History is the study of past events that are usually linked to events of today and brings forth the effects or consequences of actions in the future. The past can never be said to have no link with today and tomorrow; it has an influence to what is happening and what the future will bring ahead.
History consists of events that are chronologically and systematically arranged in a narrative manner, aimed at providing any learner various perspectives on how he o she will regard his or her actions in any given human activity, regardless of its size, significance, importance, value and appreciation of his or her life. It takes serious, dedicated and passionate endeavor to get back at learning the past in order to have a full grasp and understanding of the present and consequently, equip one when facing the challenges of the future. One can not simply jump from one phase to another in any order; he or she has to go through each and every stage in this particular order—past, present and future, and not interchangeably.
The locomotive was a unique invention, which definitely changed the way people made and shipped goods. Before 1770, most goods—such as clothing and shoes—were made by hand. At that time, most Americans lived on farms. Everyone was helping someone else. someone in the family would spin wool into thread, weave it into cloth and sew the shirt. Americans did not make all their own goods, however. Some things—such as glass, tools, and some cloth—were made in Britain and imported. (Timeline).
The revolution started in Great Britain and eventually spread through the Western parts of Europe and the Northern Americas. It was during this historical hallmark that significant changes took place in human civilization. It was so relevant that it changed the course of human history, just as what happened during the agricultural revolution eons ago. Industrial Revolution, as many historians today see it, is not only the shifting of the subsistence means of the people, but a complete alteration in their economic, social, political, and cultural life. (Timeline).
One of the important ingredients of Industrial Revolution is the establishment of large, well-organized profit-making groups. With this followed the adjustments in production and management practices. It is now a widely held fact that the First Industrial Revolution began in the textile sector, one of the booming enterprises during that time. In the first place, textile, which is made into clothes, is an important commodity, a material used to satisfy a basic need next to food and shelter. What fuelled the industrialization in the textile sector is the flooding of raw materials from several colonial markets, the mechanical inventions of scientists that expedited the production process, the flocking of populations to the cities providing ample source of cheap labor, and the discovery of new forms of energy sources that helped run machinery at an optimum speed imaginable that time. Another important factor is that even during the “pre-industrial” times, a great number of Great Britain’s population were already involved, in one way or another, in wool production. Both during and before the Industrial Revolution, the demand from agriculture for female labour was quite limited. Some women were chosen because they had the stamina and they did farm work from the seventeenth up until the nineteenth centuries. There was an expanding demand for women workers. It is a fact that the main Industrial Revolution employment consisted mostly of women. (Armento).
As capitalism and industrialization drew workers out of the home and measured labor’s worth through wages, the gap in the value of men’s and women’s work widened. Women juggled their time as mothers and workers. This economic process has occurred unevenly across the world. The historical shift from agriculture to industry began in England and northwestern Europe around 1800, spread across the United States and most European nations by 1900, and affected the global economy by 2000. (Armento).
Family farming and farm labor have declined in much of the Western world, but at the start of the twenty-first century three quarters of the world’s women lived in developing countries, where they produced over half of the food raised. By women. Many of them continue to sell their produce in local markets. In Asia, women constitute one-half of the agricultural labor force. Despite their hard labors, most farmwomen have not had the same ownership wrights as men to the land they work. In Europe and America, males customarily inherited family holdings. West African women have maintained some of their customary land use rights, but women rarely inherit land in Asia and Latin America. Women’s farm labor, in other words, has contributed to a family economy that is legally “owned” by husbands.
The revolution would not have taken place given all these factors if the citizenry were not ready for it, thus, it was seen as an opportune end to the feudal times. The revolution would not have sustained if the early manufacturing groups did not employ management styles to tap the resources and opportunities at hand. Although the kind of management in the textile industries during those days is far from being the most effective, efficient, and humane, it served as a commencement of management science that finally evolved to become what modern organizations are practicing today.
