Билет 34. The Industrial Revolution.

The transition from a quantitative change - wars becoming more costly, the colonies more profitable, the capitalists becoming more rich - to a qualitative change - a change from an agricultural country to the industrial one, from an economy of the merchant capital to one of the industrial capital - was taking place. A continuous increase of colonial wealth and trade provided a market for British standardised goods. This demand for increasing quantities of standard goods was the basic cause of the Industrial Revolution. The technical inventions were made because the conditions of the time were forcing people to solve the problem of mass production and because the accumulation of capital had reached a point where full use could be made of mass production methods. Such were the general conditions which led in England to the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution transformed commodity(товары потребления) production by developing factories using steam power and machinery for mass production. The basic industries for this development were coal and iron. - Previously Britain had to import iron from Sweden and Russia. In 1760 a revolutionary advance was made in technique – the coke from coal was used for smelting the iron. The production of iron had risen from 17,000 t. in 1740 to 68,000 in 1788 and 125,000 in 1796. - New uses were found for iron: iron rails were first laid in 1769; the first iron bridge was built over the River Severn in 1779 and the first iron ship sailed there in 1790. - At the same time steel was made. - Increase in the extraction of coal. Coal mining developed rapidly. New mines were opened up in South Wales, Scotland, Lancashire and Yorkshire. In 1800 British coal production was about 90% of the world's total. - The first improvement in methods of transport. The mining of coal and the heavy industry gave the first impulse to the improvement of transport and above all to the construction of canals. Canals remained the main means for the distribution of goods till the appearance of railways 40-50 years later. About the same time there were improvements in road-making, including the appearance of roads made of small stones pressed together.

All these changes helped to increase export trades.

Билет 35. The machine production and the population. The Speenhamland Act of 1795.

Wool was traditionally the main export of England. But the absence of machinery, the limited market and the insufficient accumulation of capital prevented the growth of a real factory system and of mass production methods. In the 18^th century the cotton cloth became more important. Fine cotton goods were imported from India, but the Act of Parliament forbade their import in 1700. As a result, the manufactures appeared at home. The rising demand for cotton led to improvements in production. Kay’s flying shuttle doubled the speed of weaving. The appearance “Spinning jenny”(прядильная машина) and water frame (водяной двигатель) helped to produce more yarn(пряжа) of finer quality. The steam engine was used in textile industry, in mines (to pump water), then became the main motive power for all industries, and was used in transport to drive trains and ships. The first factories in the world were the cotton mills in Lancashire. At first machinery production was limited to the cotton industry, but later it started to be used in other industries and affected the whole country. Enclosures were the reason of unemployment, because domestic industries couldn’t compete with the machinery production.

The prices were growing faster than the wages and bread riots broke out. 1795 – the magistrates met in Speenhamland in order to fix a minimum wage in the county in relation to the price of bread. But they were persuaded not to increase the wages, but to set a supplement to the wage, which should be given by the county every week to the poor. This addition to the wage increased together with the price of bread. This system known as the Speenhamland Act was established in half of rural areas, except in northern counties, where mines and factories provided people with competitive wages. According to this system, the employer didn’t have to pay the living salary to the worker, and the independent small parishioners were forced to help the employers to pay the supplement, but at the same time the worker was still a pauper(бедняк на пособии) even if he was in full work.

The effects of the Speenhamland Act: - The pauperisation of working people, which later led to the Poor Law Act in 1834(появление работных домов для бедных) - The growth of the population. Children became a source of income, they were sent to work as young as possible. - Widespread unemployment was accompanied by overworking and intense exploitation of women and children.