The Development of Factories

One of the most enduring images of the eighteenth and nineteenth century British Industrial Revolution is that of the large factory,filled with workers laboring amid massive machinery driven by either water or steam power.Mechanized factory production evolved out of forms of industry that had emerged only during the early modern period (1500-1750).In the Middle Ages virtually all industry in Europe was undertaken by skilled craftsmen belonging to urban guilds,and these artisans,working either by themselves or with the assistance of apprentices or journeymen,produced everything from candlesticks and hats to oxcarts and beds.During the early modern period the urban craftsman’s shop gave way to two different types of industrial workplaces,the rural cottage and the large handicraft workshop.Both of these served as halfway houses,or transitional stages,to the large factory.

Beginning in the sixteenth century,entrepreneurs began employing families in the countryside to spin and weave cloth and make nails and cutlery.By locating industry in the countryside,the entrepreneurs were able to escape the regulations imposed by the guilds regarding employment and the price of finished products.They also paid lower wages,because the rural workers,who also received an income from farming,were willing to work for less than the residents of towns. Another attraction of rural industry was that all the members of the family,including children,participated in the process.In this“domestic system”a capitalist entrepreneur provided the workers with the raw materials and sometimes the tools they needed.He later paid them a fixed rate for each finished product.The entrepreneur was also responsible for having the finished cloth dyed and for marketing the commodities in regional towns.

Rural household industry was widespread not only in certain regions of Britain but also in most European countries.In the late eighteenth century it gradually gave way to the factory system.The great attraction of factory production was mechanization,which became cost-efficient only when it was introduced in a central industrial workplace.In factories,moreover,the entrepreneur could reduce the cost of labor and transportation,exercise tighter control over the quality of goods,and increase productivity by concentrating workers in one location.Temporary labor shortages sometimes made the transition from rural industry to factory production imperative.

The second type of industrial workplace that emerged during the early modern period was the large handicraft workshop.Usually located in the towns and cities,rather than in the countryside,these workshops employed relatively small numbers of people with different skills who worked collectively on the manufacture of a variety of items,such as pottery and munitions.The owner of the workshop supplied the raw materials,paid the workers’ wages,and gained a profit from selling the finished products.

The large handicraft workshop made possible a division of labor- the assignment of one stage of production to each worker or group of workers.The effect of the division of labor on productivity was evident even in the manufacture of simple items such as buttons and pins.In The Wealth of Nations (1776),the economist Adam Smith (1723- 1790)used a pin factory in London to illustrate how the division of labor could increase per capita productivity from no more than twenty pins a day to the astonishing total of 4,800.

Like the cottages engaged in rural industry,the large handicraft workshop eventually gave way to the mechanized factory.The main difference between the workshop and the factory was that the factory did not require a body of skilled workers.When production became mechanized,the worker’s job was simply to tend to the machinery. The only skill factory workers needed was manual dexterity to operate the machinery.Only those workers who made industrial machinery remained craftsmen or skilled workers in the traditional sense of the word.

With the advent of mechanization,factory owners gained much tighter control over the entire production process.Indeed,they began to enforce an unprecedented discipline among their workers,who had to accommodate themselves to the boredom of repetitive work and a timetable set by the machines.Craftsmen who had been accustomed to working at their own pace now had to adjust to an entirely new and demanding schedule.?

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The Development of Factories

?One of the most enduring images of the eighteenth and nineteenth century British Industrial Revolution is that of the large factory,filled with workers laboring amid massive machinery driven by either water or steam power.Mechanized factory production evolved out of forms of industry that had emerged only during the early modern period (1500-1750).In the Middle Ages virtually all industry in Europe was undertaken by skilled craftsmen belonging to urban guilds,and these artisans,working either by themselves or with the assistance of apprentices or journeymen,produced everything from candlesticks and hats to oxcarts and beds.During the early modern period the urban craftsman’s shop gave way to two different types of industrial workplaces,the rural cottage and the large handicraft workshop.Both of these served as halfway houses,or transitional stages,to the large factory.

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