Iron, Steam & Money

by Roger Osborne

  While these were the main factors that encouraged change and innovation, it is also important to see how barriers to change were being dissolved. The fierce religious adherences of the seventeenth century had declined, along with fears that innovation or improvement offended against nature and the Will of God, while the death of Queen Anne in 1714 brought any serious attempts at religious persecution to an end.18 The growth of the insurance industry from the 1660s onwards also shows how people looked to Mammon rather than God to save them from destitution. The move away from the medieval system spread to trade, where laws designed to ensure standards of quality and to give protection to artisans and workers in their native towns were gradually loosened or quietly ignored. Meanwhile, in the new towns like the unincorporated Manchester and Birmingham, which lay outside the old medieval system, trade and manufacture flourished unhindered by regulation.

  As well as general prosperity and an increasingly well-trained and educated workforce, there are other aspects of mid-eighteenth-century Britain that are fundamental to our story. One is finance and banking. In the wake of the disastrous naval defeat at Beachy Head in 1690, the government had set up the Bank of England as an independent institution to raise money for the Exchequer – a strategy that proved immensely successful in stabilising the financial system. The principal debtor in the British economy had always been the state. It was therefore in the government’s interests to keep interest rates as low as possible, while also allowing a decent return on investments. Governments sometimes offered high rates of return in order to be able to borrow money – especially in times of war – but as the stability of the British economy increased, the official interest rate was gradually lowered. In the 1750s the prime minister Henry Pelham consolidated all government debt into one account, which paved the way for the formation in 1757 of the Consolidated Stock (known as Consol). The long-term Consol rate of 3 per cent gave stability to the system, dictated interest rates elsewhere in the economy and encouraged long-term investment – with negligible inflation, funds could simply be left in companies to mature.

  Financial investment suffered a severe setback in 1720 when speculation in the shares of the South Sea Company, which had taken on the whole of the government debt in return for a monopoly of trade in South America, inflated the market until its eventual collapse. The resulting legislation restricted joint-stock companies to those authorised by Parliament, limited the number of investors in any enterprise to six, and made all partners individually responsible for all its debts. These restrictions might have fatally restricted industrial enterprise, but they forced into being modest yet ambitious enterprises founded and supported by networks of families and trusted associates.

  One of the potential barriers to a functioning commercial and industrial economy was the lack of a national banking system. In the early eighteenth century trade was the dominant financial enterprise; London banking houses were geared up to allow people to deposit money, which was then loaned to shippers and merchants. While the Bank of England was set up in 1694 to manage the government’s finances and deal with large-scale transactions with London bankers, this left the rest of the country without a financial infrastructure.

  The main financial instrument in the early 1700s was the bill of exchange, drawn on a London bank. This could be transferred from one merchant to another and redeemed at the bank itself. The obvious limitation of this system was that it didn’t provide the notes and coins that were needed for everyday transactions. This began to be overcome when merchants in country towns started to accept the bills and give currency in exchange – taking commission along the way – and thereby giving birth to a de facto national banking system. Private banks operating on this principle became widespread by the 1760s, as goldsmiths, textile-makers and associations of cattle drovers all set up their own banks. The foundation of joint-stock banks outside London was prohibited, so country banks had corresponding London houses and would lend money by issuing bills of exchange drawn on those banks. This quasi-national system was particularly useful in directing money where it was needed; farmers, for example, often had money to deposit in late autumn, which was the time when manufacturers were in need of funds to settle end-of-year accounts.19

  By the mid-eighteenth century there were developments that we now recognise as important stepping stones towards an industrial economy. Iron-smelting in blast furnaces had come to Britain in the fourteenth century and become well established in areas like the Weald in Kent, the Forest of Dean, Staffordshire and east Shropshire, with steel production in the Tyne Valley and South Yorkshire. In 1709 Abraham Darby became the first ironmaster to power a blast furnace with coal instead of charcoal, opening the way for an expansion in iron-making, and in the 1740s Benjamin Huntsman of Sheffield invented the crucible method of steel-making. Craftspeople also found ways to switch from charcoal to coal in a range of other industries like brewing, salt-making, sugar refining, baking and distilling; the production of bricks, tiles, glass, pottery and lime; the manufacture of chemicals including alum, copperas, saltpetre and starch; the processing, dyeing and bleaching of cloth; calendaring, paper-making and hot-metal printing. By 1750 manufacturers were using around 30 per cent of the coal consumed in Britain.20 While coal produced heat it did not yet produce power, but this began to change with the Newcomen steam engine, or fire engine as it was then known. First installed in 1712, it was one of the greatest inventions in human history. Nevertheless, its huge use of coal limited its use to pumping water out of mines.

