Mid-term history exam - Essay Example

In fact, fabrics made in the home with techniques that remained largely unchanged since the Middle Ages. The machines used within the home to make textile fabrics were small and either hand-powered or powered by hand. The Industrial Revolution, however, replaced these hand-powered machines with coal and put the manufacturing responsibilities in the hands of a centralized factory system (Backer). These coal-powered technologies, along with the steam engine, are the most commonly cited cause of the Industrial Revolution (Hudson).

James Watt’s development of the steam engine allowed the transformation of fuel into mechanical work, which quickly became a staple instrument in a variety of different industries including powering locomotives, ships, textile machines, and automobiles. However, other explanations may aid in explaining why the Revolution occurred. One theory states that capitalism is responsible for the Revolution, insofar as capitalism incited merchants to take more control over their workers. When workers were paid a piecework rate in a factory, as opposed to the home, workers would produce more in order to have a better lifestyle.

Centralization of material production into factories was the inevitable result of the capitalist system (Backer). Another theory looks at the differences in scientific knowledge between countries and tries to look at the Revolution in terms of what countries and cultures were able to think “mechanically” (Backer). In need, one of the first countries capable of such “mechanical” thinking was Great Britain, which is commonly believed to have been the first country to industrialize. In the case of England, science and dissemination of practical scientific knowledge played a large role.

At that time, the new science of Newton was clearly associated with applied science. Those scientists disseminated their knowledge to an interested public for commercial and practical reasons through talks like the famous Boyle lectures and by various scientific societies like the Royal Society of London (Hudson). In many ways, the development of science in England and the development of industrialization in England were inextricably tied together. “By the end of the century it was simply assumed that the mechanization of manufacturing, and hence of labor, required a working knowledge of Newtonian science” (Jacob 167).

Also, the concentration of knowledge into the limited land mass of the British isle may also have played a role in contributing to industrialization. Even though England was a source of new scientific knowledge, it would have been difficult to disseminate that knowledge if the country was less densely populated like continental Europe (Jacob 160-163). The Industrial Revolution left a number of social effects on England throughout the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries. For one, it led to the birth of the modern factory and, consequently, the modern city that developed around the factories.

These factory towns brought in employees from all of the country looking for opportunities in the new industrialized world. A negative consequence of this was, of course, child labor. Child mortality rates increased throughout the industrialization period because parents would send their children off to dangerous employment in specialized tasks within the factories (Hudson). Although child labor existed prior to industrialization, it became a present phenomenon in society, in which children as young as four