims, thoughts, and feel-ings, can only with difficulty understand.

Andrew Carnegie, “The Triumph of America”, 1885.

How did the British and Americans settle in and control new land? Structure British emigration and empire American immigration and empire • Emigration to remedy poverty • Immi-gration to the USA • Population growth and emigration • Reasons for colonial expansion • The white man’s burden • Westward expansion in the USA • Notions Vocabulary

HISTORY

CS4 New territories :

two expanding peoples

As regards the self-governing colonies [Canada, Australia, New Zealand] we no longer talk of them as dependencies. The sense of possession has given place to the sense of kinship. […] As regards the colonies where the native population must always outnum-ber the white inhabitants, the sense of possession has also given place to a different sentiment --the sense of obligation. […] And I maintain that our rule does, and has, brought security and peace and comparative prosperity to countries that never knew these blessings before. In carrying out this work of civilization we are fulfilling what I believe to be our national mission, and we are finding scope for the exercise of those faculties and qualities which have made of us a great governing race.

Joseph Chamberlain, “The true conception of our Empire”, speech by the British Secre-tary of State for the Colonies, March 31, 1897.

Coming to the facts of the Industrial Revolution, the first thing that strikes us is the far greater rapidity which marks the growth of population. Before 1751 the largest decennial increase, so far as we can calculate from our imperfect materials, was 3 per cent. For each of the next three decennial periods the increase was 6 per cent.; then between 1781 and 1791 it was 9 per cent.; between 1791 and 1801, 11 per cent.; between 1801 and 1811, 14 per cent.; between 1811 and 1821, 18 per cent. This is the highest figure ever reached in England, for since 1815 a vast emigration has been always tending to moderate it; between 1815 and 1880 over eight millions (including Irish) have left our shores. But for this our normal rate of increase would be 16 or 18 instead of 12 per cent. in every decade.

Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England by Arnold Toynbee 1884.

Emigration, a remedy to poverty. Punch Magazine, 15 July 1848.

Pears Soap advertise-

ment, 1890s.

A British government notice, 1841.

Emigration from England, Wales and Scotland, 1853-1920 (000s). Source: P. J. Cain, “Economics: the metropolitan context”, Oxford History of the British Empire,

1998-1999. BNA: British North America

United States territorial expansion by 1860

United States territorial expansion to 1900

How did the British and Americans settle in and control new land? Structure British emigration and empire American immigration and empire • Emigration to remedy poverty • Immi-gration to the USA • Population growth and emigration • Reasons for colonial expansion • The white man’s burden • Westward expansion in the USA • Notions Vocabulary

HISTORY

CS4 New territories :

two expanding peoples

American factories are making more than the American people can use; Ameri-can soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for us; we must get an ever increasing portion of foreign trade. We shall establish trading-posts through out the world as distributing points for American products. Great colonies, flying our flag and trading with us will grow around our posts of trade. Our institutions will follow our flag on the wings of our commerce. And American law, American order, American civilization and the American flag will plant themselves on shores, previously bloody and primitive, but, by the agency of God, to be made beautiful and bright. If […] it means American empire in the name of the Great Republic and its free institutions, then let us meet that meaning with a mighty joy. Albert J. Beveridge, April 27, 1898 from The Meaning of the Times, collected speeches, 1908.

Not only are foreigners coming in great numbers, but in numbers rapidly increasing. A study of the causes of this movement, i.e. our attracting influences, the expellent influences of Europe and facili-ties for travel, indicates that we have seen only beginnings. The typical immigrant is a European peasant, with a narrow hori-zon, meager moral and religious training and low ideas of life. A mass of men, who know little of our institutions and are controlled by their appetites and prejudices, constitute a very paradise for demagogues. Thus immigration complicates our moral and political problems by swelling our dangerous classes. Our safety demands the assimilation of these strange populations which will become slower and more difficult. Is this in-sweeping immigration to for-eignize us, or are we to Americanize it?

Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, New York, 1885.

It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a history heroic with faith in our mission and our future ; a history of statesmen who pushed the bounda-ries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and savage wilderness; a history of sol-diers who carried the flag across blazing deserts and through hostile mountains to the gates of sunset; a history of a multiplying people who overran a continent in half a centu-ry […]. The Opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer, The rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government. We govern the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children without their consent.

Albert J. Beveridge, September 16, 1898 from The Meaning of the Times, collected speeches, 1908.