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
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.
Now we're going to examine the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain because that is the first one that occurred.
occurred. It transpired approximately between 1760 and 1830. In our own case in America,
the Industrial Revolution is usually said to have begun around 1790, although you could
make a good case for coming in with a slightly earlier date. In our own case, it ran from
from approximately 1790, if you care to accept that date, on up to around 1850.
So we have a period of about 60, 65 years in there where we had a very rapid industrialization
and development of our economy that got us off on a very, very strong economic footing.
But that's the American story.
I want to consider now the one in Great Britain, and I want to use the one in Great Britain
primarily because since it was the first to occur chronologically in the world, it teaches
us certain things that we can't learn any other way. It is the industrial development
in Great Britain that became the prototype of all the other industrial breakthroughs
that have occurred, and therefore when we understand what happened in England, we have
have a sort of a model that will teach us what has happened in other places.
Conditions prior to the Industrial Revolution, if we go back 100 or 150 years, were deplorable
by standards that we now hold today.
As a matter of fact, scholarship, which relates to the period of the industrial development
and which undoubtedly was not as precise as the scholarship that we can apply today, nonetheless
has fairly well agreed that if you go back to around, say, 1650 or 1700 in that period
of time, you would find that about two percent of the wealth of England—I beg your pardon—that
two percent of the people of England owned and controlled about eighty percent of the
wealth.
Now, that, of course, is a very, very bad distribution of wealth. If only 2% of the
people have 80% of everything that is valuable under their control, it follows that there
wouldn't be a great deal left for the other 98%. And, of course, you would have poverty
of a kind we cannot even imagine today. According to the best figures we have, and they, as
as I say are probably not accurate in terms of the accuracy that we demand now, but nonetheless
they are the best we have. Two percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth.
Then there is a second group which was to enlarge rapidly as a result of industrialization
and to be called later the middle class. Prior to industrialization it was not really called
Special Class, but we have about 8% of the people there, and that 8% had perhaps 10% of the wealth.
And that leaves us with about 90% of the people in what are called the lower classes that had
the other 10% of the wealth. And that, of course, means a bad distribution of wealth by any standard
Standard, You Care to Apply.
So if you take a look at that situation and realize that it existed, say, by 1650 on up
to 1700 in that period of time, of course, the changes then were gradual.
Although we usually say that industrial development didn't really begin until 1760, actually
it predated that by having a few things come into existence here and there along the way
so that by 1760, which is the date scholarship attributes to the opening of the industrial
development, you have a number of industries pretty well advanced. And that is the way it occurred.
It didn't happen at some particular date where everything took hold. These developments come
one at a time. They gradually emerge and suddenly you find that you've got a new way of procedure
that has sort of evolved. And that, of course, is what happened with the Industrial Revolution.
Now, if we go to a period around 1850, after the Industrial Revolution has run its course,
we are going to discover a completely different way in which the wealth is distributed. But we
also must make note of this fact. At the time when these first figures that I've given you
were put together. Wealth was viewed almost entirely as consisting of land and the immediate
appurtenances to land, that is to say the land and the buildings. And that's about all that people
thought of as wealth. So when we say that 80% of the known wealth was in the hands of a 2%
population, 2% of the population, we're talking about fundamentally the land and buildings.
and two percent of the population control that. Now if we go to 1850, a hundred years later on,
or a hundred and fifty years later on, we will discover a different way of measuring wealth.
And of course, therefore you're not making a precise comparison, and probably any comparison
you make here is an invalid one if you're trying to be precise. Nonetheless, it gives us the only
The only indication we have, and we have to make use of it, and that is to come up with
the new figures of 1850, we discovered that we still have a 2% population in a remarkably
privileged position, and this 2% of the population now has about 30% of the wealth.
But remember, now we're thinking of wealth as an entirely different amalgamation of goods
and Services and Land and so on. So it's a different basis of comparison. However, may
I point out that the same 2% that once had 80% of the wealth and now has 30% of the wealth
is better off with the 30% than they were with the 80% because wealth has multiplied
so fantastically during the Industrial Revolutionary period that the amount of wealth now accruing
to these same people is of a much different kind and there's much more of it so that
actually they're better off.
So the extreme upper class, this 2% group that I've mentioned, was not injured by the
Industrial Revolution, although if you look only at the percentage figures, it appears
So, because they shrank from an 80% control of the wealth consisting of land and buildings
primarily to a 30% control of wealth consisting of all kinds of things including land, buildings,
inventories, money, a lot of other things that were added in, you see.
So you've got a different basis of comparison.
