Reference no: EM131282421

Assignment

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION an extract from A Short History of the World BY H. G. WELLS

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NOTE TO STUDENTS: [Comments in brackets [like this] are edits by Assistant Professor Engh, SLCC. [ . . . ] indicates deletions.]

THERE is a tendency in many histories to confuse together what we have here called the mechanical revolution, which was an entirely new thing in human experience arising out of the development of organized science, a new step like the invention of agriculture or the discovery of metals, with something else, quite different in its origins, something for which there was already an historical precedent, the social and financial development which is called the industrial revolution. The two processes were going on together, they were constantly reacting upon each other, but they were in root and essence different. There would have been an industrial revolution of sorts if there had been no coal, no steam, no machinery; but in that case it would probably have followed far more closely upon the lines of the social and financial developments of the later years of the Roman Republic. It would have repeated the story of dispossessed free cultivators, gang labor, great estates, great financial fortunes, and a socially destructive financial process. Even the factory method came before power and machinery. Factories were the product not of machinery, but of the "division of labor." Drilled and sweated workers were making such things as millinery cardboard boxes and furniture, and coloring maps and book illustrations and so forth, before even water-wheels had been used for industrial purposes. There were factories in Rome in the days of Augustus. New books, for instance, were dictated to rows of copyists in the factories of the book-sellers. The attentive student of Defoe and of the political pamphlets of Fielding will realize that the idea of herding poor people into establishments to work collectively for their living was already current in Britain before the close of the seventeenth century. There are intimations of it even as early as More's Utopia (1516). It was a social and not a mechanical development.

Up to past the middle of the eighteenth century the social and economic history of western Europe was in fact retreading the path along which the Roman state had gone in the last three centuries B.C. But the political dis-unions of Europe, the political convulsions against monarchy, the recalcitrance of the common folk and perhaps also the greater accessibility of the western European intelligence to mechanical ideas and inventions, turned the process into quite novel directions. Ideas of human solidarity, thanks to Christianity, were far more widely diffused in the newer European world, political power was not so concentrated, and the man of energy anxious to get rich turned his mind, therefore, very willingly from the ideas of the slave and of gang labor to the idea of mechanical power and the machine.

The mechanical revolution, the process of mechanical invention and discovery, was a new thing in human experience and it went on regardless of the social, political, economic and industrial consequences it might produce. The industrial revolution, on the other hand, like most other human affairs, was and is more and more profoundly changed and deflected by the constant variation in human conditions caused by the mechanical revolution. And the essential difference between the amassing of riches, the extinction of small farmers and small business men, and the phase of big finance in the latter centuries of the Roman Republic on the one hand, and the very similar concentration of capital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the other, lies in the profound difference in the character of labor that the mechanical revolution was bringing about. The power of the old world was human power; everything depended ultimately upon the driving power of human muscle, the muscle of ignorant and subjugated men. A little animal muscle, supplied by draft oxen, horse traction and the like, contributed. Where a weight had to be lifted, men lifted it; where a rock had to be quarried, men chipped it out; where a field had to be plowed, men and oxen plowed it; the Roman equivalent of the steamship was the galley with its bank of sweating rowers. A vast proportion of mankind in the early civilizations were employed in purely mechanical drudgery. At its onset, power-driven machinery did not seem to promise any release from such unintelligent toil. Great gangs of men were employed in excavating canals, in making railway cuttings and embankments, and the like. The number of miners increased enormously. But the extension of facilities and the output of commodities increased much more. And as the nineteenth century went on, the plain logic of the new situation asserted itself more clearly. Human beings were no longer wanted as a source of mere in-discriminated power. What could be done mechanically by a human being could be done faster and better by a machine. The human being was needed now only where choice and intelligence had to be exercised. Human beings were wanted only as human beings. The drudge, on whom all the previous civilizations had rested, the creature of mere obedience, the man whose brains were superfluous, had become unnecessary to the welfare of mankind.

