The Industrial Revolution in Britain; history and workers

1
The Industrial Revolution in Britain history and
workers

• What, why and how

2
What was the industrial revolution?

• Unprecedented change from an organic economy with
  accompanying growth limits to an inorganic one
• Organic economy has limitations i.e. land used
  for agriculture cannot be used to provide
  housing, a craftsmans output is limited
• Inorganic economy does not have these limitations
  i.e. manufacturing, use of coal
• Slow and cumulative in Britain faster in
  countries that followed Britain

3
Why did it first occur in Britain?

• Large free-trade area from 1707
• Deforestation but resource environment with
  abundant and easily accessible coal led to change
• Politically freer (laissez-faire), rich
  intellectual climate and less bureaucracy
  enabled group of inventors and entrepreneurs to
  thrive outside the establishment Newcomen, Watt,
  Boulton
• Fortuitous geography close to sea, lots of
  rivers, largish population relative to size

4
Why did it first occur in Britain?

• Necessity of providing for growing population (no
  longer a Malthusian check to growth)
• London major financial centre
• Cotton industry first outlet for inventions
• Trade and dominance of British navy
• Scientific advances starting with Francis Bacon

5
Newcomens steam engine
Steam engine first developed for mining industry
1712. Improved by James Watt in 1776 who was able
to apply it to a variety of applications such as
grinding, milling and weaving
6
Textile innovations

• Textile innovations demonstrate cumulative nature
  of first part of the industrial revolution
• flying shuttle 1733 was manual
• spinning Jenny 1764 mechanized but helped
  home-based industries
• water frame 1768 that started the move to
  factory-based production
• mule (steam powered) 1780s
• power loom 1780s but mechanized on a large scale
  in 1815

7
Flying shuttle and power loom
8
Further developments

• Development of transport infrastructure to serve
  industries. Poor communications had kept Britain
  divided into self-contained regions
• Canals were first one horse could draw 80 times
  as much weight by pulling a barge
• Roads private, turnpike roads were first
• Rail indicative of second, faster phase of the
  industrial revolution and the most
  transformative. Established quickly 1830-50

9
The second phase capitalism

• Dominated by development of capital goods
  industries coal, iron, steel
• Limited liability 1855-56 led to rise in larger
  companies and greater risk tolerance
• Production for overseas markets needed greater
  productivity
• Simple ideas could no longer produce outstanding
  results
• Division of labour Smiths pin, and button
  manufacture
• Factory work became the norm
• Urbanization and creation of the working class

10

• In such an age, the inequalities of life are apt
  to look less like calamities from the hand of
  heaven and more like injustices from the hand of
  man. Hammond and Hammond.
• 19th century brought permanent change to the
  entire population, not simply the working person
• Growing middle and artisan class in new
  industries journalism, engineering
• Apogee Great Exhibition of 1851
• Beginnings of social reform
• Start of municipal infrastructure, legislation

11
The working person and the industrial revolution

• Life before the industrial revolution had not
  changed exponentially for centuries change
  occurred but was not transformative
• People produced sufficient for their own needs,
  with consumer goods made by local craftsmen. Way
  of life!
• As the industrial revolution happened first in
  Britain the shift from an agrarian to an
  industrial society was without precedent and was
  largely unlegislated
• Move from cottage industries/agriculture partly
  due to enclosures of land

12

• Post 1789 upper class fear of Jacobinism and
  Radicalism held back reform?
• Lack of a social safety net poor relief
  responsibility of parishes
• Poor Law 1834 exacerbated problem
• Loss of outdoor relief led to workhouses
• Loss of independence and community
• Depersonalization of the employment process
  profit became sole basis of working relationship
• Lack of advancement opportunities for many
  factory workers or miners

13
The textile industry

• First inventions helped cottage industries but
  power loom destroyed home-based weaving
• Women and children could no longer remain at
  home forced into factories
• The Luddites weavers whose wages were being
  reduced due to mechanization
• Weavers eventually starved out of their work
• First employment legislation applied to cotton
  mills

14
What brought about change?
15

• Need for educated workforce with
  industrialization
• Smithian law became inadequate in the Victorian
  era
• Previous repressive laws no longer sustainable
  trade unions became legal 1830s but still
  periodic repression
• Earl of Shaftesbury Owen Place Peel
  awakening of social conscience
• Rise in popular press, literacy, visibility of
  working conditions
• Dickens Eliot Disraeli Wordsworth Coleridge
  Godwin and Wollstonecraft
• Peterloo Massacre 1819 when public opinion
  gradually began to turn

16
Self-help

• Second generation of industrialized workers
• Alienation between the classes no common
  interest and it became clear there was to be no
  alliance with employers
• Workers started to educate themselves
  corresponding societies, friendly societies,
  trades unions, cooperative movement
• Reforms eventually carried out as concessions to
  pressure

17
How Britain fell behind/whats next?

• Easier for other countries to catch up once move
  made to capital goods industries and sources of
  growth became technological
• Education in Britain liberal arts rather than
  science and engineering-based?
• Victorian complacency
• Rise of the US
• Has the industrial revolution ever stopped?

