cotton industry was the first to be fully mechanized (Perry, 515). The crucial inventions were James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny (1765), Richard Arkwright’s water frame (1769), Samuel Crompton’s mule (1779), and Edmund Cartwright’s machine loom (1765, but delayed in its general use) (Perry, 515). The first factories were driven by water, but James Watt’s steam engine (1760’s) made steam-driven machinery and modern factories possible from the 1780’s (Perry, 515). Each development spawned new technological breakthroughs, as for example, Sir Henry Bessemer’s process for making steel (1856) (Perry, 517). With the sudden introduction of machines powered by waterwheels or steam engines manufacturing had to be done in hot, crowded factories and the work became harder for the workers (Perry, 524). It could no longer be done in comfortable homes with spinning wheels, for example, or handlooms. The Industrial Revolution affected many other kinds of manufacture. For the making of machines, tools, and engines, huge ironworks became necessary and these used new methods (Perry 516-17). When the railways came, rolling mills for iron and steel rails did a large business (Perry, 517). It’s easy to see how the Industrial Revolution changed more than the geography of England. It changed the living habits and economic conditions of almost all the English people as well (Perry, 519-523). Families everywhere moved to cities to get employment (Perry, 520-22). Country villages were deserted and the cities grew rapidly (Perry, 520-22). Now that waterpower was no longer necessary, towns grew up far from rivers. Under the new industrial ownership men grew enormously rich in a short time. When labor was paid almost starvation wages, there was an immense gap between the rich and the poor (Perry, 522-24). The nation was no longer self-supporting in food as agriculture became less important (Perry, 513). More and ...