Meanwhile, historians believe that the advances during the Industrial Revolution largely began in the textile sector. Factory production of textile was one of the earliest structures to become mechanized. Paul Mantoux (1961) wrote, “The use of machinery, even if not in itself a sufficient definition or explanation of the Industrial Revolution, remains…the leading fact, in relation to which…great historical process must be studied.” For this reason, the hydropower used to run the spinning machines and looms, the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, water frame, spinning frame, spinning mule, power loom, and dressing frame all served as significant materials in the maturation of the textile firms, as well as of the entire industrial sector.(Mantoux 1961).
In the 1700s, immigrants from Europe began pouring on the shores of America, a land formerly known then as the colonies or New England. Many of these newcomers acquired land and settled down with farming. Those who ended up in the Southern part of the States were the ones predominantly involved with raising cotton. What started the birth of textile industry in America, however, was the entry of knowledgeable and skilled individuals from Europe who were willing to initiate the cotton enterprise in the country. At around the same time that Britain was at the peak of its textile manufacturing and trade, the industry was also gaining momentum in the United States. Slater was known to have signed a partnership with a certain Moses Brown thus forming the Rhode Island System, which started operation with a seventy-two spindle mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Wren (2005) described how Slater’s factory was keenly patterned after the British ways of manufacturing, where business was simply sole proprietorship and the method involved spinning fine yarn in the mill, “but put weaving to be done by families in the homes.” He also employed supervisors and other higher-ranking officials in the company based on family relations (Wren, 2005).
Slater encountered some fierce competition with fellow immigrant Francis Cabot Lowell. Nevertheless, Slater made important contributions in the American textile industry and in the very field of management. Wren (2005) remarked that Slater implemented regularization of production and employment, integrated all the operations of creating cloth in his factories, and became the first to use data ledger, an application of crude accounting. He even eventually relegated some of his powers to hired supervisors or foremen that became the early production managers in America.
The American textile sector, whose origin can be traced from the British industries, likewise became equally important both in the local and international commerce. The two towering economies of textile production, though alike in many ways, shared a number of dissimilarities due to the differences in culture of the people. If the British workers held on to craft manufacturing, the American workforce employed mass production that hired a foreman instead of a craftsman. American firms were also more receptive to higher-powered machineries, and became more adept with throttle and powerloom spinning than the British’s mule spinning (Cohen, 1990). In American companies, laborers did not regard their superiors as “masters,” as did the British, explained Cohen (1990). The relationship between the laborers and proprietors were solely based on professionalism, with a minimal hint of class hostility. In other words, there was a clear understanding that one worked for the company in exchange for payment. Furthermore, Wren (2005) supported the supposition that American textile firms, as compared to their British counterparts, were more benign in treating their hired hands, “employers were paying high wages. . . child labor was not prevalent, and abuses were less frequent and less severe.” (Wren 2005)
It is hard for us today to realize how completely steamboats, railroads and factories unsettled everybody’s way of life a hundred years ago. It definitely changes and revolutionizes the times when Gardner lives. For she acquires her art pieces easily because of the modernization of this period. People marveled at the flood of cheap and plentiful goods made or shipped with the aid of machines, but the same machines also caused a good deal of human misery. The trained craftsmen of old were thrown out of work and their places taken by masses of industrial workers, unskilled, badly paid, and crowded together in unhealthy slums. Some welcomed, no wonder the machine as a blessing while others called it a curse. Altogether, the rise of modern industry overthrew a great many beliefs, habits and institutions. It created new tensions and conflicts, yet at the same time it made people more dependent on each other’s labor than ever before.
Isabella Gardner lives during the good times. She cannot help but be flamboyant, for her grandfather is a distinguished Salem shipowner, Joseph Peabody.(Wikipedia). So influential is he that he is known to be one of the wealthiest men in the United States during this time. Her grandaughter would see this opulence and grew up seeing art pieces transported in and out of their homes (Portrait of a Lady, 1997). But she lives bribing and smuggling some of these precious painting. She lavishes in art. She lives in the beauty of art such that after her husband Jack Gardner dies, she immediately commissions Fenway Court to house her vast collection. She herself personally supervised the minutest detail in transporting and setting up of this based on a Venetian palazzo. (Portrait of a Lady, 1997).