  By the mid-eighteenth century Britain had begun to develop a manufacturing infrastructure and expertise, so that when the famous machines of the Industrial Revolution were invented, they were rapidly put into productive action. At the same time craft industries were being turned into manufactories as, for example, in the glass trade. Venice had been the centre of European glass-making for centuries, with English makers producing inferior versions of the famous cristallo. Glass-maker and merchant George Ravenscroft lived in Venice in the 1650s and on his return to England tried new methods of glass production. In 1676 he discovered that the addition of lead oxide gave the glass added brightness and lustre, and also made it easier to cut.21 Ravenscroft was able to make lead crystal and, within twenty years of the end of his patent in 1681, more than a hundred English glass-makers were following his example. Britain soon overtook Venice as the centre of European glass-making, producing large volumes at low cost and high quality and utility.

  The putting-out system that worked so well in textiles was extended into other trades. Merchants would buy pig iron, for example, and take it to forges to be made into spades, knives, ploughshares and nails, which they would later collect and take to market. But putting-out was beginning to change too, with some rural workers finding it more profitable to move into town and set up small workshops, taking on other workers or going into partnerships.

  At the same time one particular product was beginning to make its mark on British society and the national economy. Cotton cloths known as calicoes, brought from Bengal by the East India Company, grew so popular that they were banned in 1720 to protect the domestic wool trade, opening the way for home calico production from imported raw cotton. This growing trade was based around Manchester, the traditional centre of linen-making. By 1739 Gentleman’s Magazine was telling its readers: ‘The manufacture of cotton, mixed and plain, is arrived at so great a perfection within these twenty years, that we not only make enough for our own consumption, but supply our colonies, and many of the nations of Europe.’

  The diversity of textiles and their origins is perfectly illustrated in Daniel Defoe’s description of a country grocer and his wife in 1726:

  For his clothing . . . instead of buying the cloth from Yorkshire, perhaps he has it a little finer and so his comes from Wiltshire and his stockings . . . are of Worsted and so they come from Nottingham . . . his wife . . . not dressed over fine yet she must have something decent . . . her gown, a plain English mantua silk manuf
actured at Spitalfields . . . her under-petticoat, a piece of black callamanco made at Norwich – quilted at home if she be a good housewife but the quilting of cotton from Manchester, or cotton wool from abroad . . . her stockings from Tewksbury, if ordinary – from Leicester if woven . . . her muslin from the foreign trade; likewise her linen . . . her wrapper . . . a piece of Irish linen printed at London . . . the furniture of their house . . . the hangings are made at Kidderminster, dyed in the country, and painted, or watered, at London . . . the curtains from Taunton and Exeter or of camblets from Norwich . . . the blankets from Whitney in Oxfordshire; the rugs from Westmoreland and Yorkshire; the sheets, of good linen, from Ireland.22

  The changing economy of Britain was most evident in the north of England. Along the Tyne in the mid-eighteenth century you would see hundreds of boats taking coal out to colliers moored further downstream, with shipyards among the wharves and jetties and salt pans along the river. In Coalbrookdale and South Yorkshire there were impressive ironworks, and outside Leeds and Halifax, and in Lancashire, ranks of weavers’ cottages. But most craft production was hidden away – the stocking-knitters, spinners, weavers, nail-makers and iron-forgers all worked within dwellings or small workshops. Only the coal and metal mines would have stood out against the landscape. The cities of the north were small compared to London and acted principally as markets and hubs for rural industries, sending goods on to merchants overseas or in the capital. Connections between them were only slowly developing.

  Nevertheless, Britain in 1750 was an international commercial powerhouse with a growing manufacturing sector; the prosperity of its people was driving efficiencies and increasing production in agriculture and in manufacture. Britain had far outstripped its European rivals in the exploitation of its natural resources and the organisation of industrial and agricultural production. Meanwhile, urban workshops were providing training grounds for engineers of all kinds. Their work and the steady improvement of lathes, stamps, draw-benches and presses, went on without much outside attention – in fact many of these incremental innovations were kept secret. But these second- and third-generation artisans – literate, numerate and with the lure of expanding demand – were everywhere tinkering with the tools and machines of their different trades, figuring out how to make things work better.

  This background to the great events that were to come shows us a dynamic society in a state of continual change, far removed from its medieval roots and pushing forward into an unknown future. The condition of Britain in the mid- to late eighteenth century should help us to answer the key question: why did the Industrial Revolution happen in this place and at this time? Historians have pointed to four particular factors or trends that came together for the first time in history.23

  Firstly, in eighteenth-century Britain barriers to change were dramatically reduced. The medieval world view had been based on the fatalism of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination – believers could not alter God’s will, it was their Christian duty to endure. In the eighteenth century most people still saw the world as the enactment of God’s will but they no longer interpreted their faith fatalistically; instead they believed that God rewarded those who used their talents to change their circumstances. While change brings with it social upheaval and was therefore rigorously oppressed by rulers throughout history – Ming China is a stark example of this – British landowners who governed the country were not threatened by industry; indeed many stood to gain from it. Although not overly interested in industry per se, Parliament was deeply concerned with promoting commercial power and so resisted legal and physical attempts to halt innovation. Just as important, resistance to labour-saving machines was overcome by showing that saving labour did not necessarily mean unemployment, but efficiency and greater production – the cotton industry in particular, with its vast potential for expansion, was vital in demonstrating that efficiency meant more jobs, not fewer.

