Industrial Revolution

1. Industrial Revolutio. Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries was revolutionary because it changed -revolutionized - the productive capacity of England, Europe and United States. But the revolution was something more than just new machines, smoke-belching factories, increased productivity and an increased standard of living.

It was a revolution which transformed English, European, and American society down to its very roots, like the French Revolution, no one was left unaffected.
In other words, England, then the Continent and the United States, witnessed a shift from a traditional, pre-modern, agrarian society to that of an industrial economy based on capitalist methods, principles and practices.

Today we see the Industrial Revolution as being responsible for the higher standard of living we enjoy. This, of course, is true, but there was a great and, at times, appalling, price paid in human suffering to attain this standard of living in Europe, and even worse in the colonies (as Vargas Llosa explained in his book "El somni del celta”)

2. I.R:Living conditions

LIVING CONDITIONS

From the start, industrialization meant the transformation of countries' populations from being predominantly rural to being predominantly urban and this involved the migration of thousands from the agricultural south and west to the cities in the north (Bilbao in the Basque Country or Barcelona in Catalonia, or Madrid). As the number of factories grew, people from the countryside began to move into the towns looking for better paid work ( in Catalonia also from the villages, or small towns, in the centre or in the north moving to Barcelona and industrial colonies at the Llobregat area).

These early industrial cities created problems in three areas: living conditions, working conditions, and the social structure.

First of all, cities built so rapidly were also built shoddily. Some cities, as Barcelona, even had walls from the ancient times which closed their doors at night and couldn’t be torn down, so people had to live in them, in narrow streets with houses poorly built, and in incredibly crowded conditions.
Whole families were packed into single rooms, or sharing houses. Sanitation was virtually non-existent, making clean water a luxury reserved for the rich. Open sewers ran down streets carrying water fouled with industrial and human waste. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid, typhus, and tuberculosis often reached epidemic proportions.
Add to these problems air pollution and malnutrition, and one gets a picture of incomparable human misery. Alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, and prostitution were natural outcomes of having to endure these conditions.

3. IR: Working conditions

WORKING CONDITIONS

Away from home, working conditions were even worse, the workday could extend up to 12-14 or 15 hours a day, six days a week. The work itself was hard, boring, and tedious. Conditions around the factories, steam engines and in the mines were hot and at times extremely dangerous.
In the absence of safety devices, machines often tore off fingers, hands, and even arms.
Despite of all this, there were often long lines of the unemployed waiting for any available jobs. This surplus (excedent) of labour kept wages excessively low. As a result, families had to send their women and even their children to work in the factories just to make ends meet.
In fact, women and children were preferred as workers because they could be paid less while being worked harder. Occasional depressions in the economy could lead to whole industries shutting down. This left thousands of families with no jobs and no public welfare to see them through such hard times. Even medieval serfs had been assured some rights to a living off their lands, which was more than these people could often enjoy.

The Industrial Revolution also upset old social patterns of life and family. Under the old domestic system of cottage industries, peasants worked in their own homes, produced at their own rates, and were paid accordingly.
Under the new factory system, labourers worked in the factories owned by bosses whom they rarely, if ever, saw. They had to be at work precisely on time and work at the much faster pace of the machines. Nevertheless, they were paid by the hour, not according to their productivity, since that was cheaper for the owner.
Previously, the farm, home and the workplace were one and the same, with men and women sharing in many of the same tasks. In the industrial city, there was a separation of home and workplace and a correspondingly greater separation of the roles men and women played. In middle class families, men went to work while women stayed home with the children. In working class families, men, women, and children all went to work, but usually to separate places. For both middle and working class families, these were added strains that pulled the family apart.
As individual families moved to the city, they left behind the support network of the villages, often living in isolation and having little or no support from their neighbours.

Science Museum, where you can see some engines, as spinning machines used to spin cotton.

Children in the Industrial Revolution- link-

Working conditions USA- link-

4. IR:Worker's societies

WORKER’S SOCIETIES

The 1830’s were the first period of organization of the Catalan working class, which was mainly concentrated in Barcelona being the most industrial city in the region and the whole State. This was a period when the solidarity of the class, which was essential to reach necessary improvements in working and living conditions of the industrial workers, was already becoming visible.

Workers' societies were created in Barcelona at the beginning of the 1840s, after the first strikes a few years before against working conditions in the textile sector, and for the right to organise and be allowed to negotiate collectively with their bosses.


One of the objectives of the fights and re-vindications of these first years was to gain the right of association. This possibility arrived during the first period of the regency of General Espartero. So, in 1840, in Barcelona, the first working society of the State was born: the ‘Associació de Protecció Mútua de Teixidors de Cotó’ [Association of Mutual Protection of Weavers of Barcelona], better known as the ‘Societat de Teixidors’ [Society of Weavers].
Two years later, this association had spread beyond Barcelona, with sections in Olot, Vic, Igualada, Sabadell and Mataró, gathering close to 50.000 members.
These early workers' associations were usually formed around a trade. When the revolutionary political context allowed it, they organised themselves collectively and formed bodies such as the first Junta Central [Central Committee] in 1841, the Junta Central de Directors de la Classe Obrera [Central Committee of Working Class Directors] in 1855, and the Direcció Central de Societats Obreres [Central Administration of Workers' Societies] in 1868. In 1888, the state-wide Unión General de Trabajadores [General Workers Union] was created in Barcelona.
We would have to wait until 1868, with the triumph of the revolution and the start of the Democratic Sexennium, to make the reorganization of the Catalan working class a reality. A symbol of this recuperation was the creation, in 1869, of the ‘Federació de les Tres Classes de Vapor’ [Federation of the Three Vapour Classes], which gathered together spinners, weavers, mechanics and day labourers of the textile industry.
During this period the introduction of new ideologies amongst the working class also occurred. In 1869, the AIT sent a representative called Farinelli to the Spanish State, to promote his ideas. A supporter of Bakunin, more than of Marx, Farinelli promoted the basis of anarchism and his non-political views.
These were ideas that soured amongst the majority of working associations, as can be see in the working congress held in Barcelona in 1870. The assistants approved their adhesion to the AIT, proclaimed the non-political views of their movement and constituted the ‘Federació Regional Espanyola de l’AIT’ [Spanish Regional Federation of the AIT].