There was an economic collapse then but Gardner between the years 1866 and 1873 but it Gardner seems unaffected. Railroads became the nation’s largest non-agricultural employer. People were putting their money in railroads. Jay Cooke’s firm became the government’s chief financier of the Union military effort during the Civil War. The railroad industry involved a lot of risks such that Cooke’s firm who was the financial agent in ventures on this realized it had overextended itself and soon declared bankruptcy (People & Events: The Panic of 1873). Because of this, several other banking firms followed suit. This situation led to the collapse of the nation’s economy. Of the 364 railroads, approximately 89 railroads became bankrupt. A full 18,000 business failed in a matter of two years. In 1876, unemployment rose to 14 percent and the depression triggered railroad strikes. Workers were at the upperhand in 1877 as they had their strikes that stalled the trains. There were fights between the federal troops and the strikers (Wikipedia). People tended to put the blame of a lot of people. For example, President Grant and Congress were pointed to as culprits in mishandling the economy. In all angles, it was the extreme focus on the railroad building that became the starting point for the panic of 1873 (The Grant Administration).
The Industrial Revolution, which had started in England in the last half of the eighteenth century, spread to the United States between 1825 and 1850. In the years before the Civil War, America’s advancements in manufacturing were more noticeable than her advancements in agriculture. The sweeping innovations in manufacturing were due to two basic changes—a change from work done by hand to work done by machine, and a change from the domestic system (manufacturing in the home) to the factory system (Eltis, 2000).
America’s industrial manufacturing got off to a slow start but soon flourished. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, England, having gotten a head start in industrialization, made it difficult for American manufacturers to compete. In the first place, lower production costs made it possible for Europe to flood American markets with cheap goods, especially textiles. In the second place, England closely guarded her industrial secrets. Parliament passed laws forbidding the exportation of machines or plans for machines and barring skilled machine producers from leaving England. But one skilled machinist, Samuel Slater, hearing of the rewards offered to industrialists in the United States, broke through the emigration restrictions. He arrived in New York in 1789 and contacted Moses Brown, a foresighted Quaker merchant in Rhode Island. He told Brown he felt confident he could reconstruct a textile factory from memory. Brown’s reply was, “If thou canst do what thou sayest, I invite thee to come to Rhode Island.”
Slater accepted the invitation and went to Rhode Island. By December of 1790, he had the first American textile factory in operation, beside a waterfall in Pawtucker. He is remembered as the “Father of the American Factory System.” A few other American factories were soon built, but English competition made it difficult for them to prosper. Just prior to the War of 1812, when trade with the British was nearly cut off, American textile factories began to show signs of prosperity. Soon more factories were in operation.
Many scholars still point out the fact that a combination of factors on the home front in England combined to create the Industrial Revolution. There was an agricultural revolution that began in the countryside, with the invention of more modern implements that helped increase local agricultural production. Eventually, there was the emergence of a stronger commerce structure in the cities and towns, as the excess produce was brought to these markets for consumption by people of the town or from other towns (Menard, 1991).
Another outstanding contribution of America in the world is its efforts in specializing on science. In the eighteenth century, America taught the world about physical and natural sciences, which were among the most basic foundation of knowledge that support more advanced studies of the time. Investigators, whom later were to as scientists, “aligned themselves with colleagues in “philosophical societies” and through correspondences to form an elite corps of like-minded men, bound through their interest in experiment and study” (Franklin and his friends, 1999, par. 2). This elite group painstakingly went to distant towns or abroad searching for knowledge and even built friendships across many nations.
