The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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514 LAISSEZ FAIRE characteristic feature is that it is an application of power, and not of human exertion. Hence the introduction of machinery always has a very direct bearing on the position of the labourer. From one point of view we may say that it saves him from drudgery; from another, that it forces upon him the strain of a competition in which he is overmatched, and thus gradually deprives him of employment. The invention of new processes and new implements has not such a necessary and direct result on the employment and remuneration of labour as occurs with the introduction of machines. So far as the wealth of the realm was concerned, the development of the coal and iron trades was of extraordinary importance, but she substitution of mechanical inventions for hand labour in the textile trades brought about a revolution in social life throughout the country. 244. Though the changes effected by the industrial revo- ‘ution have been so startling, it may yet be said, when we view them from an economic standpoint, that they were of un- sxampled violence rather than wholly new. After all, the age of mechanical invention was only one phase of a larger movement. We have traced the gradual intervention of capital in industry and agriculture, especially during the eighteenth sentury; we shall now have to note the operation of the same force, but at a greatly accelerated pace. Capitalism obtained a footing and held its ground in the cloth trade’, because of the facilities which the wealthy man enjoyed for purchasing materials, or for meeting the markets. Other trades, such as coal mining or iron manufacture, had been necessarily capitalistic in type from the earliest days, because none but wealthy men were able to purchase expensive plant, and to en TUD the risks of setting it up. The invention of mechanical os Lg appliances for the textile trades gave a still greater advantage ism. to the rich employer, as compared with the domestic weaver, since only substantial men could afford to employ machines. It was a farther sign of the triumph of the modern system of business management. It is worth while to distinguish some of the principal changes in connection with labour, which resulted from the increase of capitalist organisation and especially from machine 1 See pp. 499 and 505 above. A.D. 1776 —1850. had such marked results as the substi- tution of machinery for hand labour. The tntro- luction of machines and led to increased

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