This was as true of such ancient industries as agriculture and mining as it was of the newest metallurgical processes. For plowing, sowing and harvesting, swift machines came forward to do the work of scores of men. The Roman civilization was built upon cheap and degraded human beings; modern civilization is being rebuilt upon cheap mechanical power. For a hundred years power has been getting cheaper and labor dearer. If for a generation or so machinery has had to wait its turn in the mine, it is simply because for a time men were cheaper than machinery.

Now here was a change-over of quite primary importance in human affairs. The chief solicitude of the rich and of the ruler in the old civilization had been to keep up a supply of drudges. As the nineteenth century went on, it became more and more plain to the intelligent directive people that the common man had now to be something better than a drudge. He had to be educated-if only to secure "industrial efficiency." He had to understand what he was about. From the days of the first Christian propaganda, popular education had been smoldering in Europe, just as it had smoldered in Asia wherever Islam has set its foot, because of the necessity of making the believer understand a little of the belief by which he is saved, and of enabling him to read a little in the sacred books by which his belief is conveyed. Christian controversies, with their competition for adherents, plowed the ground for the harvest of popular education. In England, for instance, by the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century, the disputes of the sects and the necessity of catching adherents young had produced a series of competing educational organizations for children, the church "National" schools, the dissenting "British" schools, and even Roman Catholic elementary schools. The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid advance in popular education throughout all the Westernized world. There was no parallel advance in the education of the upper classes-some advance, no doubt, but nothing to correspond-and so the great gulf that had divided that world hitherto into the readers and the non-reading mass became little more than a slightly perceptible difference in educational level. At the back of this process was the mechanical revolution, apparently regardless of social conditions, but really insisting inexorably upon the complete abolition of a totally illiterate class throughout the world.

The economic revolution of the Roman Republic had never been clearly apprehended by the common people of Rome. The ordinary Roman citizen never saw the changes through which he lived, clearly and comprehensively as we see them. But the industrial revolution, as it went on towards the end of the nineteenth century, was more and more distinctly seen as one whole process by the common people it was affecting, because presently they could read and discuss and communicate, and because they went about and saw things as no commonalty had ever done before.

Your assignment.

• PART A: Ten Vocabulary words. As you read the text above select 10 vocabulary words (minimum). You select the words new to you, or words used in a way new to you. List each word and then a definition that fits the usage of the word. Look up the definition in an academic dictionary (such as Oxford or Miriam Webster's New Collegiate, but not Google.) Then write the definition IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Select as many vocabulary words as needed to fill up the requirement of 10.

• PART B: Answer the following questions. Do NOT retype the question.

1.

1. Explain the difference between the mechanical revolution and the industrial revolution.

2. Explain how factories are older than machines and steam engines.

3. How did the ancient Roman factories operate?

4. What is meant by "Division of Labor"? How does it define a factory?

5. How did the industrial revolution influence education?

STYLE GUIDE: All answers for all assignments must be written as full sentences, do not answer with fragments. All answers must follow the style guide below:

• No First Person (I, me, we, us, our, ours)
• No Second Person (you, your)
• No Passive Voice
• No Cliché's
• No Contractions (don't, won't, can't, isn't, and so on)
• No Colloquialisms
• No Jargon
• No Jingoism
• No Rhetorical answers
• No Dialectal answers
• No Fragments
• No non-factual answers

PART C:(answer in one or two paragraph)

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, by Wells: In what way is there 'no going back' after the industrial revolution?

This question suggests, or implies that industrialization is a one-way event: or that what has been done cannot be undone. Think about this for a minute. Is this true? Let us view the problem in broader terms. We of the 21st century tend to think of the industrial revolution as a step in progress, implying that progress is a more encompassing concept than mere industrialization. This would suggest that one could have progress of some sort before industrialization: but, that one could not have industrialization without progress of some sort. Indeed, history confirms this. Before industrialization, came progress in metallurgy. Before metallurgy, came progress in mining. Before industrialization, metallurgy and mining came a renaissance. There was in Europe primitive metallurgy and mining of a sort, enough to make weapons and armor, for example the Vikings. To the unsophisticated student a mine is a mine. However, Viking iron was bog iron, not mined deep in the earth as Romans and Greeks used to do. Vikings built no mines as far as we know. That craft had been lost, along with many others. Remember the sequence: the Vikings came after the fall of civilization. Renaissance means rebirth: a rediscovery of ancient knowledge and learning. We have met this concept before. However, there can be no rebirth without a death, of sorts. Historians call that death "the dark ages," which Edward Gibbon wrote about in his book "A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Gibbon wrote eight volumes describing the Fall of Western Civilization, explaining how civilization undid thousands of years of progress. Yes, there was a time when things seemed to go backwards.