It was during Benjamin Franklin’s time that the elite group formed passion for science. The group was so diverse that it members covered various fields of profession and endeavors that were hungry to explore more about science—from business mariners, instruments makers, surveyors and mapmakers; from educators, to physicians, planters to agriculturists, up to the point that this group, through Benjamin Franklin, became famous in Europe.
This was a point in the American history because of the introduction of industrial technologies in 1790 to 1860, when Americans imported things and built their own machines and factories. America was technically robust in terms of coming up with new technological creations, like machines, tools, sources of power and new ways of organizing work that speed up production. American transformed itself into a leading industrialized country in the world. While America is building its great place in the world’s history and as it continues to embark on its ideals to remain as the world’s super power nation, it is also too frightening that it could go the extent of engaging more deadly wars in the future, being detrimental to the economic state of America and humanitarian dispositions not only of the American people but of the world.
History tells us that America has struggled the tests of time. It has truly elevated its standing as a state and as leader of all nations in the world. It has never stopped changing and adopting to changes –big or small, painful and tragic, deadly and gruesome. It has also tasted many beautiful and rewarding achievements, many are progressive and abounding. But facing ahead of America are more challenging tasks, choices that all mind-boggling and even confusing. History continues to reveal that American can still go a long way, and it shall continue to achieve more for humanity. But let it now go beyond the ideals of democracy; let it not strive for what is detrimental to human race and the environment. And let it not achieve prosperity amidst the welfare of the people and the country outside America.
Expansion of food production expanded, due to new developments in drainage systems and fertilizers that originated from Dutch farmers (Stearns 18), increased food surplus. Consequently, population growth boomed and triggered the release of new laborers for activities besides agriculture (Stearns 19). Indeed food surplus was crucial for industrialization. “With more food came more people” (Stearns 37). The rapid population growth that ensued provided motivation for workers to search for new, even unlikable types of jobs (Stearns 37). Population explosion fostered economic dynamism, through the establishment of large manufacturing and machine-building factories, in varying degrees during the initial industrialization process of Western Europe (Stearns 38). Also necessary for industrialization is capital. Sources for capital had steadily broadened steadily because of the potency of budding domestic and, most importantly, international trade that included colonial trade. Needed labor was derived from the mushrooming power in domestic manufacturing and crafts, “which provided relevant basic skills and sheer numbers, and then from the population surge” (Stearns 38).
Improved transportation played a key role in bringing about economic and geographic expansion. High freight rates discouraged production for distant markets and the exploitation of resources, and primitive transportation hindered western settlement. Improved transportation had such a profound influence on American life that some historians use the term “transportation revolution” to refer to its impact. Canals and railroads bound the country together in a new way. They provided farmers, merchants and manufacturers with cheap and reliable access to distant markets and goods and encouraged Americans to settle the frontier and cultivate virgin lands. The economic opportunities they opened fostered technological innovations that might increase production. Eventually, the strong economic and social ties the waterways and the railways fostered between the Northwest and the East led people living in the two regions to share political outlooks.
Industrialization created a more efficient means of producing more goods at much lower costs than had been possible in the homes and small shops of an earlier day. Industrialization indeed transformed American life in both simple and complex ways.
The Industrial Revolution, which had started in England in the last half of the eighteenth century, spread to the United States between 1825 and 1850. In the years before the Civil War, America’s advancements in manufacturing were more noticeable than her advancements in agriculture. The sweeping innovations in manufacturing were due to two basic changes—a change from work done by hand to work done by machine, and a change from the domestic system (manufacturing in the home) to the factory system (Eltis, 2000).
The progressive spirit, which characterized the first two decades of the twentieth century, was responsible for a number of changes in the American political processes. At the federal level, three significant political changes were made. In the United States, the Progressive Era was a period of reform lasted from 1890s through the 1920s. (Wikipedia)
One political change with lasting significance came about when progressive congressmen determined to reduce the power of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. In the early 1900s, the Speaker appointed all House committees and served as chairman of the House Rules Committee. This gave him a great deal of authority over House legislation. However, after a series of long debates, they managed to amend House rules to prevent the Speaker from appointing or even serving on the Rules Committee. Thus the Speaker lost his power to decide arbitrarily which bills should come before the House for a vote. Limiting the Speaker’s power was intended to make House action more responsive to the will of the voters.
