CLASS 10 THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALIZATION (HISTORY-5)

THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the18^th to the 19^th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport, and technology had a profound effect on the cultural conditions starting in the UK, then subsequently spreading throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world. The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life. Most notably, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented(extraordinary) sustained growth. In the two centuries following 1800, the world's average per capita income increased over 10-fold, while the world's population increased over 6-fold. In the words of Nobel Prize winning Robert Lucas J.R. "For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth. ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before.

Illustration appeared on the Cover Page By E. T. Paull

In 1900,  a popular music publisher E.T Paull produced a music book that had a picture on the cover page announcing the “Dawn of the Century”.  At the center of the picture is a goddess like figure, the angel of progress bearing the flag of the new century.  She is gently perched on a wheel with wings, symbolizing time. Her flight is taking her into the future. Floating about, behind her, are the signs of progress; railway, camera, machines, printing press and factory.

Two Magicians

—  This was a picture appeared on the pages of a trade magazine over 100 years ago. It shows 2 magicians. The one at the top is Aladdin from the Orient who built a beautiful palace with his magic lamp.

—  The one at the bottom is the modern mechanic, who with his modern tools weaves a new magic; build bridges, ships, towers, and high-rise buildings.

—  Aladdin is shown as representing the East and the past, the mechanic stands for the West and modernity.

What Images show?

—  These images offer us a triumphant(successful) account of the modern world. Within this account the modern world is associated with rapid technological change and innovations, machines and factories, railways and steamships. The history of industrialisation thus becomes simply a story of development, and the modern age appears as a wonderful time of technological progress. These images and associations have now become part of popular imagination. How have these images developed?

Before Industrial Revolution

—  Even before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England, there was large scale industrial production for an international market.

—  This production was however not factory based and was known as Proto-industrialisation.

—  The word proto means original or primitive form.

—  It was controlled by merchants and the goods were produced by a vast number of producers working within their family farms, not in factories.

—  During the 17^th and 18^th centuries, merchants from the towns of Europe began moving to the countryside, supplying money to peasants and artisans and asking them to produce for an international market.

—  With the expansion of world trade and the acquisition of colonies in different parts of the world, the demand for goods began growing.  But merchants could not expand production within towns. Because here urban crafts and trade guilds were powerful.

—  These were associations of producers that trained craftspeople,  maintained control over production, regulated competition and prices, and restricted the entry of new people into the trade.

—  Rulers granted guilds even took decisions about the quantity of the goods to be produced and their prices.

—  It was therefore difficult for new merchants to set up business in towns. So they turned to the countryside.

In the Countryside

—  Merchants moved to the countryside and offered advances to the peasants for producing goods to be marketed by them.

—  The peasants had no choice but to accept these offers. They had earlier depended on common lands for their survival, gathering firewood, forest produce, vegetables, hay etc. and had now look for alternative sources of income.

—  Many tiny plots of land which could not provide work for all members of the household.

—  Working for the merchants enabled the peasants to supplement their meager incomes. They now had jobs for more family members.

—  A close relationship soon developed between the rural centers and the urban merchants.  A merchant clothier in England purchased wool from a wool stapler(a person who sorts wool according to its fibre), and carried it to the spinners; the yarn that was spun was taken in subsequent stages of production to weaver, fullers(a person who gathers/folding), and then to dyers. Thus wool was spun, weaved and dyed in the countryside. The finishing was done in London before the export merchant sold the cloth in the international market. London came to be known as finishing center.

—  The goods were being produced at family farms. The merchants controlled the production units in the countryside. However, this mode of production was different from production in factories where workers produced goods away from their homes.

The Coming up of the Factory

—  The earliest factories in England came up by the 1730s. The first factories were producing cloth(cotton). Its production boomed in the late nineteenth century, which was linked to a number of changes within the process of production.

—  A series of inventions in the eighteenth century increased the efficacy of each step of the production process (carding, twisting, spinning and rolling). (Carding – the process in which fibres such as cotton or wool prepared prior to spinning)

—  Richard Arkwright invented the cotton mill. The costly new machines could be purchased, set up and maintained in the mill. Within the mill, all the processes were brought together under one roof and management, it allowed a more careful supervision over the production process, a watch over quality, and the regulation of labor which had been difficult to do when production was in the countryside.