How do you explain the Fall of Rome? Answer: Civilization can learn, and it can unlearn, it can forget or lose knowledge. How does this happen? Well, consider how people unlearn. A person may learn something when young, and later forget. It is the same with civilization. Children learn about science, math, and logic when young. Biology confirms that all humans begin life as critical thinkers, a baby wants facts, food, and tolerates no nonsense. Indeed, neuroscience confirms this; all good brains are wired to think critically. If they do not think critically, it is because they have become dysfunctional, from either injury, disease or miseducation. Typically, a society immerses them in religious teachings, disciplines them to think superstitiously, and before they are admitted to the status of full-fledged adults, they are fully conditioned to function in an irrational society.

The fall of Rome was nothing more than civilization rejecting reason and critical thinking; in much, the same way an individual human often does in a superstitious society. That was Edward Gibbon's theory. How bad was it for civilization? Answer: they forgot how to make concrete. They lost the arts of medicine. They rejected the writings of Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius, and burned all their books. They shut down all facilities for adult education, closed the schools of critical thinking, Aristotle's Lyceum, Plato's Academy, The Garden of Epicurus. Faith is intolerant (by definition). What is there outside the mind of faith? Lack of faith. We may ask, "faith in what?" Trying to answer this question will stir up intolerance immediately because it turns out there are many faiths. One thing they all share in common is intolerance of contrary ideas. So intolerant where the faithful citizens of Alexandria that they burned the world's greatest achievement, The Library, and took the head librarian, a woman named Hypatia, skinned her alive until she died in agony. Link (Links to an external site.) Bishop Cyril of Alexandria organized these activities because it was better to be faithful than to stimulate questions by letting people read books. Some historians estimate two million scrolls perished in the flames of intolerance. They rejected the Greek mathematicians, which caused all the sciences to collapse. They even rejected the early theory of Evolution proposed by Anaxagoras. The world became flat! Not round. The average life expectancy dropped. They stopped bathing, because good people do not take their clothes off to wash---that was their thinking. All concepts of hygiene went right out the door. Plague, disease, famine increased in frequency. They forgot how to build aqueducts to convey fresh water to urban centers. They stopped building roads! Isolation was better than liberal communication afforded by roads. The Imperial Mail Service collapsed. They forgot how to make glass. Metallurgy became a lost art. Even their textiles became crude and lifeless. They lost interest in all art because graven images were condemned. The light of critical thinking did not revive for 1000 years, these were the dark ages, an age when everyone was taught not to ask questions, but to have faith. The historians William & Ariel Durant (husband and wife) named this period "The Age of Faith," but most call it the Dark Ages.

Moreover, the fall of Rome is not the only time civilization has lost its way. When the European explorers (primarily Portuguese) reached the Orient, they discovered vast complexes of ruins no one could explain. Who built them? The cities of Babylon, Assyria, Media, were all rubble. The followers of Mohammed could offer no explanation. They believed that everything before the time of Mohammed was utterly irrelevant.

There are other systems of belief that feel similarly. To most Americans the very idea of "Rome" is mentally associated with things having to do with Christ. Yet, Christianity had no influence on Rome until the very end. Most Americans know very little about the Rome of progress, the Rome of History. Why? Answer, because they assume everything before the time of Christianity is utterly irrelevant. The "Social Memory" only goes back as far as convenience permits: as soon as the past becomes inconvenient or contrary to what they wish us to believe, they dismiss it. This is not something praiseworthy, it is a defect in public education. Now remember, to us the industrial revolution is a thing in the past, 300 years ago. Could we forget how it happened, and what it means?

