A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

A Variety of National Industrial Experiences 531

In the Ruhr Basin, young Alfred Krupp (1812-1887) began to manage his
late father’s small steel manufacturing firm in Essen at the age of fourteen.
He served, in his words, as “clerk, letter-writer, cashier, smith, smelter, coke­
pounder, [and] night watchman at the converting furnace.” In 1832, his firm
nearly closed for lack of business. In 1848 he melted dow n the family silver
in order to pay his workers. Finally, an order from Russia arrived for machin­
ery to produce knives and forks, followed by another for steel springs and
axles for a German railway. In 1851 at the Crystal Palace in London, he
exhibited axles for train coaches and cannon w ith a gleaming cast-steel bar­
rel (his newest and ultimately most successful product). Thereafter, Krupp’s
steelworks became enormously successful, turning out guns of increasing
size and quality. Krupp employed 72 workers in 1848, 12,000 in 1873.

Sparse Industrialization in Southern and Eastern Europe

Eastern and southern Europe remained sparsely industrialized, hampered

by inadequately developed natural resources and insufficient government

attention. Entrepreneurs faced the difficulty of raising investment capital in

poor agricultural societies. There were regional exceptions, to be sure, such

as the increasingly mechanized textile production of Piedmont and Lom­

bardy in northern Italy and Catalonia in Spain, and pockets of industrializa­

tion in Bohemia and near Vienna.

Industrialization in Spain was slowed by inadequate transportation and

laws that discouraged investment. Lacking navigable rivers, Spain also suf­

fered the absence of a railway system until after the middle of the nine­

teenth century. A commercial code in 1829 established the right of the state

to veto any proposed association of investors. Following the continent-wide

economic crisis in 1846-1847, the state placed banking under the control

of the Cortes (assembly) and forbade the creation of new companies unless

investors could demonstrate that they would sene “public utility.”

Russia had a relatively tiny middle class—with only about 160,000 mer­

chants out of a population of about 57 million people at mid-century. How­

ever, the majority of the population were serfs (see Chapter 18) bound for

life to land ow'ned by lords. Their bondage made it difficult for entrepre­

neurs to recruit a stable labor force; industrial workers were among the hun­

dreds of thousands of serfs who fled toward the distant eastern reaches of

the empire.

Transportation in the Russian Empire remained rudimentary. The minis­

ter of finance from 1823 to 1844 opposed the building of railway lines,

believing that they would encourage needless travel. Moscow' and Saint

Petersburg were joined by rail only in 1851. Serviceable roads—only about

3,000   miles of them—had been built w ith military, not commercial or indus­

trial, considerations in mind. Rivers provided arteries of transportation, but

the boats were not steam-driven and travel was slow. Three hundred thou­

sand boatmen pulled barges up the Volga River, a trip of seventy-five days.