Class 10 Social Science Chapter 4: The Age of Industrialisation

Industry before the factory

We usually picture industrialisation as tall chimneys and noisy machines. But in England and Europe, large-scale production for an international market began well before any factory. It was organised by merchants and carried out by families in their own cottages. Historians call this phase proto-industrialisation: industrial, because it was production for the market on a large scale; proto, because it came first and was not based on factories.

Why merchants left the towns

Merchants wanted to produce more, but in the towns they could not. Urban crafts were controlled by guilds, associations of producers that trained craftspeople, controlled production, regulated competition and prices, and restricted the entry of new people. Rulers often granted a guild the monopoly right to produce and trade in particular goods. A new merchant had no space to grow.

So merchants turned to the countryside.

Why peasants said yes

The countryside was changing. Open fields were disappearing and the commons were being enclosed, so cottagers and poor peasants lost the land they had used for grazing and firewood. Many needed another source of income. When a merchant offered advances to spin and weave for him, they agreed.

Working at home let the family stay on its plot and use the labour of everyone in the household. Income from cloth filled the gap left by a shrinking income from land.

A chain controlled by merchants

Each merchant controlled a long chain. In the English wool trade, a merchant clothier bought wool from a stapler, who sorted it by its fibre, and carried it to spinners. The yarn went to weavers, then to fullers, who gathered the cloth by pleating, and to dyers. The finishing was done in London, the finishing centre, before the cloth was exported.

The households were scattered across many villages. The merchant, not the producer, held the whole network together.

The coming of the factory

The earliest factories appeared in England in the 1730s, and by the late eighteenth century they were part of the English landscape. Cotton was the first symbol of the new era. Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton in 1760; by 1787 the figure had reached 22 million pounds.

A series of inventions made each step faster: carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling. Then Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill. Until then, cloth was made in village homes. Now costly machines were bought, set up and maintained in one building, and every process was brought together under one roof and one management. That made careful supervision possible: of quality, of time and of labour.

Which industries led?

Cotton was the leading sector up to the 1840s. After that, iron and steel led the way. Railways spread across England from the 1840s and in the colonies from the 1860s, and they needed huge amounts of iron and steel. By 1873 Britain exported iron and steel worth about £77 million, double the value of its cotton exports.

A slow revolution

Even so, the new industries did not quickly push aside the old. At the end of the nineteenth century less than 20 per cent of the workforce was in technologically advanced sectors. Textiles were dynamic, but a large part of their output still came from homes and small workshops.

Technology spread slowly too. James Watt improved Newcomen's steam engine and patented it in 1781, and his friend Matthew Boulton manufactured it, but buyers were few. Around the start of the nineteenth century there were no more than 321 steam engines in England: 80 in cotton, 9 in wool and the rest in mining, canal works and iron works. Machines were expensive, broke down often and were costly to repair, so industrialists were cautious.

That is why historians now say the typical worker of the mid-nineteenth century was not a machine operator but a traditional craftsperson or labourer.

What this topic settles

Industrialisation did not begin with the factory, and the factory did not take over at once. A long phase of home-based production organised by merchants came first, and new machines spread beside old crafts for decades.

A land full of hands

In Victorian Britain there was no shortage of human labour. Poor peasants and vagrants moved to the cities in large numbers looking for work. With so many people ready to work for low wages, industrialists had no labour problem to solve. Why spend a fortune on a machine that would replace workers who were already cheap?

Machines needed large capital investment, they broke down, and they did not always pay. So in many industries the choice between hand labour and steam power was simple: hands.

Work that came with the seasons

In many industries the demand for labour was seasonal. Gas works and breweries were busy through the cold months. Book-binders and printers needed extra hands before December for Christmas demand. At the waterfront, winter was the time to repair and spruce up ships.

An employer in such a trade preferred to hire workers for the season and let them go afterwards. A machine would have stood idle for half the year.

Goods only hands could make

Some products could not be made by standard machines. Demand was for intricate designs and specific shapes. In mid-nineteenth-century Britain, 500 varieties of hammers and 45 kinds of axes were produced, each for a particular use. A machine makes one design in thousands; these goods needed human skill.