18
Trends we see today

• Move away from union representation dilution of
  employment rights
• Lowering of wages and race to the bottom for most
• Maximization of profit at all costs
• Government subsidizing low wages in some
  economies (UK)
• Outsourcing
• Child labour in developing world
• Technological innovations resulting in job losses
• Political and social power in the hands of a
  smaller number of individuals oligarchy vs
  democracy?

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20
Pre-Industrial Revolution

• Social Responsibility

21
No Corporate Social Responsibility Decision-Making

• A firm focuses on one thing and one thing only -
  its profit
• This creates pressure to reduce costs by cutting
  costs internally
• The owners, managers and labour make their own
  personal charity decisions.
• Is this is more or less democratic than forcing
  the firm to give?

22
The Firm without Corporate Social Responsibility
The Nation, The Community
The Law Governmental Administration
Individual Owner
Charity
Profit
Profit
Charity
Individual Manager
Charity
Customers
Profit
Profit
Suppliers
Profit
Individual Labour
Charity
Charity
The Firm
23
Corporate Social Responsibility Decision-Making

• A firm giving to charity reduces its ability to
  reinvest, and its profit
• This creates pressure to reduce costs by cutting
  costs internally this essentially represents a
  tax on labour
• Do the owners and / or the manager of the firm
  make the charity decisions?

24
The Firm with Corporate Social Responsibility
The Nation, The Community
The Law Governmental Administration
Individual Owner
Charity
Profit
Profit
Charity
Individual Manager
Customers
Profit
Charity
Charity
Profit
Suppliers
Profit
Individual Labour
Charity
Charity
The Firm
25
The Protestant Ethic

• Premise
• Stuff Money
• Money Labour
• Labour ? Free Time
• Therefore
• Stuff ? Free Time
• And
• Free Time ? Stuff
• Where does charity fit into this equation?

26
Self-Interest and Selfishness

• Fellow Feeling is crucial sympathy
• Bi-directional and inter-dependent sense of
  well-being
• Self-interest When you feel good, I feel good
• The butcher takes care of his own self-interest,
  but because he is not selfish he takes care of
  his clientele
• Not all human actions are selfishly motivated
  but he understands that
• Altruistic actions are driven by a deep desire
  within the self and not by reason alone
• This applies to all individuals

27
Relationship Between the Individual and the
Entity

• Is business as an entity of men really different
  to the church, academia, military?
• "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all
  production and the interest of the producer
  ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be
  necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
  Smith The Wealth of Nations (Page 286)
• What is the purpose the Church Academia
• To fund environmental studies? Homeless shelters?
• What about negative eudæmonia

28
Relationship Between the Individual and the
Entity

• Structure of laws and administration limit all
  human endeavours
• Lag between innovation and legislation
• Conversely creates a stable environment in which
  it can grow due to predictability of some facets
  The Navigation Acts were in place for 200
  years.

29
On Defense

• Defense of the nation state is not just military
  in nature
• More to do with public interest
• Spending on the military nationally was good
  locally and business spending on infrastructure
  was good for military and for business
• Of course, it is too bad that periodically the
  military has to be used
• Defense is dependent upon local capital
• Surely, the more local the capital the better for
  a community
• Boundary between public good and individual good

30
On the Nation

• Local government and County government was about
  to be radically restructured but largely
  ineffective
• Closed communities all dependent upon a single
  business for profit
• The Wentworth Estate
• What is good for the nation is good for the
  community and vice versa

31
Post-Information RevolutionSocial Responsibility

• - An Alternative -

32
Smith gone wrong !

• Since the late 1970s the American middle and
  working classes have fallen further and further
  behind economically because policy changes in
  government favor the rich and super-rich
• Given little to no growth, skimming off some of
  the proceeds of growth to service the
  disadvantaged no longer works
• 1 vs 99

33
The Individual Richest

• All together the 400 wealthiest Americans are
  worth 2.29 trillion - up 270 billion from a
  year ago
• Same as the gross domestic product of Brazil, a
  country of 200 million people. 
• The average net worth of list members is 5.7
  billion, 700 million more than last year and a
  record high.
• Forbes 400 (2014)

34
and there are the business hypocrites(and we
cant get enough of them ..)

