CHAPTER 14
THE INDUSTRIALREVOLUTIONManufacturing on a small scale had been part of the Europe
an experience for centuries. The economy of every region had depended to
some extent on the production of clothes, tools, pots, and pans. Most pro
duction was carried out by men and women working in small workshops,
hammering and shaping household goods, or by country women weaving or
knitting clothes.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution
slowly but surely transformed the way many Europeans lived. In Western
Europe, it became easier for entrepreneurs to raise money for investment
as banking and credit institutions became more sophisticated. Dramatic
improvements in transportation, notably the development of the railroad and
steamship but also the construction of more and better roads, expanded
markets. Rising agricultural productivity, increasingly commercialized in
Western Europe, fed a larger population. Western Europe underwent a period
of rapid urbanization: the number of people living in cities and towns grew
more rapidly than did the percentage of people residing in the countryside,
although the latter still predominated.
As the population expanded, demand increased for manufactured goods.
The number of people working in industry rose. Mechanized production
slowly revolutionized the textile and metallurgical industries, increasingly
bringing together workers, including women and children, in large work
shops and factories. Rural industry declined and, in some regions, disap
peared. Rural producers in much of France, the uplands of Zurich in
Switzerland, and Ireland, among others, lost out to more efficient urban,
factory-based competitors. Slowly but surely factory production transformed
the way Europeans worked and lived.
While many contemporaries were amazed and impressed by factory
production of goods and watched and rode trains in wonderment and
appreciation, others were shocked at what seemed to be the human costs
of such a transformation. Poor migrants flooded into towns and cities,