Taste and class

In Victorian Britain the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie preferred things produced by hand. Handmade goods were better finished, individually made and carefully designed, and they came to symbolise refinement and class. Machine-made goods were for export to the colonies.

The contrast is with nineteenth-century America, where labour was scarce. There, industrialists were keen on mechanical power, because machines solved a real problem.

Finding a job

The abundance of labour shaped workers' lives. A job usually came through an existing network of friends and relatives. Those with no such contacts often waited weeks, spending nights under bridges or in night shelters. Some stayed in Night Refuges set up by private individuals; others went to the Casual Wards maintained by the Poor Law authorities.

Seasons without work

Seasonal work meant long periods without work. When the busy season ended, the poor were back on the streets. Some returned to the countryside; most looked for odd jobs, which were hard to find.

Wages rose somewhat in the early nineteenth century, but this tells us little about welfare. Prices rose sharply at the same time, so the real value of wages fell. Even in good times, about 10 per cent of the urban population was extremely poor. In a slump like the 1830s, the share without work rose to between 35 and 75 per cent in different regions.

Fear of the machine

Fear of unemployment made workers hostile to new technology. The Spinning Jenny, devised by James Hargreaves in 1764, let a single worker turn one wheel and set several spindles spinning at once. When it came into the woollen industry, women who survived on hand spinning began attacking the machines. The conflict over the Jenny went on for a long time.

New work after the 1840s

After the 1840s, building activity in the cities opened new opportunities: roads were widened, railway stations built, lines extended, tunnels dug, drains and sewers laid, rivers embanked. The number of workers in the transport industry doubled in the 1840s and doubled again in the next thirty years.

What this topic settles

Steam power did not sweep away hand labour, because in Britain labour was cheap, demand was seasonal and the rich valued handmade goods. For workers, the same abundance of labour meant insecurity: hard-won jobs, idle seasons and falling real wages.

When India clothed the world

Before machine industries, silk and cotton goods from India dominated the international textile market. Coarse cotton was made in many countries, but the finer varieties usually came from India.

The trade ran on two routes. Overland, Armenian and Persian merchants took goods from Punjab to Afghanistan, eastern Persia and Central Asia, with bales of fine cloth carried on camel back through the north-west frontier, mountain passes and deserts. By sea, Surat on the Gujarat coast linked India to the Gulf and Red Sea ports, while Masulipatam on the Coromandel coast and Hoogly in Bengal traded with Southeast Asia.

Who ran the network

Indian merchants and bankers financed production, carried goods and supplied exporters. Supply merchants linked the port towns to the inland weaving villages, giving advances to weavers and bringing the cloth to the coast.

The network breaks

By the 1750s this network, controlled by Indian merchants, was breaking down. The European companies were gaining power, winning concessions from local courts and monopoly rights to trade. Surat and Hoogly decayed, and exports through them fell sharply. Bombay and Calcutta grew. The shift from old ports to new ones was a sign of growing colonial power.

The Company and the weaver

After the Company gained political power in Bengal and the Carnatic in the 1760s and 1770s, textile exports did not fall at once: British mills had not yet expanded, and Indian fine cloth was still in demand. But the Company wanted a regular supply at a low price.

It set out to eliminate the existing traders and brokers and to control the weaver directly. It appointed a paid servant, the gomastha, to supervise weavers, collect supplies and examine quality. And it prevented its weavers from dealing with other buyers through the system of advances: a weaver who took a loan for raw material had to hand the finished cloth to the gomastha.

Why weavers resisted

Earlier supply merchants often lived in the weaving villages and had long ties with the weavers. The gomasthas were outsiders with no such link. They acted arrogantly, marched into villages with sepoys and peons, and punished weavers for delays, often beating and flogging them. Tied by advances, weavers lost the space to bargain, and the price the Company paid was miserably low.

So weavers resisted. In many places in the Carnatic and Bengal they deserted their villages and migrated, setting up looms elsewhere. Elsewhere, weavers and village traders revolted against the Company. Over time many refused loans, closed their workshops and took to agricultural labour.