1. Yoko Ono Net Worth - 500 million. Tweeted "I
   love OccupyWallStreet. As John said, "One hero
   cannot do it. Each one of us have to be heroes."
   And you are. Thank you. love, yoko."
2. Russell Simmons Net Worth - 325 million The
   founder of a high fee credit card company called
   UniRush Financial Services visited the protests
   with Kanye West 
3. George Clooney Net Worth - 160 million Says he
   also supports the movement against corporate
   greed, but admits he needs to educate himself
   more about the specifics.
4. Samuel L. Jackson Net Worth - 160 million While
   on The View, the 62-year-old Pulp Fiction star
   said Im really glad when I look at those kids
   on Wall Street and I think, Finally, someone got
   up and did something. We used to be on the
   streets in the 60s.
5. Sean Penn Net Worth - 150 million Speaking on
   Piers Morgan Tonight, he says, "It resonates a
   great deal and in many ways. I applaud the spirit
   of what's happening now on Wall Street. I hope
   that increased organisation can come to it.
6. Jane Fonda - 120 million
7. Roseanne Barr Net Worth - 80 million Tweeted
   "The working class of this country were destroyed
   by wall street as the middle class was encouraged
   2 jeer at them call them lazy"
8. Deepak Chopra Net Worth - 80 million
9. Kanye West Net Worth - 70 million Arrived to the
   protests in 1,000 jeans and a 300,000 car.
10. Alec Baldwin Net Worth - 65 million Also the
    spokesperson for Capital One credit card 

35
A Possible Solution Predistribution

• Dont wait until the have been earned and then
  distribute.
• Distribute the earnings beforehand they land on a
  pay cheque.
• Focus on the voiceless middle classes.
• Engineer markets to create fairer outcomes from
  the beginning.

36
How to reinvigorate the centre-left?

• Jacob Stewart Hacker Director of the Institution
  for Social and Policy Studies and Stanley B.
  Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale
  University
• Written works on social policy, health care
  reform, and economic insecurity in the United
  States
• Winner-Take-All Politics How Washington Made the
  Richer Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle
  Class

37
The Precursor to Predistribution

• James Meade Nobel prize-winning economist, in
  his 1964 book Efficiency, Equality and the
  Ownership of Property
• older and more radical approach to
  predistribution
• called a "property-owning democracy"
• Looks to fundamentally to change individuals'
  economic power within markets

38
Predistribution

• Focus on the economic engine of the middle class
• Fix the macro economy
• Provide quality public services
• Empower the workforce

39
Predistribution

• Acknowledges that
• The state cannot do everything
• Vital place for active governance in the 21st
  century economy
• More than just softening the sharp edges of
  capitalism by creating a positive role for the
  state (contrary to Hayeks thinking)

40
Assumptions

• Predistribution
• More on education and training to foster greater
  self-respect and economic agency
• Predistribution
• Greater capital stake gives people the kind of
  independence that comes with being less in thrall
  to the vagaries of the labour market
• Predistribution
• Encourages those with a more secure economic
  position (since they are freer) to refuse
  demeaning or badly paid jobs
• this in turn bids-up wages and reduces inequality

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42
Environment and the Industrial Revolution

• how business, science, and religion led to the
  degradation of the planet

43

• Pre-Industrial Revolution
• I Attitudes
• II Timber and CoalIII Science
• IV Agricultural Revolution
• V Changes in European Culture
• Industrial Revolution
• I Canals
• II Industry/Air Quality
• III Case Study Alkali Acts 1863
• Post-Industrial Revolution
• I Sewage and Waste Disposal

44
Changing Image of Nature
45
Mazatlan Wetlands - Mexico
Deforestation in Australia
Highland Valley Copper Logan Lake, BC
46
Domination or Stewardship?

• Greek
• Sacrifices to Greek gods to gain favour
• Sacrifices or offerings were often given to
  ensure that the weather was in favour of the
  people
• Poseidon for safe water passage
• Demeter for the harvest
• Hades for wealth (precious metals come from
  within the earth)

47
Domination or Stewardship?

• Christianity Genesis 126-28 New International
  Version (NIV)
• 26 Then God said, Let us make mankind in our
  image, in our likeness, so that they may
  rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in
  the sky, over the livestock and all the wild
  animals,a and over all the creatures that move
  along the ground. 27 So God created mankind in
  his own image, in the image of God he created
  them male and female he created them. 28 God
  blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and
  increase in number fill the earth and subdue it.
  Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in
  the sky and over every living creature that moves
  on the ground.
• Genesis 91-5 New International Version (NIV)
• Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to
  them, Be fruitful and increase in number and
  fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will
  fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all
  the birds in the sky, on every creature that
  moves along the ground, and on all the fish in
  the sea they are given into your
  hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves about
  will be food for you. Just as I gave you the
  green plants, I now give you everything.

