Essay question for this unit is: Which is a more important goal for a society: economic equality or economic growth?
Biography - James Watt
James Watt was born in England in 1736. He was educated at home and as a teenager worked in his father’s business making navigation instruments for ships. As a young man, he went to work at the University of Glasgow repairing scientific instruments. It was here that he met and befriended Adam Smith. In 1763, he was asked to repair the university’s Newcomen steam engine. The large Newcomen steam engine had been invented in 1712 to pump water out of coal mines. Watt quickly realized that the Newcomen steam engine was terribly inefficient. It wasted about three quarters of its heat, which made it very expensive to operate anywhere except for coal mines where coal was very cheap. Watt recognized the large profits to be made from making an efficient steam engine. After this, Watt spent several years working on steam engines until he was able to build a faster and more fuel efficient steam engine that only used one-third the coal used by the Newcomen steam engine. Unfortunately, Watt did not have the money needed to start a business producing steam engines.
In 1775, Watt met and went into business making steam engines with Matthew Boulton, a successful business man in Birmingham, England, which was an important manufacturing city. Watt and Boulton worked well together because Watt had strong engineering skills and Boulton was a shrewd businessman. The first steam engines they produced were purchased by mine owners for pumping water out of the underground mines. In 1781, Boulton and Watt realized that the steam engine could be used to power many different types of machines and they began to sell their engines to paper, flour, iron and textile factories. By 1800, they had sold about 500 steam engines and had become very wealthy. In addition, they set up a program to help their workers if they became sick and to care for them when they got old. Watt died in 1819 and was buried next to Matthew Boulton. In 1882, the term “watt” as a measure of electricity and mechanical power was named in his honor.
Biography - Richard Arkwright
Richard Arkwright was born in England in 1732, the youngest of thirteen children. His family was poor and he was educated at home. As a young man, Arkwright worked as a barber. However, he was not happy with the work and realized that he could make more money if he made wigs from hair. While working as a wig maker, he invented a water proof dye that he sold to finance his work on inventing machines. In 1768, working with John Kay, a clock maker, Arkwright invented a spinning machine that could spin 128 threads at the same time. Up to this point, spinning thread was difficult work and a skilled spinner could only spin one thread at a time. In addition to being able to produce more thread, Arkwright’ machine was simple to use and unskilled workers could learn to operating with only a little training.
In 1771, Arkwright went into business operating the first water powered textile factory and by 1774 the factory employed 600 workers. In order to get more workers, Arkwright built housing near the factory for the workers and the number of workers grew to 1500. The workers in Arkwright's factory worked for 13 hour a day from 6am to 7pm. In addition, about two-thirds of Arkwright's workers were children, some as young as six. Arkwright was also the first to use one of James Watt's steam engines to power machinery in his factory. The success of this factory made Arkwright wealthy and famous. He went on to build several more factories and sell the technology in his factories to other factory owners. His technology was used in more than a hundred factories. Arkwright has since been called “the father of the factory system”.
Source # 1 - Excerpt from An Impartial Representation of the Case of the Poor Cotton Spinners in Lancaster (1780) which detailed Arkwright’s new factory system:
"Arkwright's machines require so few hands, and those only children, with the assistance of an overlooker. A child can produce as much as would, and did upon an average, employ ten grown up persons. Jennies for spinning with one hundred or two hundred spindles, or more, going all at once, and requiring but one person to manage them. Within the space of ten years, from being a poor man worth £5, Richard Arkwright has purchased an estate of £20,000; while thousands of women, when they can get work, must make a long day to card, spin, and reel 5040 yards of cotton, and for this they have four-pence or five-pence and no more."
Source # 2 - Diagram of British Textile Factory
Source # 3 - Video on development of the railroad in England - click here
Source # 4 - Map of Industrial England
Source # 5 - Graph of Railroad Construction in England
Source # 6 - Graph of British Coal Production
Source # 7 - Graph of Cotton Consumption in British Mills
Source # 8 - Graph of British railroad construction