Now, again, going to 1850, the second group of people that prior to industrialization
had been about eight percent, a sort of a beginning middle class which consisted at the earlier date
of artisans, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs and businessmen of various types. You have merchants
who, for instance, own their own ships or own their own stores or shops. You have blacksmiths
50. About 58% of the British people are now in that class, and they have about 50% of
the wealth of England. And that includes the land and buildings and inventories and so
on. Now, the major group, the 90% group in 1650, has now been reduced, you see, to about
40%. So 50% of the people of England have migrated into a better class. The major change
The change brought about by industrial development was a migration of people out of the lower
classes into the middle class.
That was the great shift.
And this lower class, which prior to industrialization consisted of 90% of the people having about
10% of the wealth, this 90% has now been reduced to 40% of the people and that 40% of the people
now has about 20% of the wealth. So the conditions of everyone improved, and curiously, the condition
of those at the top of the scale improved the least, and the conditions of the persons
at the bottom of the scale improved the most. Now that is exactly the opposite contention
that is usually made. It is usually suggested that the people at the top of the heap benefited
primarily from industrialization, and that the lower classes were exploited. In point
of fact, if you examine the record, the reverse appears to be the case. Although in truth,
no one was really injured, although here and there there were pockets that did not adapt
to the change, and certainly injury did occur there. I'll cover that at a later time.
The important thing to see is that we move from a 2% group having 80% of the wealth to
that same 2% having about 30% of the wealth. We have an 8% factor that enlarges to about
58% and shifts from having approximately 10% of the wealth to having now 50% of the wealth.
You can see the change in the middle area. It's profound. And then in the lower area,
which is the area where the people migrated from.
Here you had originally 90% of the people, and that's now down to only 40% of the people,
and the amount of wealth that the 90% had was only 10%, and now it's 20% with less
than half the same number of persons.
So the conditions all the way around improved.
But while we're looking at it, it's very important to point out one thing, because
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.
The 2% group, which remained pretty much a constant during this whole period, consisted
of the king and the royal family and their immediate relatives and friends and the privileged
few that were benefited by him.
It also included the nobility, the earls, the barons, and their families and their entourage,
etc.
Now, that's the 2%.
These are the people who are truly privileged because, you must remember, that privilege
is not a matter of money. It is a matter of political power. And, of course, they tend
to run together. When political power is granted to someone, it usually doesn't take him long
to get the money. And that's what you will discover was the condition prior to the Industrial
Revolution. The moneyed class and the political class was the same class, and it was called
the privileged class. Now the Industrial Revolution was to create something absolutely new that
had never happened before. It was to provide for the first time a moneyed class that was
was not necessarily politically privileged.
And that is the unique thing.
I wish I could tell you that all of the industrialists were happy to fall into that grouping.
That is not true.
Unfortunately, some of the industrialists were very quick to get as much political power
as they could in order to enhance their financial position.
This is the same problem that confronts us today. But nonetheless, in spite of those
industrialists who did and still do curry favor with those who hold political power,
the creation of a vast new area of wealth outside of the political area began to occur
during the industrial revolutionary period. And that is the significant thing to keep
Keep in mind.
Now, let me cover quickly a few of the conditions that existed in England prior to industrialization.
There are only a few areas where we have any substantive figures from which to draw conclusions.
The British did keep very good statistics in certain areas, and they completely avoided
them in others, so we don't have a standard base of comparison that runs clear across
If we take a look at the conditions in these six areas prior to industrialization, we will
discover just how bad things were in England and elsewhere in the world before industrialization
began.
First of all, the death rate.
Deaths occurred primarily, as I have indicated in an earlier discussion, as a result of a
lack of food or as a result of various dietetic deficiencies, malnutrition, scurvy, berry-berry
rickets, the type of disease that accompanies starvation. The death rate was so high in
pre-industrial England that on right up to around 1750, just before the Industrial Revolution
occurred, the average length of life in England was only 20.3 years. Think of it, only 20.3
years. And the reason was because, not because everybody died when they got to be 20, but
because so many people died before they got to be 20. It was the death rate among the
children that brought the average down. You could anticipate that in an average family
Most of the deaths occurred from birth through the infant years up to perhaps five or six.
If the child got as far as nine, then he began to have a much better chance of survival.
The death rate from the year one to nine was simply ferocious, and the people dropped like
of Money.
I'm thinking now of the conditions that confronted the 90 percent, the poor people, never mind
the privileged group.
You read about them in the novels and it's made to look very romantic and so on.
Well you've had that.
Stop thinking about that.
Think of the 90% people who were impoverished beyond words to describe.
Now these people, what did they have to eat?
Well if they lived in the country, they might get some green things, especially during the
growing seasons.
You could scrounge a bit if you were in the country.
And we have many accounts of people eating leaves and berries and roots and nuts during
the nutting season.