—  Cotton became the leading sector in the first phase of industrialisation.

The Pace(speed) of Industrial Change

—  The expansion of railways in England and its colonies rapidly increased the demand for iron and steel. (Till 1840s, cotton was the leading sector)

—  The new technologically advanced industrial sectors could not easily displace the traditional industries. Textiles were still produced within domestic units and not in factories.

—  Traditional industries were not based on machine production, but they were also not stagnant(inactive). Small innovations were taking place in traditional industries as well.

—  Technological changes took place gradually and slowly because new machinery was expensive and it was not easy to repair them.

—  Historians thus accept that a worker in the 19^th century was not a machine operator but a traditional craftperson.

Hand Labour and Steam Power

—  Introduction of machines required large capital investment. Hence, cheap labour was preferred over the use of machines. There was no problem of labour shortage or high wage costs.

—  Gas workers & breweries(beer) were busy through the cold months so they need more workers to meet their peak demand.

—  Book binders & printers, catering to Christmas demand too needed more labours before December.

—  At the waterfront(harbour), winter was the time that ships were repaired and spruced up(make neat).

—  In all such industries manual labour was preferred where production fluctuated with seasons.

—  A range of products could be produced only with hand labour.

—  Machines were oriented to producing uniforms, standardised goods for a mass market.

—  But goods with intricate(elaborate/complex) designs and specific shapes were in great demand in the European markets.

—  This was possible only with hand labour and not machine outputs.

—  The upper classes (aristocrats & bourgeoisie) preferred things produced by hand because handmade products came to be symbolise refined(polished) and carefully made.  Machine made goods were for export to the colonies.

Life of the Workers

—  The abundance of labour in the market affected the lives of workers.

—  Large scale migrations to towns and cities from countryside in search of jobs.

—  Many job-seekers had to wait weeks, spending nights under bridges or in night shelters. Some stayed in Night Refuges that were set up by private individuals, others went to the Casual Wards maintained by Poor Law authorities.

—  Workers became jobless after the busy season of work got over.

—  Some returned to the countryside after winter when the demand for labour in the rural areas opened up.

—  Most people looked for odd-jobs, which till the mid 19^th century were difficult to find.

—  The wages of workers increased in the early  19^th century, but the prices of goods also increased simultaneously.

—  It was also critical hat the period of employment – the number of days of work determined the average daily income of the workers.

—  The fear of unemployment made workers hostile(inhospitable/unfavourable) to the introduction of new technology.

—  Women who survived on hand-spinning  for their livelihood began attacking when the Spinning Jenny was introduced. Such conflicts continued for a long time.

Industrialization in Colonies - The Age of Indian Textiles

—  Before the age of machine industries, silk and cotton goods from India dominated the international textile market .

—  Armenian and Persian merchants took goods from Punjab to Afganistan, Eastern Persia and Central Asia.

—  Bales(large bundle) of fine textiles were carried on camel back via the north-west frontier, through mountain passes and across deserts.

—  Surat (Gujarat coast) connected India to the Gulf and Red Sea Ports, Masulipatnam (Coromandel Coast), Hoogly in Bengal had trade links with Southeast Asian Ports.

—  A variety of Indian merchants and traders were involved in this network of export trade, financing production, carrying goods and supplying exporters.

—  They gave advances to the weavers, procured the woven cloth from weaving villages and carried the supply to the ports.

—  At the port, the big shippers(who ship goods) and export merchants had brokers who negotiated the price and bought goods from the supply merchants.

—  The European companies gradually gained power and monopoly rights to trade.

—  This resulted in decline of the old ports of Surat and Hoogly through which local merchants had operated.

—  While these ports decayed, Bombay and Calcutta grew under the colonial rule and the trade was controlled by the European companies.

What happened to Weavers

—  The East India Company gained monopoly rights over the Indian textile trade. (political power estd.in Bengal and Carnatic in 1760s and 1770s)

—  The weaver and the supply merchants would bargain and try selling the produce to the best buyer when the French, Dutch, Portugese competed in the market to get woven cloth.

—  It (EIC) tried to eliminate the existing traders and brokers connecte with the cloth trade and established direct control over the weavers.

—  They did it through a series of steps.

