Historical sources on the Industrial Revolution

Extract A

"To evade the more [burdensome] and exhausting kinds of bodily toil [hard work], men were impelled [driven] to exercise their ingenuity [cleverness] in improving old tools and inventing new ones, — while, to increase production, they called the powers of nature to their aid. They tamed the horse, and made him their servant; they caught the winds as they blew, and the waters as they fell, and applied their powers to the driving of mills and machines of various kinds. But there was a power greater by far than that of horses, wind, or water, — a power of which poets and philosophers had long dreamt [imagined], — capable of being applied alike to the turning of mills, the raising of water, the rowing of ships, the driving of wheel-carriages [wheeled vehicles], and the performance of labour in its severest forms." 

Extract B

"Hence the unquestionable fact that though the motive power of steam had long been the subject of ingenious [clever] speculation and elaborate [thorough and wide-ranging] experiment amongst scientific men, it failed to be adopted as a practicable [workable] working power until it was taken in hand by mechanics [skilled tradesmen who worked with machines] — by such men as Newcomen, the blacksmith; Potter, the engine-driver; Brindley, the millwright [a craftsman who built and repaired mills]; and, above all, by James Watt, the mathematical instrument maker." 

Extract C

"The steam-engine had now become firmly established as a working power. Beginning as a water pumper for miners, it had gradually been applied to drive corn and cotton mills, to roll and hammer iron, to coin money, to work machinery, and to perform the various labour in which the power of men and horses, of wind and water, had before been employed." 

Contextual information:

Samuel Smiles was a Scottish author and social reformer who published Lives of Boulton and Watt in 1865. He wrote the book after gaining access to the original business papers of the Soho manufactory, making it one of the most thoroughly researched accounts of the steam engine's development produced in the nineteenth century. The book traces the full history of steam power from its earliest experiments through to the partnership of Matthew Boulton and James Watt. 

Bibliographical reference:

Adapted from Smiles, S. (1865). Lives of Boulton and Watt: Principally from the original Soho MSS (pp. 4, 34–35, 391). John Murray. 

Copyright: Public domain. 

Extract A

"But the water routes for traffic largely made up for the deficiencies [shortcomings] of the land routes. Attempts to improve water communication began with deepening the river beds. In 1685 there was a project for rendering the Avon navigable [passable by boat] from its junction with the Severn at Tewkesbury through Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire, but it was abandoned owing to the civil war. From 1660 to 1755 various Acts were passed for deepening the beds of rivers. In 1720 there was an Act for making the Mersey and Irwell navigable [passable by boat] between Liverpool and Manchester. About the same time the navigation of the Aire and Calder was opened out. In 1755 the first canal was made, eleven miles in length, near Liverpool. Three years later the Duke of Bridgewater had another constructed from his coal mines at Worsley to Manchester, seven miles distant. Between 1761 and 1766 a still longer one of twenty-nine miles was completed from Manchester through Chester to the Mersey above Liverpool. From this time onwards the canal system spread with great rapidity [speed]." 

Extract B

"When we turn to investigate the industrial organisation of the time, we find that the class of capitalist employers [business owners who paid wages to workers] was as yet but in its infancy [early beginnings]. A large part of our goods were still produced on the domestic system [a system in which goods were made in people's homes rather than in factories]. Manufactures were little concentrated [gathered together] in towns, and only partially separated from agriculture. The 'manufacturer' was, literally, the man who worked with his own hands in his own cottage. Nearly the whole cloth trade of the West Riding, for instance, was organised on this system at the beginning of the century." 

Extract C

"Passing to manufactures, we find here the all-prominent fact to be the substitution [replacement] of the factory for the domestic system [home-based production], the consequence of the mechanical discoveries of the time. Four great inventions altered the character of the cotton manufacture: the spinning-jenny, patented [registered as a legal invention] by Hargreaves in 1770; the water-frame, invented by Arkwright the year before; Crompton's mule introduced in 1779, and the self-acting mule, first invented by Kelly in 1792, but not brought into use till Roberts improved it in 1825. None of these by themselves would have revolutionised [completely changed] the industry. But in 1769 — the year in which Napoleon and Wellington were born — James Watt took out his patent for the steam-engine. Sixteen years later it was applied to the cotton manufacture. In 1785 Boulton and Watt made an engine for a cotton-mill at Papplewick in Notts, and in the same year Arkwright's patent expired." 

Contextual information:

Arnold Toynbee was an English economic historian and social reformer who lectured at Balliol College, Oxford, in the early 1880s. He died in 1883 at the age of thirty, and his lectures were published the following year. Toynbee is widely credited with establishing the term "Industrial Revolution" as a standard concept in historical writing. 

Bibliographical reference:

Adapted from Toynbee, A. (1884). Lectures on the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century in England: Popular addresses and other fragments (pp. 64, 66, 91–92). Rivingtons. 

Copyright: Public domain.

"An abundance of coals existed in the neighbourhood: by rejecting those of inferior quality, and coking [treating with heat to remove impurities] the others with great care, a combustible [a material that can be burned as fuel] was obtained better fitted even than charcoal itself for the fusion [melting] of that particular kind of ore which is found in the coal-measures. Thus we find Darby's most favourite charge for his furnaces to have been five baskets of coke, two of brays [crushed pieces of coke], and one of peat; next followed the ore, and then the limestone. The use of charcoal was gradually given up as the art of smelting [melting ore to extract metal] with coke and brays improved, most probably aided by the increased power of the furnace-blast [the forced air used to keep a furnace burning], until at length we find it entirely discontinued. The castings [objects made by pouring molten metal into a mould] of Coalbrookdale gradually acquired a reputation, and the trade of Abraham Darby continued to increase until the date of his death, which occurred at Madeley Court in 1717." 

Contextual information:

Samuel Smiles published Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers in 1863 as a companion volume to his Lives of the Engineers. For the chapter on the Darbys at Coalbrookdale, Smiles drew on the original business records of the Coalbrookdale firm, supplied by associates of the Reynolds and Darby families. The book is the principal nineteenth-century historical account of Abraham Darby's pioneering use of coke in iron smelting. 

Bibliographical reference:

Adapted from Smiles, S. (1863). Industrial biography: Iron workers and tool makers (p. 80). John Murray. 

Copyright: Public domain.