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

Impact of the Industrial Revolution 547

in union campaigns for economic justice reflected this evolution of liberal­
ism away from laissez-faire principles to a political theory concerned with
economic, social, and political justice.

Impact of the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, to be sure, changed the way people lived. Yet
one should not overestimate either the speed or the extent to which these
fundamental changes occurred in the nineteenth century. Even in Britain,
France, and Prussia, the three most industrialized European powers, fac­
tory workers comprised between only 2 and 5 percent of the population in

1850. In many places, industrial workers—particularly miners—returned
      home to work in the fields part of the year, or even part of the day.

Continuities on the Land *

Most rural people in Europe were not landowners. Landless laborers out­

numbered any other category of the rural population, and their numbers

increased dramatically in nineteenth-century Europe. Agricultural wages

fell, and rural under- and unemployment became chronic. Landlords hired

workers on a disadvantageous short-term basis. The abolition of serfdom in

1807 on the Prussian great estates east of the Elbe River increased the

number of rural laborers scrambling to find farm work there. The increase

in population put more pressure on the rural poor. Yet, even when peasants

owned land, they were by no means guaranteed a decent life, because many

plots were too small to be profitable, or the land was of poor quality. In

Prussia and southern Spain, the number of landless laborers soared as own­

ers of small farms were unable to survive and sold off their land.

Rural protest increased in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.

In 1830, a hard year, travelers found people who had died of hunger on the

roads, nothing in their stomachs but dandelions. In southern and eastern

England, wealthy landowners had begun to use threshing machines, which

left many hired hands without work. Grain passed through the rollers

of these portable machines and then into a revolving drum. Threshing

machines could be set up in any barn or field and operated by one or two

horses. Farm workers, whose labor as threshers or “flailers” was no longer

needed, began to smash threshing machines. The protesters were sometimes

supported by local artisans, whose own livelihoods were threatened by

mechanization, or by small landowners who could not afford the machines

and were being driven out of business by their wealthier colleagues who

could.

Some of the scrawled threats landowners received were signed “Captain

Swing” (for example, “Revenge for thee is on the wing, from thy determined

Captain Swing!”). Swing emerged as a mythical figure symbolizing popular