Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- 1 The starting-point
- 2 The demographic revolution
- 3 The agricultural revolution
- 4 The commercial revolution
- 5 The transport revolution
- 6 The cotton industry
- 7 The iron industry
- 8 The sources of innovation
- 9 The role of labour
- 10 The role of capital
- 11 The role of the banks
- 12 The adoption of free trade
- 13 The role of government
- 14 Economic growth and economic cycles
- 15 Standards of living
- 16 The achievement
- Guide to further reading
- Subject index
- Index of authors cited
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- 1 The starting-point
- 2 The demographic revolution
- 3 The agricultural revolution
- 4 The commercial revolution
- 5 The transport revolution
- 6 The cotton industry
- 7 The iron industry
- 8 The sources of innovation
- 9 The role of labour
- 10 The role of capital
- 11 The role of the banks
- 12 The adoption of free trade
- 13 The role of government
- 14 Economic growth and economic cycles
- 15 Standards of living
- 16 The achievement
- Guide to further reading
- Subject index
- Index of authors cited
Summary
The other British industry whose technology was revolutionized in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was the iron industry. As with cotton, the effect of the technological transformation was to satisfy a long-established need with the production of a commodity which was so different, both in quality and in price, from what had hitherto been produced in Britain that it was virtually a new commodity.
In certain other respects the changes in the iron industry's system of production which were involved in the industrial revolution were less radical than the changes in the cotton industry. The textile industries were transformed in organization as well as in technology. There the domestic-handicraft type of manufacture gradually changed into a capitalistic factory industry. But the iron industry was already capitalistically organized. Its development in the sixteenth century was one of the outstanding examples of technological and organizational change which Professor Nef adduced to support his argument that the origins of the industrial revolution lie in the period 1540–1640. Professor Ashton makes the point forcibly in his study of the iron industry in the Industrial Revolution:
From the earliest period of which we have exact information, iron-making in this country has been conducted on capitalistic lines—capitalistic not only in that the workers are dependent upon an employer for their raw material and market, but also in that they are brought together in a ‘works’, are paid wages and perform their duties under conditions not dissimilar to those of any large industry of modern times.[…]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The First Industrial Revolution , pp. 103 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1980