48
Pre-Industrial Revolution

• Britain subsistence agriculture
• Early modern period soil fertility maintained
  through crop and animal rotation
• Woodlands are the source of fuel for the
  community
• Each family farmed their own lot, but natural
  resources were shared
• Medieval landlords did not strive to maximize
  their gains

49
Pre-Industrial Revolution

• 1100/1200s problem with the ownership of
  woodlots
• Landowners want to sell the wood to the companies
  building the ships
• Mature oak of 80-120 years was necessary for the
  hulls, and firs were used for the masts
• Industries also reliant on timber
• Housing
• Soap
• Glass
• Iron/Copper refineries
• Docks, bridges, barges, locks (canals)
• Brewing industry
• By the 1200s, there is a shortage of timber for
  fuel and coal is used instead.

50
Coal as fuel

• In Elizabethan times, the use of coal had created
  a major pollution problem travelers when
  visiting the capital would have the smog greet
  them as their first visual
• The coal burned in the early modern period
  contained twice as much Sulphur as coal used
  today
• By the 18th century, statues of Stuart kings were
  covered in soot
• The production of English coal rose
• 1560 - 210,000 tons
• 1690 - 2,982,000 tons

51
Royal Edicts

• It was said that Queen Elizabeth was so grieved
  and annoyed with the taste of the smoke of sea
  coals that in 1578 she asked the brewers of
  London and other industries not to use any coal
  in their operations, but to rely only on wood.
• This was not likely to happen because wood was
  very expensive

52
Science

• Francis Bacon formulated empirical
  methodologies (the scientific method)
• Moves away from theological and metaphysical
  thinking (religion)
• By examining natural causes one could overcome
  the harsh inconveniences of nature (and politics)
• The world could now be controlled instead of
  endured
• Echoes the principles of domination

53
Agriculture Revolution

• Uncultivated land was seen as uncivilized
• wild and vacant lands encumbered with bushes
  and briars were like a defamed chaos
• Some saw the decision to have Otmoor (a wetland)
  unenclosed as scandal to national policy
• Improvements to agriculture was designed to
  improve the farmers status
• This prompted a shift to scientific agriculture
  focused on land management and increased yields.
  CM 56
• More food more profit
• More food less people needed on farms more
  people available for factory work
• Enclosure

54
Changing Landscape

• With improved farming technology that created
  higher yields, people began to look for new areas
  that could be farmed.
• Wetlands were drained in an effort to create more
  farmland
• Affected the poor, and nature (birds and fish
  were a source of food)

55
Changes in Culture

• changes arising within human culture affected
  and were affected by the natural environment -
  CM 43
• rise and fall in population
• conflict between landlord and peasant over
  control of natural resources - change from
  subsistence to profit model
• technological innovation
• spread of capitalist market

56
Industrial Revolution - Canals

• The first true canal was built in the UK 1741
• The rendering of these rivers applicable to the
  purposes of commerce forms one of the most
  important features in the history of our inland
  navigation. Joseph Priestly, 1831
• In a petition from 1698, it was stated that if
  the Rivers Ayre and Calder were made
  navigableit would lead to the preservation of
  the highways, and a great improvement of
  tradesometimes roads are unpassable
• much damage happens through the badness of the
  roads by the overturning of the carriages

57
Industrial Revolution

• Thirty of forty factories rise on the tops of
  hills I have just describes. Their six stories
  tower up their huge enclosures give notice from
  afar of the centralisation of industrythe soil
  has been taken away, scratched and torn up in a
  thousand placesheaps of dung, rubble from
  buildings, putrid, stagnant pools are found here
  and there among the houses and over the bumpy,
  pitted surfaces of the public placesa sort of
  black smoke cover the city. The sun seen though
  it is a disc without rays. Alex de Tocqueville
  1835