—  A paid servant called the gomastha was appointed for supervising weavers, collecting supply and examining the quality of cloth.

—  The company prevented the weavers from dealing with other buyers. One way of doing this was through the system of advances.

—  Once the order was placed, the weavers were given loans for purchasing raw material for production. The produced cloth was to be handed over to the gomastha.

—  The new gomastha had no social link with village. They acted arrogantly, marched into villages with sepoys(Indian soldier) and peons and punished weavers for delay in supply.

—  The price received by weavers from the Company was miserably low and the loans that they had accepted tied them to the Company.

—  In Carnatic and Bengal weavers deserted villages and migrated, setting up looms in other villages where they had some family relation.

—  Elsewhere(in other areas), the weavers along with the village traders revolted, opposing the Company and its officials.

—  Weavers began refusing loans, closing down their workshops and taking to agricultural labour.

Manchester Comes to India

—  The British industrialists pressurised the government to impose duties on cotton textiles so that Manchester goods could sell in Britain without any outside competitions.

—  The industrialists also persuaded the East India Company for selling the British manufactures in the Indian markets.

—  Exports of British cotton goods increased dramatically in the early 19^th century.

—  The export market of the Indian cotton weavers collapsed and the local market shrank(become smaller) being glutted(overfull) with cheap Manchester imports.

—  Consequently, the weaving industry decayed and died.

—  By the 1860s, weavers faced a new problem.

—  They could not get sufficient supply of good quality raw cotton.

—  When the American civil war broke out and cotton supplies from the US were cut off, Britain turned to India.

—  As raw cotton export from India increased, the prices of raw cotton shot up.

—  Weavers in India were starved of supplies and forced to buy raw cotton at exorbitant(excess) prices.

—  By the end of the19th century, factories in India began production, flooding the markets with machine-made goods.

Factories Come Up

—  1854 – First cotton mill came up in Bombay

—  1855 – The first jute mill came up in (East) Bengal; another one in 1862

—  1860s – The Elgin mill was started in Kanpur

—  1861 – The first cotton mill of Ahmedabad was set up.

—  1862 – Four Cotton mills started in Bomaby

—  1874 – The first spinning and weaving mill of Madras began production

—  1917 – Ist Jute Mill in Calcutta

The Early Entrepreneurs

—  Entreprenur – someone who organizes a business venture and assume the risk for it

—  The British in India began exporting opium to China and took tea from China to England.

—  Many Indians participated in this trade by providing finance, procuring supplies and shipping consignments.(cargo/freight)

—  In Bengal, Dwarkanath Tagore made his fortune in the China trade and established six joint-stock companies in the 1830s and 1840s.

—  In Bombay, Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata built huge industrial empires in India. They accumulated their initial wealth partly from exports to China and partly from raw cotton shipments to England.

—  Seth Hukumchand, a Marwari businessmen who set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917, and Shiv Narayan Birla (grandfather of the famous industrialist G. D, Birla) also traded with China.

—  Merchants from Madras traded with Burma, Middle East and East Africa.

—  Other trading activities included carrying goods from one place to another, banking, transferring funds between cities and financing traders.

—  However, Indian traders were barred from trading with Europe in manufactured goods and had to export raw materials and food grains required by the British. They were also gradually edged out of the shipping business.

Where did the workers Come from?

—  In most industrial regions, workers came from the nearby districts around.

—  Many peasants and artisans who were not able to find work in villages migrated to industrial cities in search of job opportunities.

—  The job-seekers were always more than the jobs available.

—  In 1911, more than half of the workers in the Bombay cotton industries came from the districts of Ratnagiri, while the mills of Kanpur got most of their textile hands form the villages within the district of Kanpur.

—  Most of the mill workers returned to their villages during the period of harvests and festivals.

—  Later, many workers from the United Provinces travelled great distances to Bombay and Calcutta in search of employment opportunities.

—  However, getting jobs was always difficult even when mills multiplied.

—  The job-seekers were always more than the jobs available.

—  Industrialists usually employed a jobber(middleman) to get new recruits. He got people from his village, ensured them jobs, helped them settle in the city and provided them money in times of crisis. Therefore he became a person with some authority and power. He began demanding money and gifts for his favour and controlling the live of workers.