Two new procedures adopted by many states were specifically intended to give voters a greater voice in the making of state laws. These are the initiative and the referendum. About a dozen states adopted the recall, by which an official may be removed from office before his term expires. Upon the petition of a required number of voters, a special election must be held to determine whether an official should complete his term or be replaced
REFERENCES
Armento B., Nash, G, Salter C. and Wisson, K. America Will Be. Houghton Mifflin
Company. 1991.
Eltis, D. and Engerman, S. (2000). ‘The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain.’ Journal of Economic History, Volume 60, No. 1, pp. 123-144.
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/franklinroosevelt/p/pfdroosevelt.htm
Freedman, E. (2002). No Turning Back. Ballantine Books. New York.
Gusmorino, P.A., III. “Main Causes of the Great Depression.” Gusmorino World (May
13, 1996). Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://www.gusmorino.com/pag3/greatdepression/
Isabella Stewart Gardner. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner
Mantoux, P. (1961). The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century. New York: MacMillan Company.
Menard, R. (1991). ‘Transportation Costs and Long Range Trade in 1300-1800: Was there a Transport Revolution in the Early Modern Era?’ in J.D. Tracy, ed. Political Economy of Merchant Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Panic of 1873. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873
People & Events: The Panic of 1873. American Experience. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/grant/peopleevents/e_panic.html
Portrait of a Lady. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/reviews/971228.28middlet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Progressive Era. Wikipedia. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era
Sharpe, Pamela. The female labour market in English agriculture during the Industrial
Revolution: expansion or contraction. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://www.bahs.org.uk/47n2a3.pdf
Stearns, Peter N. The Industrial Revolution in World History 3rd ed.
The Grant Administration. Panic of 1873. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h213.html
Timeline. 19th Century.
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/timeline19.html
Understanding the Industrial Revolution. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://www.cottontimes.co.uk/chrono1.html
World War I. Retrieved May 19, 2008 at:
http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/world_war_i.htm
Source: Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/women.htm
Chart that shows that many of the victims of the explosion were children
Felling Colliery Disaster
Employed as
Number killed
Average age
Oldest
Youngest
Hewer
34
35
65
20
Putter
28
17
23
10
Waggon Driver
5
12
14
10
Trapper
14
14
30
8*
Chart that shows Industrial Revolution Inventors
Source: Industrial Revolution Inventors
http://americanhistory.about.com/library/charts/blchartindrev.htm
Industrial Revolution Inventors
Top 10 Significant Industrial Revolution Inventors
Person
Invention
Date
James Watt
First reliable Steam Engine
1775
Eli Whitney
Cotton Gin, Interchangeable parts for muskets
1793, 1798
Robert Fulton
Regular Steamboat service on the Hudson River
1807
Samuel F. B. Morse
Telegraph
1836
Elias Howe
Sewing Machine
1844
Isaac Singer
Improves and markets Howe’s Sewing Machine
1851
Cyrus Field
Transatlantic Cable
1866
Alexander Graham Bell
Telephone
1876
Thomas Edison
Phonograph, Incandescant Light Bulb
1877, 1879
Nikola Tesla
Induction Electric Motor
1888
Rudolf Diesel
Diesel Engine
1892
Orville and Wilbur Wright
First Airplane
1903
Henry Ford
Model T Ford, Assembly Line
1908, 1913
Timeline
Source: Understanding the Industrial Revolution.
http://www.cottontimes.co.uk/chrono1.html
1712: Thomas Newcomen patents his atmospheric engine.
1732: Jethro Tull publishes details of innovations such as the seed drill and the horse-hoe.