58
Industrial Revolution - Disease

• That such disease, wherever its attacks are
  frequent, is always found in connexion with the
  physical circumstances above specified damp,
  filth, overcrowding, and that where those
  circumstances are removed by drainage, proper
  cleansing, better ventilation, and other means of
  diminishing atmospheric impurity, the frequency
  and intensity of such disease is abated and
  where the removal of the noxious agencies appears
  to be complete, such disease almost entirely
  disappears.
• habits of cleanliness are obstructed by
  defective supplies of water
• the annual loss of life from filth and bad
  ventilation is greater than the loss from death
  and wounds in any wars in which the country has
  been engaged in modern times
• Edward Chadwick, Parliamentary Papers, 1842

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61

• The Economist 1849 on Cholera
• Argument that sanitary measures are not
  necessary because the disease is spread from
  person to person not due to poor sanitary
  conditions
• After inflicting much suffering particularly
  on the lower classes - the cholera seems to have
  entirely departed. All the nuisances of
  unflushed sewers , interamural burials, coffins
  bursting and pouring forth poisonous exhalations
  are continued
• it would be most unphilosophical to ascribe
  cholera to them, and to proceed to create new
  institutions, or create new laws, to get rid of
  them

62
Industrial Revolution - Air

• The sturdy Hawthorne makes an attempt to look
  gay every spring but its leavesdry up like tea
  leaves and soon drop off. The farmer may sow if
  he pleases, but he will only reap a crop of
  strawthe human animals suffer from smarting
  eyes, disagreeable sensations in the throat, and
  irritating cough, and difficulty of breathing.
  Chemical News, 1862
• The cause of this hydrochloric acid,
  particularly from alkali trades

63
Alkali Acts 1863-1884

• 1862
• Consumed 1,834,000 tons of raw materials
• Employed 19,000 men
• Earnings 871,000 (45.84 per person)
• Produced finished good worth 2.5 million
• Contributed to secondary trades
• But, in manufacturing, clouds of HCl gas were
  released into the atmosphere, and rained down as
  acid rain

64

• Attempts to fix the problem were made
• Make the chimneys higher no good
• Smoke was just spread over a larger area
  instead(they thought it would be diffused in the
  air, thus having a less potent effect)
• The landed gentry were the most upset
  especially if they were downwind from the
  factories
• Attempts to mitigate the effects were not made
  because there was no incentive to do so
  (difficult to lay blame, no incentive)

65

• 1863 Lord Stanley of Alderly brought in a
  private bill
• all alkali works be subjected to a fixed
  standard of ninety-five per cent condensation
  setting penalties of fifty and a hundred pounds
  for first and subsequent offences, and
  authorizing the Board to Trade to appoint an
  inspector with the sole powers of prosecution and
  appeal.
• Manufacturers were not pleased with this
• they insisted the problem had only recently had
  a scientific solution.
• Complained that if earlier stages had been
  subject to inspection, they never would have
  arrived at this present position

66

• After the Act is passed
• Acid was reduced from 13,000 tons to 43 tons per
  year
• Enthusiasm for inspection increased once it was
  discovered that HCl acid (a waste product) could
  be turned into hypochloride and into commercial
  bleach (no more urine!)
• Only HCl gas could be reported on not the other
  noxious gases
• 1875 Queen Victoria complains about the smells
• 1876 A royal commission was established
• to inquire into the working and management of
  works and manufactories from which sulphurous
  acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, and ammoniacal and
  other vapours and gasses are given off, to
  ascertain the effect produced thereby on animals
  and vegetable life, and to report on the means to
  be adopted for the prevention of injury thereto
• Result inspection is extended beyond Alkali
  plants

67
Post-Industrial Revolution

• 1948, the Tyne, Tees and Wear Rivers were in some
  parts little more than open sewersthe crude
  sewage of several towns goes untreated into the
  river Kempster
• 1940s Darlington, in the 1940s still poured 3
  million gallons of sewage a day, in addition to
  it receiving the effluent from coke ovens higher
  up and chemical works lower down

68

• Victoria currently only does primary screening
  for sewage treatment
• There is a misnomer that the effluent will be
  diluted, and therefore okay however that does
  not remove what is IN the sewage
• Been dumping since 1894
• Scientific data used for supporters and
  opponents to treating waste
• From 1908-1958, municipal garbage was dumped into
  the ocean
• BC Ferries dumped waste into the ocean for
  another 25 years, ending the practice in the
  1980s

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Pascals Wager with the Environment
  Yes we take action No we dont take action
GCC is false
GCC is true
Cost Global Depression
Livable world ?
CatastropheEconomic Political Social Environmenta
l Health
CostLivable world ?
70
In the end

• We shouldnt resort to NIMBYism, or claim
  ignorance when considering the environment.
• We all have choices to make what will yours be.