The Industrial revolution and its consequences

The new ideas of freedom for the individual gave rise to the philosophy of economic liberalism.

In the 18th century, economic liberalism took a new meaning: it meant free trade and unrestrained economic activity summed up in the expression “let do”.
This concept was illustrated by Adam Smith in his work The wealth of nations. He said the basis of a nation’s wealth is the work of its population, which must be left free to act as it wishes.

The Industrial Revolution took place in England from 1760 to 1840.
It was a process of change from an handicraft economy to an industrial and manufacturing economy. In fact, the agricultural revolution was an essential prerequisite of the Industrial Revolution: with a remarkable increase in agricultural productivity and a growing availability of primary products, the labour force moved from agriculture to industry.

Fundamental to the Industrial Revolution were some technical innovations:

• the use of new materials like iron and steel as a result of the presence of great iron deposits in China, Australia and Brazil;
• the use of new energy sources like coal and electricity thanks to large coal deposits situated in China and in the USA, and the discovering of electricity of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla;
• the inventions of new machines that increased production and reduced expenditure of human energy;
• the development of transports and communications and, consequently, the improvement in roads;
• a new organization of work : factory system.

Then, at the end of the 18th century Mayer Amschel Rothschild founded Rothschild Bank, a British and French investment bank, which is located in Paris nowadays.

In spite of everything, the Industrial revolution had some weaknesses that had negatively influenced society.

The introduction of new machines saw a drastic reduction in the number of workers.
People moved from the countryside to town and worked in the factories for up to sixteen hours a day in poor areas and terrible conditions.
They were badly-paid, badly-fed and badly-clothed. They lived in overcrowded slums, without sanitation, where alcoholism and illnesses were common and the death rate was high.
Women and children paid less than men. Children especially worked in mines because they could crawl through small tunnels thanks to their height.

In 1824 the first Trade Unions organizations representing industrial workers were formed. In Britain, socialist reforms were introduced in order to improve working and living conditions of workers and abolish class differences and redistribute wealth.

In this period, humanitarian movements spread. For example, children began to be considered as real human beings and their rights were recognized in a society where the exploitation of children at work was common.

Women were less free in the 19th century than they had been in the 18th century. They worked with men in factories, but they were subject to discrimination.
Even elementary schooling was thought to be superfluous for them. Moreover, women from the upper classes enjoyed less freedom because of the code of sexual and social behaviour imposed by the middle class.
Though at the end of the 18th century women began to demand emancipation. Mary Wollstonecraft was a pioneer in this field with her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.