WEBVTT NOTE The Industrial Revolution - Part Two 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:30.000 The Industrial Revolution, part two. In order to understand the Industrial Revolution, it is imperative that we examine conditions prior to the period we want to focus on to see what the factors were there and then how they led into the Industrial Revolutionary period, and by this process we can determine whether or not the industrial development that occurred was of benefit or harm to human beings 2 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:52.000 This is a very important point because we want to do what we can to face up to the accusations that have been made against the businessmen and industrialists to find out if they were in fact guilty of all of the rapacious greed and cruelty that has been laid at their collective door. 3 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:59.000 Now we're going to examine the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain because that is the first one that occurred. 4 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:08.760 occurred. It transpired approximately between 1760 and 1830. In our own case in America, 5 00:01:08.760 --> 00:01:16.840 the Industrial Revolution is usually said to have begun around 1790, although you could 6 00:01:16.840 --> 00:01:22.740 make a good case for coming in with a slightly earlier date. In our own case, it ran from 7 00:01:22.740 --> 00:01:29.700 from approximately 1790, if you care to accept that date, on up to around 1850. 8 00:01:29.700 --> 00:01:40.020 So we have a period of about 60, 65 years in there where we had a very rapid industrialization 9 00:01:40.020 --> 00:01:46.980 and development of our economy that got us off on a very, very strong economic footing. 10 00:01:46.980 --> 00:01:48.380 But that's the American story. 11 00:01:48.380 --> 00:01:53.420 I want to consider now the one in Great Britain, and I want to use the one in Great Britain 12 00:01:53.420 --> 00:02:00.500 primarily because since it was the first to occur chronologically in the world, it teaches 13 00:02:00.500 --> 00:02:06.420 us certain things that we can't learn any other way. It is the industrial development 14 00:02:06.420 --> 00:02:11.460 in Great Britain that became the prototype of all the other industrial breakthroughs 15 00:02:11.460 --> 00:02:16.620 that have occurred, and therefore when we understand what happened in England, we have 16 00:02:16.620 --> 00:02:24.660 have a sort of a model that will teach us what has happened in other places. 17 00:02:24.660 --> 00:02:32.460 Conditions prior to the Industrial Revolution, if we go back 100 or 150 years, were deplorable 18 00:02:32.460 --> 00:02:36.500 by standards that we now hold today. 19 00:02:36.500 --> 00:02:43.280 As a matter of fact, scholarship, which relates to the period of the industrial development 20 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:49.960 and which undoubtedly was not as precise as the scholarship that we can apply today, nonetheless 21 00:02:49.960 --> 00:02:58.140 has fairly well agreed that if you go back to around, say, 1650 or 1700 in that period 22 00:02:58.140 --> 00:03:05.660 of time, you would find that about two percent of the wealth of England—I beg your pardon—that 23 00:03:05.660 --> 00:03:11.300 two percent of the people of England owned and controlled about eighty percent of the 24 00:03:11.300 --> 00:03:12.300 wealth. 25 00:03:12.300 --> 00:03:20.980 Now, that, of course, is a very, very bad distribution of wealth. If only 2% of the 26 00:03:20.980 --> 00:03:27.300 people have 80% of everything that is valuable under their control, it follows that there 27 00:03:27.300 --> 00:03:33.320 wouldn't be a great deal left for the other 98%. And, of course, you would have poverty 28 00:03:33.320 --> 00:03:40.860 of a kind we cannot even imagine today. According to the best figures we have, and they, as 29 00:03:40.860 --> 00:03:47.020 as I say are probably not accurate in terms of the accuracy that we demand now, but nonetheless 30 00:03:47.020 --> 00:03:53.780 they are the best we have. Two percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. 