The Industrial Revolution

This is Unit Nine of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: the British reform movement, four procedures, and the chain from coal to class to parliament. Part one ended with an island shrunk by rail and fed from everywhere. This part is what its parliament did about the classes the mill had made, and it pays off the unit's governing idea, the anchor's chain from a fuel to a franchise. The Reform Bill of eighteen thirty-two gave the urban middle class the vote; the Chartists asked for it for workers and were refused; the Corn Laws fell in forty-six; unions became lawful in seventy-one on the witness. One name the exam may use, the Reform Act of eighteen sixty-seven, is in no source the course holds, and the course discloses it rather than teaching it. Then the methods: the century on one line, causes and reforms sorted, and a reformer's testimony read for what it assumes. By the end you will be able to describe the reforms. To sequence industrialization. To classify a cause and a reform. To read testimony. And to state the chain.

Three entries on the reforms: the vote extended in thirty-two, the Charter refused and the Corn Laws repealed, and the unions from ban to legalization.

Slow, steady liberalization instead of revolution.

WC2 0827 The Reform Act of 1832

The anchor's chapter on politics names the Great Reform Bill of eighteen thirty-two: most of the urban middle class enfranchised, rotten boroughs abolished, passed by a Lords frightened of a middle-class and worker alliance. Catholics and dissenters had entered office in twenty-eight and twenty-nine. Slow, steady liberalization, the anchor's phrase, instead of revolution. The Act rests on the anchor alone.

Workers asked for the vote and got cheaper bread.

WC2 0828 Chartism and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, 1846

The witness supplies Chartism, eighteen thirty-eight to fifty-eight: the People's Charter for manhood suffrage, mass petitions, the general strike of forty-two, and a government that yielded nothing. The anchor has the Corn Laws repealed in forty-six; the witness, their tariffs on grain ended. Workers asked for the vote and got cheaper bread. Chartism is the witness's; repeal is both.

Banned, transported, then lawful.

WC2 0829 Trade Unions: From the Combination Act to Legalization, 1871

The anchor says further protection took decades of struggle and stops, so the witness supplies it: the Combination Act banning unions, the Tolpuddle laborers transported, skilled workers' unions from the eighteen fifties, and legalization by the Trade Union Act of eighteen seventy-one. The exam's reform movement ends here. Witness-built; the Reform Act of sixty-seven is in no source and is disclosed.

Four procedures: inventions and laws between three fixed points, causes sorted by kind, Sadler's testimony read against his opponent's, and reforms sorted by the question each answers.

Inventions before the first point, laws after the second.

WC2 0830 Sequencing Industrialization, 1750 to 1871

Three fixed points: Watt's condenser in seventeen seventy-four, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in eighteen thirty, and repeal in forty-six; inventions cluster before the first, laws after the second. Then place: the power loom, eighty-seven; the Corn Laws, eighteen fifteen; Peterloo, nineteen; the Reform Bill, thirty-two; the Factory Act, thirty-three; the Charter, thirty-eight; the Mines Act, forty-two; the Ten Hours Act, forty-seven; unions legalized, seventy-one. Watt, loom, Corn Laws, Peterloo, railway, Reform Bill, Factory Act, Charter, Mines Act, repeal, Ten Hours, unions. The anchor's early dates for Watt and the telegraph do not change the order, and the Reform Act of sixty-seven is absent from every source and not placed.

In the ground, in the bank, in parliament, in the head.

WC2 0831 Classifying a Cause: Resource, Capital, Politics, Culture

Four kinds of cause: what Britain had in the ground, in the bank, what its parliament did, and what its elites believed. Coal after the forests ran out: resource. Banks lending at fair interest under favorable law: capital. A free-trade parliament and moderate taxes: politics. Nobles who invested in commerce: culture. A surplus population made by rotation, breeding and enclosure: resource, this time human. The Eden Treaty opening France to British cloth: politics as a weapon. The continental contrast reads backward: France's skeptical elites are culture, its thin banking capital, its costly transport resource. The anchor ranks energy first and calls the cultural explanation self-serving, so a single-cause question wants coal and a why-France-lagged question wants several. The farm is the witness's.

Who speaks, what they saw, what law they want.