The Peculiarities of Industrial Growth

—  Many European Managing Agencies established tea and coffee plantations, acquiring land at cheap rates from the colonial governments. They also invested in mining, indigo and jute.

—  Since yearn was not an important part of the British imports into India, the early cotton mills in India produced coarse cotton yarn(thread) rather than fabric. The yarn produced in Indian spinning mills was used by handloom weavers in India or exported to China.

—  Nationalists during the Swadeshi movement mobilized people to boycott foreign cloth.

—  Industrial groups organized themselves to protect their collective interests, pressurizing the government to increase tariff protection and grant other concessions.

—  From 1906, the export of Indian yarn to China declined since produce from Chinese and Japanese mills flooded the Chinese market..

—  Cotton piece goods production in India doubled between 1900 and 1912.

—  When the British mills busy with war production to meet the needs of the army, Manchester imports into India declined. As the war prolonged, Indian factories were called upon to supply war needs including jute bags, cloth for army uniforms, tents and leather boots and mule saddles(a seat for the rider of a horse) and a host of other items.

—  Industrial production boomed owing to the increase in the working hours and the estd.of new factories.

—  After the war, Manchester could never recapture its old position in the Indian market.

—  Unable to modernize and compete with the US, Germany and Japan, the British economy crumbled after the war.

—  Cotton production collapsed and exports of cotton cloth from Britain fell dramatically.

—  Within the colonies, local industries substituted the foreign manufactures and captured the home market.

Small-scale Industries Predominate

—  Large industries formed only a small segment of economy. Most of them were located in Bengal and Bombay. (67% in 1911)

—  There were small scale production units, workshops and household units which were functioning all over the country.

—  Most of the workers worked in small workshops and household units.

—  While cheap machine-made thread wiped out the spinning industry in the 19^th century, the weavers survived despite problems.

—  In the 20^th century, handloom cloth production expanded steadily. (almost trebling between 1900 and 1940)

—  How did this happen?

—  Handicrafts people adopt new technology that help them improve production without excessively pushing up costs.

—  By the second decade of the 20^th century, weavers used looms with a fly shuttle(a mechanical device used for weaving, moved by means of ropes and pullies. It places the horizontal threads into the vertical threads)

—  This increased productivity per worker.

—  By 1941, over 35% of handlooms in India were fitted with fly shuttles:

—  In the regions of Travancore, Madras, Mysore, Cochin, Bengal the proportion was 70 to 80%.

—  Many other small innovations also helped the weavers to improve the productivity and compete with the mill sector.

—  Among the weavers, some produced coarse cloth while others wove finer varieties.

—  The coarser(rough) cloth was bought by the poor and its demand fluctuated violently along with the fluctuations in their incomes.

—  The finer ones were bought by the rich and its demand was constant.

—  Even famines did not affect the sale of Banaras saris.

—  Saris with woven borders, or the famous lungis and handkerchiefs of Madras could not easily displaced by mill production.

—  Weavers and other craftpersons continued to expand production through 20^th century, though they were not a prosperous class.

—  They lived hard lives and worked long hours.

—  Very often the entire household including all the women and children had to work at various stages of the production process.

Creating Markets for Goods

—  Advertisements are an important tool for marketing and selling goods in the markets.

—  Advertisements expanded the markets for products and shaped a new consumer culture.

—  They try to shape the minds of people and create new needs.

—  They appear in newspapers, magazines, hoarding(large outdoor signboard), street walls, television screens.

—  Manchester cloth which came to the Indian markets had the label ‘Made in Manchester’.

—  This was to make consumers confident of the quality of the produce which they were purchasing.

—  Labels also carried images which appealed to the people to buy the goods.

—  Images of Indian gods and goddesses were imprinted for making a foreign product familiar to the Indian masses.

—  By the late 19^th century, many manufacturers were printing calenders to increase the popularity of their products.

—  Besides the images of the advertised products, these calenders had images of gods, figures of important personalities and royal figures.  (emperors and nawabs)

—  They were hung in houses, offices and shops.

—  Advertisements gradually became a tool for selling Indian products and began to carry nationalistic messages such as ‘Use Swadeshi Goods’.

Conclusion

—  The age of industries has meant major technological changes, growth of factories, and the making of a new industrial labour force. However hand technology and small scale production remained an important part of the industrial landscape.