31 00:03:53.780 --> 00:04:00.300 Then there is a second group which was to enlarge rapidly as a result of industrialization 32 00:04:00.300 --> 00:04:06.540 and to be called later the middle class. Prior to industrialization it was not really called 33 00:04:06.540 --> 00:04:15.340 Special Class, but we have about 8% of the people there, and that 8% had perhaps 10% of the wealth. 34 00:04:16.300 --> 00:04:24.140 And that leaves us with about 90% of the people in what are called the lower classes that had 35 00:04:24.140 --> 00:04:31.500 the other 10% of the wealth. And that, of course, means a bad distribution of wealth by any standard 36 00:04:31.500 --> 00:04:33.180 Standard, You Care to Apply. 37 00:04:33.180 --> 00:04:40.540 So if you take a look at that situation and realize that it existed, say, by 1650 on up 38 00:04:40.540 --> 00:04:46.420 to 1700 in that period of time, of course, the changes then were gradual. 39 00:04:46.420 --> 00:04:52.860 Although we usually say that industrial development didn't really begin until 1760, actually 40 00:04:52.860 --> 00:04:59.180 it predated that by having a few things come into existence here and there along the way 41 00:04:59.180 --> 00:05:06.140 so that by 1760, which is the date scholarship attributes to the opening of the industrial 42 00:05:06.140 --> 00:05:11.020 development, you have a number of industries pretty well advanced. And that is the way it occurred. 43 00:05:11.020 --> 00:05:17.820 It didn't happen at some particular date where everything took hold. These developments come 44 00:05:17.820 --> 00:05:25.020 one at a time. They gradually emerge and suddenly you find that you've got a new way of procedure 45 00:05:25.020 --> 00:05:30.540 that has sort of evolved. And that, of course, is what happened with the Industrial Revolution. 46 00:05:31.820 --> 00:05:37.980 Now, if we go to a period around 1850, after the Industrial Revolution has run its course, 47 00:05:37.980 --> 00:05:45.420 we are going to discover a completely different way in which the wealth is distributed. But we 48 00:05:45.420 --> 00:05:52.780 also must make note of this fact. At the time when these first figures that I've given you 49 00:05:52.780 --> 00:06:00.380 were put together. Wealth was viewed almost entirely as consisting of land and the immediate 50 00:06:00.380 --> 00:06:05.660 appurtenances to land, that is to say the land and the buildings. And that's about all that people 51 00:06:05.660 --> 00:06:11.500 thought of as wealth. So when we say that 80% of the known wealth was in the hands of a 2% 52 00:06:12.380 --> 00:06:18.780 population, 2% of the population, we're talking about fundamentally the land and buildings. 53 00:06:18.780 --> 00:06:27.660 and two percent of the population control that. Now if we go to 1850, a hundred years later on, 54 00:06:27.660 --> 00:06:33.940 or a hundred and fifty years later on, we will discover a different way of measuring wealth. 55 00:06:33.940 --> 00:06:40.100 And of course, therefore you're not making a precise comparison, and probably any comparison 56 00:06:40.100 --> 00:06:45.860 you make here is an invalid one if you're trying to be precise. Nonetheless, it gives us the only 57 00:06:45.860 --> 00:06:51.380 The only indication we have, and we have to make use of it, and that is to come up with 58 00:06:51.380 --> 00:06:59.620 the new figures of 1850, we discovered that we still have a 2% population in a remarkably 59 00:06:59.620 --> 00:07:09.340 privileged position, and this 2% of the population now has about 30% of the wealth. 60 00:07:09.340 --> 00:07:15.060 But remember, now we're thinking of wealth as an entirely different amalgamation of goods 61 00:07:15.060 --> 00:07:23.100 and Services and Land and so on. So it's a different basis of comparison. However, may 62 00:07:23.100 --> 00:07:31.660 I point out that the same 2% that once had 80% of the wealth and now has 30% of the wealth 63 00:07:31.660 --> 00:07:38.580 is better off with the 30% than they were with the 80% because wealth has multiplied 64 00:07:38.580 --> 00:07:45.420 so fantastically during the Industrial Revolutionary period that the amount of wealth now accruing 65 00:07:45.420 --> 00:07:53.040 to these same people is of a much different kind and there's much more of it so that 66 00:07:53.040 --> 00:07:55.480 