Manchester comes to India

In 1772, the Company official Henry Patullo said that demand for Indian textiles could never reduce. Within forty years he was proved wrong. In 1811-12, piece-goods were 33 per cent of India's exports; by 1850-51 they were no more than 3 per cent.

As cotton industries grew in England, industrialists pressed their government to impose import duties on cotton textiles, so that Manchester goods could sell in Britain without competition. At the same time they persuaded the Company to sell British manufactures in India. By 1850, cotton piece-goods were over 31 per cent of the value of India's imports; by the 1870s, over 50 per cent.

Weavers squeezed from every side

Indian weavers now faced two problems at once: their export market collapsed, and their local market shrank, glutted with cheap machine-made Manchester cloth.

In the 1860s a new problem came. When the American Civil War cut cotton supplies from the US, Britain turned to India. Raw cotton exports rose, and its price shot up; weavers could not get enough good cotton at a price they could pay. And by the end of the century, factories in India began production, flooding the market with machine goods of their own.

What this topic settles

India went from the world's leading exporter of fine textiles to a market for British cloth. The change was driven by colonial power, by the Company's control over weavers and by British industry protected at home and pushed abroad.

The first mills

Factory industry came to India in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first cotton mill in Bombay came up in 1854 and went into production two years later. By 1862 four mills were at work with 94,000 spindles and 2,150 looms.

Jute mills came up in Bengal at about the same time: the first in 1855, another in 1862. In north India, the Elgin Mill started in Kanpur in the 1860s, and a year later the first cotton mill of Ahmedabad opened. By 1874, the first spinning and weaving mill of Madras began production.

Where the money came from

Who set up these mills, and with what money? In many cases, the capital came from trade, especially the trade with China.

In Bengal, Dwarkanath Tagore made his fortune in the China trade before turning to industry. He set up six joint-stock companies in the 1830s and 1840s, but his enterprises, like those of others, sank in the wider business crises of the 1840s.

In Bombay, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata, who built huge industrial empires, made their early wealth partly from exports to China and partly from raw cotton shipments to England. Seth Hukumchand, a Marwari businessman who set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917, also traded with China; so did the father and grandfather of G.D. Birla. Merchants from Madras traded with Burma, the Middle East and East Africa.

Limits under colonial rule

As colonial control tightened, Indian merchants found their trade restricted. They were squeezed out of the trade in manufactured goods and pushed towards supplying raw materials and food grains. Many moved into industry precisely because their space in trade was shrinking.

Even so, till the First World War, European managing agencies controlled a large sector of Indian industry. Three of the biggest were Bird Heiglers & Co., Andrew Yule, and Jardine Skinner & Co. They mobilised capital, set up joint-stock companies and managed them. Indian financiers often provided capital, but the agencies made the decisions.

Where the workers came from

Factories needed workers. In most industrial regions, workers came from the districts around. In 1911, 50 per cent of the workers in Bombay's cotton industries came from the neighbouring district of Ratnagiri. Kanpur's mills got most of their textile hands from villages within Kanpur district.

Most millworkers moved between village and city, returning home for harvests and festivals. Over time, as news of jobs spread, people travelled great distances: from the United Provinces, for example, to the textile mills of Bombay and the jute mills of Calcutta.

The jobber

Getting a job was always hard: jobseekers far outnumbered jobs. Entry into the mills was restricted, and industrialists usually employed a jobber to recruit new workers.

The jobber was very often an old and trusted worker. He brought people from his own village, ensured them jobs, helped them settle in the city and gave them money in times of crisis. This made him a person of authority and power. In time he began demanding money and gifts for his favours and controlling the lives of the workers.

Growth in numbers

The number of factory workers kept rising. In 1901 there were 584,000 workers in Indian factories; by 1946 there were over 2,436,000.

What this topic settles

Indian factory industry was built with capital made in trade, often the China trade, but under colonial limits and with European agencies in control of much of it. Its workers came mostly from nearby villages, through jobbers who could help them and also hold them in their grip.