  On an intellectual level the long-held belief that the ancient world was the most important source of wisdom was also breaking down. The breathtaking work of Isaac Newton showed that modern humanity could outdo ancient authority, while instruments like telescopes and microscopes revealed facts about the world that were utterly new. This encouraged people to believe that discovery and innovation, rather than obedience to ancient authority, was the path that humanity should follow. The Industrial Revolution was a revolution of the mind as much as a technological leap forward.

  We have already discussed the second trend – the change to specialised working. From the late seventeenth century workers were able to specialise because they could buy in goods and services from others. Historians have argued that this coordination of specialised work and the availability of goods and services to buy marked the birth of modernity.

  The third factor was the interplay of high wage costs, cheap capital and cheap coal. High wages provided a ready market for manufactured goods, thereby encouraging more efficient production methods, while producers were keen on innovations that used coal-fired power to reduce labour costs, and cheap capital enabled others to invest in long-term industrial ventures.

  The fourth and final factor brings us back to the inventors themselves. By the middle of the eighteenth century Britain had been home to craft trades for three or four generations. Made rich on the wool trade, the British had diversified into other industries, initially lagging behind their Continental rivals, but eager to learn (partly through welcoming skilled refugees) and rapidly making up ground. Second- and third-generation artisans were steeped in the techniques of their trade, and in the needs of the markets they served. The new fluidity in society enabled those who could earn a good living from their trade to buy goods and services to get a more comfortable life for their families; these were well within reach of the skilled artisan, while the craftsman who was prepared to innovate might prosper like never before.

  At no other time and place in history had these four factors coincided for a sustained period. Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt and the classical world of Greece and Rome had produced extraordinary technical achievements as well as a thriving intellectual culture, but the separation between work and wealth and the availability of cheap or even slave labour gave little incentive to produce labour-saving devices; instead inventors like Hero of Alexandria made steam-driven toys to amuse their friends. Roman construction work was hugely impressive but iron production was low quality and sailing ships were badly rigged; there was no harness suitable for using horses as draft animals and no stirrups, while water power was used only sporadically and was inexpertly exploited.24

  At different times in its history China had also been a centre of dazzling innovation but our medieval forebears did not wake one morning to see a fleet of Chinese steamships, complete with cannon and telescopes, and with a cargo of clocks, pistols, locks, jennies, locomotives, roller printers and cheap cotton looming on the horizon. A single powerful authority viewed innovation with suspicion because of its potential for social disruption. Both the Ming and Qing dynasties in China (1368–1917) favoured orderliness over technical advance.25 The British experience gives good evidence that change does indeed cause social disruption; the advent of the full industrial economy brought upheaval, dislocation, and social rearrangement on a scale that had never been experienced before. The ‘pandaemonium’ of Milton, the satanic mills of Blake, and the ‘sublime smoak’ of Arthur Young, the great chronicler of eighteenth-century England, were about to be unleashed on the world.26

  This helps us to understand why late eighteenth-century Britain was so well placed to be the crucible of the Industrial Revolution. It may be that historians in 1,000 years will be able to point to a time when the momentum of technological innovation created by the Industrial Revolution finally came to an end. But there seems no immediate prospect of that; instead technology-based industrialisation is spreading to all corners of the world. We will begin the story of the revolution by looking at the role that inventors played in this unique episode.


  I. Invention

  ‘The age is running mad after innovation; all the business of the world is to be done in a new way.’

  DR JOHNSON, 1783

  1. The Watershed

  BY THE 1760S the stage was set for the great deluge that we have come to call the Industrial Revolution. While some key inventions had been made in the previous sixty or so years, the innovations, devices and processes that occured in the half-century after 1770 are those that changed the course of history. But before looking at what they were and who invented them, it is important to see them in the context of their immediate precursors.

  In 1709 the ironmaster Abraham Darby of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, developed a method for using coal to produce cast iron in blast furnaces. Up until then charcoal had been the only suitable fuel, as coal contained impurities which ruined the iron. Ironmasters had tried to solve the problem for decades, and were becoming increasingly desperate as wood for charcoal was becoming scarce and expensive. Darby was an experienced metal-founder and knew that Shropshire coal might be pure enough. He turned the coal into coke and found that, with care, he could make perfectly good cast iron – production was no longer limited by the number of trees available.

  At almost the same time Thomas Newcomen, a metalworker based in Dartmouth in Devon, was putting the final touches to a single-piston engine, driven by steam, for pumping water from mines. The world’s first ever continually working steam engine was installed at Dudley in 1712.