And in fact, we have eyewitness accounts of elderly people on their hands and knees cropping
grass with the sheep.
You could get something to eat if you lived in the country.
What if you lived in the city?
Well, the green things don't grow that way in the city.
So what did you get along on? Well, I suppose that if you were an adult, you were probably,
that is to say, if you did not have some type of attachment as a member of the servant class
or as a member of some household, you were probably a part of the floating population
and therefore a criminal. The criminal class in London, for instance, was absolutely huge.
No one knows how big it was. Crimes occurred every second. Pickpockets and purse slitters
and thieves of every description roamed the streets and simply scrounged on everything
that was there. Green grocers who kept their wares out in the public had a normal attrition
just from the moment they opened until they put everything under cover, because children
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
and the gutters ran with garbage and sewage of every description. And we have many accounts of
children fighting each other to get little tidbits out of the gutter that they could eat.
It's no wonder that they died at an early age, not only of starvation but of all the
attendant diseases you can imagine. I might point out that pestilence was the second major killer.
In fact, as you know, there was one period of time much earlier where they had the Black Death,
So-called, the bubonic plague that swept England and the continent and the price of which was so
devastating that in that one summer, one out of every three people died. This was the condition
now prior to industrialization. But let's take some of the things that the poor people
might have had to eat if they were favored. We have one writer who suggests that the average
Each person in the poor classes could anticipate one meal every other day. That's all. We
think of three meals a day as being absolutely necessary. How would you like to think of
three meals a week as being more or less standard fare? That's the condition that existed.
And what did they get to eat if they got anything? Well, Great Britain, curiously, was a large
Grain Producer. Now, it's not a large area, as we know, but they always have concentrated
on raising quite a few items of grain, not so much wheat or maize, as we call our corn,
but they usually raise the other grains such as barley and the oats and rye, the darker
And these were used to bake bread and to provide other things like a gruel, for instance.
A gruel is a kind of porridge basically made of barley. That is, well, if you put enough barley
in it, it makes up like a kind of oatmeal and would be like a cereal that you could have for
breakfast. Only that would be a staple item of diet. And of course, if times were good,
It would be fairly thick and would contain quite a bit of nutrition. When times were
not good, well, then it sort of thins out, and you can have gruel that's very thin indeed
about the consistency of dirty dish water, and you would have that. So that would be
a basic item of food. Then there was black bread that would be relatively common, and
and gin. You know, you can make gin out of almost anything, and I'm sure people did.
As a matter of fact, I suspect—I don't know this, but I suspect that many of the
stories about brown October ale isn't brown October ale at all. It's just bad, dirty
gin, and I suspect that's what it was, because you can make gin out of anything, and there's
The Theory of Money and Credit
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.
And that was called poaching. So the chances were good that if you tried that, you could be arrested and punished.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The people in the lower percentile group that I'm talking about couldn't have begun to afford luxury such as this.
So that in point of fact, the impoverished masses, and that's exactly what they were,
simply lived on the brink of starvation, having little to eat, if anything, and it is no wonder
that the death rate was as high as it was and that their resistance to disease was low.
They certainly lived deplorable lives. As far as other factors relating to them are
concerned, they lived in filth. We cannot imagine people living the way they did. Remember,
There's no hot or cold running water at all, even for rich people. If you wanted running
water in those days, you put some in a pail and ran with it. That's all you could do.
And of course, as far as soap is concerned, soap had been invented. In fact, people had
used it for years. But the poorer people didn't have soap. As a matter of fact, they didn't
wash. They just went from one year to the next without washing. Their hair was matted
with filth and crawling with vermin. They didn't go to beauty parlors or barbershops.
They couldn't have afforded that. They never bathed. They didn't have perfume. They didn't
have deodorants. They would have teeth rotting in their gums, and who could afford a dentist?
The condition of these people is just beggar's description. We can't imagine it. And yet,
in general, that was the condition of the people in England prior to the industrial
Development. Industrialization changed it so that it has never gone back to that again
in those places where industrialization has occurred. Industrialization has proved to
be one of the major benefits that human beings have ever had, but we don't think so when
we hear the propaganda relating to the industrial revolutionary period and the accusations that
are made about the cruel and rapacity of the businessmen and the industrialists who exploited
the workers and took advantage of them at every turn.
In point of fact, I'm going to show in my next discussion in this area just exactly
what did occur here, but it is important to understand the background and the conditions
that predated industrial revolution before we can understand how things changed.
You have to see what they were first and then you see how they changed and that way you
can get the whole thing into perspective.
Keep in mind that we've had an earlier economic development. It's called the agrarian revolution
that occurred way back at an early time when we stopped being hunting and foragers and
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.
More on that later. Thanks very much.