WC2 0832 Reading Factory Testimony: What the Witness Assumes

The type is Michael Sadler's speech to the Commons of March sixteenth, eighteen thirty-two, which the witness quotes from Hansard beside a reply by his opponent Hope. Who speaks: a reformer in parliament, not a worker, urging regulation of children's hours. What he reports: parents who surrender their children to what he calls infantile slavery, most from extreme indigence, because the overseer refuses relief to families with children who could work; children roused in the winter dark and returned fatigued after nightfall, drooping, crippled, dying before their prime. What he wants: a ten-hour limit, which the Factory Act of thirty-three partly and the Ten Hours Act of forty-seven fully answered. Then the reply: Hope argues that child labor is not necessarily an evil and should not be regulated, the mill owners' position. Testimony is advocacy; each chose his witnesses, and the exam may quote either. Identify the side by whether the speaker wants a law or none.

Who votes, what bread costs, how long, whether they may combine.

WC2 0833 Classifying a Reform: Franchise, Tariff, Labor, Union

Four kinds answer four questions: who votes, what bread costs, how long the young and women work, and whether workers may combine. Rotten boroughs abolished and urban middle-class men enfranchised: the franchise, the Reform Bill of thirty-two. Six points demanding manhood suffrage and a general strike: the franchise demanded and refused, Chartism. Tariffs on grain ended: bread, repeal in forty-six. Children under nine barred from mills: labor, the Factory Act. Women and boys under ten barred from underground: labor, the Mines Act. Combinations made lawful: unions, seventy-one. The trap is Chartism, which sought the franchise and won none of it while the Reform Bill had given the vote to the class above; and repeal was a middle-class victory over landlords, not a workers' one. The Reform Act of sixty-seven belongs to this table and is missing from every source.

One capstone entry: the chain from forests burned to unions lawful, and why Britain had no eighteen forty-eight.

Coal, mill, city, class, reform.

WC2 0834 From Coal to Class: How Industry Remade Britain First

The exam's sixth band asks what the two revolutions were, what caused them, what they did to the classes, and how Britain reformed, and the anchor's answer runs from a fuel to a franchise. Britain burned coal because it had burned its forests, and by eighteen fifteen its mines yielded the energy of a forest the size of the island, by the anchor's reckoning. Watt's condenser, seventy-four on the witness, turned heat into motion, and the power loom and the mule turned motion into cloth, two hundred times the cotton of seventeen eighty by eighteen fifty, spun from the slave South. Behind the engine stood the farm the anchor omits and the witness supplies, feeding more people with fewer hands, and behind the farm stood Britain's banks, its free-trade parliament, its moderate taxes and its elites who did not despise trade. The continent, short of one or more of these, lagged: Belgium by the thirties, Germany after the Zollverein, France slowly, Spain not at all. Railways from thirty and the telegraph made the island one market and the world one larder. The cost was paid in Manchester, twenty thousand to four hundred thousand in a century by the anchor's count: cellars, soot, slag, dear bread under the Corn Laws, wages at subsistence, artisans deskilled, women paid less and working twice, children in the mills, a miner dead by forty. Out of that condition came class, identity by circumstance rather than legal estate, and a working class that struggled before it organized: Luddites, Peterloo in nineteen, then the reforms. Parliament limited children's hours in thirty-three and forty-seven, cleared the mines in forty-two, gave the urban middle class the vote in thirty-two, refused the Chartists, repealed the Corn Laws in forty-six, and legalized unions in seventy-one, on the witness. Slow, steady liberalization, the anchor calls it, the reason Britain had no eighteen forty-eight. Coal made the mill, the mill made the city, the city made the classes, and the classes made the reforms.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe the Reform Bill of thirty-two, Chartism refused and the Corn Laws repealed, and unions lawful in seventy-one, with the Act of sixty-seven disclosed rather than taught. You can sequence the century between Watt, the railway and repeal. You can classify a cause by resource, capital, politics or culture, with coal first, and a reform by franchise, bread, labor or union, with Chartism the trap. You can read Sadler against Hope by who speaks, what they saw, and what law they want. And you can state the chain, coal to mill to city to class to reform, which is this unit's one idea. Unit ten opens on the ideologies that named what industry had made.