actually they're better off. 67 00:07:55.480 --> 00:08:02.020 So the extreme upper class, this 2% group that I've mentioned, was not injured by the 68 00:08:02.020 --> 00:08:06.320 Industrial Revolution, although if you look only at the percentage figures, it appears 69 00:08:06.320 --> 00:08:12.720 So, because they shrank from an 80% control of the wealth consisting of land and buildings 70 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:19.600 primarily to a 30% control of wealth consisting of all kinds of things including land, buildings, 71 00:08:19.600 --> 00:08:23.960 inventories, money, a lot of other things that were added in, you see. 72 00:08:23.960 --> 00:08:26.520 So you've got a different basis of comparison. 73 00:08:26.520 --> 00:08:34.000 Now, again, going to 1850, the second group of people that prior to industrialization 74 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:40.880 had been about eight percent, a sort of a beginning middle class which consisted at the earlier date 75 00:08:40.880 --> 00:08:48.080 of artisans, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs and businessmen of various types. You have merchants 76 00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:57.120 who, for instance, own their own ships or own their own stores or shops. You have blacksmiths 77 00:09:27.120 --> 00:09:33.600 50. About 58% of the British people are now in that class, and they have about 50% of 78 00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:38.600 the wealth of England. And that includes the land and buildings and inventories and so 79 00:09:38.600 --> 00:09:48.160 on. Now, the major group, the 90% group in 1650, has now been reduced, you see, to about 80 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:55.160 40%. So 50% of the people of England have migrated into a better class. The major change 81 00:09:57.120 --> 00:10:02.940 The change brought about by industrial development was a migration of people out of the lower 82 00:10:02.940 --> 00:10:05.820 classes into the middle class. 83 00:10:05.820 --> 00:10:08.160 That was the great shift. 84 00:10:08.160 --> 00:10:17.360 And this lower class, which prior to industrialization consisted of 90% of the people having about 85 00:10:17.360 --> 00:10:25.320 10% of the wealth, this 90% has now been reduced to 40% of the people and that 40% of the people 86 00:10:25.320 --> 00:10:35.220 now has about 20% of the wealth. So the conditions of everyone improved, and curiously, the condition 87 00:10:35.220 --> 00:10:41.360 of those at the top of the scale improved the least, and the conditions of the persons 88 00:10:41.360 --> 00:10:48.360 at the bottom of the scale improved the most. Now that is exactly the opposite contention 89 00:10:48.360 --> 00:10:54.460 that is usually made. It is usually suggested that the people at the top of the heap benefited 90 00:10:54.460 --> 00:11:00.640 primarily from industrialization, and that the lower classes were exploited. In point 91 00:11:00.640 --> 00:11:07.080 of fact, if you examine the record, the reverse appears to be the case. Although in truth, 92 00:11:07.080 --> 00:11:13.420 no one was really injured, although here and there there were pockets that did not adapt 93 00:11:13.420 --> 00:11:20.600 to the change, and certainly injury did occur there. I'll cover that at a later time. 94 00:11:20.600 --> 00:11:29.200 The important thing to see is that we move from a 2% group having 80% of the wealth to 95 00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:36.880 that same 2% having about 30% of the wealth. We have an 8% factor that enlarges to about 96 00:11:36.880 --> 00:11:44.840 58% and shifts from having approximately 10% of the wealth to having now 50% of the wealth. 97 00:11:44.840 --> 00:11:49.960 You can see the change in the middle area. It's profound. And then in the lower area, 98 00:11:49.960 --> 00:11:54.880 which is the area where the people migrated from. 99 00:11:54.880 --> 00:12:00.720 Here you had originally 90% of the people, and that's now down to only 40% of the people, 100 00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:07.400 and the amount of wealth that the 90% had was only 10%, and now it's 20% with less 101 00:12:07.400 --> 00:12:09.400 than half the same number of persons. 