A lopsided start

Indian industry did not grow in the way one might expect. The European managing agencies that controlled much of it were interested in goods for export: tea and coffee plantations, mining, indigo and jute. They were not interested in making goods for sale inside India.

Indian businessmen who set up cotton mills in Bombay in the late nineteenth century also did something unexpected. Their mills mainly produced coarse cotton yarn, not cloth, and much of this yarn was exported to China. Yarn was not imported into India in large amounts, so making it meant they did not have to fight Manchester cloth in the Indian market.

Swadeshi and the shift to cloth

The first two decades of the twentieth century brought change. The Swadeshi movement urged people to boycott foreign cloth. Industrial groups organised to protect their common interests and pressed the government to raise tariff protection and give other concessions.

At the same time, from 1906, Indian yarn exports to China declined, because goods from Chinese and Japanese mills flooded the Chinese market. Indian industrialists therefore shifted from yarn to cotton piece-goods. Cloth production in India doubled between 1900 and 1912.

The war boom

Even so, industrial growth stayed slow until the First World War. The war changed everything. British mills were busy producing for the army, so Manchester imports into India fell. Suddenly Indian mills had a vast home market to supply.

Indian factories were also asked to supply war needs: jute bags, cloth for army uniforms, tents and leather boots, and horse and mule saddles. New factories were set up and old ones ran several shifts. Industrial production boomed.

After the war, Manchester never regained its old position in India. It could not modernise and compete with the US, Germany and Japan; Britain's cotton production and exports collapsed. Local industrialists slowly took over the home market.

Small units stayed big

Large factories made up only a small part of the economy. About 67 per cent of large industry in 1911 was located in Bengal and Bombay. Elsewhere, small-scale production continued to dominate.

Only 5 per cent of the industrial workforce worked in registered factories in 1911, and 10 per cent in 1931. The rest worked in small workshops and household units, often tucked into lanes and by-lanes.

In some cases, handicraft production actually expanded. Cheap machine-made thread had wiped out hand spinning in the nineteenth century, but weavers survived. Between 1900 and 1940, handloom cloth production almost trebled.

How the handloom survived

Part of the reason was technology. Craftspeople took up new tools when they raised output without pushing costs too high. By the second decade of the twentieth century, weavers were using looms with a fly shuttle, which raised output per worker, sped up production and cut the labour needed. By 1941, over 35 per cent of India's handlooms had fly shuttles; in Travancore, Madras, Mysore, Cochin and Bengal the share was 70 to 80 per cent.

The other reason was the kind of cloth. Coarse cloth was bought by the poor, and its demand swung wildly: in bad harvests and famines, it fell. Fine cloth was bought by the well-to-do, whose demand was steadier. Famines did not stop the sale of Banarasi or Baluchari saris. Mills could not easily copy specialised weaves such as saris with woven borders or the famous lungis and handkerchiefs of Madras.

Weavers who kept expanding production did not necessarily prosper. They worked long hours, and often the whole household, women and children included, had to help. Yet they were not leftovers from the past: their work was part of industrialisation itself.

Selling the goods

New goods needed new buyers. Advertisements make products look desirable and necessary.

When Manchester industrialists began selling cloth in India, they put labels on the bundles. The label told buyers where the cloth was made and by which company, and served as a mark of quality. Seeing 'MADE IN MANCHESTER' in bold, buyers were meant to feel confident.

Labels also carried pictures. Images of Indian gods and goddesses, such as Krishna or Saraswati, appeared often. This seemed to give the goods divine approval and made foreign products feel familiar.

By the late nineteenth century, manufacturers were also printing calendars. Unlike newspapers, calendars reached people who could not read. They hung in tea shops, poor people's homes, offices and middle-class flats, so the advertisement was seen day after day. Figures of emperors and nawabs were used too: if a product was used by royalty, its quality could not be doubted.

When Indian manufacturers advertised, their message was openly nationalist: if you care for the nation, buy what Indians produce. Advertisements became a vehicle for swadeshi.

What this topic settles

Indian industry grew unevenly: first yarn for China, then cloth for home, then a boom in the war. Yet most Indians who made goods still worked by hand in small units, and some of these grew. The age of industries was an age of both machines and hands.