pulation rose. With that rise inpopulation came a large demand for clothing, mainly cotton clothing. Old textile methodssimply could not produce enough cotton to supply the demand. England’snon-industrialized textile manufacturing had reached its limits of production, so somethinghad to be done to expand the limits of production. The development of new technologiesand the movement from textile manufacturing in the home to factories was the cure toEngland’s problem. The changes and development of the textile industry must certainly center aboutthe inventions and their inventors, though not necessarily be limited to them. Theinventions that were perfected and applied led to tremendous changes in the world ofwork. Gone were the old days of domestic system, yielding to the ways of the factorysystem. Developments and improvements in the iron industry came in the early eighteenthcentury. Abraham Darby successfully produced pig iron smelted with coke. This was ahuge breakthrough, for before this discovery pig iron was smelted with the use ofcharcoal. Charcoal, made from the charring of wood in a kiln, was a good source ofenergy to smelt the iron. The downside to using wood to fuel the kiln was the seriousdepletion of England’s forests. This new technique developed by Darby was gainingwidespread use during the late eighteenth century, though problems still existed. The ironproduced through the new method was impure and brittle, making it totally unsuitable forthe forgmasters to fashion it into implements. Soon its use was limited to castings,nevertheless Darby’s breakthrough changed the iron industry forever. Later,improvements would occur which produced high quality material and improved techniquesin fashioning it. Although there were many developments in the making of iron, theorginization of iron factories remained nearly the same, “ The scale of operations hasincreased enormously: the sapling ha...