102 00:12:09.400 --> 00:12:14.080 So the conditions all the way around improved. 103 00:12:14.080 --> 00:12:18.440 But while we're looking at it, it's very important to point out one thing, because 104 00:12:18.440 --> 00:12:39.440 This is the key that must be examined. It's that 2% group. What we must understand is that 2% group was, in fact, privileged, not because it had money, but because it had political power, and that's where privilege comes from. 105 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:45.000 The 2% group, which remained pretty much a constant during this whole period, consisted 106 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:52.360 of the king and the royal family and their immediate relatives and friends and the privileged 107 00:12:52.360 --> 00:12:54.720 few that were benefited by him. 108 00:12:54.720 --> 00:13:01.800 It also included the nobility, the earls, the barons, and their families and their entourage, 109 00:13:01.800 --> 00:13:02.800 etc. 110 00:13:02.800 --> 00:13:04.800 Now, that's the 2%. 111 00:13:04.800 --> 00:13:09.840 These are the people who are truly privileged because, you must remember, that privilege 112 00:13:09.840 --> 00:13:17.120 is not a matter of money. It is a matter of political power. And, of course, they tend 113 00:13:17.120 --> 00:13:24.180 to run together. When political power is granted to someone, it usually doesn't take him long 114 00:13:24.180 --> 00:13:29.960 to get the money. And that's what you will discover was the condition prior to the Industrial 115 00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:37.400 Revolution. The moneyed class and the political class was the same class, and it was called 116 00:13:37.400 --> 00:13:45.900 the privileged class. Now the Industrial Revolution was to create something absolutely new that 117 00:13:45.900 --> 00:13:53.760 had never happened before. It was to provide for the first time a moneyed class that was 118 00:13:53.760 --> 00:13:57.360 was not necessarily politically privileged. 119 00:13:57.360 --> 00:13:59.200 And that is the unique thing. 120 00:13:59.200 --> 00:14:06.880 I wish I could tell you that all of the industrialists were happy to fall into that grouping. 121 00:14:06.880 --> 00:14:08.720 That is not true. 122 00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:15.440 Unfortunately, some of the industrialists were very quick to get as much political power 123 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:20.280 as they could in order to enhance their financial position. 124 00:14:20.280 --> 00:14:28.180 This is the same problem that confronts us today. But nonetheless, in spite of those 125 00:14:28.180 --> 00:14:35.040 industrialists who did and still do curry favor with those who hold political power, 126 00:14:35.040 --> 00:14:42.940 the creation of a vast new area of wealth outside of the political area began to occur 127 00:14:42.940 --> 00:14:48.220 during the industrial revolutionary period. And that is the significant thing to keep 128 00:14:48.220 --> 00:14:49.220 Keep in mind. 129 00:14:49.220 --> 00:14:58.740 Now, let me cover quickly a few of the conditions that existed in England prior to industrialization. 130 00:14:58.740 --> 00:15:07.140 There are only a few areas where we have any substantive figures from which to draw conclusions. 131 00:15:07.140 --> 00:15:11.260 The British did keep very good statistics in certain areas, and they completely avoided 132 00:15:11.260 --> 00:15:17.780 them in others, so we don't have a standard base of comparison that runs clear across 133 00:15:47.780 --> 00:16:04.400 If we take a look at the conditions in these six areas prior to industrialization, we will 134 00:16:04.400 --> 00:16:12.700 discover just how bad things were in England and elsewhere in the world before industrialization 135 00:16:12.700 --> 00:16:14.060 began. 