We (the modern global civilization) can no longer explain where electricity comes from. Sure, engineers can, but most people have no idea. We use stuff we cannot explain. How do cars work? Who cares? We just drive them. Why are cities built primarily for cars and not for people? Who cares? We just do it. In spite of technology, we seem to retain very little information concerning where it comes from, how it works, what kind of thinking creates it. These problems, in the way humans think, go very deep.

For example, young couples of today do not ask, "Why should we have a child?" No. They just have children. Critical thinkers of the past would view this as strange. Why strange? Answer: when we read the ancient writings of preindustrial civilizations (i.e., Rome, Greece) we discover they were agricultural civilizations. In those societies, a "child" was both a "mouth to feed" and "insurance for the elderly," and so getting pregnant required getting permission, a license with a contract of liability to ensure the child would be raised and fed and educated, all the things that went into ancient marriage. Marriage had nothing to do with 'amour' or love. It was a license to procreate. This is how the ancients viewed it. Moreover, their population was remarkably stable. Do we of the 21st century go into marriage with these ideas in mind? We have forgotten. Yet these ideas are as old as procreation. Do we ask, "Where do homeless people come from"? Do we ask, "Where do underemployed come from"?

To the ancients "The State" was part of the world of natural law, simply "the way things are." To them nothing should exist in human society that does not serve human society, or if it did, they viewed it as a burden on society. The model in the ancient mind of society was the wise farmer. We know this from reading Virgil's poetry in The Eclogues and The Georgics, some of the most sublime poetry in the world. An even older example of this thinking is the six-thousand-year-old Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. To the ancients, "the state" was the government of society, and it should serve the same purpose as wisdom serves the farmer. I.e., his or her function was to 'husband their resources' for the coming spring. By this thinking, civilization would last for as long as spring follows winter. Ancient man would view our modern idea that society should build and consume with NO concept of ‘next spring' as insane. Is it possible society could 'fall' or become 'insane' in the way in which it occurred anciently in Rome? Could the progress of industrial society be undone? Yes, many things can foment a new dark age. Remember that the original Dark Age happened so imperceptibly that those involved in it were unaware of it. They thought faith was better than interrogating nature (i.e., critical thinking). Thanks to Edward Gibbon, we see the consequences. Most of them did not. A few did, and even wrote about it. The Emperor Julian's writings are an example. Yes, civilization can lose its way. There are ways things can go backwards. Will some future historian look back at us and see the dawning of another age of intolerance, ignorance, superstition, a civilization blindly going backward.

The ancients knew about trigonometry, indeed they are the ones who invented it. From this they invented the science of ballistics, and pneumatics, and hydraulics, and others, all which enabled them to mine underground, pipe fresh air, pump hot and cold water through the plumbing of a city, and do many things we find amazing. So amazing that simpleminded people who are ignorant of history jump to the ridiculous conclusion that "aliens from space" were involved, or that "spiritual powers" are the explanation. The ancients did all there marvelous feats without anything other than brain power and work. The did all this 300 years before the Common Era. Yet it was all lost. Critical thinking informs us that if it happened once it may happen again. This can easily happen if a society fails to face a critical threat, which then overwhelms them.

Example: Imagine a society which knows it must store food for the coming winter, or risk starvation midwinter. They have survived and prospered in this way for perhaps a thousand years. Then in this example that society is forced to convert to a new way of thinking, imported by clever deception or force, from another part of the world where winter storage schemes have never been practiced, and are consequently laughed at. The new rulers think differently and have absolutely no regard for the "old ways". With the new power in place this society indulges itself to the full, consuming everything produced, with no regard for tomorrow.

Midwinter comes, and turns out to be exceedingly long, the food is gone, and there is no obvious solution, because all those who knew what to do are followers of the old faith, the old way of thinking, and are consequently not going to be listened to, but more likely they are dead (part of the conversion process). Besides, if it is midwinter then it is too late to conserve food for midwinter.