1733: John Kay of Bury (1704-1779) patents the Flying Shuttle. Until this point, weaving has been a slow, laborious process and the width of a piece of cloth has been limited to the stretch of a man’s arms. Now, cloth can be made wider and faster. Suddenly, there is a shortage of thread to keep the weavers busy, and this leads to a search for better ways of spinning.
1738: Lewis Paul and John Wyatt take out a patent for their drafting rollers and the flyer-and-bobbin system, enabling the production of finer, more even yarns.
1742: Wyatt and Paul open a mill in Birmingham utilising their new rollers. But it is not a success.
1743: Wyatt and Paul open a spinning factory in Northampton with five machines of 50 spindles. It runs until 1764.
1745: Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion. Scottish Jacobite army marches South led by the Young Pretender, collecting supporters in Manchester and reaching Derby before retreating North again.
1746: Battle of Culloden. The Pretender’s army is beaten and he flees to the Isle of Skye.
1748: Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn each take out a patent for a carding engine.
1751: Construction of the Sankey-St Helens Canal begins. This cut pre-dates the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal by five years.
1754: John Kay invents an improved carding machine – another step in the process of mechanising the cotton industry.
1756: Start of Britain’s Seven Years’ War with France.
1759: Britain wins Battle of Quebec. Duke of Bridgewater begins construction of Bridgewater Canal from his coalmines at Worsley to Manchester. Coal will be brought from
underground by boat, with the canal crossing the Irwell-Mersey Navigation on an aqueduct at Barton and finishing at Castlefield. The canal will also link Manchester with the tidal Mersey at Runcorn. John Harrison builds the first successful marine chronometer.
1760: George III crowned King of England. Kay’s eldest son, Robert, invents the drop box, allowing the use of three shuttles on one loom, each containing weft of a different colour.
1761: Bridgewater Canal reaches Manchester. Price of coal in the city is halved.
1762: Matthew Boulton opens his Soho engineering works in Birmingham.
1763: France cedes Canada to England. End of Seven Years’ War.
1764: Thomas Highs of Leigh builds the first spinning jenny. Until this time, spinning has been a cottage industry, but now, one spinner can operate 16 spindles. The jenny is still small enough and cheap enough to be operated in a farmhouse, but it is the first real step towards mechanisation.
1767: Blackburn’s James Hargreaves develops a spinning jenny, although his employer Robert Peel probably has much input. Thomas Highs builds a spinning machine that uses roller drafting, but Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) steals the idea.
1768: Blackburn rioters destroy spinning jennies being built by Hargreaves for Peel. Hargreaves flees to Nottingham and opens a spinning business.
1769: Arkwright patents the water frame, a development of Highs’s invention, that requires concentration of labour in a mill – it is too big and power-hungry to be used in a cottage. Arkwright’s roving frame and draw frame – also stolen ideas – follow by 1775, making possible a continuous cotton-spinning process powered by water, and thus leading the way to the factory system.
1770: Completion of Grand Trunk Canal, linking the Trent and Mersey. Birth of Beethoven.
Source:
Industrial Revolution Inventors
http://americanhistory.about.com/library/charts/blchartindrev.htm
Top 10 Significant Industrial Revolution Inventors
Person
Invention
Date
James Watt
First reliable Steam Engine
1775
Eli Whitney
Cotton Gin, Interchangeable parts for muskets
1793, 1798
Robert Fulton
Regular Steamboat service on the Hudson River
1807
Samuel F. B. Morse
Telegraph
1836
Elias Howe
Sewing Machine
1844
Isaac Singer
Improves and markets Howe’s Sewing Machine
1851
Cyrus Field
Transatlantic Cable
1866
Alexander Graham Bell
Telephone
1876
Thomas Edison
Phonograph, Incandescant Light Bulb
1877, 1879
Nikola Tesla
Induction Electric Motor
1888
Rudolf Diesel
Diesel Engine
1892
Orville and Wilbur Wright
First Airplane
1903