136 00:16:14.060 --> 00:16:17.420 First of all, the death rate. 137 00:16:17.420 --> 00:16:22.900 Deaths occurred primarily, as I have indicated in an earlier discussion, as a result of a 138 00:16:22.900 --> 00:16:31.660 lack of food or as a result of various dietetic deficiencies, malnutrition, scurvy, berry-berry 139 00:16:31.660 --> 00:16:38.180 rickets, the type of disease that accompanies starvation. The death rate was so high in 140 00:16:38.180 --> 00:16:45.220 pre-industrial England that on right up to around 1750, just before the Industrial Revolution 141 00:16:45.220 --> 00:16:54.820 occurred, the average length of life in England was only 20.3 years. Think of it, only 20.3 142 00:16:54.820 --> 00:17:00.900 years. And the reason was because, not because everybody died when they got to be 20, but 143 00:17:00.900 --> 00:17:05.420 because so many people died before they got to be 20. It was the death rate among the 144 00:17:05.420 --> 00:17:13.200 children that brought the average down. You could anticipate that in an average family 145 00:17:13.200 --> 00:17:28.280 Most of the deaths occurred from birth through the infant years up to perhaps five or six. 146 00:17:28.280 --> 00:17:33.640 If the child got as far as nine, then he began to have a much better chance of survival. 147 00:17:33.640 --> 00:17:41.080 The death rate from the year one to nine was simply ferocious, and the people dropped like 148 00:17:41.080 --> 00:17:42.080 of Money. 149 00:17:42.080 --> 00:18:06.040 I'm thinking now of the conditions that confronted the 90 percent, the poor people, never mind 150 00:18:06.040 --> 00:18:07.220 the privileged group. 151 00:18:07.220 --> 00:18:12.340 You read about them in the novels and it's made to look very romantic and so on. 152 00:18:12.340 --> 00:18:14.300 Well you've had that. 153 00:18:14.300 --> 00:18:15.300 Stop thinking about that. 154 00:18:15.300 --> 00:18:20.900 Think of the 90% people who were impoverished beyond words to describe. 155 00:18:20.900 --> 00:18:23.860 Now these people, what did they have to eat? 156 00:18:23.860 --> 00:18:28.940 Well if they lived in the country, they might get some green things, especially during the 157 00:18:28.940 --> 00:18:30.820 growing seasons. 158 00:18:30.820 --> 00:18:33.460 You could scrounge a bit if you were in the country. 159 00:18:33.460 --> 00:18:41.260 And we have many accounts of people eating leaves and berries and roots and nuts during 160 00:18:41.260 --> 00:18:42.940 the nutting season. 161 00:18:42.940 --> 00:18:48.780 And in fact, we have eyewitness accounts of elderly people on their hands and knees cropping 162 00:18:48.780 --> 00:18:51.160 grass with the sheep. 163 00:18:51.160 --> 00:18:55.100 You could get something to eat if you lived in the country. 164 00:18:55.100 --> 00:18:56.980 What if you lived in the city? 165 00:18:56.980 --> 00:19:00.840 Well, the green things don't grow that way in the city. 166 00:19:00.840 --> 00:19:08.080 So what did you get along on? Well, I suppose that if you were an adult, you were probably, 167 00:19:08.080 --> 00:19:12.840 that is to say, if you did not have some type of attachment as a member of the servant class 168 00:19:12.840 --> 00:19:18.880 or as a member of some household, you were probably a part of the floating population 169 00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:25.040 and therefore a criminal. The criminal class in London, for instance, was absolutely huge. 170 00:19:25.040 --> 00:19:32.860 No one knows how big it was. Crimes occurred every second. Pickpockets and purse slitters 171 00:19:32.860 --> 00:19:40.460 and thieves of every description roamed the streets and simply scrounged on everything 172 00:19:40.460 --> 00:19:47.420 that was there. Green grocers who kept their wares out in the public had a normal attrition 173 00:19:47.420 --> 00:19:51.960 just from the moment they opened until they put everything under cover, because children 174 00:19:51.960 --> 00:20:21.960 And adults would pass by and the merchandise would disappear. You know, in those early days in England, there was no undercover plumbing for either intake water supplies or for sewage disposal and consequently, the water that got into your house had to be pumped there or carried there in buckets and whatever was used up was then thrown out into the gutter 175 00:20:21.960 --> 00:20:28.520 and the gutters ran with garbage and sewage of every description. And we have many accounts of 176 00:20:28.520 --> 00:20:33.320 children fighting each other to get little tidbits out of the gutter that they could eat. 177 00:20:33.320 --> 00:20:38.360 It's no wonder that they died at an early age, not only of starvation but of all the 178 00:20:38.360 --> 00:20:44.760 attendant diseases you can imagine. I might point out that pestilence was the second major killer. 