This Cycle of learning and forgetting has happened so many times in world history that some scientists (viz Dr. Stephen Hawking) suspect that it may indicate a genetic, neural flaw in human evolution, and may lead to our inability to deal with threats to our prosperity and even our existence: they point to climate change, they point to depletion of finite resources, and point to the threat of thermonuclear annihilation (which is still with us). Our world will celebrate the 100 year anniversary of potential nuclear annihilation in 2043, only 27 years away. You will live to see that anniversary. Many scientists explain the enduring nature of these dangers by pointing out that all of them are profitable to business. Dr. Hawking even chided that it would be an embarrassment to humanity if we ever had to explain our behavior to an intelligent alien species.

Are we forgetting? How do we forget? Indeed, it is happening right now in northern Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Forgetting is always happening in some parts of the world. Do not let that distract you. It is too easy to let other society's problems draw us away from our own. Too often we look at other societies and point to their problems. That is unprofessional and unscientific. To think critically one should always look first inward. What is our nation, our state, our town doing that suggests bad thinking, a forgetting of wisdom right before our very eyes.

For much of my professional career [Professor Engh speaking here] the thinking of OUR society was "Better to be dead than red." This saying meant, "it is better to be a dead American (by thermonuclear war) than to negotiate ANY kind of treaty for world peace with those communists". I noticed most people who talked that way had no idea HOW CLOSE WE WERE to utter annihilation. Today (2016) most people imagine this threat has GONE AWAY somehow. No, it has not. The religion of Thermonuclear Patriotism is still very much alive. I know because I am still involved in the business.

We face other threats, but are unwilling to do anything about them, because the truth is uncomfortable. We imagine this planet can sustain as many people as are born. We imagine another billion mouths should be no problem. Some imagine we must make room for as many babies as are born regardless, because those baby-souls are up somewhere waiting to be born, and we would be sinful if we did not multiply and replenish as commanded. Nevertheless, we are ignorant of how we are actually feeding the current 7 billion. To sustain the current population we must use a finite resource, phosphorus and nitrates, for without massive fertilization of crops we would not have food for the world's population. Most of the phosphates and nitrates are used up. The business of phosphates and nitrates is far too profitable as demand increases and supply decreases, to do anything to curb the human appetite. Worldwide the best farmland is already tilled, so the world acreage will not increase, it too is finite. Some say, "let's build hydroponic farms out in the ocean", but they forget that the ocean is already playing that roll and the world supply of fish other protein from the sea is rapidly declining. Besides, the net benefit of hydroponic protein is less than the net cost of water and energy used in hydroponics to justify the scheme.

Another difficulty. Rather than curb an appetite for carbon based energy, which is not very efficient, we use it as if the supply were infinite. It isn't. The companies and government agencies and scientific institutions of the world have known this since 1957 when they dedicated the entire year to the World's International Geophysical Year.

Another example: Isaac Newton was one of the first to suspect that earth's climate is not stable, he even proposed that man may cause the climate to change to a new vector, and suggested that was the explanation for rising temperatures: but that was in the 17rh century!

It amazes this author that so many people ridicule critical thinking, or go to great lengths to cast doubts upon science when it inconveniences their emotional attachment to some other way of thinking: and yet, whenever we try to have a discussion about the threats we face, the same people say "science will find a way to solve the problem," or "industry will find a way." I hope you live to see this resolved. I hope it is resolved in such a way that critical thinking permits us to become a rational species. At the present time we are not a rational species, we are merely a species capable of producing rational individuals. I hope our solution comes before any of the threats mentioned overwhelm us. There are many more not mentioned here. Perhaps the greatest risk comes from the threats we do not see: but only a critical mind has any chance of finding them.

The idea that something is watching over humanity, and would never let catastrophe strike is too appealing, it overwhelms most people's ability to think critically. Yet our civilization (which is now global) faces real threats which most people do not wish to face. We cannot face them until we can turn societies attention to the problem. How do we do that? How do we forestall the human tendency to constantly forget the lessons learned? How do we stop the tendency we have to "go back"?