179 00:20:44.760 --> 00:20:51.000 In fact, as you know, there was one period of time much earlier where they had the Black Death, 180 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:57.960 So-called, the bubonic plague that swept England and the continent and the price of which was so 181 00:20:57.960 --> 00:21:04.360 devastating that in that one summer, one out of every three people died. This was the condition 182 00:21:04.360 --> 00:21:11.720 now prior to industrialization. But let's take some of the things that the poor people 183 00:21:11.720 --> 00:21:17.320 might have had to eat if they were favored. We have one writer who suggests that the average 184 00:21:17.320 --> 00:21:25.240 Each person in the poor classes could anticipate one meal every other day. That's all. We 185 00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:32.400 think of three meals a day as being absolutely necessary. How would you like to think of 186 00:21:32.400 --> 00:21:40.200 three meals a week as being more or less standard fare? That's the condition that existed. 187 00:21:40.200 --> 00:21:47.200 And what did they get to eat if they got anything? Well, Great Britain, curiously, was a large 188 00:21:47.200 --> 00:21:53.880 Grain Producer. Now, it's not a large area, as we know, but they always have concentrated 189 00:21:53.880 --> 00:22:01.260 on raising quite a few items of grain, not so much wheat or maize, as we call our corn, 190 00:22:01.260 --> 00:22:11.120 but they usually raise the other grains such as barley and the oats and rye, the darker 191 00:22:11.120 --> 00:22:17.760 And these were used to bake bread and to provide other things like a gruel, for instance. 192 00:22:17.760 --> 00:22:26.680 A gruel is a kind of porridge basically made of barley. That is, well, if you put enough barley 193 00:22:26.680 --> 00:22:33.260 in it, it makes up like a kind of oatmeal and would be like a cereal that you could have for 194 00:22:33.260 --> 00:22:38.160 breakfast. Only that would be a staple item of diet. And of course, if times were good, 195 00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:43.500 It would be fairly thick and would contain quite a bit of nutrition. When times were 196 00:22:43.500 --> 00:22:48.840 not good, well, then it sort of thins out, and you can have gruel that's very thin indeed 197 00:22:48.840 --> 00:22:53.420 about the consistency of dirty dish water, and you would have that. So that would be 198 00:22:53.420 --> 00:22:59.720 a basic item of food. Then there was black bread that would be relatively common, and 199 00:22:59.720 --> 00:23:08.700 and gin. You know, you can make gin out of almost anything, and I'm sure people did. 200 00:23:08.700 --> 00:23:13.480 As a matter of fact, I suspect—I don't know this, but I suspect that many of the 201 00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:21.080 stories about brown October ale isn't brown October ale at all. It's just bad, dirty 202 00:23:21.080 --> 00:23:27.600 gin, and I suspect that's what it was, because you can make gin out of anything, and there's 203 00:23:27.600 --> 00:23:31.600 The Theory of Money and Credit 204 00:23:31.600 --> 00:23:37.600 The Theory of Money and Credit 205 00:23:57.600 --> 00:24:08.600 So you could have fished there, excepting that the land was owned and controlled by the barons, and usually he didn't welcome the poorer classes fishing in his streams. 206 00:24:08.600 --> 00:24:14.600 And that was called poaching. So the chances were good that if you tried that, you could be arrested and punished. 207 00:24:14.600 --> 00:24:26.600 And not after a trial. You were punished as you were arrested. They might cut off a finger or two, or take a whole hand, or an ear, or a nose, or some such thing, to mark you as a poacher. 208 00:24:26.600 --> 00:24:42.600 This was not only true of fish, it was true of the various game animals that existed in England, such as the game birds, partridge, grouse and so on, and the smaller game rabbits and little animals of this sort, which of course belong to the barrens. 209 00:24:42.600 --> 00:24:50.600 And that's poaching if you take any of those things. And of course, the deer belong to the king, and that's poaching if you take a deer. 210 00:24:50.600 --> 00:25:02.960 And naturally, the animals that are raised for food, such as your beef and your sheep and hogs and so on, these are much too costly. 211 00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:11.560 The people in the lower percentile group that I'm talking about couldn't have begun to afford luxury such as this. 212 00:25:11.560 --> 00:25:16.960 So that in point of fact, the impoverished masses, and that's exactly what they were, 213 00:25:16.960 --> 00:25:23.800 simply lived on the brink of starvation, having little to eat, if anything, and it is no wonder 214 00:25:23.800 --> 00:25:30.940 that the death rate was as high as it was and that their resistance to disease was low. 215 00:25:30.940 --> 00:25:36.920 They certainly lived deplorable lives. As far as other factors relating to them are 216 00:25:36.920 --> 00:25:44.120 concerned, they lived in filth. We cannot imagine people living the way they did. Remember, 217 00:25:44.120 --> 00:25:49.760 There's no hot or cold running water at all, even for rich people. If you wanted running 218 00:25:49.760 --> 00:25:53.880 water in those days, you put some in a pail and ran with it. That's all you could do. 219 00:25:53.880 --> 00:25:59.240 And of course, as far as soap is concerned, soap had been invented. In fact, people had 220 00:25:59.240 --> 00:26:04.600 used it for years. But the poorer people didn't have soap. As a matter of fact, they didn't 221 00:26:04.600 --> 00:26:12.700 wash. They just went from one year to the next without washing. Their hair was matted 222 00:26:12.700 --> 00:26:17.500 with filth and crawling with vermin. They didn't go to beauty parlors or barbershops. 223 00:26:17.500 --> 00:26:22.060 They couldn't have afforded that. They never bathed. They didn't have perfume. They didn't 224 00:26:22.060 --> 00:26:28.980 have deodorants. They would have teeth rotting in their gums, and who could afford a dentist? 225 00:26:28.980 --> 00:26:34.780 The condition of these people is just beggar's description. We can't imagine it. And yet, 226 00:26:34.780 --> 00:26:40.020 in general, that was the condition of the people in England prior to the industrial 227 00:26:40.020 --> 00:26:48.420 Development. Industrialization changed it so that it has never gone back to that again 228 00:26:48.420 --> 00:26:52.660 in those places where industrialization has occurred. Industrialization has proved to 229 00:26:52.660 --> 00:27:00.280 be one of the major benefits that human beings have ever had, but we don't think so when 230 00:27:00.280 --> 00:27:06.540 we hear the propaganda relating to the industrial revolutionary period and the accusations that 231 00:27:06.540 --> 00:27:13.780 are made about the cruel and rapacity of the businessmen and the industrialists who exploited 232 00:27:13.780 --> 00:27:17.080 the workers and took advantage of them at every turn. 233 00:27:17.080 --> 00:27:22.120 In point of fact, I'm going to show in my next discussion in this area just exactly 234 00:27:22.120 --> 00:27:27.380 what did occur here, but it is important to understand the background and the conditions 235 00:27:27.380 --> 00:27:34.700 that predated industrial revolution before we can understand how things changed. 236 00:27:34.700 --> 00:27:39.380 You have to see what they were first and then you see how they changed and that way you 237 00:27:39.380 --> 00:27:42.540 can get the whole thing into perspective. 238 00:27:42.540 --> 00:27:50.940 Keep in mind that we've had an earlier economic development. It's called the agrarian revolution 239 00:27:50.940 --> 00:27:56.100 that occurred way back at an early time when we stopped being hunting and foragers and 240 00:27:56.100 --> 00:28:15.100 When we became farmers, in 1760, we began to move off the farm into the city in a great industrial development, and we are right now, as we approach the 21st century, on the threshold of a new economic revolution. 241 00:28:15.100 --> 00:28:18.100 More on that later. Thanks very much.